Guild Wars 2

The anger thing I can understand, but if they were that bad, they should have been kicked in the first 5 minutes. If you suffer through the entire experience with someone, they deserve the reward as much as you, no matter how bad they were.

The other scenario is definitely a possibilities, but it poses the question, why are you giving your friends a dungeon reward if they don’t run dungeons/fractals? They don’t deserve it. They don’t even need dungeon/fractal rewards if they don’t run dungeons/fractals.

I sometimes give my IRL friends who don’t play the game frequently free gear/gold to help them gear, but that’s out of my own game earnings, and that’s to ENCOURAGE them to do dungeons with me. Rewarding friends for NOT doing a dungeon seems to be the exact opposite effect. There doesn’t seem to be a personal benefit for the person inviting their friends over the pugs, and therefore it doesn’t make sense to me.

Something like this happened to me once, a few days after fractured came out. I joined a party in the 3rd instance, and someone left, and when they left, we weren’t kicked, but the fractal level dropped around 4 levels, because the host had opened it at one level and nobody else had the same level, so apparently a new host was assigned and it changed the level to their highest level. That new host decided to leave and the dungeon was lost.

I have no idea why that occurred and I’ve never seen anything even remotely close to that happen again.

After seeing the thousands of forum topics about “I got kicked by my pug so they could invite guild members to get the rewards”, my own being one of them, I just had a weird thought:

What’s the personal benefit of pugging a dungeon, fractals especially, and then kicking the pugs in favor of your guild members getting rewards?

PUGs are usually a nightmare and take twice as long as running a dungeon with friends/guild members that you know (and like enough to break the rules for). So for two/three members to sit through 2+ hours of torture playing with random people to give their friends free rewards, why are you going through that trouble, instead of running the dungeons WITH those guild members in LESS THEN HALF THE TIME, for THEM to get a free reward?

If the answer is:

1. They’re too lazy and don’t want to bother running the dungeon: Kick them out of the guild and stop being friends with them. If they’re not going to play the kittening game, why the kitten would you give them rewards? And better question, why do they need good gear anyway if they don’t play the game?

2. They suck to much and can’t beat the dungeons: Gear isn’t going to make them better at the game, playing the game is. And again, why are you rewarding them for sucking?

Neither of the above are personal gains, so the only “valid” reason I can think of:

3. They’re paying you X amount of gold because of 1. or 2.

However, Getting a good group of friends to zerk the dungeon train will give you alot more money and rewards in less time and frustration than the X amount of gold they’re paying you for your aggrivation of dealing with a pug so they can get free rewards.

So, the best answer I can possibly think of is:

4. You like hurting random people on the internet for no personal gain other than the pleasure of knowing you ruined someone else’s day.

Go ahead, admit it. At least you’re being honest. I can respect that much more than justifying it with another bullkitten excuse.

Ascended Backpacks will most likely always be expensive. The new Blade backpiece is the cheapest piece (timewise). Goldwise, obviously the fractal pieces are free, but it’s much easier to grind 60g than 1850 fractal relics.

However, the question of “why bother” arises. If you dislike fractals, there is no reason for ascended backpieces (unless you really like the look of one of them). Ascended gear is needed really only for high level fractals- the percent change in stats you get between exotic and ascended is definitely not worth 100+ gold (but the infusion slot and the agony resist slot are worth that money)

Well, now we know exactly what happened to the moas!

What a clever idea. I’m gonna guess Incinerator and Rodgort, because they’re all burny and so is Lion’s Arch.

If you’re looking for the most reliable way to make Best in Slot gear, go with Weaponsmith/Armorsmith. It won’t become relevant until you’re level 80 and have a substantial amount of money, but Ascended gear is account bound and therefore cannot be bought. The only way to obtain ascended weapons and armor is by crafting them or from extremely rare drops.

