Guild Wars 2

Hilda Raven.8641:

I just feel thats a terrible waste of a dungeon is all. Like TA for instance, 90% of that dungeon is skipped,

If the fights were fun, people wouldn’t skip them.

Forcing people to grind boring content (uninteresting mobs with far too much HP) is not going to make them enjoy the game more; in fact, it’s going to make them enjoy the game less.

GW2’s dungeons suffer from a fundamental design problem, which is that even unnamed mobs are far stronger than players can ever be (frequently with 10x more HP). This just makes player feel like wimps. I’m a level 80 player with fancy weapons and runes, I defeated Zhaitan and saved the world, and yet it takes me (and my 4 companions) 20 seconds of bashing to kill a couple of lowly bandits? What kind of sense does that make?

Only bosses should feel more powerful than players. Other mobs should either be trash (simply to make the dungeon more fun) or their difficulty should come from a numeric or strategic advantage (i.e., 5 players vs. 20 guards, or 5 players vs. 3 enemies with catapults). One-on-one, “normal” mobs (i.e., humanoids with armor and weapons comparable to players’) should never feel more powerful than players.

That’s why people skip them, because the fights are boring and fundamentally “unfair” and unrealistic (when a dog can take more damage than a player in full plate armor, something is wrong).

Fix the fun, fix the realism, and the skipping will fix itself.

P.S. – And, to be honest, in TA (and CM), even the bosses are incredibly boring. The only fun bit is precisely running / dodging your way past mobs.

laokoko.7403:

I level to 80 and gear up before I do AC so […]

…so you can be a noob at level 80?

Watching videos is a great idea (before joining a PUG, anyway; personally I like to do every dungeon at least once without having watched any videos, but I do it with friends), but the obsession with level 80 and gear is completely misplaced.

In fact, that “WoW mentality” is precisely part of the problem with PUGs. People expect that their level or their gear will do the work for them. In reality, it makes very little difference in GW2. Your stats get scaled down to the dungeon’s level anyway, and although level 60+ players have access to better traits, sigils and runes, those don’t really make up for skill (mostly meaning awareness) and experience.

AC story mode is a level 30 dungeon, and it’s perfectly doable by a group of level 30 players (in fact, it’s doable by level 25 players – although that’s slower, due to all the glancing blows).

I never know whether to laugh or cry when I see a level 80 character with 500 AP join a party for AC story, stay completely silent (i.e., don’t mention that he’s never been there before) and then commit serial suicide by running into every group of mobs he sees, instead of asking what he should do or waiting to see how the level 30 guys (often playing on their 5th alt, or at least doing their Nth run) approach things.

I mean, he’s level 80, they’re level 30. He’s obviously “stronger”, right…?

And then you have those who ask for “level 80s only”, as if a level 79’s stats were noticeably different, or as if being level 80 somehow guarantees good gear (not that gear even matters, but even if it did, nothing prevents a level 80 character from wearing level 10 armour – and there’s no way to check).

Posting “LFM for [some low level dungeon or low Fractal level], level 80s only.” is a sure way to earn an entry in my block list. Not because of elitism; just because it shows the person in question hasn’t figured out that (s)he is playing GW2 and not WoW.

DancingPenguins.9875:

People will learn or leave. It’s better that way in the long run.

I’m glad you don’t run my company’s marketing department.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’d not thought it was possible to do the Hodgins library event solo

The 2 main issues in that event are the breeder from burrow #2 and the scavengers from burrow #5.

The timing on the breeder seems pretty variable (sometimes he spawns as soon as the event starts, sometimes he doesn’t spawn even when players take almost 10 seconds to kill the burrow). Not sure if this randomness is intended or some bug (or if it’s not random at all, and just depends on some other factor).

If you manage to kill the burrow before the breeder spawns, and as long as you don’t make the mistake of killing burrow #1 too soon (before cleaning up and making sure Hodgins is safe), the event becomes trivial for a group (and doable – though still pretty hard – solo).

P.S. – If you search for “Charles Bronson enjoying a day off” (without quotes) on Google Images, Hodgins’s secret identity is revealed.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I used my minions in the Jade Maw fight to give us the best chance of avoiding a wipe. Two of our group had either disconnected or quit on earlier fractals so we didn’t have the DPS to take down the tentacles as quickly to ensure a steady supply of crystals.

You only need one crystal to be safe, and you get (more than) one before the Maw even starts using its beam.

Pick up crystal, reflect the beam, put it down again. Problem solved.

If you or your party are throwing your last crystal, it’s really a L2P issue.

