Guild Wars 2

As others have stated, best bet is to keep going for “objectives”; capture camps, towers, keeps with your server. The “boss” will give you a couple badges for your effort. If you’re able to play at off-peak hours, that is usually a good time to do jumping puzzles, if you wish to do those as well for some additional badges. For the one in Eternal Battlegrounds, there are also invisibility wells that you can use to make yourself invisible as you traverse the puzzle, or you can of course rely on a Mesmer, should there be one there, to portal you up near the chest.

Ohoni.6057:

Also, the game needs to provide a better feedback mechanism for ranging underwater. Without proper landmarks it is much harder to gauge distance to target under water, and they need to figure out some better way of depicting this so that players have a better feel for what they can hit with their attacks, and which enemies can hit them.

I hope I am just pointing out the obvious here, but under each skill, there is either a red line visible, or it’s not. When it’s visible, you are out of range.

I think it’s alright, and don’t hate it. Would like to see them develop more underwater content and flesh out on balance and mechanics some day. Like Catisa wrote above, if they added a map where 90% were under water in WvW, it would give them a good incentive to revise and balance the various professions’ under water combat prowess.

Thanks for all the fun I’ve had so far, ER and VS. I live in Norway, but being that I am american-made, I often find myself playing during night time, and you guys have kept it interesting and lively. Been loving all the battles so far. The occasional smaller number clashes I’ve been able to have, has shown great skill from every server involved, so I’m proud of the SFR community (as I always am), and respect a large number of the ER and VS players as well. Keep it up!

It’s a shame we all seem to suffer from the holiday numbers though (as in, our “core” of WvW players are not all present on the battlefield). I know SFR attendance numbers are down at least, and I am certain this is the case the other two servers as well. Would be interesting to see how it’d play out without the holidays breaking into every servers war effort.

I must also take my hat off to VS. And it’s not because of the typical reason that you’ve stayed in Tier 1 for all this time, but the fact that you have a very well oiled machine going, in that which are your daunting zergs. Some players may hate them and find it annoying (culling/lag is of course a problem that comes from it), but I can’t do anything but respect the fact that you are able to organize together so quickly when key locations are under attack. There’s obviously no fluke to it, you guys communicate and work well together.

To ER, so far I’ve had nothing but honorable fights versus your troops. There’s been some nice tactics employed by a large number of your soldiers, and every fight I’ve experienced, has been rewarding (really fun) and interesting. Would love to fight you guys for several more weeks.

Oh well, time to get back to the fight. The blood staining on my sword has dried; It’s time to kill (and get killed by) some more VS and ER soldiers.

Been having an absolute blast this reset. Fights to be had around every corner and over every hill. And the ever-present fear of the VS zerg(s) rumbling through the gates when trying to capture something makes it all pretty entertaining.

Also want to throw out a little /salute to the two Thiefs I did a bit of Sword/Dagger-build testing against, below Garrison (I can’t for the life of me remember the server name above their heads). Really good sportsmanship, saluting and bowing after I eventually got slaughtered. Whoever you were, you’re the type of players I love to encounter, and have the utmost respect for. Helped me fine tune a new build too, so cheers to you two!

I keep toying around with the Unbreakable Choir Bell every day. Here’s some of the “tabs” that I’ve been experimenting my way to;

(9) = Decrease Octave
(0) = Increase Octave
- = Short pause

Aerith’s Theme:
6-8-(0)4-3-1-(9)5-6-8-(0)4-3-54341-(9)567

Chocobo Theme:
8-642864-6-4-6-5-44542-4-1-4468(0)23

Dragonborn:
(9)123-345-574-312-123-345-578-7(0)21-123-2-1-(9)7-5-3-4-354-123-345-574-312

Fear Not This Night:
1-3-5-1-322(9)7-7786-(0)1-3-5-8-(0)322(9)7-7786

Jingle Bells:
666-666-684-56-777-77-66-6-88-7-5-4

Payphone:
(9)678-(0)54-4421-(9)76-7764-7-6-5-465

Prophecies Theme:
123-4-321-12(9)7-7-786-(0)123-4-325-564-4-451

Song of Storms:
(9)138-138-(0)2-3232(9)75-5-1-345-5-1-342-138-138-(0)2-3232(9)75-5-1-345-5-1

Song of Time:
5-1-3-5-1-3-576-4-345-1-(9)7(0)21

Wind Theme:
1-2-32(9)758-8-75345-4-2-357(0)2-3-(9)7-3432-(0)2-32(9)758-875345-4-2-3-57-(0)21(9)7-8-8

Zelda Intro:
(9)4-1-4-445678-88(0)234-4432321-1-(9)778(0)2-1-(9)7-6678-7-6-5567-(0)2-1-(9)111-111-1123

Note that there are certain notes that will be impossible to mimic on the scale we have available, so for a couple of these melodies, there are usually one note (the one magical note) that may sound a bit off.

I really wish the Unbreakable Choir Bell wouldn’t time out like the regular Choir Bells. It’d be more of a convenience thing that it would just stay active for as long as we want it there of course, but we can just re-summon it right away after all. And the way that it times out can really break up your experimentation and song playing. It makes sense for the consumable item that breaks, but to me, not so much for one that’s permanent.