If you’re looking for easy levels, go with cooking/jewelry/artificer. They aren’t as useful for you late-game as everything that you make can be more easily bought on the Trading Post, but you will get some fast levels from mastering these crafts.

Those dungeon recipes that Flissy mentioned are very profitable, but they are rarer than a precursor. If you happen to ever get one, then make a jewelcrafter, but don’t anticipate ever getting one.

Are you planning on learning every recipe for each ascended weapon and armor with every stat combination available as well? Just so you know, that alone will cost you over 2000 gold and over 3000 laurels (which, considering the rate you can acquire laurels will take over 5 years)

When FotM first came out, you could only play a reward level that you personally unlocked, and when a party tried to start fractals, the highest reward level you could choose was the lowest common reward level amongst all party members.

This, coupled with the fact that the in-game LFG didn’t exist yet, caused finding parties to be a nightmare, especially for odd-leveled fractals (no boss chest and you couldn’t skip them). Once you reached level 10, there was absolutely no reason to ever play a fractal level below 10, unless you were helping a guild member/friend.

While I realize that being able to join any fractal level has the issue of low-levels attempting to join fractal levels that they don’t belong, but that’s a much smaller issue. When you get into high level fractals, your skill level, gear, and AR all become apparent rather quickly, and you will most likely be told that you don’t belong there/booted rather quickly.

The issue I believe is not with the fractal reward level, but with how the game is not beginner-friendly. They start advertising dungeons to a newly level-30 player, and then hit you with dungeon difficulty full force. They don’t explain that, while you’re allowed in dungeons starting at level 30, you’re meant to be level 80 with full exotic gear. FotM is the same way. The only way you can really learn about the mechanics is by reading the Wiki. But until you’re told about it, a beginner doesn’t even know that the wiki exists.

Ah, I see. Thank you for the clarification.

I’m not referring to IP address changing, I’m referring to the fact that it said my account was “in use at another location.” I was worried that meant that I was booted from the game because someone else logged onto my character from somewhere else, meaning I was hacked.

OP- Did you do fractal story mode during the factured update? During this, we learned that Dessa forgets everything after the experience- so all this work we’re doing to help her “learn” is useless.

I like your idea, but unless the reward scaling was exponential for difficult fractals (ie: much, much better chance at ascended/fractal weapon drops), it would involve the same 4-5 fractals being chosen by everybody. Nobody does fractals for the gold reward, and the relics run out of use pretty quickly unless you’re making ascended backpieces for multiple alts. I’d much rather my fractal run always take 45 minutes for a 1% chance at a fractal skin than it taking 4 hours for a 1.5%, but if it was 4 hours for a 10% chance, maybe I would consider it (But even then, the aggravation factor is something to consider)

Cranked- The reason why everyone wants to roll swamp all the time is because if you know how to run the wisps the entire fractal takes less than 10 minutes. It’s a technique fractal and the technique doesn’t change from level 1 to level 50, so therefore the difficulty doesn’t scale like it does in the other fractals. At level 49/50, that means the first fractal goes by quickly and painlessly (people will most likely kick/leave if the wisps fail even once) and there’s only 3 more fractals to deal with. Urban Battlegrounds takes forever at high levels because of the ridiculous mob scaling in the courtyard, and Uncategorized is just a huge pain in the kitten with the knockdown harpies. To go through all that trouble and then be done with just one fractal is very disheartening.

At lower levels, however, those fractals are a joke. Personally, I would consider Urban Battlegrounds to be the easiest level 1 fractal because there are no mechanics, it’s just killing vets which are easy as pie at that level. Uncategorized doesn’t have knockdown on the harpies at that level, so it’s just an annoying jumping puzzle without the trolling. Swamp and Water, on the other hand, have those technique parts, and if you’ve never done them before, they can take a long time and be very frustrating.