Regardless of that, I think that it makes sense for the Maw to target clones. After all, they’re supposed to be indistinguishable from the mesmer, so it makes sense that they should “fool” the enemies. They are not real living creatures, though, so they should not spawn grubs or serve as foci for AoE DoT effects (ex., lightning golem’s debuff or Molradovich fire ring in SE).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’d like to ask that if anyone finds a monster/boss whose mechanics unfairly target pets and minions, to please post about it here in this thread, and I will try to look into them to see what can be done.

General Molradovich in Sorrow’s Embrace P3. He casts rings of fire on pets / minions / clones, and there is no way for players to tell those minions to jump on the water and put out the fire, so the pets effectively set fire to other players.

Lightning Golem in Sorrow’s Embrace P1. I’m not 100% sure about this, but I think the lightning golem can cast the “flashing” debuff on clones and phantasms. Doesn’t seem to make much sense, since they’re not actual “physical” creatures.

In the Uncategorized Fractal, lightning bars that hit pets (on the ramp) cause AoE damage to nearby players. Pets should be immune to damage from those bars. Stowing the pet is an option, but if a ranger takes any damage (ex., due to another player being hit by a bar near him), the pet pops out and proceeds to run into a bar, causing more AoE damage to hit everyone near it. Also, the “stow pet” button should not have a cooldown, ever (and, ideally, should have 3 states: active, standby, stowed – where standby means the pet pops out if the ranger takes damage and stowed means it will not pop out until the ranger manually sets it to active)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Without knowing exactly how to reproduce the bug though, I am shooting at the dark for fixes

The event objective is “go with Detha to the Hall of Champions”. Simply trigger it when a) that event objective is being displayed and b) Detha arrives at the Hall of Champions.

And if players make the mistake of dragging a ton of enemies into the Hall of Champions (causing the ghost event to start before all the oozes / gravelings are dead), well, they’ll just have to deal with that (and they’ll learn to take care of the gravelings before leading Detha to the map marker, next time).

Alternatively, make it so that when she arrives she simply gains a new dialog option (“We are ready, you can start building the cannons.”), to give players some control over the triggering of the next part (ghost spawns).

The current scripting seems to be looking for a lot of hidden conditions instead of sticking to the actual event objective. Keep it simple (but reliable) and players will learn to deal with it.

I’ve found a very high correlation between people saying “no noobs” and those people being being noobs. Or really bad players, to be more precise.

The entire crafting system is messed up. Too many intermediate items that don’t even go into your collections. You should be able to simply select the end product, and the game would display a “tree” of ingredients, like the GW2Spidy website does for recipes.

It would then automatically craft the final item, as long as you had all the necessary ingredients.

The intermediate steps are fine for discovery, but once you’ve discovered all the items it’s just a PITA and bad UI design.

No Walking.6349:

Where are the recipes so you can learn to make items with dungeon tokens, such as the eternal flame, or the ring of blood?

I can’t find where these recipes are anywhere on the internet. Anyone know how to get these recipes?

They drop from the final bosses of those dungeons. The item name is generally a clue as to which boss drops it (ex., the “Husk of the Destroyer” recipe drops from the Destroyer of Worlds, etc.). They also have a very small chance of dropping from other bosses, but if you want to maximize your chances, kill the boss with the corresponding name.

travosaga.6089:

For those of you that don’t know, the rune required for a 20 slot bag costs 10 gold. The rune for an 18 slot bag only costs 2 gold. It costs 8 gold to gain 2 slots. What gives? It’s not like it’s a status thing. Nobody can see what bags you are using. It grants you a total of 8 extra slots for 36 more gold than simple 18 slotters. I don’t get it.

Yes, 36 inventory slots are cheaper than 20 inventory slots. No one gets it. It’s been like that since day one. The same thing happens with a few other items (ex., it’s more expensive to make armor satchels than to craft the individual set pieces one by one). Someone at ANet needs better arithmetic “skillz”.

Probably just some communication error between the server and your client (it didn’t get drawn by the client, but it was always in the server’s guild vault database).

Item transfers are typically treated by servers as atomic transactions (meaning the item is deleted from one container and added to the other container as a single operation), to avoid any problems. Doesn’t mean there can’t be some bugs in Arena Net’s database code, of course.

Not all names use the crafted weapon naming convention, and if people get a “Super Awesome Sword of Zhaitan”, they probably don’t want it to be renamed “Berserker’s Sword of Berserking” just because they decided to apply different stats with a transmutation stone.

The name of the weapon is associated with its skin, so if you keep the skin, you also keep the name.

Magic Find isn’t supposed to affect the amount of money you get, just the quality of the drops. There is some food that increases magic find and increases the amount of gold dropped from monsters, but the two things are separate.

Also, when a player dies from a fall (instant kill, no intermediate downed state), there is no armor damage.

