Guild Wars 2

Chaba.5410:

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

meanwhile, in PvE…

Bobblehead Laboratories EVERYWHERE
People with a Lute that have no idea how to use it EVERYWHERE

The gem store seems to be working quite well for them.

…meanwhile, WvW…

crickets

We had a bobblehead/lute party in WvW last night.

Well, that’s… something.

And I had no idea you could use musical instruments in WvW. I can play taps on my horn, I think that would be pretty fun to do over a graveyard of dead zerglings.

meanwhile, in PvE…

Bobblehead Laboratories EVERYWHERE
People with a Lute that have no idea how to use it EVERYWHERE

The gem store seems to be working quite well for them.

…meanwhile, WvW…

crickets

It happens. Try equipping a toy like a kite or balloon.

Bo Van Swill.7619:

@Reverence I think this is a l2p issue as one of my mesmer builds is full condition the hardest class to kill is ele they can clear condies so fast and heal so much that its so hard to kill them unless you finish them quick.

Destruction of The Empowered.

Goodbye, ele.

Engineers can use rifles, so you have The Predator, which is pretty kitten awesome as rifles go. It’ll probably be the next Legendary I make.

I think the biggest laugh-out-loud moment was the congratulatory post on the front page showing a sylvari wielding two mistforged weapons. I mean, come on, how kittening funny is that? 1) You can’t even get two mistforged if or when this is ever fixed and 2) YOU CAN’T EVEN GET ANY RIGHT NOW

Seriously, ANet, stop making me laugh so hard.

Alright, you know the whitish sparkles that appear around the horn when you use it? That’s what I’m talking about for an on-wield effect.

Stars was a poor choice of term.

I’m not advocating for anime-style super star bursts and blinding FX or anything. I suppose it’s difficult to describe what I’m picturing in my head. Simply more of an inclination towards nighttime, the moon, stars, wolves, is what I had in mind. The stars I’m thinking of would be more of a subtle… what’s the description I’m looking for… I dunno, but I’m thinking of the Fervid Censer’s particles, very small that blink in and out and fade away.

Somewhat cross-posted from the bugs forum, but since this isn’t a bug but a suggestion, I thought I’d carry it over here. I know there was a thread about this a little while ago, but I can’t find it (seriously, just enter Howler into the search bar: 0 results. Nice search engine you got there).

I’m actually about to craft Howler. Only 211 ecto to go and it’s done. I’m a bit sad that it’s been turned into a pale shadow of itself, since I started working towards it before they “adjusted” the FX around the same time they beefed up Eternity. So, I thought a bit. This is what I would do with it:

- Remove the default warhorn sound completely, or muffle it greatly. Make the howl louder and longer. The Super Warhorn replaces the default sound. Why does a Legendary not? You can barely hear the howl over the default skill sound.
- At nighttime, the moon inside the crescent should be always on. Not just the glowing eyes.
- On wield, a burst of stars around the player that trickles down to the ground, along with a heightened fog aura and the wolf’s eyes glowing more brightly. Scale the luminosity on the moon as well so that it shines brighter (during the daytime this should activate the moon briefly, or hell, why not just activate it on wield any time of day?), and add a dynamic light burst that matches the color of the moon (by dynamic light, I mean an actual light sourced from the warhorn that casts illumination and shadows on whatever’s around it. This could be made only visible to the player that wields it, much like the glow on Jormag’s Breath, since anyone in WvW hiding with it doesn’t blow their position just by wielding).
- On skill use, all of the above to a degree, but a smaller dynamic light radius, and a burst of stars only from the warhorn. Fog aura should amplify on use as well.
- Actually put some effort into the footfalls. Seriously. The current ones are programmer art. How about a neat little star burst from the ground that lingers a bit before fading? Or an arcing crescent moon similar to the rainbows from The Dreamer?

Of course, that entails developers actually having some loving care for this weapon, and while I would hope the FX artists and creative programmers would, it seems like this is not the case.

I’ll tell you what, though, if even 50% of the above suggestions were done, that would make this weapon deserving of being called Legendary.

Paradox.5498:

ANet obviously doesn’t care about any weapon not being a greatsword.

ANet, fixing the legendary you broke isn’t about the “amount of interest”. People who worked for months to craft ANY legendary deserve their weapon to get fixed, no matter if they crafted Eternity, a random underwater weapon or the warhorn. It’s kinda disrespectful to only fix obvious bugs if there’s popular demand, especially if the bugged weapon is so expensive.

Actually, the shark spear, whatever it’s called, is pretty kittening awesome looking, and has awesome hit FX (translucent shark head devouring the enemy, and it scales to the size of the enemy — so if you hit the giant jellyfish in FotM, the shark’s head is HUGE. First time I saw it I was impressed).

