Guild Wars 2

I did my share of kittening. And I stand behind my posts and criticisms. The whole fiasco with Black Lion Chests felt tainted and unclean. In all of my transactions with Anet (and there have been many, I have an Eve standee in my room for kittens sake), that is a first.

But credit where credit is due, the rest of the event has been great. The decorations look spectacular, the quests were fun, all of the flavor text and dialog from NPCs was a fine touch. The art and content teams have done an absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to see whats left in store. A lot of love and effort went into the event and it shows.

Most fans know not to hold Anet as a whole responsible for the short-comings or bad decisions made by one department. Content, programmers, art, audio and design teams I’m sure had little influence over cash-shop decisions. One bad grape doesn’t spoil the whole bunch and I appreciate the rest of the studios hard work and creativity.

The Tier 3 cultural armor is also a set of unique skins with mediocre stats and requires a heavy investment. They are meant to be transmuted on to exotics that you should be acquiring or crafting soon after you hit 80.

I personally think the skins are pretty rockin and the greatsword in particular looks better than most of the dungeon rewards.

This is exactly how it worked in GW. Beat a campaign, get a token of some sort, trade it to an end game vendor for a unique skin.

I was actually happy to see this implemented this way and think the rewards are perfectly appropriate.

Ecstatic,
level 80 Guardian with kittenen transmuted exotic pact greatsword

Ive been enjoying it.

Did the book scavenger hunt on my main and all the alts. It was actually fun the first time to figure out the riddles without looking on the internet. I’ll admit the scavenger hunt was frustrating the first few minutes after the update, but that was because of a bug that kept the first ghost from spawning, so you couldn’t really start it and there was no one that had already done it before to let us know how it was supposed to work. Once that was patched it was all dandy.

Farmed some ghost doors for a little while for ToT bags and then did some jumping puzzles to see how the new rewards were.

Costume brawl I figured out by just mousing over the icons. That was fun and chaotic enough to hold my attention until I got the achievements for it.

The only thing that really put me off was the whole Black Lion Chest supposedly having halloween themed items and then finding out after buying 20 keys that the only items were weapon skins and the drop rates were nearly non-existent. That hasn’t ruined the entire event for me, but I will never fall for that again. Now I know the Black Lion Chest being restocked for a holiday means it has all the same crap + a few skins you probably wont get.

If you get there after someone else had summoned it, then its possible it’s timer elapsed and the NPC disappeared before you got the page.

Also, the final book when you turn on all 6 pages isn’t awarded automatically. It’s attached to a mail you will get.

I had a moment where I thought I accidentally trashed or sold the scavenger hunt reward before remembering I never took the attachment from the mail because my inventory was full.

dahkot.3579:

Example doesnt stand up for a second.

If the Girl Scouts that sold you the cookies told you as you bought them that you were buying a chance , and chance only , to get Girl Scout cookies , otherwise would be generic crap then yes its the same.

AN didnt suddenly bait and switch , they said all along it was a chance.

No the example DOES stand. Thats what people are failing to get. Anet sent me an email saying Black Lion chests were stocked with Halloween things. They had a banner in the market advertising the chests.

People reasonably believed that the chests would be halloween themed. No where was anyone told the only things in the chests would be rare skins with a 0.05% drop rate.

I was expecting tonics, consumable food, party items, alcohol. Anything of the like. Thats what is insinuated when you tell people something is “stocked” with holiday themed things.

You are viewing this from the percetion of knowing the weapons were the only themed things in there, and that they were known to have a low drop rate. Neither of which are true or could have been discerned from the marketing that players had.

DumpTruck.2945:

no-one forced your hand in spending cash. there is an option to buy gems with gold. if you burned through your gold (such as i did) and resorted to buying with cash that is your choice not the devs. i stopped when i dropped my account gold down to 50silver and decided if i didn’t get one by then i wouldn’t get one. i haven’t spent cash and i understand the disappointment, but seriously if you spent cash you only have yourself to blame.

I did spend cash. I don’t mind spending cash to support Anet and future content. But that’s not what this is about. Even though I buy gems with supporting the game in mind, it’s not a charity donation. I expect to get something for that money. Namely I expect what is advertised. In this case it was Halloween “stuff” from the Black Lion chests. Not getting something rare I can deal with. But getting nothing Halloween related at all after opening 20-30 makes me feel taken advantage of. Plain and simple. I never cared for Black Lion chests. I bought them for this specific holiday, for the themed festive stuff specifically.

I used girl scout cookies as an example before and I will again: Every year people buy girl scout cookies because 1.) they are good 2.) even though there are equally good cookies elsewhere, the money is supporting something. Now pretend you buy $60 in girlscout cookies and when they deliver them you actually get some walmart brand cup-cakes. Well you didn’t buy cup-cakes, you didn’t want Walmart brand stuff. You bought girlscout cookies and that’s not what was delivered. For a lot of people, this will make them rethink supporting that organization in the future.