Actually, pupils have no colour (they’re just holes), and the inside of the eyes is red (as you can see in flash photography – where enough light makes it into the eye to make the inside visible, but for such a short time that your iris doesn’t close).

I doubt GW2 is actually trying to simulate this, though, it’s probably just a bug.

Some traits only apply in combat, even though the tooltip doesn’t mention this. Did you try it in combat as well as out of combat?

Astraea.6075:

realm hopping to gather at ori nodes […] Because of this there needs to be some limit,

Because it’s impossible to make the harvested nodes’ status part of the player account, and make them stay “harvested” even if the player switches server, eh…?

Oh, wait, it isn’t. In fact, the nodes’ status already is part of the player’s account (if it was a property of the server, then nodes harvested by one player would appear as empty to other players).

In other words, if that’s the excuse they’re using, it makes no technical sense. If the player has harvested node X in zone Y at time Z, guesting on another server won’t make any difference; his account will still list that node as “harvested” until the server time is >Z+RT (last gathering time plus node respawn timer).

The only potential problem with this would be transferring between servers on different time zones, but GW2’s servers are synced worldwide, so that’s not an issue. It would be fairly easy to deal with anyway (just adjust Z when transferring between zones).

Sir Cusfreak.5971:

no one is playing alone or manipulating WvW cross region. They shouldn’t charge for that.

Then everyone would simply transfer from the US to the EU and then back to the US (to a different server), thus avoiding any fees.

There’s no need to make a distinction between the zones; in fact, that is precisely the problem. Guesting should work regardless of where you are, and transfers should be paid regardless of where you are.

If guesting on a EU server when your main server is in the US takes a bit longer (because your data needs to be copied to the EU data center), so be it. GW2 has insanely long loading screens as it is; I’m sure no one would mind waiting an extra minute or five when joining a different server; it’s not something that people are likely to do more than a couple of times a day anyway. Display a warning (saying it will take some time and might increase your latency slightly) and, if people click “ok”, just do it™.

Vergil Huragok.3967:

Players on North American home worlds cannot guest on European worlds or vice versa.

While this was an understandable issue at launch, many assumed guesting would fix this.

On the contrary; this was not an issue at launch. I transferred back and forth between EU and US servers on a daily basis to play with two groups of friends before Arena Net had the brilliant idea to introduce a world transfer delay (supposedly to fix some WvW “exploit” – but if that was the case why not simply introduce a WvW cooldown period after transfers?).

Guesting was supposed to restore that, but for some reason they decided to add a limit of two servers and restrict it by zone.

One of the main features advertised during the pre-purchase period ends up being enabled six months after release and in such a neutered way that it’s virtually useless.

I guess it goes into the same bin as the “no number grinding” promise.

I actually asked for a refund when they added the server transfer delay (because when I paid for the game I was told guesting would allow me to “play with my friends on any server at any time”), and was told that guesting would be “enabled soon”, and that I would be able to play with both groups of friends as before. I guess that was just to keep people waiting for 2 months so they can’t legally ask for a refund any more.

CaptainFabulous.8410:

It’s a technical impossibility given the current setup and infrastructure as the datacenters do not communicate in any way that allows it.

Nonsense. I was able to transfer from the US to the EU on a daily basis after release (before Arena Net added the “cooldown period”). It took about 1 minute to copy my player data to the other region, which is faster than some loading screens when you enter a city. With a bit of smart caching it could be made even faster.

Warder.3491:

What happened between prelaunch and launch that caused all this arrogance?

I don’t think it’s (just) arrogance; I think it’s disorganization. With each patch, GW2 seems to move further away from the promises and principles it claimed to follow during development. Instead of a cohesive game world, it’s just becoming a collection of poorly-implemented contradictory ideas.

I get the feeling that whoever was leading GW2’s design was either demoted or left the company altogether (perhaps the guys who left to form Undead Labs?), and there are currently “too many cooks in the kitchen”, each pulling in a different direction.

In addition to that, they seem to have horrible QA and a clueless web coding team (specifically, the ones responsible for the trading post; six months to implement trading post item previewing in a game where looks are such a fundamental part of the “endgame” is ridiculous).

I still think GW2 introduced some very important concepts (namely the large multi-stage dynamic events that make the world feel a lot more alive than simple player-initiated “quests”), but I’ve pretty much given up on waiting for it to become a good MMORPG, or for Arena Net to become a company that I have any trust in. It’s just moving in the wrong direction (becoming more grindy, losing features such as armor preview, turning into a “lobby game”, adding pure number grinding, lying to customers and treating them like children, etc.) .

At this point I think the only thing that could make GW2 live up to the pre-launch expectations would be if someone with a strong global vision was given the power to scrap some of the dumb ideas added since launch. I have no idea who that person would be, though. Mike, Colin and Chris have used up pretty much any credibility they ever had, in my book.