I’m actually about to craft Howler. Only 211 ecto to go and it’s done. I’m a bit sad that it’s been turned into a pale shadow of itself, since I started working towards it before they “adjusted” the FX. What I would do with it:

- Remove the default warhorn sound completely, or muffle it greatly. Make the howl louder and longer.
- At nighttime, the moon inside the crescent should be always on. Not just the glowing eyes.
- On wield, a burst of stars around the player that trickles down to the ground, along with a heightened fog aura and the wolf’s eyes glowing more brightly. Scale the luminosity on the moon as well so that it shines brighter (during the daytime this should also activate the moon briefly), and add a dynamic light burst that matches the color of the moon (by dynamic light, I mean an actual light sourced from the warhorn that casts illumination and shadows on whatever’s around it. This could be made only visible to the player that wields it, much like the glow on Jormag’s Breath, since anyone in WvW hiding with it doesn’t blow their position just by wielding).
- On skill use, all of the above to a degree, but smaller dynamic light radius, and a burst of stars only from the warhorn. Fog aura should amplify on use as well.
- Actually put some effort into the footfalls. Seriously. The current ones are programmer art. How about a neat little star burst from the ground that lingers a bit before fading? Or an arcing crescent moon similar to the rainbows from The Dreamer?

Of course, that entails someone actually giving a kitten about the weapon, and while I would hope the FX artists and creative programmers would, it seems like this is not the case.

I’ll tell you what, though, if even 50% of the above suggestions were done, that would be one awesome Legendary.

I love to solo roam, it’s just difficult finding other solos to duel. I frequently solo flip camps and such, but I often see 2 person teams that complement each other well (guard/ele, thief/anything, war/mes, etc) or death squad havoc groups that steamroll me the second I’m spotted.

Had a very interesting last day of the tournament, though. A thief was taking out sentries in our BL so people went and tracked her down. When we approached she backed off, /bowed, and we took turns dueling her. She was quite good, out of 6 of us only 2 were able to take her down, one a mes and one a warrior. The mesmer fight went on for ages. The warrior fight was over in an instant. The thief was a high stealth blind spammer, so while the mesmer was able to deal with it using clones, most of us couldn’t get the blinds off to land many hits before she’d stealth out and heal. The warrior fight that ended quickly simply started with an F1 hammer smash and ended with hundred blades.

Duels like that, especially with spectators, are rare but fun — and good practice, too.

I think The Flameseeker Prophecies and Howler would like to have a word with you.

Relshdan.6854:

if true……………….hahahahahahahahaha.
worse QA team in gaming?

There is no QA team. Seriously. I wish I was kidding, but I’m not. While working on Lost Planet 3, we had a 140-person strong dev team, with a QA staff of about 6 people. Those people would find the most extreme edge case issues with just about anything we could throw at them, things we would never have expected or possibly found ourselves, but they found them by testing in the way a good QA team does: creatively. The first thing they did when we would implement new features would be to attempt to break them in the most mind-boggling ways, and they were quite good at it.

They thought like gamers. Not just your average gamer that plays with new content and does with it what you intend, but gamers that say: “hey, I wonder if this new change allows me to do this” — by “this” meaning something unintended.

If you do not have a QA team that thinks like this, you have a kittenty QA team. There are always, always people out there that will think of the most ingenious ways to exploit or use things in creative, unintended ways, bug or not. Some people here may remember the famed Alpha Tester group of GW1, who were responsible for testing new content (and breaking it, so it could be fixed prior to public consumption), and they were kitten good at it.

ANet, get a kitten QA team in-house. Tell NCSoft you need the extra 200k per year in funding, because in the long run, it ends up costing less in man hours to fix the terrible issues you introduce after new content has already been released to tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people. You don’t even test your fixes to see if they break anything else in the process. I’ve watched you do it, over and over, like Prometheus, rolling that rock up all the way up the hill until it rolls back on you and crushes you, then doing it all over again for all eternity. Except in this case, you roll one rock up the hill, and a dozen more roll back down. I would say I feel sorry for you, but after all this time, I can’t. Every time you open that flaming brown paper bag on your doorstep, it seems like you expect to find diamonds in it, but no, it’s always dog kitten. Every time. Always dog kitten.

The spider queen in Ascalonian Catacombs can no longer be reflected. The typical “stack behind the column” method is no longer viable, forcing people to fight out in the area the spider spawns in. I have a feeling that in order to fix the issue of the spider’s venoms not hitting through the column in this particular dungeon, or to make it more challenging, they’ve broken all similar dungeon enemies.

Fix one thing, break 10 more. That’s how it works at this company.

Update:

Got into a gold BB instance, and have been in it for the last 2 hours. I’ve gained 84 skill points, earned countless rares, and gotten a few exotics. And enough festival tokens to buy 5 Tomes. And it’s fun! Keep rotating between the different bosses and it stays interesting.

Best choice of any of the ideas above.