Hawkmoon.5849:

There currently appears to be no way to acquire additional Mystical Cogs needed to complete all the pets. it would appear that you need to buy them (the other pets, not cogs) from the cash shop, which I refuse to do. If it can’t be acquired in-game, then I don’t need it.

In a way, they can be acquired in-game. Currently 7 Gold will net you about 350 Gems, which is the cost for each of the Tixx’s Mini Pets in the Gem Store. This puts them at about the same cost that most Rare Mini Pets are going for at the Trading Post. That isn’t too bad in my eyes (though these are not tradable, which does lower their value to basically zilch). The Wintersday Mystery Box ones are far worse.

Got to agree on the notion of the Mini Pets (and other RNG box items for that matter) needing to be possible to trade. Out of €50 I got 2 Mini Festive Golem, 5 Mini Snowman (3 went to make Festivoo the Merry), 2 Mini Infirarium and 2 Festive Hats (I do not need/want more than one, quite honestly)—besides the other “junk” items. I am actually “stuck” with a duplicate of every Miniature, and I got friends that are missing just 1 to complete their collections. I’d like to give mine to them.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that I at least didn’t end up with a broken collection, and that it only cost me €50 (which is still a terribly high cost for 4 Mini Pets), compared to others I know who’s spent over €80+ and not gotten complete collections. Even so, it still stings that I needed to pay €50 (50 Wintersday Mystery Boxes opened before the collection was completed) in order for that collection to happen. The Halloween approach was FAR better, a set I can buy twice to make a fourth.

As I’ve said in one or two other posts; I will not jump into another RNG gamble like this, if this is how it’s intended to be forwards. And, as soon as my collection is broken, and I have no way of obtaining these collectibles through, e.g., Trading Post, I will just stop collecting. Who wants a broken collection? Thus, any funds coming from me for future collectibles updates are not going to be happening. Consider that this may be the case for many collectors. Making them Account Bound may just be like shooting yourself in the foot on purpose, stupid.

Guild Wars 2 is not the typical Free-to-Play model, we already pay upfront for our copy of the game, and as such we have already invested and are less likely to jump in and out. You’d think you would want to keep your already playing players investing, through clear purchases, and not drive them away. If the game was completely free to download and play, then yes, I can see that tactic being possibly beneficial to the company; but as it stands however, this game is not a game that I would expect to see having a influx of players jumping in and out of it, like other F2P titles that relies on these tactics to “milk” players as they jump from game to game.

Borikitty.1302:

Yareon.2835:

You can equip it and see yourself without any problem.

I can’t see it.. I tried (about 2 hours ago) on all 5 of my characters

Did you tick the little box within the Hero UI to actually display back pieces? Shows up just fine on mine. It’s a little sack filled with gifts. Perfect if you may have some sort of a desire to RP as Santa, heh.

If you wish to use the event to earn something of value, e.g., Gold, why not spend the time out in the world, farming the various presents scattered about for Wintersday Gifts, which you can then proceed to either gamble with in order to get a Unbreakable Choir Bell or Endless Toymaker’s Tonic—both which value 40G on the Trading Post—or to straight up sell for profits?

You can even turn the Frames into Endless <Toy> Tonics, chuck 4 of those into the Mystic Forge and hope to get a Endless Dolyak Tonic (100G) or Endless Toymaker Tonic (40G). Additionally you can now purchase these frames from the holiday vendor(s), so it should be possible to repeat for as long as you want to keep doing it.

If you have absolutely no use for the Mystic Cogs, and do not wish to hang on to them for the possibility of future implementations where they’re used, you can vendor them for some minor Silver (1 Copper each, 7 Silver if you collected all 700). Not exactly something that helps massively, but they don’t need to take up inventory space or be flat out destroyed for nothing.

Personally, I do not think (holiday) events needs to be about earning Gold for the players, I think they should be more about fluff and fun. What I’d rather see, is a cut back on the insane RNG they throw in our faces for these events, at the very least when it comes to real money transactions, as-in; the Gem Store. Sell us stuff where we have a high probability of getting what we want, or straight up know we get what we pay for. Gambling boxes are not my idea of fun event content, plus you are likely to get duplicates of stuff you don’t want, e.g., 2 Santa hats and 3 duplicate Mini Pets (after making Festivoo the Merry).

It’s a skin, a cute little backpack for variety. I’m happy enough with the little gift, although I have no clue why he gave us 200 new Mystical Cogs when 250 are needed to make a Mini Pet. Perhaps Toypocalypse rewards some very rarely or something. Still, that doesn’t solve the issue of not having a frame to use anymore.

Unfortunately you were struck with a severe case of bad luck. I made my potion after 5 attempts at it. That’s why I somewhat hate RNG for these time-limited events, it makes you feel bad for being lucky and it makes you feel bad for being unlucky.

I would just hang on to them in the Bank for the time being, chances are they will be used for future Legendary items. Quoting Linsey Murdock Unveils New High End Ascended Gear:

You’ll also see more Legendary items in the future and an update to our existing Legendary weapons. […] As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content).

Chances are we’ll be seeing some new uses for them eventually. Hopefully not too far down the road. I would really like to see alternatives to the Staff, Pistol and Shortbow weapons in example. Some new legendary models that aren’t as… “colorful”?