They’ve definitely managed to match (and even surpass) Blizzard, just not in the way I had hoped.

Aye.8392:

while they say they’ll charge a sliding fee based on the population of the destination server, they also say they can manipulate how “full” a server is and how that information is displayed.

A system almost as transparent as GW2’s gem-gold exchange. Clearly Arena Net hired some people from Lehman Brothers.

No idea what the “bug” is supposed to be. The fact that the ooze’s health bar is visible from the outside? That happens in a lot of other places with thin walls. If there’s an enemy behind the wall, part of its name and / or health bar can be visible from the other side.

Yep, the bug has been there for ages, and I know several people have reported it, both in the forums and using the bug report form in the game.

It’s quite annoying on elementalists too, since switching to air attunement is a common way to gain swiftness when you’re simply trying to run past some enemies without aggroing them, but the game automatically targets a random enemy and attacks it, causing you to enter combat and lowering your speed.

Because everything about the “progression” in Fractals seems designed to keep the addicted number-grinders… well, grinding numbers. And if they can make those players grind again for the same infusion on a slightly different ring, then the designers have achieved their goal.

It’s self-inflicted pain, really. It’s not even as if you get new content by grinding for higher agony; it’s just the same thing made harder through a numeric increase, which you then make easier again by increasing your own resistance stat.

How some people enjoy this is beyond me (and, I used to think, beyond Mike O’Brien – but I guess not), but hey, if you do enjoy the process of repeating the same content hundreds of times to get an item with a slightly bigger number, then surely the inability to salvage the infusions is a bonus, as it gives you the opportunity to do it all again.

And if you don’t enjoy it, well, you don’t have to do it.

If you’re going with the French origin, then it should be pronounced “fohrr” (and spelled “fort”).

Effectively, “forte” has become an English word, and the “correct” pronunciation is whatever pronunciation the majority of English speakers uses, which seems to be closer to the Italian pronunciation (which would match the spelling “forte”).

In fact, from the page you linked: “both the one- and two-syllable pronunciations of forte are now considered standard”.

Nemui.6753:

according to the wiki (linked in the OP) it’s a certain event in straits of devastation.

The text in the wiki is an almost direct cut & paste of a forum post made by a player. That was just his personal theory, there is no evidence to back it up.

I’ve done that event chain dozens of times (it’s easily soloable, in fact, it just takes a while), and I know several other people who have, as well. There are no references to gargoyles, staves or “final rests” in the NPC dialogue, and the most I ever saw drop from the final chest was a couple of greens.

Archangelus.8671:

this gives me a reason to keep looking and continuing my quest!

Whereas finding it would remove that “reason to keep looking”. In other words, the non-existent staff is doing its job wonderfully.

Archangelus.8671:

It’s not bugged, I just ran it like 4 times without a problem

Just because it’s not bugged in your server doesn’t mean it’s not bugged in several others. On my server, for about two weeks, the NPCs in question were simply standing still at the entrance to the catacombs, while the event text told us to “defend them as they look for artefacts” (i.e., typical stuck escort event).

Anyway, there is no evidence that the staff is in any way related to that event.

PowerCat.5738:

Linsay said it drops from a chest, but you said it drops from a boss?

Which one is it, chest or boss?

So far, it’s neither. I don’t think it has ever dropped for anyone, anywhere. And it doesn’t appear in the trading post even if you disable “show only available”. So either it binds on pickup (unlikely, if it’s a chest drop) and has never dropped for anyone, or it’s bugged and not actually available in PvE.

Also, AFAIK, there are no other pieces of gear in the game that drop only from one place; even legendary precursors can drop from dozens of different locations.

Oglaf.1074:

That’s very odd.

It might be odd but it’s been in the game since beta. Happens in a lot of situations. It seems to be related to the fact that the animation system has the ability to disable parts of the user interface (namely, movement control).

For example, if you try to pick up some object while moving but that action fails (because the object despawns or someone else picks it up at the same time), your character will be stuck moving in its previous direction for the duration of the “pick up” animation. I’ve seen people walk off the ledge on the Jade Maw fractal boss several times because of this.

Other symptoms of this weird animation vs. control system include being unable to swap weapons using a keyboard shortcut or the swap weapon button on the skill bar (the button in the hero panel doesn’t get disabled, though) and being frozen in place for no apparent reason for up to 30 seconds (not just when you’re knocked down, happens a lot when using a staff on an elementalist), unless you cast certain spells that make you move.