So I tried AC p3 alone yesterday. The spider queen was again no problem, and I managed to get Kohler to kill the Troll, but I got stuck at the burrows. I tried my best to kite all the gravelings, but they never all seem to stay aggroed on me. A few break the group and head for the essence collectors, and gradually kill them. And if I don’t move around in a wide enough circle, the gravelings kill me. The best I got to was 50% charged and then I gave up and posted a LFG to help me finish the dungeon.

I also tried CM p3 and I have absolutely no idea how to kill Sure Shot Seamus. I got him to 90% at best by running around the building with some well aimed bow shots, but I couldn’t handle him or the adds.

In the middle of a PvP Solo Queue match, I got dropped to the character select screen with a message along the lines of “this character was logged on at another location.” I logged back in immediately, and noticed nothing that I owned was gone and that other people were dropped from the same time. Apparently there was a large server-wide disconnect at the same time.

Should I be worried about my account being hacked, or was this just a glitch?

Fractal Level is relevant to this opinion. At levels 1-20ish, Dredge is more than managable and even (just short of) enjoyable because the challenges are reasonable in duration.

At fractal level 49 dredge is a nightmare that makes me feel the same way as you.

I’ve only done dredge 50 once, and I’ll never speak of it again. (Over 2 hours in the one fractal)

Thanks for all the advice guys. I’ve been mulling over what you’ve all said and I’m gonna probably try AC p3, then TA up, and possibly CM p3. Those seem like the most attainable in the near future. I’ll post my progress when I attempt one of them (probably not until tomorrow.) I’ll see about getting a video of all/part of one of the runs.

Opened an AC path 3 LFG about a week ago, mentioned nothing about build, class, speedrun, etc. just asked for “experienced 80s”

Got an entire group of chill people with good attitudes. I’m pretty sure we were all zerker builds (but I never gearchecked) because the bosses’ HP just melted away, and we had a stack of 15+ might almost the whole time. It was delicious. The path went by so quickly, nobody complained about anything and we didn’t have any trouble anywhere in the path. (and we didn’t even have an ele for burrows and nobody complained about it and we didn’t even notice the lack of ice bows)

I hope they move them away quickly enough, otherwise:

Dear Scarlet,

Please don’t destroy Lion’s Arch. I know you’re sad because Valentine’s Day is coming up and you’re not going to have anybody, but I promise you, destroying Lion’s Arch will only make you feel more empty inside. (AND IT WILL MAKE THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD WORSE)

Instead, won’t you please be my valentine? I made you a card.

I promise that my intentions are sincere, and by no means is this a “pity kitten”

With some sort of feeling (but certainly not love),
Atrius

I just want to add that by starting the run, you are making the decision to stick with the run through hell or high water unless everyone else in the group decides to quit and are okay with you leaving. You don’t want to add to the problem of ragequitting dungeon leaders.

I know this is going to sound like a textbook response, but the first thing you should do is open the dungeon yourself to avoid the leader ragequitting. This way even if the entire party leaves you can post a LFG saying “LFM 3rd DREDGE” and you’ll get only people prepared to do dredge.

As far as actually beating the fractal, I can assure you it’s doable, even at level 50. It just sucks royally and take upwards to an hour (with a good group). They constantly fix every little exploit so there’s no real trick to doing it, you just have to suck it up and do it and know that it’s going to hurt you all over. The bombs part will kill you if you don’t have stealth. The clown car will take at least 5 minutes, there’s no way around that. The easiest part of the fractal is the boss (and that’s no cakewalk either)

Lord Kuru- Ah, that’s why she reset then. I was constantly running around her in circles and dodge rolling in a wide radius.

I’ll give Seamus a try and see if I can handle him. If not, at least he’s right in the beginning of the dungeon.

I’ve thought about AC P3 since I’ve already done Spider Queen and I know I can solo Rumblus, but how am I supposed to handle the essence collectors? I can’t imagine being able to take the burrows down quickly enough before they get out of control.