Thanks for the responses, guys. For now, I suppose I’ll just rotate to keep myself entertained. Do dungeons for a bit, move to a champ train for an hour, do the Sanctum stuff for a bit, move on, etc. And definitely get in on any gold blitzes I can. World exploration does seem like maybe something I could do on one of my other characters this weekend (I’ve leveled a guardian and thief through crafting alone to 50 using boosters but rarely take them out into the field).

Soon, my precious Howler, soon.

It appears some people aren’t reading the entirety of my post. I’m trying to avoid options such as those very 2. Running the same dungeons over and over isn’t fun. Killing the same champs in a train over and over isn’t fun.

Perhaps I should rephrase the topic: is there any way to earn skill points that’s both entertaining and relatively fast?

Yeah, that’s on my list. I do AC and CoE full runs and CoF1, CM1 and 3 sometimes as well. It’s still quite repetitive with not much of a requirement other than “stack in this spot” or “stack in that spot.”

On further reflection, maybe this should be in the Players Helping Players forum.. I suppose if a mod sees this thread, move it, please? Thanks.

edit: and wait, there’s a champ train in the Bazaar? I’m also not talking about zerging the blitz, I’m talking about coordination across all 6 bosses to take them down within the gold time limit, which requires skill, focus, and very much the opposite of zerging.

Ok, so here’s the deal. I’m now working on my second Legendary (Howler, if anyone is interested), and it’s coming down to the same problem as I had with my first: I’ve got 60 Mystic Clovers, and I estimate that by the time I’m done making the last few, I’ll be out of skill points. This happened before, and I don’t have the Bloodstone Shard yet. That’s 200 skill points. Everything else is done. Same situation all over again (kitten why did I have to craft Jormag’s Breath and Infinite Light before I decided to make another Legendary… but I digress).

I’ve been doing dungeon speed runs for leveling and EotM runs for champ bags in the hopes of getting Scrolls of Knowledge out of them, but EotM becomes a tiresome chore after a while and I’m only averaging about 3 scrolls per 15 bags. At an hourly rate, I’m getting totals of ~8 Scrolls and 3 or 4 levels. Not exactly efficient, and also very boring.

I’ve noticed that much like the LA event, Tomes of Knowledge are now available for 300 Festival tokens. That’s one option, but turning boxes into tokens is expensive and hit-or-miss. There are the various champ trains, etc, but I’d rather do something fun while I’m working towards more skill points. At any rate, I’d like to hear your feedback. Things I’ve come up with:

- EotM runs for champ bags/leveling
- Dungeon runs for straight XP leveling, occasional scrolls from bags
- Festival tokens for Tomes (boxes, gauntlet, blitz)
- Various champ trains such as the FG one
- PvP, but I’ve never played it, and I’m not sure if getting into it now would help me earn Tomes quickly or not. I know next to nothing about earning Tomes this way.

The Festival tokens have the most interest from me, since I could also level one of my other characters to 80+120 SP, but I don’t see an easy way of getting 300 tokens quickly over and over, being only able to do each gauntlet boss once per day for tokens, never finding a decent boss blitz instance to run for gold rewards, and with the bazaar events being spaced so far apart.

Tomes or Scrolls, doesn’t matter, I just need to get to 200 SP. What are your suggestions? Oh, if anyone routinely does gold boss blitzes and wouldn’t mind me joining, please add me to your contacts/whisper me ingame. I enjoy doing those, since it is much more than just mindless zerging.

talkingun.9627:

The Howler was a legendary I crafted because of the effects. The last patch removed the night effect and all Anet did was reword the effects on Wiki. no put back the effect or refund the cost of crafting and let us craft another legendary.

In an attempt to fix the looping howl sound, they removed all the constant night FX, which was a really, really dumb idea. There is a very odd habit of doing this; they tend to “fix” something, and break something else in the progress.

I am perfectly fine without the looping howl sound, because that is clearly a bug and should not go on forever like that. However, I would love it if the moon and glowing wolf eyes were always on at night again, along with the meatier aura and footfalls. They basically Flameseekered it.

Well, ok THEN, I guess that’s just YOUR opinion. You have an AWFULLY strange WAY of EXPRESSING it. Evening the FIELD just seems FAIR to ME.

DeWolfe.2174:

How about NOT even releasing the Mistforge NPC _until this is sorted out??? Just don’t even update our clients until this is all settled.

It took me a second to figure out how that got an auto-kitten, and then I laughed.

One day before the vendor spawns and they’re starting to “look into it.” Yeah, heard that one before. And before, and before, and before. So tomorrow we all get to look forward to people running around with their shiny new mistforged weapons while we patiently wait for a fix with no ETA, and of course no additional compensation for the missing rewards during the time we wait (yeah, I had the daily reset bug, that was a lot of fun). Those mistforged weapons, if you think about it, are now worth as much if not more than a precursor or legendary if they were able to be sold/traded on the TP, because there is only one way to get them: earning them and receiving the reward tickets to purchase them we were promised and rightfully deserve.