Some time ago, several items were listed in the trading post with the name “…” (the most notable of which was the Arachnophobia short bow, which didn’t even appear when searching for “Arachnophobia”). Those seem to have been fixed, but now there are several items that don’t appear in the trading post.

For example, I can see a listing for “Rampager’s Destroyer Torch” (1 unit available) and I can see a listing for “Valkyrie Destroyer Torch” (0 units available), but “Berserker’s Destroyer Torch” is not listed at the TP at all. This suggests that, if I craft one, I won’t be able to sell it (either it won’t be possible to list it at all or no one will see it, which means I’ll just lose the listing fee and never sell it). I’m obviously not going to spend close to 20g in materials just to find out.

The fact that it’s not listed also makes it impossible for players to place buy orders, so crafters have no idea how much someone would be willing to pay.

Is this a known bug? Or some cryptic feature? Has there been any official comment about this? Has anyone actually tried listing an “invisible” item at the trading post? And how are you supposed to put a buy order for an item that isn’t listed?

Jason King.2647:

If you’re certain that you have not received credit for a jumping puzzle, please let us know

So far got credit for:

• Dark Reverie
• Demongrub Pits [*]
• Goemm’s Lab
• Loreclaw Expanse
• Morgan’s Leap
• Sharkmaw Caverns
• Skipping Stones
• Spekk’s Laboratory
• Tribulation Rift Scaffold
• Troll’s End [*]
• Under New Management
• Urmaug’s Secret

May have received credit for:

• Fawcett’s Revenge (I don’t really expect this one to give credit, but it is listed in the “jumping puzzles” achievement section, so technically it should; it may have given credit before the first gate – see below for Bounty)

Definitely did not get credit for:

• Collapsed Observatory
• Fawcett’s Bounty (I’m positive the monthly achievement counter did not get updated after the first gate, so if this one was counted, it was before the first gate, and before Fawcett’s Revenge – and in that case Revenge definitely wasn’t counted; my counter was either either at 4 or 5 [*] before entering this area, and it was at 5 after finishing Bounty, so at least one of the two wasn’t counted).

Note that in the ones I got credit, I got it as soon as I started the puzzle. On the observatory I did not get credit even after finishing the puzzle. I didn’t actually “finish” Fawcett’s Revenge again, but I was at the puzzle’s location (you need to go through it to reach Fawcett’s Bounty). I did finish Bounty again.

[*] The reason why I’m not sure if it was at 4 or 5 is that I only remember going to 4 puzzles before that (LA and Queensdale), but I think the counter was at 5 before I went anywhere near Fawcett’s cave. I think this may have been caused by one puzzle (either Troll’s End or Demongrub Pits) being counted twice after going there with two characters on different days. On all the other JPs mentioned above, I’m sure I only went there once, with a single character.

[quote=1052396;ReginaBuenaobra.6953:We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive.
[/quote]

Well, that’s kind of excessive. I mean, you’re basically giving people an achievement simply for not losing?

I agree that keeping 5 alive might be tricky when people keep joining and leaving, parties get separated, etc., but the achievement should always require something a bit beyond “not losing”.

3 dolyaks would be adequate for public groups, 2 would be easy but acceptable, 1 just feels like a non-achievement.

Tamaki Revolution.3548:

Funny story. I got bored and just tried to combine 4 of them. I am now the proud owner of 2 endless toy soldier tonics. Alas lol.

Hm… I wonder if you always get the one you didn’t put in.

If so, that could be used to have identical pet and endless tonic (i.e., use your soldier frame to make the pet, use your other 4 frames to make the other 4 tonics, combine the tonics to get the soldier tonic, et voilà, you can now be a toy soldier with a toy soldier pet).

If so, I can see a reason for it. But if you just get a random tonic (as some people have posted), it seems like either an oversight or a pretty sadistic recipe.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

As part of an overall improvement to armor previewing we have had to temporarily disable the ability to see armors outside your class.

So the disabling was deliberate, and not just a mistake? If so, can you be a bit more specific about this? Namely:

• What kind of improvements are you planning to add?

• Why was it necessary to disable previewing of other armor types?

Naturally, I’m not asking for you to give us an ETA, I assume the improvements will be released “when they’re ready” ™ or “soon” ™, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t really understand what kind of future improvements would require disabling this.

I can log into my asura guardian and preview heavy armour. I can log into my asura elementalist and preview light armour. Neither of those had to be disabled. But for some reason, I can’t preview heavy armour while I’m logged into my elementalist (although the model is the same).

Can you give us one example of a situation in which the preview was causing problems, and which led to it being disabled?

Jabberwock.9014:

I’m not sure if I should keep it or wait for it to skyrocket after wintersday

I suspect they’ll add it to the BLTC chest or to next month’s event chests. After all, hair cuts are not thematically linked to winter holidays.