Beings fans doesnt mean you shouldnt have expectations of a company as a consumer.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Kimbald.2697:

GW1 odds were different from these…

What were the odds of…
Getting a minipet from a Zaishen Strongbox or a Gift of the Traveler?
Getting an Armbrace from a Coffer of Whispers?
Getting a Crystalline Sword from the chest in the Hall of Heroes?
Getting an everlasting tonic from the Zaishen chest?
Getting a Mini Polar Bear from the Wintersday chest?
Getting a Frog Scepter from Bogroot Growths?
Getting a Voltaic Spear from Slavers’ Exile?
Getting a Bone Dragon Staff?

People were fine with gambling for rare items in GW1. Now that they can see each other whining about it on official forums, they all seem to feel entitled to all rare items with no gambling and little effort.

Could you buy Coffer of Whispers from the cash shop?

Wasabe and D W are missing a pretty basic point of contention here.
1 – ANet sent out an email saying black lion chests were stocked with Halloween items.
2 – The gem store itself had an add for black lion chests touting their Halloween upgrade.

This led people to rightfully assume THEY WOULD GET HALLOWEEN ITEMS FOR THEIR MONEY.

Yes, it sucks the weapon skins have a stupid low drop rate that most people weren’t exactly expecting given the nature of Anet’s Halloween events since…I don’t know…ever.

But remove those from the equation for a moment. And consider that people who spent good money on keys did not receive a single Halloween themed item at all . No candy corn, no trick or treat bags, absinthe, squash serum, witches brew, nothing.

Yes it was someone’s choice to buy 6 keys and they shouldn’t have rightfully expected to get all six weapons out of the gate. But with the promotions and advertising put out those people did have a right to expect something related to the event.

That was not an unreasonable expectation by any means given the information players had. And that’s why people feel slighted.

Consider for a moment publix always sells bags of their bakery cookies. And then puts out ads saying those bags have been stocked with girlscout cookies, so you go buy half a dozen or so. You don’t get any peanut butter patties or thin mints. Oh well, luck of the draw. But then you find out there was not one single girl scout cookie of any kind at all in any of the bags. That kittening sucks. People like girl scout cookies.

People understand it was a choice. And people are upset they were misled my marketing into making that choice.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

You are not guaranteed to receive a rare item after opening a Black Lion Chest. You have a chance to get a unique/rare item. Some people are luckier than others. The Halloween skins are tradeable, so if you aren’t able to get them in a Black Lion Chest, you can obtain them on the Trading Post.

Yeah, Sorry RB, but no dice there. When the splash screen ad for mystic chest shows Halloween items, and the promotion for the event says it will be stocked with Halloween items, then the team should make sure at least SOMETHING Halloween related is as common from them as boosters and mining tools.

This is something that people paid hard earned cash for. People attached credit cards to their accounts and gave you money directly from their banks based on in and out of game advertisements that led them to believe they were paying for something related to the event. I would have not been nearly as disappointed if a few of my 20-30 attempts resulted in a Halloween tonic, or a ToT bag anything related to the reason I purchased the keys to begin with. Something I could say “Well I didn’t get a weapon, but this is pretty neat…”

I appreciate the teams hard work on the event. It looks great. Im sure it will be entertaining. But whoever made this particular decision probably made a mistake that will cost money in the long term. This is the sort of thing people remember. I’m sure future events will sell a lot of costumes (even to me), but as a long time customer…there is no way you will ever sell me a black lion key again based on an event or promotion again.

zKarp.6048:

Starts the 23rd. PST

Incorrect. People have gotten and screen shot-ed the drops already. Its just a stupid low drop rate. Someone uses a key they got from story completion and gets one, other people waste $50+ for nothing.

@MrLee, I bought 20 keys after the patch. The event was well underway. Not only that but I ended up getting twice as many gems as ordered and charged twice because of an error with the market. Oddly enough, I am more understanding of the double charge (because it is a web-based market and there was a lot of traffic) than I am of the absurdly low chance of getting Halloween items from a chest advertised to contain Halloween items during a Halloween event.

Instead I have four sets of fifty non-stackable black lion harvesting tools.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Black Lion chests are going straight into the TP from now on. Seven years of GW, GW2 CE, Art book, soundtrack, 100 mile drive to pre-release event for T-shirt item and signed poster…and I can say this is the first time I have ever been disappointed in giving Anet my money.

That Nexon influence strikes again. The work that went in to the event was amazing, but a little warning about the event skins being a ridiculously low drop rate would have nice.

People spending half of what they paid for the game on a chance for a single holiday themed item? I have never had any problem buying the costumes. But this was really shady business. I’m hoping it’s a bug or misplaced decimal point because this isn’t ArenaNet’s style at all.

Yeah, I bought 4 sets of 5 keys. Not only did I NOT get any weapon skins, I didnt get a single Halloween themed item.