Pretty sure that was just luck (or lack thereof). Did The Grove one 4 times last night, first couple goes gave me Fine and Masterwork items, third gave me as you write, “junk” items and the fourth granted me an Exotic. Just luck of the RNG I would imagine. (I did this as a duo with my friend.)

I would actually like to hear an ANet response/update on this as well. Not specifically giving us a ETA, since that’s probably risky with potential delays that may occur for a variety of reasons, but saying that they have completed a certain number of new Legendary weapons or something of the sorts wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps trickling out some preview screenshots of them to get some player feedback could’ve been nice as well, though that’s also a bit risky, since players will want what they can’t have now, and not wait for it.

In the same boat as Sons though, I would love a Shortbow, a Pistol, another Dagger even, but I do not like The Dreamer, nor do I like Quip. I personally don’t want to shoot rainbows or bubbles and flowers with party-popper sound effects. They’re well made, it’s not that, but I just don’t want to run around with them.

I could aim for two Incinerator’s, but I’d rather work on two seperate Legendaries over making a duplicate. I’d hope we don’t need to wait all too long before we start seeing new ones to select from, as I enjoy having the motivational drive from working towards one. At least 1 more of every weapon type (besides Greatsword which has 2 (Eternity is a combination), though I won’t mind another option for those too).

I like most of those ideas;

1) Not being Account Bound would open up the ability to at least buy them at some point, even if they’d be incredibly expensive. And as written, this may be an incentive for some rich (real life) players to buy even more to create themselves a stock of additional minis for future sales and profits. Currently the box isn’t even in the Hot Items list, if that doesn’t say anything.

2) I think they can be both from real money (RNG box) and in-game luck, but more like the Karka event ones, where I believe we can still go to Southsun Cove and grind up Young Karka for a minimal chance of obtaining one. Combined with not being Account Bound, they could stop dropping after the event of course. If Account Bound, at least with promises of letting the same batch of minis drop during the Wintersday event of 2013, besides additional new ones, should work too. My collection would be “broken” for a year, but I’d know I can get another shot at getting them next year.

Side-note; For all I/we know, the same miniatures may appear during Wintersday 2013, and as such, may not require as many purchases of RNG boxes this year, since we get the same chance next year. But without any word on that, it’s hard to know. And I understand from a profit making standpoint, stating such things may not be viable. I would at least prefer to see additions added though.

3) A set “you will get what you want” amount of purchases through having a ticket drop from each box could work, though then they may as well just have a direct purchase for the amount of Gems that it would take, as that would be more profitable for them, considering during say 30 boxes, chances are that you get at least one of the miniatures. Which means you wouldn’t need to spend 30 purchases to get the collection. I’d rather see the Halloween approach, a pack with the pets, and another purchase to combine into a fourth. I don’t mind spending €25 (2000 Gems) if I know what I get. I mind spending €50 and not getting what I want, which can likely happen with RNG boxes. If I wanted to gamble, I’d do so where I can get something of real value back, e.g., money in Vegas.
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The problem I have with the way they handled this batch of minis, is both as a collector and a fear that they may just shoot themselves a bit in the foot with the strategy they pursue to monetize on them currently.

If my collection gets broken because I were not lucky enough to get the miniatures I wanted for a reasonable real cash cost (yes, sure, you can spend Gold, but I am talking about real cash here, as Gold doesn’t support ANet and the development of the game going forwards), where is my incentive to keep collecting? Why should I as a collector keep collecting, when my Collectibles list is broken by unattainable miniatures?

I loved collecting them in GW, and sure, there were 3 that were actually impossible to get, as those were given to Gaile Gray, but the others were, to a certain extent, possible to obtain through spending in-game currency and trading for them.
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And yes, not everyone, probably a majority, cares about miniatures. But there are plenty of us that likes collecting them for ourselves. We are a source of real money as well as any other player, and cutting off motivation to collect may not be the best strategy.

PvE

- When I stealth, why are channeled skills from the enemies still firing on me? This is extremely annoying when they keep turning with you, so you can’t get behind them.
- When I stealth, why do in example Skill Challenges reset so quickly? It’s almost no time available at all to get behind a enemy.
- When I stealth, why do the enemies sometimes dash back to their original position, making it again impossible to really get behind them for the short duration you’re in stealth. Some walk, that is perfect.

All of these are minor issues, and is in my opinion minor annoyances than something that needs fixing quickly. All can be in ways worked around.

PvP

My Backstab damage is ridiculously high (8k+). Pair that with a quick Heartseeker (5k+) and most professions are dead before they know what hit them. This needs fixing. On the flipside, Thief is a very squishy profession when pulling those numbers, and if damage is lowered, they do need a slight buff in defense (VERY slight, not much).

Mug->Backstab->Heartseeker is in most cases racking up 16k+ damage within a couple seconds. Not on every target, but on a lot of them. Add Basilisk Venom to that and the player that’s on the receiving end were unable to react at all.