Mr Crazy Moose.5760:

The people in Europe who have tested it after their reset time.

Unless Wintersday behaves differently, the reset time is the same for all servers.

Casia.4281:

Dude. that is exactly what lottery tickets do.
90% of scratch ticket" wins" are $1 back.

But those tickets don’t cost $10, do they?

The issue here is that you “pay” 10 sweaters and, in 90% of the cases, get 1 sweater. Not only are you getting something worth 10% of what you paid, but you’re getting exactly the item you were trying to get rid of (so much for gift exchange).

IMO there should be exactly a 0% chance of getting a sweater from a gift you purchased with sweaters (you should get bells, tonics, hats, socks, snowflakes, etc.). And the average value of what you get from the gift should be only slightly inferior to the value of the items you turned in. Even in roulette, on average you get back 47% of what you bet. Here, in 90% of the cases, you get 10% of what you put in (and in 9% of the cases you get a snowflake that’s worth the same as 2 sweaters, and in 1% of the cases you get something else, typically worth 4 or 5 sweaters).

The other gifts are actually a better deal than the giant one, but really, given the abysmal drop rates, you’re generally better off selling the sweaters at the trading post and buying presents there, instead of using the “gift exchangers” which are really more like “item deleters”.

I’ve never understood the gambling mentality / addiction, but even I can see the odds here make no sense. It’s like playing in a roulette where 90% of the numbers are green. And, purely from a gameplay point of view, it doesn’t make any sense for a “gift exchanger” to take 10 sweaters and “exchange” them for one identical sweater.

MethodicMockingbird.6520:

I’m confused by this. What exactly is the “technical issue” that disabled the Pop Gun Skin from allowing a ‘POP’ sound? There are other rifles that have sound effects, surely this must not be all that different from those skins.

Well, if you listen to the other guns, you’ll see they sound more like “IMAP”, “IMAP”.

If you understood that joke, congratulations, you’re a nerd.

Seriously, now, I don’t understand his reply, either. There are already other rifle skins with custom sounds in the game (namely the legendary), so clearly the game engine has support for it. And they even have the “pop” sound in the game (used by the toy soldiers).

Azure Prower.8701:

You really don’t know what you are talking about. When some one is lagging to the server, you see them rubber band a lot on your client whilst on their client they are walking normally.

I guess you didn’t bother to read my previous post’s last paragraph (and don’t really understand how modern netcode works).

I worked for the 2nd largest games publisher in the world for 7 years, and although it wasn’t my main job, I also wrote parts of the netcode in two games – coincidentally around 2001 (which was when most games made the transition from “classical” netcodes to lag-compensated netcodes).

I do know what I’m talking about.

Azure Prower.8701:

As this has only happened to me once in 300 runs of farming this puzzle for presents.

So, you admit this has only happened to you once but somehow you think that qualifies you to make definitive statements about the issue and its cause…?

Catamaran Nights.2630:

Grumbles.2804:

I open the present, get blown back, run up and grab the gift, then make a run for it. It’s just quicker.

Exactly what he/she said. Open present grab gifts then just run

That would always be “quicker”. The issue is that the dolls seem to be scaling incorrectly in most zones (unlike the toy soldiers, for example, which are comparable to other mobs of the same level – although you get 6 of them, of course).

The dolls start out immune to damage and CC, immediately buff themselves with protection, regeneration and fury, apply tons of confusion within 2 seconds, have homing projectiles, etc.. If this was intended, I’d expect them to at least be tagged as veterans, so it’s probably a bug.

So far the Toy Soldiers seem fine (slightly harder than the skritt, but still in line with their level).

Toy Soldier scaling seems fine, at least in the areas I checked. They’re about in line with the local mobs of the same level (i.e., a group of six level 28 soldiers is about as hard as a group of six level 28 spiders or griffons).

zbrkesbr.4173:

dunno whats so hard killing those…

The fact they they normally cast spells, instead of just standing there doing absolutely nothing, as in that video…? Also, every time I got dolls from a present, they were immune to all damage and CC for about 2 ~ 3 seconds after spawning, so again it looks like the dolls in that video were “special” (or maybe those were normal, and the majority of presents is just spawning the wrong type).

Dan.8709:

Now I SO wish there were npc barbers around, like, really really bad.

Some people (cough*me*cough) actually mentioned all this during beta. For example, you could have a barber in a rougher neighbourhood with crazy dyes, punk hairstyles, and the option to change your tattoos, and a fancy salon in a richer area with more classical hairstyles and an option to change earrings and make-up.

Same for the plastic surgeons. A more “respectable” one to let you adjust your facial features and a mad scientist to change your gender or even race (although the latter could lead to problems with the personal story).