Purple Miku- Nice video, I like the technique. Watching this video also shows just how substantial the difference between a full Zerker build and a full Sentinel build really is. Overall your damage output is at least 500% more than mine, even after factoring in the fact that I can hit her more frequently because I heal through most of her attacks. My sword hits for a measly 200 damage per hit (plus bleeds, woohoo). The only saving grace is that it allows me to make mistakes (something I do frequently because I’m not really familiar with how bosses work differently when you’re the only available target). However, I can understand fully why people only ask for full zerker parties with speed runs in dungeons.

How necessary is Ascended gear for solo runs? My main warrior that attempted these runs is in full ascended weapons, trinkets, and armor, but when I get better (if I continue with this long enough) I have an Exotic geared zerker warrior that I use for party speed runs. If exotics is sufficient, I’ll probably eventually give her a try- but I don’t ever plan on getting a set of Ascendeds for her.

Purple Miku- I hate Sure Shot Seamus even with a full party- i can’t imagine doing him alone X_x. I’ve been thinking about Arah, but I watched a video and saw just how much is required to solo some of the bosses, especially Lupicus, so I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.
If you do try AC p2, keep in mind that it’s buggy and you might not be able to complete it Dessa freezes, and you do need a party for the final boss.

Lord Kuru- I had been thinking about that path, and I just completed it!

Here’s how my Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 solo went:

Gates/Golem: Breaking the gates was pretty easy. I kitten ed a couple of times and died, but other than that it went smoothly. The champ golem was a pain in the kitten with all the pulls and knockdowns though! That took forever. During that fight, when he was at about 30% health the server crashed, and I had to run back in. Luckily he only regened about 25% health before I aggroed him again.

Nokk: This fight was the biggest pain in the kitten ever. Getting stunned for 10 seconds every single time you miss the dodge is painfully slow, and the only thing I could figure out to do was range him from by the door. His health took forever to drain down, the fight took at least 20 minutes because I couldn’t get the hang of dodging the gravity bind. Eventually I did dodge it repeatedly and won the fight. Only one death, happened right away when I accidentally dodge rolled into the lava.

Three Golems: I was worried by this fight initially, but it turned out to be okay once I successfully pulled them individually. I died once on a bad pull, but then I fought the shield golem first, then the fire golem, then the poison one. I only died once on the poison golem, then I figured out how to dodge the attacks. I used a lot of vigor from my warhorn #5 plus the conversion of poison into more vigor. Went very smoothly.

Tazza: This is where things got hairy, but not from a difficulty standpoint. After four attempts I managed to pull her into the big room. God kitten does she have a lot of HP. I was whittling it down, after about 7-8 minutes I had her at 75%. Then I apparently moved her a little too far away because she decided to reset. Then I couldn’t get her out of the small room no matter what I did, she kept resetting. So i fought her in the room with the Troop Commander, and got them both to about 75% when I messed up and died. At this point I asked the friends/guild members I invited for the free rewards to help me finish her off and 2 helped me (a third died pretty quickly) so we trio-ed her down. I’m satisfied by this and consider this second solo a great success!

If you say for example, “lfm p3 exp only” when you say the path number that should be obvious enough that you’re talking about explorable mode. There’s no such thing as Story Mode Path 3. To say path 3 explorable would be redundant.

That being said, the more painstakenly descriptive you are, the more likely people are to understand what you mean.

That also being said, I had a post saying “need WARRIOR” and got a ranger, then necro, then ele, then mesmer join. Finally we gave up and removed the ‘need warrior" and behold! A warrior joined. Gotta love it.
On the other hand, I’ve had groups with my not serious friends saying “casual run, all welcome, killing everything” and people join expecting a speed run and kittening when something takes longer than it’s “supposed to”

I’ve been thinking about getting into dungeon soloing a bit, for the fun and challenge. I don’t know how serious I’m ever going to get, and I doubt I’m ever going to sell dungeon runs, but I wanted to try it out to test my abilities as a player.