Day 1 of my gem store boycott. You can take your hacked-together minis of pre-existing mobs/characters, your fuzzy hats, and all the rest of your pathetic attempts to pull cash out of us and shove it. If I can’t even earn and receive a reward properly, I’m sure as hell not going to pay money for one.

The reality boils down to this: we are all in a paid beta test, where they continue adding items to their cash shop while routinely breaking/nerfing/removing legitimate ingame ways of earning those items. Odds on them fixing an issue with the gem store not working or not being able to purchase an item within minutes or hours of a single report? I wouldn’t bet against that.

You should feel ashamed of yourselves. Your lack of community communication and interaction, lack of ingame GMs to help with immediate problems, lack of decent timetables on implementation of fixes and improvements, lack of transparency, lack of polished and well-tested content, lack of properly compensating people that have suffered ingame due to your failings (just a “hey, you know what, we’re really sorry about this problem that occurred due to a bug with something we did, here’s a karma booster” would go a long, long way towards ushering goodwill), lack of tact, lack of fulfilling promises made long ago — yes, you see where I’m going here. What I find, I find lacking.

Eternity, considered the pinnacle of Legendary weapons in the game due its requirement of combining two other Legendaries, was broken on day 1. It was fixed two years later.

Drown in your shame.

Although I already posted about my results, I did not mention that I also completed the meta very early in the tourney. My achievement panel shows the correct 1st place award, though.

Still no chest. ANet should be waking up in a few hours, and I hope we get some gorram answers.

As pointed out, Bull’s Charge + HB is cheese. Any and all builds should have a stun breaker and thieves have plenty of them. I’ve seen some nasty combos using Bull’s Charge + Hammer/GS that have gotten people, but if I get hit by a stun as a war I’ll activate stability immediately. I run 2 stability skills + Last Stand for a very good reason.

If you tried this on me, Last Stand would activate and I’d knock you right down with my mace. A better combo is activating either Dolyak Signet or Balanced Stance, then Bull’s Charge + HB, but it’s still relatively easy to dodge/break/retaliate.

No chest. Henge of Denravi, 1st place Silver. I have never transferred. HoD was the first server I chose when I bought the game. WvW achievement panel shows 1st place achievement and reward, but have not gotten it. Tournament meta achievement finished early like many others who haven’t gotten their chest, and all achievements are complete, not just 10.

Add me to the list, I guess.

mallas.9836:

it seems its a problem with everything they do ever which should have been tested better.

Fixed that for you.

Well, it looks like we may be screwed. First of all, if you visit the WvW subforum, people from season 1 still haven’t received their rewards. Second, this was posted by a dev 17 hours ago:

Michael Henninger.7451:

Keeping this short, there is no need to submit a ticket. Customer Support is not handling anything related to the tourney at this time. I will update if this changes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-Tourney-and-Customer-Support/first

That boils down to “don’t bother us, we really don’t give a kitten, and if you do bother us, we’ll ignore you.”

kitten this.

Reposting, 1 hour past WvW reset time:

Didn’t get mine. Henge of Denravi, 1st place Silver. WvW achievement tab shows 1st place and the reward chest icon, but I’ve not gotten the chest. All achievements in the meta completed. Logged out and back in twice. Zoned to HotM and into Lion’s Arch. Zoned to my home instance. Logged out again and logged in. Entered WvW. Entered EotM. Entered Obsidian Sanctum.

No chest.

This is starting to remind me of the dreaded daily reset bug where we got zero feedback and had to wait a week for a fix. Is there anything you can’t kitten up ArenaNet?

Didn’t get mine. Henge of Denravi, 1st place Silver. WvW achievement tab shows 1st place and the reward chest icon, but I’ve not gotten the chest. All achievements in the meta completed. Logged out and back in twice. Zoned to HotM and into Lion’s Arch. Zoned to my home instance. Logged out again and logged in. Entered WvW. Entered EotM. Entered Obsidian Sanctum.

No chest.

I have no idea, and I’m sorry, but that’s hilarious.

Danikat.8537:

So after all the discussions about item “prestige” and wanting special items to show off I thought I’d try an experiment.

I logged into my main character, opened the wardrobe and tried to pick the most prestigious – the rarest, hardest to get, most expensive etc. items in each slot. Then I added the 4 most expensive (and limited time) dyes and took a screen shot.

I went for:

• Celebration Hat (play at launch)
• Wurmslayer’s Shoulderguard (beat the Triple Wurm and got lucky on RNG from the chest
• Illustrious Guise (crafted ascended)
• Fire God’s Vambraces (30 HoM points)
• Accursed Leggings (Arah dungeon tokens*)
  *Radiant Greaves (21,000 achievement points)
• Dynamic Tempered Spinal Blades (expensive mystic forge recipe)
• Eternity (Legendary sword)
• Pyre, Deep Glacial Sky, Blacklight and Enamelled Crimson dyes

• There’s not much choice for prestigious trousers.