I try to avoid doing too much of that type of gameplay, simply because I know how annoying it is to be on the receiving end of it. It’s why I run with Dagger + Pistol and not the one-shot setup of Traits in example.
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It is however worth noting, that Thiefs can be countered fairly easily, and once you’ve played one for a while, you know how to deal with them fairly efficiently. I think a large part of the complaints is not having played the profession and learning how to counter. Investing some point into Toughness, as any profession, won’t hurt either. That helps you against everyone, not just the Thief.

For those players who are reading this who have troubles with, e.g., stealth and Thief, don’t stop your attacks, keep spamming your skills out as soon as a Thief is invisible, you are in 8/10 engagements going to still deal a good bit of damage to them, and they’ll pop out of stealth in a Downed state. This is one mistake I see a lot of players make. They stop attacking because the Thief went invisible.

Grohl Absconditus is very happy as he got a new toy just two days ago;

I at least, think it was a good idea to add the Ascended tier of equipment. It introduces an interesting mechanic with resistances that can be used in multiple parts of the game. I could very well see it being possible to use it in at least World vs. World as well; Critical Resistance, Fire Resistance, Chill Resistance, and so on forth. Not saying it’ll happen, but it could be something to consider. Sacrifice some customization (Runes/Sigils), for a different type of customizing (Infusions).

Don’t forget that you can’t actually slot the powerful Runes/Sigils into this new tier, you can slot Infusions only, which are mainly resistances against Agony (for now). For that reason, I’ll likely stick with Exotics when resistances aren’t required, as I have more customization that way (and Ascended items are barely better). I see it as giving us players a choice to make; do we want to sacrifice our stats customization for some resistance (when not required for a specific dungeon), get slightly better stats that we can’t really select ourselves, or do we want to have the ability to slot our Runes and Sigils, together with the decision of what combination of stats to have on the items?

Additionally, they have already stated that sometime in the (near) future it will be possible to obtain this new tier in a multitude of ways; so likely we will see crafted versions, world-dropped versions, and so on forth. It is currently available in relation to a dungeon, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be that way forever. And what good is Agony resistance going to do you anywhere outside that specific dungeon at any rate? You may not be doing yourself a favor, if you go with Ascended outside of the dungeon.

The ideas were good, the intentions were good, the implementation was horrible.

You should’ve expected major latency issues, and avoided free trials during the first big event, promising content updates and changes to the world (which was delivered). The intention to draw in new players are good, but it just backfired, e.g.; several of my friends said they kept disconnecting this weekend and won’t be buying the game, thinking it’s normal that it has connection issues. They don’t want to invest $60 on something they believe is unstable, and while I’ve tried suggesting that this may be in part because of the trials and the event, I do understand them. (Note: I do not believe it would have been without issues if the free trial weekend wasn’t running, but it may have helped slightly.)

If Southsun Cove were instanced to be at most 30-50 players per map, it may have reduced the framerate troubles that most experienced, as well as the invisible foes. It could probably help reduce certain latency issues as well, as they seemed to mainly kick in when every single person present, were attacking one specific enemy (during the last stages of the event).

I am also disappointed to see that everything fluff-related in the form of skins and miniatures, were available in one single gambling chest, which sole purpose is to draw as much money out of players as possible. They did drop from the event foes, as I did get a shoulder skin from a Karka, but the rate was low (referencing other players about their experience). What I wanted, was the miniatures, as I love collecting them, but at the same time I do not wish to spend 70 Gold+/- (which can buy you ~6000 Gems) on the set of pets (which is my problem, I know). I would much rather see (at least) the miniatures available as a seperate purchase. If these pets (and skins) are permanent rare drops in Southsun Cove, then I at least have no problems, nor will I feel as demotivated and disappointed, with how it were implemented. I do however fear that the boat has sailed and that they no longer drop.

Lastly, I don’t think it’s necessary to have such an incredibly limited approach to “one-time” events. It could very well have repeated the several stages throughout the day. A lot more players would experience it, a lot more players would spread out on when they participate, logging in when they have the time and wish to do so. Limiting it to one location, one time slot, isn’t perhaps the best approach. Why not seperate those that has completed the event and those that hasn’t in different “overflows”/instances? As soon as enough players that haven’t completed the content are present, pop up a “queue” notification asking if the player wants to do the content, re-enter the queue or leave the queue.

Bad things aside, there was a lot of great things with this update

I absolutely love the new dungeon. Fractals of the Mists is a little masterpiece full of beautiful scenery and, at least to me, interesting encounters and mini-puzzles. It is so far some of the most entertaining instanced content I’ve had the pleasure to play in a MMO, and I can’t wait to see what future content updates brings in terms of dungeons. Looking forwards to the fix on “crashes” not allowing you to re-enter and continue with your group.

I quite enjoy the new sPvP map as well, and any new addition made to this part of the game is more than welcome.

I wish to thank you for the great event rewards; The 20 slot Ancient Karka Shell Box and Ancient Karka Shell are excellent little treasures to be had. I think it was nice that the chest had a chance at granting precursors too, although I know a lot of players are unhappy about this (Note: I did not get any precursor dropped.)

Southsun Cove is a pretty little map. I quite enjoyed the Skipping Stones jumping puzzle. It’s nice to see new enemies added so early in the games life. Veteran/Champion Karkas actually feels a bit scary when alone!