I decided that my first target would be AC path 2. I figured that the spider queen was an attainable goal to start with, and then I wanted to see how far I could get after that. For this run, I used a warrior with full ascended Sentinel gear, Sword/Warhorn and Longbow. I’m aware that most solo players play zerker build, but I didn’t think i could handle that yet. Perhaps if I learn the mechanics of the fights well enough I can switch later on.

So here’s a breakdown of my first dungeon solo. It’s a disaster around every turn, but kitten if I didn’t have a good time doing it.

First elite breeder- piece of cake.

Spider queen: I’ve learned that the hardest part of this boss damage-wise is all the spider minions. Clearing the spider minions from the room killed me around 4 times. But once I cleared the spiders from the room, the spider queen went down with no problem. For the most part, I could heal through her damage, and I have my warhorn set up for condition removal to deal with the immobilize and poison.

Gravelings: this killed me once, and then I figured out how to handle them. This involved a lot of running around and jumping. I ran through and disabled the chains before I tried to fight them so I had more room for mobility.

Kohler: Man, this boss is hard alone. I was able to heal through most of his damage as long as I dodged the pull/spin attack, and I took him down to 66%. Then, the second wave of elites that he spawned- warrior and mesmer, took me down. The warrior never despawned after this, and I was unable to handle him with three elites at once.

Defend Detha: This was the hardest part of the dungeon, but also the most enjoyable. Killing the gravelings, using the chains, and protecting detha all by yourself is extremely difficult. I found that I relied on Detha’s 3 bombs to wipe out most of the gravelings, and I used a banner to pinpoint the exact location of the middle chain. I used Pin Down on the champion breeder at that location and then pulled the chain as many times as possible. I then had to pull it around and try to get it to use its minion summoning ability in that spot, because that freezes it in place for around 15 seconds, so I would run back and pull the chain some more. I had hounds of balthazar to attempt to distract the champion breeder long enough to take it down. I failed around 5 times, twice with the champion breeder at 20% HP remaining. It was at this point that I realized I needed Throw Bolas on top of Pin Down to keep it in there for that extra bit of damage. However, the next attempt bugged, and the champion breeder never came towards detha. I went to it, fought it, died, waypointed back, killed it. and then killed the other gravelings that were just standing there, and strangely enough, it cleared the event. This was a very strange bug, I have no idea how it happened.

Sadly, this was the end of my run. I had intended on attempting to charge the cannons by myself and inviting some guild members to clear the boss with me (which cannot be soloed), but Detha glitched at the end without starting the cannon event. I spent over an hour trying to fix the glitch, getting her killed, killing all the gravelings and oozes and everything, and it never spawned.

Overall, despite the disappointing ending, it was very fun, and a nice challenge in a game that I have done pretty much everything else already. I am definitely going to consider trying again, perhaps in a different, less glitchy dungeon.

Danikat.8537:

Because I have never before had the chance to fire unicorns at my enemy, and probably never will again.

This right here is the reason why you are a perfect candidate for a legendary. There’s no other good reason- they’re the same stats as ascended, granted the ability to change prefixes is nifty (I never use it). The cost is outrageous compared to ascended, I could have fully geared all of my alts in ascended with the money and time I spent making my Bolt and Howler, but instead I look like a walking thunderstorm and I love it!

Personally, I crafted both of mine, and if I ever make another legendary, I would craft again. I made a neat little checklist chart breaking down each of the gifts into their core components and crossed them off when I finished each one. That felt alot better than just building up a gold number, but that’s just my opinion.

Either way, it’s going to be a grind that takes hundreds of hours, so be prepared for that.