Obviously what constitutes a good look is a matter of opinion, but for me at least the end result is a pretty effective illustration of why choosing your skins by what you think will impress other people is a bad move.

You’ve got me stumped on the leggings, but that’s pretty kitten good!

I’m curious if you would think Eternity would be more prestigious than a Sunless Greatsword? Eternity can be bought and crafted.

Sunless weapons:
- Cannot be bought
- Cannot be crafted
- Are account bound on acquire
- Share similar looks to other ascended weapons but have a unique dark shroud particle effect and glow scheme
- A very rare drop from defeating Tequatl, which can only be attempted 3 times per day.

What do you think? Do I have a new challenge for you?

Flissy.4093:

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

There’s not a whole lot of love for shields in this game. The Flameseeker Prophecies, the legendary, only has a nice glowy effect on wield with a page turn when first wielded or a skill used. When stowed, it doesn’t look like a legendary at all. Only when I looked into possibly pursuing it did I realize I’d seen it around many times, just never noticed because it looks absolutely plain. Also, as far as I know, the only legendary that does not have footfalls.

Leave my shield alone please, it’s perfect as is.

I’m only stating my opinion, if that’s alright with you?

There’s not a whole lot of love for shields in this game. The Flameseeker Prophecies, the legendary, only has a nice glowy effect on wield with a page turn when first wielded or a skill used. When stowed, it doesn’t look like a legendary at all. Only when I looked into possibly pursuing it did I realize I’d seen it around many times, just never noticed because it looks absolutely plain. Also, as far as I know, the only legendary that does not have footfalls.

As far as their utility goes, they can be effective for warriors in some situations. I’ve used one in WvW effectively, with shield bash offering a nice 300 range sudden stun with nearly no tell that it’s activating, and block allowing me to absorb all damage for a few seconds while I regen/CD other skills.

I have only used one on a warrior, though. I hear that they are actually very useful for engineers.

You know what, guys? They listened. It took 4 days for them to work something out, but they listened. Yes, it’s still extremely difficult to coordinate a gold reward for anyone but TTS/TxS etc, but they increased the rewards and that’s at least saying something. There’s still over a week left in the release, and hopefully more people will get around to learning the coordination (much like we did with Marionette, although yes, I admit, the loot was very good there and worth it for the challenge).

I attempted to command a divide-and-conquer a little while ago, but being as there were no other tags in the map to follow, everyone just went to me. It would be nice to have other commanders that I can communicate with, so instead of me having to tell people to go elsewhere (which I won’t), the others can say “hey, come to me! I need 4 people over at boss X!”

In a perfect world, it would work. I think the disparity between why Marionette ending up being so well coordinated with commanders on all paths (most of the time, at least on my server) was that we knew the exact time the event would happen, it was server-wide, and it gave time for people to gather and prepare.

Oddly, while the fixed event times work/worked so well with Teq, Wurm, and Marionette, they’re terrible for other world bosses. If I had any suggestion, make it a timed event. If people are in DR or perhaps near the CP, or in the Festival, throw a yellow notification out that the pavilion will be starting soon, much like they do with other festival events.

It just isn’t working with the way it’s set up now, and players that aren’t TTS members or don’t know one to taxi them into their instance are getting shafted. Better rewards, thank you! Actually finding a way to get them… help!

The same thing happens with a lot of movement skills, like Rush, sword leap, etc. It’s annoying, and people have complained about it a lot.

Zaxares.5419:

Most of the Phoenix weapons are gigantic compared to other sets. I agree that the Phoenix Hammer is probably the biggest hammer in the game right now. The Phoenix Greatsword possibly too.

No rifle comes close to dethroning the Charrzooka so far, however.

Pretty sure the Fractal GS is probably the biggest. The mistforged GS is massive also, probably the bigger than the Fractal, but we won’t see it for another week or so.

You should always get dragonite from Jormag (once per daily reset cycle, of course). The fact you got an ascended armor chest, though, is worth a crapload more than a few dragonite ore.

The hammer is fantastic. I had one claim ticket lying around that I’d gotten out of a random key drop 4 months ago or so, and as soon as I saw that beast I bought it.

Then I hit the TP and put in ridiculously low offers for the sword, shield, rifle, and longbow at 40g apiece, woke up this morning to find out they were all filled.

I should have just kept the ticket… 160g is not that much for those 4 awesome skins. The rifle alone may be the best I’ve seen in the game next to The Predator.

Xytl.8659:

Anyone who already has a blade pack really has no reason to complain. You got to use them for what they were intended. A lot of us didn’t get the chance, personally I started playing GW2 about a week before the destruction of Lions Arch. It has been one of my goals since I bought the game to get a blade pack, now they’ve made it easier on me, rather than having to buy thousands of watchwork sprockets.