Thank you for the new Ranger’s Reef Drake pet! I absolutely love it. Great detail, and I love the Confusion skill.

And bad experiences aside, thank you for the event; it did seem like it would have been plenty more fun, if it weren’t for the fact that there were too many players on the screen, latency issues as well as some minor framerate issues. I hope in the future you implement new means of presenting content like this.

Unless I am entirely mistaken, large gold chests has always dropped precursor weapons. It’s just the fact that there were so many thousands of players doing one specific event that had a large gold chest, which resulted in a seemingly increased drop rate of these items. I do not think the rate for the precursors was any better than from any of the other large golden chests (dragon events, certain Orr events), it was just the sheer number of players involved at one given time.

I have no problem with the fact that some players got lucky while I didn’t. I am perfectly satisfied with the accessory and 20 slot box. The extra Exotics and Rare items I got were just fluff added to those two.

I would also very much like to know if we should be in Lion’s Arch or in Southsun Cove. And more specifically where, even if this mean massive lag as everyone gathers there. I had to relay the whole little scene that played out near the trebuchet in Lion’s Arch last night, because there were no indication of where to go, and a lot of players had missed out on it.

PS: Please don’t allow interaction with NPC’s for scenes like this in the future, ArenaNet—players kept talking to them (purposely to troll), interrupting the voiced dialogue.

While I ain’t entirely sure how they handle the dungeons, it may help to have someone with a good connection enter you. It seems to me that (at least in part) dungeons are hosted by the person entering, since if the person that entered leaves, the whole group are kicked from the dungeon. This is another issue I see with the way the game handles dungeons. Instead of re-allocating the host/instance to someone else, it just kicks everyone and all progress is lost.

I ain’t bored yet. I find it fun to apply and adapt strategies with my server, in order to catch the opposing server(s) off guard. Unless your server is forever holding 90+% of the maps, there should be ways for you to get into the tactical part of WvW. Setting up skirmish teams, scouts, guards, zergs and so on forth. Attack with a large force up front, keep them busy, while a small group breaks in from a different location. It’s those things that makes the WvW part of the game satisfying to me; Outsmarting the opponents as a server working together. Or just having a laugh as some guilds decide to pump out Siege Golems galore and attack a fortification.

Still, I wouldn’t mind a few more maps to add to the variation of the 3 completely identical Borderlands. There’s in many ways just 2 maps, and that’s it. A few more rewards to buy for badges wouldn’t hurt either. Lv.80 Exotics perhaps?

As others point out, it will probably differ from your home world, and also the zone you visit. But another important factor is the time you play. I am often a night owl, playing from midnight to early morning. During these hours, on a EU server, I do not really see all that many players around, maybe 3-4 per zone I complete. When I play during more normal hours however, prime time (5pm-10pm), I see 20-40(+) players about in more or less all zones. So I wouldn’t be worried about it feeling empty and dead, if you play on more prime time hours for your world. Weekends should also be good for having the social aspect around you at earlier/later hours.

I too think Legendary weapons should be Account Bound. You are “limited” to 2 Legendary weapons per character reaching 100% Map Exploration, so with 8 professions, you can at most make 16, unless you wish to make “duplicate characters”. I don’t think that would make them any less legendary in status—in fact, I think it’d make them more legendary—since you wouldn’t technically just be able to purchase the weapon completed on the Trading Post. Personally, I find that it lowers the legendary status, knowing that someone could just buy it, if someone were to sell them.

Also considering that multiple classes use multiple weapons of the same type; Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian often run with Greatswords in example, or Elementalist/Necromancer/Mesmer/Guardian can often be seen with Staff, and so on forth, it gets a wee bit annoying to think about needing to waste your limited resource, Gift of Exploration, on duplicate legendaries.

I at least don’t get why these were not made Account Bound in the first place. They require so much effort to make, that asking us to make duplicate ones over multiple classes is a slight bit of a slap in the face. And a change like this needs to happen before someone actually goes about making duplicate Legendary weapons, or it’ll be more of a headache to implement systems to let players exchange one (or more) duplicate for another.

Would very much like to see a sort of archived section for Seasonal Achievements. Halloween 2012 as a sort of sub-category in example. To prevent having a list of achievements you can never complete (if you couldn’t do them in time), they could of course not list the non-completed ones.

As it kicked off on day one, I must admit I felt a bit lost. There wasn’t a good enough guide telling you where to obtain the Candy Corn to power the Candy-Powered Matter Meter. That combined with Serene (the ghost next to Magister Tassi) being bugged at the time, got really confusing. I also had no real idea of where to find the pumpkins at first, and throughout the whole event I was wondering if I had missed something, since the achievements were spread over multiple Acts, more specifically the It’s a Mad King’s World one, which had 3/4 parts in Act 2 and the last in Act 3. I were at first convinced this was a bug with the Lunatic Inquisition map not triggering the 4th area visited in the Mad Realm.