There are people in this world that feel so strongly about their opinions that they feel it’s their duty to “change” everybody else’s mind, and they do that by shoving their beliefs in other people’s faces. In this case, there is a group of people who use the LFG system that feel that it’s wrong to ask for a specific level range, class , or build, and so they protest it in the only way they can- by ignoring you and being obnoxious about it.
There’s also the group of people that feel that selling paths is wrong, and so they take it on themselves to kick the instance owner from his own dungeon when he tries to sell it. It’s not against the rules, but they think it should be, and of course, they know best because they have some sort of moral crusade behind them. Both of these groups of players fall under the same category of people as the protesters who stand outside planned parenthood shouting insults and telling everybody that goes into the store that they’re going to hell.

Chasind is also right though- especially because the text gets cut off if the LFG description is too long, and so some people might see something like “LF2m p3, 80s experienced only… need elementalist” and only actually read “LF2M p3, 80s experienc…” I’ve actually widened my window significantly so I can always read the entire description before I join a group.

Lol it censored 45 – 55 as kitten. What is offensive about that?

@ Anierna- When I said “even if it takes 6 hours” I was referring to the 6 hours I’ve already spent unsuccessfully in Fotm 50 with PUGs, I wasn’t trying to predict a run with people I know. I was saying that I wouldn’t mind playing that long with friends, where as with strangers it just makes me want to tear my hair out.

I have run 49 with Clara and the gang and we’ve been very successful. Unfortunately, their AR is mostly in the 45 to 55 range right now, and I’m not sure if they have any plans on raising that to 70+. (And my other friends from not UGF have even lower fractal levels and AR)

J Eberle- Oh, I see. I was under the impression that you were telling me that my gear was no good. That makes more sense.

I’m definitely burned out right now. I think I’m going to wait until my friends are ready to do level 50 and run it with them. Then even if it take 6 hours I’ll be with people I like.

There was no gear check in the beginning, or mention of a specific gear requirement in the LFG that they posted. The only requirement was 70+ AR. I even asked them when I joined if they wanted me to play a warrior or guardian, I have both with 70+ AR and they said guardian.

I always honor those people that ask for 80s only, or specific classes, or specific builds by either joining with that specific class/build or by not joining if I don’t have what they want. I respect people wanting to run the dungeon their way. But if there’s no mention of it at all in the first fractals, no complaint about what I’m doing, then all of a sudden it shouldn’t magically become an issue on the final boss. They were obviously kicking me to give their guild member the loot instead of me.

Not to mention, I spied on them by putting them on my friend’s list, and they were still in Fotm for at least 45 minutes after kicking me. If I was really the problem, why did it still take them over a half an hour to kill the molten duo without me?

It had nothing to do with gear, or skill. I had 70 AR and was playing on an equal level as everyone else, and the party never once complained about my playing. The only thing they ever said in regards to my contribution was to make sure I used Chains of Light under the lava buckets and I said, I was doing so. And I salvaged the fight that we did win when the lava pourer drew the aggro and missed the opportunity to pour, I chains of lighted him in the right spot AND poured the lava to make sure the boss didn’t recover.

They didn’t complain or anything, they just booted me in the 4th fractal. The only reason why they gave me any explanation was because I messaged them immediately (which, by the way, the names STILL disappear after you get booted from the party even though Anet said they fixed that, I just happen to have a good memory) and three of the four members blamed the kick on someone else (which is obviously a lie, you need two to boot). One of them felt bad because I told him how kittenty of a week I’ve been having because my grandfather just died and how upset I was about them wasting my time and he gave me his spot, and that’s how I saw the fifth guild member who was obviously the reason that they booted me in the first place. I got downed while I was trying to rez the downed mesmer, then other party members then rezzed the mesmer, ignored me and let me die, and then booted me because “they just couldn’t deal with me anymore” and invited the other guy who gave me his spot back in.

I don’t remember the guild name, but I do remember the player names. But, as I was already aware, name dropping is not allowed.

I reported them, but what a fat load of good that’s going to do, considering I still see the same bot patrol in Diessa Plateau I reported three months ago.