Those will be the last black lion keys I buy for any event. Would have made more money off of me selling one time use skins individually, but I didnt see the option in the shop anywhere.

Connection error(s) detected. Retrying…

I get that over and over again. Every time it retries, it starts at zero. Servers must be getting pounded.

I actually just pretend it’s not there. When free transfers stop it will be my official WvW feature launch/unveiling day. There’s so much awesome content I have left to do and so much new stuff coming that I don’t want the twisted existence of WvW in its current state to dilute the rest with the horrid bitter taste of disappointment.

Next step is to pry the B button off of my keyboard so I’m not tempted to look at the score and shatter my delusion.

Surinen.9684:

I have t3 and I think that prices are too high, close to mindwracking if you are not using TP and play game only ( as there is no daily and mobs drop or dont drop money at all ). People and their “prestige”, let other people enjoy game and pixels they want, if you are only doing it for show off then something is probably not right with your head and you need a good therapy. Playing a game should fun, not everyone is a student/neet/social walfare leech and have all the time in the world to play a game. After work some people would like to go and play a game instead of engaging in other form of work.

Whoa. You need to simmer down there buddy. To begin with the people that have the most money in game so far aren’t even the people with the most time. Just the people that use their time wisely.

GW is about aesthetic progression. The way you display your accomplishments is by how your character looks. So yes, you can enjoy the pixels you want, as long as you have met the requirements to get them. You don’t just get an Arah dungeon set, or Armageddon, or T3 cultural without making an investment.

If you want to relax with the game instead of making an investment towards some sort of short or long term goal for your character, then by all means play that way. But don’t get upset when the game doesn’t just hand you all of the stuff you want when you have done less than the bare minimum to achieve it.

I earn 2-4 gold a day doing dungeons. I play on and off between 6-12. Dungeon → play with kids → dungeon → dinner → dungeon → put kids to bed → dungeon → watch tv or movie with woman → dungeon → bed. Sometimes I can get another run or two in there. Some days I only do one, play on an alt instead, or don’t play at all. The point is, I do those dungeons because they get me money at a decent rate and I have fun with them. I make easily enough to buy one piece of T3 gear a week (which is what im doing) and the most expensive pieces in close to two weeks, by doing things I would have been doing anyways.

As of now it’s the most expensive armor in the game. Sans maybe Armageddon, if you want to draw the karma/gold parallel. A few weeks of hardcore grinding out progress towards getting it, or a few months of just casually making progress towards getting a set is a more than reasonable amount of time.

You shouldn’t even be shooting for T3 unless you are already 80 and geared up, ready to transmute. And if you are at that point, there isnt really much to spend money on. If you are having trouble saving, then there’s a problem besides the scary looking price of the gear.

I wonder if we will see a gang war between the Nightmare Court and the Lunatic Court to determine who gets to be Tyria’s resident bat-kittencrazy murderous psycho-path club.

I mean…one can’t have the other one just rolling into town and out…evil-ing them right?

Dance fight!

Why sPvP and PvE > than WvW…

1.) free server transfers
2.) orb hacking
3.) free server transfers
4.) Alt F4 vanishing victims
5.) free server transfers

When those few things get taken care of…you might have a point.

@Shooopa,
First, you opinion is a bit skewed. Maybe its because you said this is your first mmo? Nearly every mmo online ever post mud have had servers that locked when they were full or high population. They also had guilds/clans, and those guilds/clans were not always cross server.

So what you are calling poor design is really the standard for the genre. Actually its a bit beyond standard because server transfers have been free since release and that’s practically unheard of. As an aside, that was nice and all, but they should really turn it off now.

In other big name mmos transfers cost money, your limited by what characters you can have on a server, you cant chat, join guilds, parties or do dungeons with people that are cross server. In others transfers aren’t allowed at all. Something to consider while you are feeling insulted.

Second, there are high population servers that are simple enough to transfer to. Instead of shopping for a guild, shop for a server that’s available and then find a guild within it.

You mentioned being stuck on Henge. For some reason I wouldn’t be surprised if the guilds you contacted and server you were trying to get on to just happened to be JQ.

I am going to fall out of my desk chair and die laughing the first time I see a stampede of 30+ players chasing a Skritt with a sack tossed over his shoulder across a field, followed by everything they aggro-ed in pursuit.

Hopefully I’ll be able to Fraps it, set Black Betty as the background music, and have youtube gold.

Are any of you from Florida? Let me explain to you the problem with the state: The beaches are amazing. There aren’t actual mountains or anything of the like, but the state parks and springs are pretty incredible. There are also the tourist “districts” that are kept pristine by private companies. And the sub-divisions and schools and apartments surrounding said districts are really nice places to live.

Sounds great right? Wrong. There is no community here. The local government do not care about the citizens, the citizens don’t care about the government (9/10 couldn’t tell you the names of their congressman or mayor). Don’t expect to be shown any courtesy, patience or hospitality from anyone that isn’t on the clock and paid to give you that experience. Historical sites or protected land are regularly “re-purposed” because no one shows up for town-hall meetings to oppose the sale and construction.