The point is you shouldn’t feel entitled to anything over an item that has outlived its use. Arenanet promised a merchant who would accept them, they never said "Keep your blade shards, you can trade them for exotic/ascended gear." Can you blame them? If they sold you even rares for blade shards, it would crash ectoplasm prices and with it the entire crafting economy, they thought forward, and thought about the people who don’t have 5,000 of these things just laying around, consider that. Your expectations are not their sole focus, keeping the game alive and well is. A good game is not made through a ruined economy.

Really?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/escape/What-to-do-with-4250-Blade-Shards#post3732808

CC Danicia

Please don’t delete them!
You can hold on to your extra blade shards, as the team will be adding something later which will allow you to convert the shards to something of value. Dev will be announcing more on that later. Thanks!

What do you consider “something of value” to be?

It’s not a bug. This basically boils down to:

- They made it harder
- They made it less rewarding at the same time

It’s reminiscent of the watchknights in Battle for Lion’s Arch, except now you have 6 massively powerful bosses instead of 3, and you get junk for doing it all.

Do you remember, a long time ago, that one of the game’s primary goals was to move away from grinding? That rewards would be balanced, fair, and respective of the difficulty to achieve them? The developers have progressively forgotten that over time, it seems, because every patch we end up looking at weaker rewards while everything becomes more difficult. Welcome to the new Guild Wars.

In the original announcement about the blade shard vendor, this is what was posted:

Rumors tell of a merchant interested in items from major events in Tyria’s recent history, including Blade Shards. Players are encouraged to hold on to these items if they are interested in trading with her when she appears.

It’s not unreasonable to think that getting a single green for 250 of these shards that people were told to hold on to for over 2 months (some had whole bank tabs full of these stacks, some even more!) might feel like somewhat of an insult.

It might also be noted that the exact same equipment bag that the blade shard merchant gives you for 250 of these shards also costs 100 fortune tokens. For something that can’t be bought, sold, traded, or deposited, and became very rare after the Battle for Lion’s Arch, waiting 2 months to give up 250 of them for garbage that we can get the equivalent of by fighting just about any mobs in any area in under 5 minutes… can you understand why those people felt let down?

It’s ArenaNet’s game, they can, of course, do what they want, but they had to expect near-universal disappointment from anyone that held onto their shards.

Don’t tell us to save our 5000 extra shards or whatever and then give us items for 250 of them that are worth less than the cost of waypointing from LA to Mount Maelstrom and expect a ticker-tape parade in response. In this case, I can only surmise that it’s basically the same attitude they’ve had in “improving” the game experience since launch: make everything less rewarding.

There’s also, umm, Superior Rune of the Traveler. Any class can use this. On my warrior, I have the +25% movement speed with melee weapons in my Discipline line, on my thief I use the signet. My wife has a ranger, and I’m not sure what she uses for her permanent +25% movement speed, but she has that as well (and then Rampage as One for the extra boost + stability on top of that, one of the best elites in the game).

Some classes simply have benefits that others don’t, and vice-versa. For example, warrior elites. I would do anything, anything, to be able to put one of my warrior’s non-elites into that slot rather than be stuck with what he has.

Signet of Rage used to be great before the Lyssa rune change, which cleansed all conditions and gave all boons for 3 seconds, but again, that could be used by any class. Runes that proc on elite are pretty neat, but sadly there is now only one. And it summons… birds.

Jski.6180:

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Jski.6180:

Conner.4702:

Karizee.8076:

Relics of Orr interview with Chris Whiteside posted yesterday ~~

http://www.relicsoforr.com/p=3256

Interview with mister marketeer. Woop dee doo. It’s sad when someone is in denial about what he really is, but I’ve accepted that Anet will ignore inconvenient truths and gloss over or just joke about problems people have pointed out. This interview is no different in regards to this.

You just asked to here something from Anet not that content of what they where saying hell for all they could say is “thx for your post” and that would be no longer “quiet” that this thread is talking about. If your trying to make a problem where there is non then shame on you.

I would like to point out that it is 100% possible for someone to say something without saying anything.

Erik: That’s true, we can go for yes or no’s. So this may be a very yes or no section here. Will Season Two be focussed entirely on the war with Mordremoth, or will there be side stories for us to go on with the biconics?

Chris: I think that we will continue to develop the stories of our characters moving forward and put them in exciting situations that we can all be part of and we certainly want to focus a bit more on the player as a hero as well so…yeah, a bit of a sidestep on a question, but also a little bit of information…so there you go.

There are words in the answer there. Certainly, there are words. But even he acknowledges that he didn’t say anything.

Politicians are also very good at this.

My i point out that saying something “is not saying any thing” is not a means of argument to proves or disprove a point.