This is the third failed attempt at Fractal level 50 I’ve had in three days now.
The first time I hosted and two of the party members left mid 2nd fractal because of a patch and we couldn’t replace them (because of the patch)
The second time we spent an hour on the grawl boss and then the party leader gave up.

I just want to get this over with so I can never do it again

A group of 4 guild members on the Blackgate server kicked me during the Molten Boss fractal so they could invite a guild member in my place. I spent 2.5 hours with them and suffered through the dredge and then I got booted.

They claim that they kicked me because I was “dragging down the party” but I wasn’t. I had enough AR and was pulling my own weight, doing exactly what I was told and supporting the party.

It depends on what you’re crafting for.

For the crafting-required equipment that you will use late game at level 80 (ascended weapons and armor) I would recommend Artificer for Staff/Scepter/Focus (or weaponsmith if you use dagger/dagger) and Tailor for your light armor.

But crafting also provides 7.5 levels from 1-400 and if you’re crafting just for easy levels, you will want chef, artificer or jewelcrafter.

Currently Jewelry Crafting is capped at 400 and therefore ascended jewelry cannot be crafted. Ascended jewelry can be obtained in the following ways:

Backpiece: Mystic Forge (using ectos and t6 mats or items bought with fractal relics), or level 500 armor crafting recipes recently added in this patch

Amulet: Purchase from a Laurel Vendor- 30 laurels or 20 laurels + 250 badges of honor in WvW

Ring: Relatively common random drop from daily chest in Fractals of the Mists at fractal reward level 10 and higher, Purchase from BUY-4373 in Fractals of the Mists for 10 Pristine Fractal Relics, or Purchase from a Laurel Vendor- 35 laurels or 25 laurels +250 badges of honor in WvW

Accessory: Very Rare random drop from Guild Mission completion chest. Purchase from Guild Commendation trader- 12 Guild Commendations + 5 gold. Purchase from Laurel Vendor- 40 laurels + 50 Ectos

I would assume so. There would be no logical reason to release those new stats for weapons but omit them for armor.

I feel the same way, I have my hopes way up on getting ascended Sentinel armor. I hope that they release the Gossamer Inscriptions with an easier way of obtaining them like they did for the weapons, because they’re currently 80g each on the trading post…

For all of those people who are saying that fractal level “is just a number”, you need to be reminded that video gaming is all about numbers, and it always has been, since the beginning of arcade gaming. Numbers are everything. Games have always been about progressing as far as you can, and getting a score (number). Those who have the best skill are able to get the highest score and they have bragging rites. Since the 70s/80s, gaming has come a long way, and many people have forgotten about that era of gaming, but the truth is it’s still here, even in guild wars. Everything in this game is a number, and gamers who share the spirit of the original games desire to get a high score in this game as well. The nice thing about Guild Wars is you’re allowed to choose which numbers are important to you.

The following are also “Just a number:” (And there is someone in this community who strives to have the highest of each)
Gold, Karma, WvW Rank, PvP Rank, Achievement Points, Dungeon Tokens, # of Legendary Items you own, # of t6 mats you own, # of miniatures you own, Level (capped at 80, but you can have the most # of level 80 alts) Dungeon Master title (# of unique dungeons you completed, not an endless number, capped at 33)

These are all high scores. And they’re all “just a number.” Someone spent hours and hours attaining them, and yet they can all be reset as easily as fractal level. (By altering a few lines of code) Some people care about them, others don’t. Fractal Level is also a high score. It is very important for a very devoted section of the Guild Wars community. Why turn your backs on them? They have every right to the number that is most important to them.