Ok, so here is where I was going…Florida has no community because no one calls it home. People from New York move here for whatever reason, they are still from New York; after they have been in FL for 25 years, they will still say they are from New York. They don’t care about the people, places and things surrounding their new home because they will never see it as their home.

Free server transfers…no one has a home. So no one feels any accountability for the way they act or treat people they will need to play with at some point. There’s no home loyalty in WvW. The population is so mercurial that even the few that want to get to know their neighbors have given up because most of who they meet will just be on another server tomorrow. The servers themselves cannot develop a unique identity based on the players because anyone that could contribute to shaping that is “just passing through”.

For so many reasons, free transfers need to go. They needed to go a long time ago.

You never know, Anet has a sense of humour. They might decide to throw some last minute forge recipe in that uses cinnamon sticks for the people that fell for the rumor or have just been hoarding them.

So the scammers will be like (._.)
and the “victims” like

That would be about on par with their usual level of shenanigans.

The ones where you pick a random bottle and see what you win under-neath? Or pick an oyster and get a prize based on the color “pearl” inside? Yeah dude, random is still random.

We both know I wasn’t talking about trying to knock over sand filled milk bottles with a plastic ball.

This is about putting a small bit of money down for a guarantee to get a shiny thing and a chance to get a specific shiny thing you want, which has no intrinsic value or use whatsoever and is only desired because its a shiny thing.

Nice try to spin that though. Wait, no.

Edit: Wow, I forgot the biggest offenders of all! The people that make breakfast cereal! I mean, you pay like $4+ for a box of cereal. And theres no way to know which of four possible prizes you are going to get! That is borderline sadistic. I mean…they are practically forcing you to buy another box of their cereal if you don’t get the one you want. Kitten that immoral and integrity-less Captain Crunch!

Get real man.

Lol, MajorKong, way to blow that one waaay out to an extreme. On gumball machines you put in a few quarters and get a prize. Is it illegal they don’t have the odds listed on the machine so you know the chances to get that silver spinning rim necklace you want?

What about sticker machines? You wanted that glitter dragon but got my little pony instead! How dare they not put the odds front and center for you to see.

And carnival games…my god carnival games. Exactly how many of those oysters have a blue pearl and how many have a red? How do we know there even are any red ones? This is poppy-kitten, they should all be arrested!

Its a useless skin. Nothing immoral about it. If you want it then play the game and make the gamble. If you don’t, then save your gold/money and be none worse off for it.

Yes. I bought the exotic pearl sword for my thief because at the time it was the cheapest exotic with the stats I needed. IMO that skin is hideous. I transmuted it to the fiery dragon sword from HoM.

Gehenna.3625:

…because I don’t personally care for things like chainsaws in a fantasy setting…

Not to say that your particular taste is wrong or anything, but the the gear and steam blade 1/2h sword skins are already basically chainsaws.

I’ve seen the same complaint with regard to the aviator glasses.

These races have invented guns, mortars, tanks, inter-dimensional teleportation, force-fields, lasers, airships, and bio-engineering. …Is it really that far out there for them to have come up with something to expedite the whole cutting down tree thing, or to protect their eyes from dangerous UV rays?

That said..I think the Priory should get wide rim glasses, the Whispers should get aviators and the Vigil should get sport sun-glasses as faction specific town clothing you can buy from their bases ^.^

sword – machette
gs – chainsaw
staff – broom
dagger – hrm…I think this will be one of the ones they use, but nothing jumps out at me as appropriate and distinct.

What would be brilliant on Anets part is if this was an addition to remove the excess of black lion chests from the TP.

If they lower the drop rate on them, and use them like this for future holidays also then they will retain some value. If the drop rate stays the same, then the things will just bounce jump to around from 4c to 40c every holiday, and the same million chests will be posted over and over again.

There are 11k sitting at 49c and 21k sitting at 50c right now. I’d be surprised if 32,000 chests got sold in the next week to break that threshold. And even if it does, there are a few other listings with quantities in the thousands before they break a silver.

If you buy them up at 44c now, they need to pass that 32k sold mark in to 50c before you could break even.

Not going to say it wont happen. But I’d be surprised. Sad thing about it is those 21,000 chests were probably posted by a RMT farmer a weeks ago, and the account that posted them might even be banned. But listings never expire, so even when events like this come along that would let us really play a meta-game with the TP, we hit these artificial ceilings on item value.

Think we will get any word on whether or not these skins are account bound or character bound?

The mystic harvesting tools are soulbound, but the tonics are account bound. So it could go either way.

BTW, in the last ten minutes Chests have gone from 38 to 44 copper and I doubt thats entirely due to this post. I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep going up until about week 3 of the event.

Is your opinion they are bugged because there are legitimate and obvious problems with how to bosses are working that prevents any possibility of beating them, or because you couldn’t figure out how to beat them?