I guess they could just say every thing that about to come out but not for 3 months down the rode etc… but then they are accused of over hyping things so what is the “right” way of doing this?

BTW “Politicians” are far better at disproving info with out any backing then saying nothing. You would make a great politician.

Once more please? English this time.

Jski.6180:

Conner.4702:

Karizee.8076:

Relics of Orr interview with Chris Whiteside posted yesterday ~~

http://www.relicsoforr.com/p=3256

Interview with mister marketeer. Woop dee doo. It’s sad when someone is in denial about what he really is, but I’ve accepted that Anet will ignore inconvenient truths and gloss over or just joke about problems people have pointed out. This interview is no different in regards to this.

You just asked to here something from Anet not that content of what they where saying hell for all they could say is “thx for your post” and that would be no longer “quiet” that this thread is talking about. If your trying to make a problem where there is non then shame on you.

I would like to point out that it is 100% possible for someone to say something without saying anything.

Erik: That’s true, we can go for yes or no’s. So this may be a very yes or no section here. Will Season Two be focussed entirely on the war with Mordremoth, or will there be side stories for us to go on with the biconics?

Chris: I think that we will continue to develop the stories of our characters moving forward and put them in exciting situations that we can all be part of and we certainly want to focus a bit more on the player as a hero as well so…yeah, a bit of a sidestep on a question, but also a little bit of information…so there you go.

There are words in the answer there. Certainly, there are words. But even he acknowledges that he didn’t say anything.

Politicians are also very good at this.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Knaifhogg.5964:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Knaifhogg.5964:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Maybe your machine has a piece of software that causes that, Knaifhogg, one doesn’t know. This is the problem with software.

Yeah, no, it’s for every player in the map, people have reported exactly how you can reproduce it and it should be fixed by now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_806gNyWYZo

I have done Tequatl in that time and have NOT had that bug, so it is NOT for everyone. I have done it with TTS and have not had this issue.

People also need to check how many hops they are from the game server, the more hops the bigger chance for packet loss.

If you burst the boss to directly go to the next defense phase it happens every time, stop trying to argue whether this bug is global or not. I guess TTS is weaker than TXS (shots fired).

NO – they do it the exact same way. Ignoring arrogance on your part, which is par for the course on gaming forums (since people ALWAYS ASSUME EVERYONE has the same problems/opinions they do) and when you don’t they belittle and make fun of you.

As I said, check your wonderful internet connection and everything in between. ONE of the possible reasons is because you are losing packets. If you lose the packets about drawing Tequatl, it is possible that you will lose him (go invisible). A.Net can only control the server and the client and there is a huge area in between they have no control over. If they haven’t fixed it, it may be they can’t tell from the data they are collecting.

As Sherlock Holmes said,

‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.’

Sherlock Holmes Quote -The Sign of Four

I don’t think you understand how transport protocols and packet loss work. In fact, I know you don’t.

Signed, a veteran network programmer. In the games industry, no less.

Hamfast.8719:

Like it or not (I don’t), we are all part of a larger community now thanks to the MegaServer. Wherever you go, there are tons more people around. It is a fact of any society that the more crowded it gets, the quicker tempers tend to flare. As such, it makes sense to do whatever we can to get along with our neighbors.

This is an appeal to be just a little bit more observant of the other players around you to avoid unnecessary tension. A couple of examples:

• Don’t be an Aggro Magnet. Simply running through the world, you pick up pursuers. Then if you happen to run past another player minding their own business, these monsters have a chance of disengaging from you and attacking them. With so many people packed into a zone, there are fewer “safe spots” to go AFK for a couple minutes. There is much greater risk nowadays of someone bringing monsters down upon you while you’re on the potty, or grabbing a pop from the fridge, or sorting your Inventory. Please do your best to steer clear of other players if you know there is a bad guy following you. If you realize you’ve put someone else in jeopardy, stop and help them. Then saying “Sorry…” accompanied by a sheepish /shrug could even make a friend, if that’s what you’re looking for.

• Not everybody wants help. Part of the fun of any game is beating an opponent all by yourself. Naturally, there are some bad guys that pretty much require teamwork to take them down. Help is appreciated. But don’t you enjoy a challenge now and then? Don’t you appreciate the opportunity to finish a tough battle without the Almighty Zerg charging in and finishing off your foe in a matter of seconds? All I am asking is that you look before you leap into the fray. If the player seems to be doing fine, leave them alone! If it looks like a close battle, it can be fun to stand back and watch. Perhaps throw in some healing spells, or step in to revive if he gets downed. But let the other player have a chance at the feeling of accomplishment that you would also enjoy from a good battle well fought. (EDIT: This goes especially for Skill Challenges, After all, they’re supposed to be a challenge!)