Overall though, this was to me an fantastic event; I loved Lunatic Inquisition, and re-visited it quite often. Reaper’s Rumble was also pretty fun, and I hope to see game types like these implemented in sPvP some day. I loved running around with the big zergs in the Labyrinth. I startd to hate the Clock Tower initially, but once I mastered it, it was such a great feeling of achievement and I enjoyed it for the most part, repeating it over the 8 characters I have. I loved that the Candy Corn nodes were all over, even in World vs. World, allowing me to do some PvP and still progress on grabbing some event materials whilst there. I completely fell in love with the scavenger hunt, and it was a challenge I liked doing without following a guide. It was also incredibly fun to get my Lv.11-23 characters through the maps and to the ghosts with the help of one of my Lv.80 characters (a lot of re-logging). The fight against Mad King Thorn was also quite fun, and I enjoyed how there was a short scene that triggered when the battle-dungeon opened in Lion’s Arch. I also really appreciate the Witch’s head costume (Hat is censored if there’s a s and a <space> between..) given in the final Act. I felt that was a very nice gesture and exactly the kind of fluff I love collecting from events. Extra nice that it is Account Bound, so I didn’t have to flood my inventory by collecting 8 of them. I also loved the Witch’s- and Mad King’s Outfits!

On the negative side; I did not really like how extremely rare the Black Lion Chest skins were. It was an event, fluff skins, it felt too much like a scam to advertise these skins and not inform the players buying keys how rare they were. Don’t get me wrong, I am not mad at ArenaNet for this (I didn’t buy many keys at all, just spent some of my remaining Gems after buying costumes and even got the Scythe skin), but I felt it was unnecessary and I completely understand the rage-posts that popped up on the forums non-stop. Long-term, tactics like this is likely not going to pay off, as you probably lose those paying customers trust in buying anything random ever again. This is not a F2P as typical F2P games are, as you buy the game to play it initially. In a fully free to download, free to play game, these tactics may pay off, since players are constantly pouring in and out of the game. GW2 however, is more likely to retain players who invested money in purchasing the game initially, and won’t have the same amount of players just testing it out since it’s completely free. Anyways, enough of that, that horse has been beaten dead a number of times already.

I think the Clock Tower could have given a slightly better time limit, allowing for mini-mistakes to occur, and to say pause your jump(s) for a micro-second as the large group of players is blocking your view.

I’m not mad about it, but I found it a bit annoying that I had to buy the Miniature Spooky Trio Pack twice, in order to get Chainsaw the Skeleton. It’s not like these minis are tradable either.

TL;DR: I loved the event, and can’t wait for the next one (now in November? I see ??? twice in the Monthly Achievements).

I can’t recall getting any rewards out of the Lunatic Inquisition (which I loved!) or Rumble PvP games. I too think if there had been a bit more rewards to it, it’d have been more players participating, past their initial first goes at it. Inquisition got really empty near the end of the event, and it isn’t so fun to be 1 Lunatic vs 1 Villager, the map was too big for that.

I’d so love a type of Inquisition game type being implemented into the sPvP part of the game. Who knows, maybe they could even have weekly/monthly/yearly leaderboards showing longest standing survivors, most dominating “hunter” and so on forth?

Once I finally got through it, after 30-50 goes on the first character, I did find it a lot easier on the other 7 characters. At that point, I could even somewhat enjoy it. I also did it 4 times on the initial character, to see if you could repeat it for rewards right after my first go through, then again once there was a new build, and a last time after 24 hours, to see if the rewards reset/changed. In total, I did the puzzle 11 times during the event, and on all races(/professions)—it was definitely doable.

The hardest—by far—for me was on the (tallest possible) Norn character I have, which was after doing it “easily” on other races in 1-2 goes. The movement speed, while not actually slower, but due to the slow animations, really messed up my jumps, and I felt terrible for needing to do it over and over (ended up taking 10-20 goes), blocking the view for others trying to complete it.

I think it was a very well designed jumping puzzle overall, and eventually quite enjoyed it. But I think just one or two second(s) longer on the “time limit” could have helped many with completing it without as much frustration. When you get so insanely stressed for time (you can’t make any mistakes or pause your movement for a moment), combined with the myriad of other players affecting your jumps, it’s a recipe for frustration and anger. I was so angry at the game on my first character through this puzzle. On the flip-side, this did also result in a “KITTENS YES!” shout of joy when I finally did it—it did feel rewarding—but I still feel bad for those that weren’t able to complete it at all.

Also if this map is coming back next year, please have a look at the “breaking clock” transition, because I jumped into it after waiting for the rotation where it occurs, heard the crashing glass as I jumped in and was teleported back to the start of the jumping puzzle. Granted, this happened only once, but it still shouldn’t happen if I did everything right and should’ve landed in the treasure room.

PS: Very nice addition to have the 3 chests scattered about on the way up. I ended up using it as an additional challenge to grab all chests on my way to the top on my Human characters. I’d love to see stuff like this in future jumping puzzles out in the world, if there will be some more timed ones (which I hope there will be). Perhaps it could have a extra achievement tied to it, for grabbing all the chests.

In example in Queensdale, after the specific Halloween Events have been completed, there will be a bunch of pumpkin icons all over the map, these will take you to the Mad Realm. Once there, to get to the Labyrinth, you head over to the circular disc to the right of the NPC ahead of you, and teleport.