The boss getting stuck in geometry and untargetable, or staying “green” status and never turning hostile would be bugs.

You not being able to dodge the green projectiles or shadow step attack from Lupicus would not be bugs.

So far every path of Arah has proved to be totally pug-able. And is done so pretty regularly. So actual bugs would be a surprise to me and must be pretty recent.

I would like to see larger party things to do. Eight seemed like a great number in GW. And a few of the harder dungeons allowed for even more than that.

Now I would never expect the existing limit of five in existing dungeons or story modes to change. Too much is balanced about what a group of that size can do. But, why are we limited to five in open PvE zones? Just means if half a dozen or more guild mates want to do something like claw, they cant monitor each others health, they cant see each other on the map, and they can only communicate by spamming guild chat, which other people in the guild might not appreciate.

These people are already there anyways. So whats the issue with letting them group together? It would be nice to have parties of 8-10, and maybe when you try to enter a dungeon or the like you get a message saying “Your party is too large”. As you did in GW.

Besides that, the dungeons now don’t work for larger groups because they are so small (exception to Arah). Elite areas like Underworld or Fissure of Woe are essentially dungeons that are half the size of an entire map section. Where is the issue with making dungeons like those a little more difficult and adding 3-5 people cap to the party?

You could have objectives that require the party splitting in to A and B squads and hitting different timed objectives to accomplish one goal. Like, A DE triggering in a dungeon that requires four people to split off and light a guarded lighthouse to summon a ghost ship down the coast that four other people need to swim to and loot for an item to give to the forgemaster before the ship disappears.

I have no problem with parties of 5. But longer more challenging PvE content that allows for guilds to play together and coordinate in larger groups would be great. It doesn’t have to be a “raid” per say. Yes, stuffing more than five in AC now would be a zerggy mess. But content designed for a higher player cap wouldn’t share the same issues.

Ran a new player through AC story mode last night for the first time. Actually it was two new players (lvl 30 and 35) and three level 80s.

Now this dungeon typically takes about 40-45 minutes. A few people might go down on the first chest boss, especially lower level new players, and a few people usually go down and get brought up a few times on the lovers (mostly because of confusion is my guess. No one ever suspects confusion). Nente and Kasha have always been push-overs.

This last time it took less than 30 and there wasn’t a single death:
- we burnt down the commander in less than a minute and he never dropped a single party member below 80% health. Including the lvl 30 warrior in lvl 20 gear.

- Nente brought it"face to face" one time and was killed about five seconds after he decided to “put some distance” back between us. It took as long to drop him as it did to destroy graveling burrows. Only one of his pets spawned with him when he moved.

- Kasha never summoned minions, and never did the purple laser thing (even though I’ve never been quite sure what that does, it at least re-focused the fight for a minute).

- The Lovers were probably the biggest let down. Vassar couldn’t be knocked out of the immediate center area. Usually we push him up the stairs or by the trees. Ralena didn’t move. She couldn’t be moved with rocks. She couldn’t be kited. So for the entire fight they were near each-other, but it didn’t make any difference. I remember when them being close enough to hold hands was panic inspiring. Now it’s just “meh. Rush em down and beat em like they owe you money.”

Adelburn, thankfully, still had his kittens intact. The foefire still hurt and couldn’t be ignored like every other attack in the dungeon, and he was still doing his vortex move, except he wasn’t directly following it up with attacks or AOE any more. He just pulled everyone in and then…sat there until you all got up and moved back.

I know we are good. But I wouldn’t say with 100% certainty that we are “perfect run of story mode, escorting two lowbie new players through their first dungeon in under half an hour” good.

I havent seen and explicit patch notes about it. Does anyone else feel like there was a discrete number or mechanic tweaking going on with this dungeon?

So they fixed it so you can’t pull him out of the room to the waypoint anymore?

Free transfers are not the problem in and of themselves. What players do to abuse free transfers is the problem.

There are three types abusing the transfers…
1 – players that want to be on the winning team and don’t particularly care about queues.
2 – players that could care less about WvW but want the economic advantages from being on a winning server.
3 – Griefers and trolls that want to jump to opposing servers and wreak havoc.

All types hurt over-all server community. And they might not even be bad players per say (except for type 3). They are just being opportunistic while they have the chance.

The OP assumes leaving transfers during high pop windows okitten good for 24hr WvW coverage, but isn’t considering the troves of people coming in that could care less about WvW and just want realm buffs or mist completion. These people are bloating server populations and keeping players that may want to legitimately join to play with friends from transferring over. They are also keeping people that want to transfer off to play with those said friends from easily being able to get back. So the only people moving around are the ones taking advantage these windows and could care less what server it is they are on.

The OP also assumes somehow the opportunistic players are going to wake up one morning with a complete change in mentality and join low pop servers, or servers with less of a WvW presence out of the spirit of competition, fair play and good matches. And that server balance will magically come from this massive awakening. …That will never happen.