You may think this that is just a computer game, but it is also a social environment (especially now). Nothing is forcing you to be considerate of others, but most people will find it more enjoyable to avoid tension with other players. I am not saying you can’t run around and be as disruptive as you want, if that’s how you like to have fun. I am merely trying to bring this to the attention of all the non-trolls who aren’t used to having other players on the map, and may not realize how they may be affecting those people. Despite hiding behind cartoon avatars, those are real folks you are encountering. Treat them the way you would want to be treated. It would make the MegaServer a bit more tolerable.

If either of your 2 bullet points ever had a chance of happening, I would love it. Sadly, they do not.

Sartharina.3542:

People want mounts simply to make overland travel faster.

Frankly, I’d prefer tanks, so guilds and parties can travel in style. Tanks definitely need to be added to WvW, with Charr architecture and bases to churn them out and help with tearing down fortresses. Looking at WvW maps, I’m asking “What century is this?! Trebuchets, catapults, and castles? Get your tails in gear, Iron Legion!”

Maybe Charrpers (Charr choppers/motorcycles). With forward-mounted guns. And maybe a chain to whack people in melee. ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

This is an excellent idea, and instead of tanks, why not armored personnel carriers! The Dredge have them, as shown in Sorrow’s Embrace and the Dredge Fractal clown car (I mean seriously, how do they fit 40 guys in there?). Another vote for armored carriers.

Of course, then we have to worry about who’s driving. I’m reminded of…

BlueZone.4236:

Remember all the Tequatl bugs?
Here’s why (copy and paste the link, the forum breaks the link):
http://www.relicsoforr.com/?p=3256

Chris Whiteside

Playing that, I don’t know how well known this is, but we didn’t kill Tequatl before Tequatl went live internally. That’s not how we do our reviews or our balance testing. We don’t need to kill it to know how well balanced it is, which is interesting and maybe one day we can do a podcast about that and I can explain how that works.

I’m ok with his opinion that they don’t need to kill it to know how balanced it is, but they do need to kill it to see whether it is killable.

TLDR constructive feedback: Don’t skip testing.

As a game developer of 11 years myself, programmer specifically, I’m practically dying over here. Not testing content before rolling it out sounds like shear insanity. Not only do we, as programmers, spend quite a bit of time testing the content locally while implementing it, our in-house QA team will do daily tests that would mimic how end-users would play it.

With one caveat: we tell them to try to break it. We want them to throw everything they have at the feature(s), including things that players normally wouldn’t do, to see if anything causes progression breakage or even the slightest detriment to the experience either for the player him/herself, or other players. It’s a mantra.

Small anecdote. While working on a major single/multiplayer game for Capcom, this is one of the questions we asked QA interviewees: how would you test this stapler (stapler put on the desk in front of them) ? Give an example of how you would know that the stapler is ready for sale. One of the guys paused for a minute, picked the stapler up, and chucked it to the ground. It broke into about 3 pieces. His response: “I guess they didn’t test to see what would happen if someone accidentally knocked the stapler off their desk. It’s a kittenty stapler.”

He was hired, and several years later is now a producer for a different company. I love telling that bit, and I still use the stapler methodology during interviews. Nobody else has tried to break it, though.

Danikat.8537:

I’m pretty sure this is part of the reason for having different text colours for different rarities. If you’re at a merchant selling a bunch of green and blue items and you see pink text in the list that is your reminder to stop and check what you’re selling.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Solandri.9640:

Unfortunately, for buyback to work, you have to know you sold something you wanted to keep. Often when you accidentally sell something, you didn’t realize you sold it.

Of course the answer to that is invisible bags, so your important stuff never shows up in the sell list. If they’d just fix the stupid bug where switching from 1h weapons to a 2h weapon results in the off-hand weapon going into your main inventory.

I don’t think that’s a bug… just a poor QoL feature.

Technically it’s a lack of a feature. The off-hand is using the default behaviour for any item going into your inventory – going into the first free slot. There are no special features for it. Now if Anet said they had changed it so any weapon you unequip goes into the bottom most free slot, or into a specific kind of bag and it didn’t happen that would be a bug.

A really nifty feature of this since the April 15th update (or maybe it was before, I wasn’t using a dual 1h build and swapping to a 2h until recently) is that it somehow remembers the offhand weapon that I had last equipped if I double-click the primary to equip it. I use sword/shield and axe/mace in WvW, GS and axe/mace in PvE, but when I equip my sword the shield gets auto-equipped as well. Oddly, if I view the equipment page in my hero panel, it tells me the shield isn’t equipped, and the shield is still visible in my inventory.

I actually like that! It’s a bug I’m sure, or a feature that was not fully implemented (I can almost picture the comments in the code: // @todo: finish offhand auto-equip on 2h → 1h swap), but it’s nice.

It is annoying to see my shield go into the first open inv slot, though. Not a huge issue since I’m not constantly swapping back and forth between 1h/offhand to 2h, but I wouldn’t mind a small QoL change to address it.