In addition to those two type of NPCs (barbers and plastic surgeons), I think at the time (early beta) I mentioned two other types: scribes (to change your character’s name) and job advisors (to change your profession – which doesn’t impact your story in GW2, so could be changed easily, although obviously some items could become unusable).

All of those could be paid in gems, and even charge differently for different operations. For example, 15 gems for a haircut, 10 gems for hair colouring, 10 gems to change your beard, 25 gems to change your tattoos, etc..

Jabberwock.9014:

It is actually VERY dumb that there are no npc barbers. This may actually be the first MMO I’ve ever played that doesn’t have such a basic function. The money milking is getting a bit out of hand imo.

It’s independent of the money milking, anyway. I always expected GW2 to have NPCs taking payment in gems. There’s no reason why the barbers couldn’t deduct some gems from your account (even 250, if Arena Net thought that would be a sane value to charge – which apparently they do, since that’s the price of the single-use kit).

kuscheldrow.6415:

kuscheldrow.6415:

I just bought mine for 250G

Account.9832:

How many hair styling kits were you buying every day, to make that a good deal…?

None, to tbh. ^^
But I can do it now and whenever I want. I’m a roleplayer, and I onl play Sylvari.
Y’all know what happens to a flower if you put ink in their water? Their petals dye in the color of the ink so… You know, drinking orange juice will color the petals in a light yellow, cherry juice in red… and whatever else tonic or drink… Well I think you get the point… xD

Well my point is that with the gold you spent on that you could have bought a lot of gems and a lot of normal styling kits.

Which I find insanely overpriced, BTW (if Arena Net sold them for 10 ~ 25 gems, people would be getting haircuts every day, to match their new armour, etc. – with the current price a lot of people will buy exactly zero).

I think they haven’t quite understood the “micro” part of “microtransactions”, and how making some things really cheap can lead to more profits in the long run (because people will buy it without even thinking, whereas something costing 250 gems will always be a conscious decision).

I also find it really boring (from a RP point of view) that hair cuts come from an icon and a piece of UI, instead of having actual barbers in the cities. GW2 capitals are huge, detailed, and… almost totally devoid of anything to do. Adding a couple of barbers to each city (each with at least one unique hairstyle and one unique hair dye) would give players a reason to travel around and discover new stuff.

Same for the “total makeover kit” – should have been a “mad plastic surgeon” NPC (although I think 350 gems for those is fair – cheap, even, since it’s almost like getting a new character).

When they didn’t have these things at launch, I assumed they were doing something special with them. Instead, after four months in development, we get an icon that calls a piece of recycled UI. Sigh…

And now they can’t even add the barbers or lower the prices, otherwise they’ll pissoff the people who bought the permanent kit.

ezd.6359:

One bad thing is: real life lottery must declare chances (in my country). Arena dont tell us % to get particular things – it is unfair.

I suspect that by having the RNG items available for money (at the gem store) but also in-game (even if there’s only a shall chance of getting them), that exempts them from gambling laws. IANAL, though.

Jaed.9823:

I had gotten a Sparky Wand Skin (Scepter Skin) -that’s worth 150 socks

It’s actually worth less than that, because you can buy the skin at the TP for 36s (and you can make 36s by selling less than 150 socks).

In fact, an even better deal is to buy 100 sweaters and exchange them for the skin (ends up costing you 28s).

In the time required to get 150 socks (or 100 sweaters) most players can easily make 1g, so the whole thing is kind of pointless for anyone high enough to run dungeons (level 35+).

I’ve done the jumping puzzle and other activities several times because they’re fun, but as a way to get the skins they’re extremely inefficient. It’s much easier to buy all the skins at the TP, and use your “farming” time to recover the gold by doing activities you enjoy more.

The only reason to gamble on the presents at all is if you are desperately trying to get the bell or pet (assuming the pet even drops, which is unconfirmed). Everything else is cheaper at the TP (and will probably get even cheaper over the next week).

kuscheldrow.6415:

I just bought mine for 250G

How many hair styling kits were you buying every day, to make that a good deal…?

The HP you have in the puzzle depends on your character’s base HP, so I expect a vitality-specced necro will be able to beat anyone.

In other words, if your base HP is 20k and you reach the end with 2k, that means you were as fast as someone with 13k HP who reached the end with 1.3k.

Azure Prower.8701:

As I responded to the last thread on this. Probably lag. On your client, you’re jumping normally. To the server, you’re walking off a ledge.

And, as I responded above (read the post above yours), that would not produce these symptoms, even assuming IP didn’t have a way to reorder packets and ensure they’re applied in order (which it does) and assuming GW2’s netcode didn’t have lag compensation built in (which I’m sure it does – as do virtually all games made in the last 10 years). The server can look at packet timestamps and know what your client was seeing even if you have high latency.