You are looking at this bleeding wound and trying to tell people to leave it alone and eventually it will heal, instead of bandaging it. That won’t happen. There is no sign of it happening. It will fester and rot before the miracle you are waiting for occurs.

Sure transfers could stay open until guesting is implemented. And server morale will continue to crumble, and medium population servers will continue to see guilds come and go, and low population servers will continue to lose twice as many people as they gain. All of which are horrible for individual server communities and player attitudes towards their home worlds. It will be like Florida. Lots of people move there, but everything in the state goes to kitten because too few call it “home”.

And that’s thinking bigger. Things rarely just “sort themselves out” for the better.

Are there other solutions? Yes. No transferring to opposing teams, two week lockout of WvW after transfer, guesting working as designed, limiting transfers to low/med pop servers, not allowing realm bonuses until you have been on a server two weeks…there are lots of possibilities. But we don’t know how long those would take to roll out or what other issues those solutions could introduce. So in the mean time, stop the root cause of the issue. Flip the switch on free world transfers so things stop getting worse while the final solution to make things better is ironed out.

Part of the idea behind WvW was that, if you chose, you could level a character from 1-80 and do all the gathering and crafting and progression based stuff that players in PvE could do.

So you have mobs for kill variety, some of the achievements, fine crafting materials, skill points, dynamic events, unlocking weapon skills, yada yada. It’s also neat to see how people adapt when their skirmishes with each other are interrupted by a herd of Raptors.

Some of those progression things would just take way way to long if you had to do them with player kills alone and loot from such alone.

Unfortunately I don’t think we will ever know. The only response I have seen has been that – and I am paraphrasing – “We have seen data regarding transfers and it all looks great, people are moving away from queues”.

Well, we seen first hand with JQ that’s not the case. Two hour long queues be kitten people sat up all day and night waiting for the window they could slip into that server on. Dragonbrand is full with a 15-30 min queue at peak times and I had people PMing me last week asking what the best time to transfer on was (I think because we were anticipated to beat SoS, before three of our Wvw guilds…::gasp:: TRANSFERRED to the opposing team).

So as far as we know, they think it’s a non-issue.

A long long time ago when WvW information was trickling out:
- you were supposed to pick a home server to represent in WvW
- you could guest to other servers but NOT WvW while guesting
- if you were winning WvW you would get realm bonuses
- you did not get these bonuses while guesting
- If you transferred you COULDN’T PARTICIPATE IN THE CURRENT MATCH

So obviously in the design phase of the mode itself Anet guys knew that it was important to keep people guesting and transferring from being able to jump in WvW to prevent possible abuse.

But now instead we get:
- Unlimited free home server changes
- 24 cool-down (that was only recently implemented)
- Transfers to opposing servers
- Transfers get realm bonuses
- Transfers to full servers during small windows making them full-er.

What happened to that careful intentional design? So guesting wasn’t working right at launch. But the entire awareness of what transfers can do to WvW was just forgotten and the after-effects were allowed to get out of control. I get making allowances to account for a promised feature that isn’t available. I don’t get sacrificing the integrity of an entire game mode to pay for that allowance.

Nabrok.9023:

Locking out servers completely is not an option. Again, not everybody plays WvW.

So what? Not all of the transfers are to play WvW. Winning servers get realm bonuses. I have known players that jump to the winning servers so they get an extra orichalcum from each node. And I would bet a shiny nickel that more people like that are transferring than honest to goodness little drops of sunshine PvE and RP players.

What happened to JQ when the HoD wvw alliance split up and moved around? It got completely flooded. Just because people knew it would be the next top server. Do you think all of those transfers were for PvP?

If a server is only listed as not full for three hours in the early morning, then there shouldn’t be any good reason to let 500 more people flood in during that window. It’s full. Other servers are not. So go there. If they did a temp lock-out on full servers, then the lower population servers would see their populations get up to par within a few weeks. Instead of allowing free transfers, hoping people will join them for lower queues, and letting it ruin WvW for months at a time.

You are incorrect. And a red post on this topic from Anet means the “data” they are collecting on the matter doesn’t properly reflect whats going on.

It’s the difference in being connected to your community through the community and being connected through a spreadsheet.

Yes some guilds and players are migrating to lower population servers. But from listening to other players, the majority of the ones doing that are transferring for PVE to get out of spammy map chat, or zergs on dynamic events. They just want a less crowded environment. Lower queue times for PvP is a perk but not the determining factor.

Now, from the last two WvW matches rounds we have had…
There was a guild and alliance migration during Dragonbrand’s match with Blackgate. Even a spread-sheet will show that those transfers won Blackgate that match. Overnight they went from a 50k deficit to a 100k lead and owned 98% of the over-all map.

This weeks match, three WvW guilds, tired of losing to zergs and transfers, transferred themselves to Sea of Sorrows. Just to be on the winning team.