Human, Necromancer, no speed boost, 4 times (checked repeat, and after new Build)
Charr, Thief, no speed boost, 1 time
Asura, Engineer, no speed boost, 1 time
Human, Guardian, no speed boost, 1 time
Sylvari, Elementalist, no speed boost, 1 time
Norn, Warrior, no speed boost, 1 time

Those are the ones I have done it on so far. Got so frustrated with the amount of Norn and Charr around that blocks my view (no offense to the Norn or Charr, but they are in fact rather large character models, and they do block your view).

PS: Only Trick or Treat Bags on repeat (at least before any timed resets).

When entering the Mad Realm, and speaking with the Lunatic Boatmaster, your first option is to state I’m interested in Lunatic Inquisition., selecting this and following up with I’d like to participate. results in nothing happening for a few short moments, then a

Network error.

Please check your Internet connection and try again.
(Code=1043:53:2:2265:101)

pops up, and when clicking this away it shows a Not found message (Note; You’re still connected to and within the game). Haven’t heard about anyone else being able to enter either, so currently it was only possible to get 3/4 progress on the It’s a Mad King’s World achievement.

Am I missing something here, or is it in fact bugged?
Server: Seafarer’s Rest

PS: Searched for Lunatic Inquisition, and no topics were found.

As a little hint, you can read the mail you got as Act 2 started. I’d say try visiting Queensdale in example. Don’t forget to knock on some of these doors scattered about. Go Trick or Treat to the Mad King’s Realm.

Got to agree a bit with Cortechs.

The excessively rare skins from Black Lion’s- and Mad King’s Chests, drives the prices fairly high for any casual players looking to purchase them (I am not one of the casuals, but can still put myself in their shoes). The permanent versions of the rentable Staff/Shield/Bow requires a rather insane amount of investment to create, it’s like a mini-legendary!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m not all for having stuff to do during an event, but I think ArenaNet went a bit over the top on these things. And while I can manage to get a lot of these fluff and fun things, I am pretty sure there are a large number of more casual players that can’t. Simply because of the amount of time/cash (real or in-game) they require.

For an event, I’d rather see more or less everyone being able to get most rewards, as that is fun for those that are able to get them. I personally don’t need any super-rare rewards from an seasonal event; I can show my hardcore dedication in the game with multiple legendaries on a single character instead.

Well, it is an achievement that you can work on outside of the event, to my understanding. Brawl is as far as I understood, here to stay, why it’s under Community and not Special Events. Still, would’ve been nice to have a “Brawler” title.

1. Will you or will you not be buying black lion trading company or random number generation materials again?

I will not buy into anything random/gamble in the future.

2. Did you buy them in the past?

Yes.

3. If you would not buy trading post material/gamble, would you support direct to buy weapon skins and what general price do you find acceptable from a business standpoint both as a customer and realizing that they must make money as a business?

Yes. I will support ArenaNet on non-gamble sales. E.g., 700 Gems for an Outfit.

4. Do you believe that future events will also be handled with random number generation to make profit based on limited time item acquisition?

Yes.

5. If you believe that the future events will be handled in the same manner, does this realization negatively effect your trust of Arena Net in regard to handling micro transactions for permanent content?

No and Yes. Outfits are not random, good fun, reasonably priced. Random gamble items is a plague of F2P however, and I hate that ArenaNet has gone this path.

6. Did you obtain a skin or whatever it is you were looking to get from the black lion trading chests? From the Mad King Chests?

Yes. 1 Skin (Scythe) out of several Black Lion Chests (did not purchase keys for all). Nothing decent from Mad King Chests.

7. Have you bought any of the direct purchase, set priced halloween items. If so, will you be buying more?

Yes. I will buy more Outfits (and non-gamble items), if they are of the same high quality, in the future.

I’m personally a big fan of the Elite, Conjure Fiery Greatsword. I start with 3 (Fiery Whirl), through the group of enemies I wish to kill, they all get Crippled for a short duration and take a decent amount of damage. Follow up with 5 (Firestorm), which I place slightly ahead of the enemies moving towards me, then a 4 (Fiery Rush), immediately following up with a very quick 3 to get out of range, then either let 1 auto-fire away as I kite or throw in a 2 (Fiery Eruption). Enemies are usually dead before I get to the end of that though.

Haven’t really had too much goes with the other weapons, since I find the Arcane Wave, -Shield and Glyph of Lesser Elementals—which I use mainly as a enemy distraction in PvE—to be more useful. I do kinda like the Conjure Flame Axe though, throwing the 2 (Explosive Lava Axe), followed by 5 (Flame Leap), 4 (Ring of Fire) and lastly 3 (Burning Retreat). From time to time I switch to that instead of the Glyph.

I think one of the important steps in using these two skills/weapons respectively are to make sure that you actually target the enemies you wish to engage with when conjuring them, as they have some decent Burning damage at their spawned location on summoning.

I’ll endure it to 80, get my 100% World Completion on that character as well, then just play the other professions in the meantime. I do understand your frustration however, since I rage more than ever when I play on Elementalist. It’s not a single day on Elementalist, where I ain’t screaming “What the kittens was that! KITTEN!” at my monitor.

To be fair, there are certain enemies I can really demolish with D/D starting with Air; 4 → 5, switch to Fire; 4, dodge back, 3 → 2, use Arcane Wave while channeling → 5. That can destroy groups of 2-4 enemies quite effectively. But there are other enemies, and quite a few of them, that will demolish me instead. The profession do have parts of the cannon, but even with Toughness built into the spec/gear, the glass seems to be very prevalent.