The lag would apply equally to your fall and to the server’s command to show you a loading screen. In other words, you would simply lose control of your character (ex., a short client freeze), then see it fall off, and then get the loading screen. If the command to teleport you is reaching your client, then the update to your character’s position would also be reaching your client.

This doesn’t happen in any other jumping puzzle or anywhere else in the game.

Also, “lag” wouldn’t explain how a player can get knocked down on a platform (see video above), when there is nothing nearby with the ability to knock down players. The game is clearly applying an effect to the player that was not meant for that player.

BTW, what you see other players do is not a reliable representation of what they’re doing or even of what the server thinks they’re doing. Consistency is only maintained between the server and each client, not between different clients.

Sokina.8041:

Lottery tickets. Win or lose.

Wintersday chests: You’re getting a prize every time. This > Gambling Laws. I’m sorry it’s not the best prize, but it is a prize. I’m sorry if people think ugly sweaters aren’t a prize, but they are. You win every time

With lottery tickets, your chances are very low but the (potential) reward is millions of times more valuable than the cost of the ticket, which makes it an interesting gamble.

Still, no one buys 20 or 50 lottery tickets every day, each with a separate draw. If there were that many different lotteries every day, they would probably be significantly less profitable (or they would have to have cheaper tickets, and frequent small prizes, to keep people playing). So maybe we should look at forms of gambling designed to entertain gamblers continuously (not just to make 1 bet each month).

In casinos, the chance of winning at roulette is about 47% (assuming you bet on red or black), with a payout of 100%. In other words, if you bet $10 you have a 47% chance of doubling your money. Again, that makes it a very interesting gamble.

In GW2, a giant present costs 10 sweaters and, 90% of the times, it contains 1 (identical) sweater. If you think that trading 10 sweaters for 1 sweater is “winning a prize every time”, you must be the world’s biggest optimist.

Maybe the chance of getting a bell or a pet is like the lottery for some people, but there’s no reason why that chance couldn’t be kept approximately the same while having better odds on the “gambling chips”. To come close to the odds of roulette, each gift (costing 10 sweaters) should give, on average, 9 sweaters or items of equivalent value. Even an average return of 5 ~ 6 sweaters would be fine. A return of 10% (i.e., equivalent to a casino taking a 90% “house cut” on every bet) is just silly.

When a game gives its players worse odds than a casino, you get the feeling they don’t really understand how gambling works.

Azure Prower.8701:

It’s lag. The position on your client is not matching up to the position on the server. It gets desynchronized.

No, it’s not lag. If it was lag, you’d still see your character fall, only with a delay. You would also see irregular movement on other players. Both my personal experience and the video above show perfectly smooth motion. If packets with my character’s position weren’t getting through, neither would packets with the other characters’ positions. The fact that my client is receiving updates about the other players’ positions makes it obvious that my own character’s position is also being updated frequently by the server.

This doesn’t happen anywhere else, only in this JP. I’m almost sure the bug has something to do with applying the teleport to the wrong player. I say that because one time I genuinely fell from a platform and was not teleported to the lobby. I just fell all the way to the ground and died. I bet when that happened to me, some other player got teleported without falling.

Also, the video above shows a player being knocked down on a platform, which again seems to suggest he’s being “hit” by something that was meant for another player (ex., maybe a snowball, being thrown at a different player in the lobby).

Looks like some bug in the JP is confusing player IDs.

wcnighthawk.8530:

So whenever a better phone deal comes out, you refund your phone? Whenever a better deal on the same car you got comes out, you refund your car?

Usually there’s no need; the company will simply refund the difference. They know it’s perfectly legal to return the product within a certain period (typically 2 months), so they’ll just refund the difference if you ask. You end up getting the same deal and they save on restocking costs, etc..

In fact, several companies will do that unprompted. If you buy some professional software and the price is lowered or a new version comes out within 2 months, the manufacturer will usually refund your money or give you a free upgrade to the new version.

It’s not even a matter of being “nice”, it’s just good business. Avoid refunds and helps companies keep their customers.

wcnighthawk.8530:

Hell, you refund your girlfriend whenever a better looking girl comes around?

I don’t buy my girlfriends. If you’re buying yours, I’m not sure if “girlfriend” is the correct term.

wcnighthawk.8530:

Probably the same people that complain about 15 measly bucks a month for a sub but have no problems spending 50 in a month buying gems. You people make me laugh.

I see you have me all figured out… not.

“You people” make me sigh.

BTW, this is still happening, though not as frequently as in the first day. I get teleported out randomly in maybe 1 out of each 6 or 7 runs.