These situations are being echoed on nearly every server. If you lose a match, expect your population to drop. Why put effort in to doing better next time when you can make the same or half the effort on the server that you know can win?

As the OP sort of suggested: If you transfer, you shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the current match. Period. There is really not one single reason to have been allowing this that makes all of the negatives we are experiencing worth it. Migration, trolling, griefing, harassment. This shouldn’t have been allowed on launch day, yet alone two months later.

But this still wont solve the server abandonment problems people are seeing and experiencing. We would just see it happening less and usually with moves to the top tier servers, so players know they can wait a week and win their next match.

- WvW current match lockout for transfers
- No free transfers
- and if Anet is serious about populating med/low servers, lock out the servers that are at capacity until populations stabilize. Instead of letting players wait until 3am to transfer when a shard is high instead of full and bloating an already bloated sever.
- post a date on the login news section to let people know the date this is going in to effect. Three months to figure out how to play with friends and organize each other on a server has been plenty.

::Asura gates into Borderlands::

Oh, hey guys! How is WvW going it’s bee….oh…server transfers are still free? That’s..um..neat.

::slowly backs away towards exit gate::

So your real problem isn’t that its difficult to earn currency, its that you don’t earn enough to support yourself and all of your buddies.

I do dungeons in 30-40 minutes. Thats 26s a pop. Not including what I get from mobs, selling drops and TP any rares I get along the way.

So I can say I make safely between 40-50 silver on average for a dungeon. Three paths means right around 1.5 gold. Two characters: 3 gold for a few hours time after work.

And there are ways to make even more than that but I would rather do dungeons with friends and guild-mates than grind paths in Orr with a ton of MF buffs.

If you are doing the same event 56x for 1.8s a pop, then you are kittening up. Bad. In fact, you should probably go sit in a corner for a little while and think about what you have been doing with yourself.

“There is no gear progression”. I quit reading there because nothing you could possibly say afterwards can have any validity.

There was not gear progression in GW1, there is not gear progression in GW2, there will never be gear progression.

Since 2005 they have done interviews as to why that’s not part of their philosophy, in the last year building up to GW2 release they have published articles, tweeted, status updated, given interviews, and released videos that have all hammered in that there is no gear progression.

The franchise is not about having a belt buckle that makes you superior to other players because it gives you 0.05% more precision. It’s about have the shinier belt buckles that tells players “I accomplished this”.

That wasn’t a surprise. They didn’t try to sneak that one by us. There is no way, other than sending every new player in the target demographic a certified letter, or leaving them a personalized voice-mail, that they could have made that more clear.

Birds of a feather and all that jazz. If half of the people you know and played with before are like minded, it’s no surprise they would fall off as well. I little research could have saved you all $60. But no monthly fee, so maybe when you grow out of the need for stat based progression to justify your play time then you’ll find something enjoyable in GW2 again.

Seen some comments about Anet stifling gold to force players to buy gems.

What are you trying to do that would make you feel that way?

My personal experience, thus far, is that gold takes an acceptable amount of time to come by in relation to what you need. I have a level 80 and when I got there I had earned plenty along the way two max to crafts and deck myself out in trading post crafted exotics. I get enough from the rewards to easily pay for waypoints, the occasional repair or salvage kits and still bank a fair amount at the end of the day.

Now the things I want (in the case of this character, tier 3 cultural), are a different story. They are really expensive and will take a bit of time and effort. But that’s the point. It’s why I want it. Look at what happened to CoF armor and even Arah to some extent. Since the speed farms, those rare sets are now so common that a lot of people totally lost interest in them, because you see players with that gear everywhere. The price isn’t prohibitive, it just requires a decent amount of investment and committal, and hopefully that will stand up over time to it retains its uniqueness.

So, if you have the money for the things you need to progress in the game and be effective, and have to work towards the things you want over time, then whats the problem again?

The market could do with some attention. Right now bots have put artificial ceilings on item value that has nothing to do with supply and demand. You can see this on a lot of high demand uncommon items in the TP.

Unidentified dyes for example. Lets say the floor price is 17s 41c with a fluctuation of 20-30c. since anything drastically lower re-sellers are buying to repost in the 17-18s range to make a small profit.

Now enter the botters…who post TWO THOUSAND unidentified dyes at 17s40c. Now the ceiling for unidentified dyes has dropped significantly because players have to sell for lower than the farmer. Since players are now undercutting the farmer, those 2000 will never sell. This will happen until dye stabilizes, probably somewhere in the 17s20c range, until another farmer comes in and lowers the ceiling again.

It makes it a buyers market. The issue being, it will ALWAYS be a buyers market. In the instance of dyes you can look through the available listings and see this happening. Tight competitive prices -> massive listing that undercuts current average -> price drop -> tight competitive prices -> massive listing that undercuts new current average -> repeat until we have near vendor prices.

This issue can never “naturally” work itself out of the sheer quantity of the listing along with the fact that listings never expire, and I would wager in more than a few instances the account is banned and unable to remove it manually (if they even chose to).