I enjoy playing Elementalist, but at the same time I hate it.

A Thousand Stonings sounds incredible! Though I think that diminishing returns debuff needs to carry across changing maps, since that’s all it takes to get rid of it. Personally though, I don’t find Elementalist to be all too bad, and I can feel plenty cannon, albeit very glass. Especially while using Conjure Fiery Greatsword.. oh wait, that just makes me a Warrior (with low HP and defense) for the duration.

The Downed State is what gets to me, as every time I get downed—which is so often compared to any of the other classes—the skills presented to me are absolutely rubbish. Wait 5 seconds to use a stupid slow Mist Form—because when you’re in combat, you have to move slower of course (another one of my pet peeve’s of GW2)—so that you can move a few inches away/closer, perhaps throw in a dodge or two to get that few extra tiny inches further, but not far enough to get away from enemies.. nope, just so that you can prolong the darn Downed State. Oh, and you wanted to use any of those “damaging” abilities on enemies with ranged attacks? Tough luck, your range is far shorter than theirs, so you’ll just sit there getting hit. But don’t fear, you can Mist Form away to prolong it, and just have the enemy follow you.. still ranging you to death once you pop out of it!

Overall, I do enjoy the profession, but this is the one that has me raging at the game, at least more so than other things, even the oh so common, broken Skill Challenges. I really do hope ArenaNet gives the profession some love at some point.

PS: I’ve never been killed, even once, by an Elementalist on their own in PvP.

If you wish to duel someone, communicate with them, and enter a empty sPvP map/server. From there you can usually duel uninterrupted. If someone pops in, you can say you’re dueling each other, and most people will either stick around to watch or head over to another server. It’s not the best solution, but it works.

I wouldn’t mind seeing some alternative designs to The Bifrost in the future, e.g., I really love how Sunrise and Twilight can be combined into Eternity. More stuff like that would be nice to see added in the future. Perhaps if they added another Staff, that could be combined to make a third unique Staff, and so on forth for the other weapons. It wouldn’t necessarily need to behave the same way that Eternity shows Sunrise during daytime and Twilight during night.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

It’s been covered in other threads, but it’s a to-be-announced achievement related to the special October holiday content.

And why in the world, did you guys not add a Seasonal Achievement category instead of making a Monthly Achievement category something you can’t complete outside of a small holiday window? This, to me, was a really bad idea of whoever handles that on your team.

To flag the hint, VinceNoir, click on the hint when you’re near an opposing downed enemy. It’ll flag it as “learned” and not display it again.

The main issue with the Hint Completion Achievement is the Mailbox one, as the limit for mails are 9, while the hint requests 10 to flag your Inbox as full. Oversight by ArenaNet, and one I hope they fix soon-ish. It shouldn’t take long to switch the >= 10 to >= 9 in the code.

This is the error code I am receiving after the game times out as well, which is happening all the time since the maintenance earlier today. Whatever was done, it completely broke the game for me (and I must imagine others). It’s pretty much unplayable like this, as it’ll happen in the Personal Story on my alts, and everything resets. In PvE it always happens in combat, so that gets me killed. In PvP.. you get the picture. It’s simply frustrating.

You did maintenance to fix something I would imagine, ArenaNet—but this maintenance royally “kitten’d” me over. You “ruined” the game (for me), as just an hour before this, everything was completely fine, as it had been since launch.

• Country: Norway
• ISP: NextGenTel (uses Telenor lines)
• Firewall: None
• Antivirus: None
• UAC: Disabled
• Parental Control: Off
• Other MMO’s: No issue

It’s obvious enough that this is not related to my hardware or ISP. This occured right after you did a maintenance today, and just prior to this, everything were fine—this problem is obviously on your end and whatever you did during that maintenance, I would suggest looking into reverting/altering.
____

PS: If anyones worried about me getting trojans/virii and that affecting my gaming, don’t worry, the gaming rig is never used to connect to various websites, nor do I download and install illegal “warez”. Also, my apologies if I am coming off as rude—I’m simply finding this situation very frustrating, as I do tend to enjoy the game quite a bit.

After your maintenance today, the servers are causing serious lag issues for NextGenTel in Norway (uses Telenor lines as Target.5873 above). You can play for a period of time without being interrupted, then a lagspike sets in, freezing everything in place. If you’re lucky, the game will resume (with you dead most of the time), or it will “crash” out to the Character Selection screen, where you will no longer be able to log in, stating you have no internet connection. This issue were not occuring prior to your recent maintenance, and everything’s been stable until today, post-maintenance.

Whatever you did, you must’ve broken something. (The only other player I’ve seen and asked in-game stated that they’re not having issues however. Seems to be likely related to location/ISP.)—Tested a few other online games and experienced no such issues.

My current Lv.80 Mesmer, sporting the Norgu’s set (no visual difference from a lot of other armors, boo..) and a Transmuted Bramblethorne, made to look like a Peacemaker’s Staff (Asuran Cultural Weapon, Tier 3).

Dyes: Black, White Gold, Night Shade