The market may not need a total wipe and reset. But there should definitely be a time limit on listings and any posts from banned accounts should be removed.

The dye time-line…

- Dyes were going to be account bound. And people were happy.

- Mystery dye plant food was a fun cheap item in the cash-shop.

- Arenanet hired Crystin Cox to work on the cash-shop. Crystin Cox formally of Nexon a company known for pay to win games and micro transactions that knickle and dime the players.

- Fans predict her taking things we have and changing it encourage cash-shop buys.

- Crystin Cox announced that dyes would be character bound and retracted all previous statements made by Perry and anyone else who said they would be otherwise.

- Cheap mystic dye plant food disappears from cash-shop, it is replaced by the more expensive dye packs.

- Fan predictions come true.

- People were unhappy and demanded changes.

- Anet said no.

There you go, now you’re all caught up.

Solution: Achievement/title: Legendary Defender of Queensdale (or other appropriate starting are) – Level to 80 without leaving this zone.

:D

Mog.1589:

Dungeons are fun the first few times. After that they just become a grind. GW2 made this grind even worse by making you run the SAME dungeon for 40+ hours to get a set of cool looking gear….

The point is there are no alternatives to getting cool looking gear. Its grind the kitten out of the same dungeon or to bad.

Give the players a chance to get some cool kitten FROM the dungeon other then tokens. kitten they could make a few new sets that you can ONLY get from Dungeon drops. …

The whole kitten point is if you want a cool set you gotta spend a kitten ton of hours running the same kittening dungeon. I like to run dungeons a few times not a hundred.

You are disagreeing with yourself. You say the dungeons would be better with a “chance” of getting another rare dungeon skin from drops.

But then say you only want to run dungeons a few times.

Adding a chance to get different dungeon skins from drops still wouldn’t make you happy because it would still be a rare drop at the very least.

So, you dont want to run a dungeon for 40 collective hours, unless that dungeon has a chance to drop gear instead of tokens? Even though it’s entirely possible that you end up with enough tokens to buy a piece of gear, well before one ever drops.

Either that or you want a guaranteed rare armor drop for a unique dungeon skin every time you run the dungeon. Only having to do it six times. BUT…chances are against you getting a piece you dont already have, as you get more pieces. Meaning youll end up repeating the dungeon anyways.

Unless you mean you want them to program it specially to give you a rare piece of unique gear every time you run a dungeon and you only get pieces you don’t already have so you never have to repeat the dungeon more than necessary.

See how this is getting silly? WHy don’t you just say you only want to do SM of dungeons and you want Anet to just give you dungeon armor to save you time.

At least with tokens you know how many runs it will take you to get the exact thing you want. No more. No less. You are guaranteed to meet your goal on your schedule instead of being at the whims of an RNG. If I want a rare dungeon helm I know I can get it in three runs. In most other games if I want a rare dungeon helm I may have to farm that dungeon for weeks before I ever even see it, and then I still have to compete for it with other players.

Here’s another idea…if you don’t enjoy the dungeons, don’t do them. If you don’t want tokens, then doubly don’t do the dungeons.

If you do enjoy dungeons, then do them because you enjoy them and get the tokens, chests, and silver as a byproduct of doing something you though was interesting and engaging.

I don’t get the mentality of people saying they don’t like dungeons that can take upwards of an hour, but would do it if the boss dropped a gold. Are you kittening mad-cap? Why would you do something you don’t think is fun or interesting for an hour just for a chance to get an item?

Lets break it down…

1. Arenanet adds higher gold drop chance to dungeons…
   - people get mad they aren’t always level 80.
   - people get mad the drop isn’t always for their class.
   - people with exotics complain it’s not useful to them and they want better loot.
2. Arenanet adds higher chance of exotic drop…
   - people get mad the exotics aren’t for their class
   - the game wide trading post is flooded with exotics and looted or crafted item value crashes
   - they get mined for the runes and rune item value crashes
   - All other ways to get exotics are obsolete since they all require more investment than say…cof path 2.
3. Arenanet has boss drop a piece of dungeon armor…
   - Token system is completely obsolete.
   - Drops have to be account/soulbound to keep them somewhat unique
   - People complain drops should be for their class
   - People complain drops for their class are useless because they want the armor for another character…
   - Dungeon armor is common enough to equip every alt with max gear in a weekends time
   - Was is supposed to be the third most unique tier of armor in the game is no longer unique

See? People will always be unhappy, and the things they want to make them happy would make other people unhappy. And trying to make everyone happy they make everything so easy to do and so easy to acquire that everyone posts in general topic that they have everything and there is nothing to work for and the game is dead.

Yeah, they already buffed rewards because of the QQ about them not being rewarding enough. We got:
- more chest loot
- character level appropriate loot tables
- twice as many tokens per run
- tokens made account bound
- 5x as much silver for completion

Now people want more. It’s amazing.