After some more thought about it, here’s how I feel regarding the level reset from a different standpoint:

Imagine a new game with this scenario: You buy the game because it promises “unlimited stages!” and “Increasing difficulty with each stage, how high can you get?” After playing the game for a while, you realize that there are two forms of difficulty, a number modifier and actual game difficulty. After you hit stage 50, you realize that the number modifier stops working. But you keep playing until you get to stage 85, then turn the game off. The next time you turn it on, for some reason you’re on stage 80 again. “But I thought there was unlimited stages?” Then you notice that it still says your “highest stage reached” was 85. Okay, so there’s a buffer. The high score is unlimited, but 80 is the highest starting point. So you play around and the max number you ever get to is 92, because that’s how skilled you are and stage 93 is just too hard for you.

Then all of a sudden the makers of the game tell you “Sorry, we didn’t realize that people were going to take the term unlimited stages seriously. The maximum stage right now is supposed to be 50. We’ll fix the later stages eventually, but for now, stop at 50. But if you passed 50, we’re not taking away what you’ve already done, we’re just stopping progress by only letting you play odd numbered stages past 48.” So you continue playing on stage 79, because that’s the highest level you can actually play anymore, but you’re much more skilled than stage 49, so you don’t want to go back to such a low stage.

Then the game makers tell you. “Okay, we fixed the problem with the stages. 50 really truly is the max now, and we’re getting rid of all the high scores of people that got past 30, because you weren’t supposed to go past 50. But we’re changing levels 31-50 to make to make up for it.” So all of a sudden, your high score is gone. All record of your progress to stage 92 and all the hard work you spent is just gone. And to make matters worse, you play the new levels 31-50 and they’re so easy for you that you can’t even enjoy it, and there’s no way to increase the difficulty.

What really is the issue here? In my opinion, the real issue is the false advertising and going back on their word. It was supposed to be a game with “Unlimited levels” that caters to everyone because you can pick your own difficulty. But really, there was two hidden level caps, one at 50 and one at 80. So now they’re getting rid of that and making something with a finite end. That’s not what they promised when they made the game, they promised an endless challenge.

This is exactly the scenario that Arena Net did. Attached is proof- a screenshot of the initial November 2012 update where Fotm first came into existence. The fact that they’re changing this means that their word can’t be trusted, and this isn’t the only occurrence of this- it’s happened repeatedly. They also promised there would be no more sudden changes that affected the economy without warning (When karma jugs were changed), and then just recently Champion boxes were nerfed without warning- without even mention of it in the patch notes. So before you say “it’s just fotm, it doesn’t affect me” That’s bullkitten. It affects all of us, because the issue is that they lie to us, stating facts and making promises and then going back on their word. Then they compliment that by taking away progress of players who go against what their new decisions are.

Here’s my opinion on the upcoming changes, both good and bad: For the record, I myself am a personal reward level 31. (But I have done many more level 10/20/30 dailies)

New Fractals: Yes! New content is always something I look forward to, and I’m glad that they’re not actually removing old fractals (I loved TA Aetherpath, but I felt that the removal of F/U was in extremely bad taste.) I loved the Molten Facility and the Aetherblade retreat living story instances, it will be nice to be able to revisit them indefinitely. I’m excited about the Reactor meltdown as well. The only thing I’m upset about is the issue from several months ago- the vote which selected one of two awesome fractal concepts and abandoned the other. There is absolutely no good reason why we can’t have the Fall of Abbadon fractal as well.

New Boss Fractals Also yes! It’s nice for some variety. Doing the Jade Maw a million times gets stale, it’s nice to at least have a few different options.

Account wide fractal level Yes! Not having to grind fractal levels on multiple characters is nice.

Reward Updates:
What I like:
—Boss fractal and bonus chest at any level including odd- No more even fractals only. —-Gold reward for finishing fractals.
—What sounds like a better chance at getting ascended weapons for free
What I don’t like:
—Daily account bound reward repeatable only once, regardless of level. Account bound doesn’t bother me as much as level bound- I liked the ability to play each 10 level for a reward multiple times a day.
—Fractal Skins being dropped at level 10+, while a tonic being dropped at 40+. The fractal weapon skins were a prestige drop that is much more bragging-rites worthy than a stupid tonic. Personally I think the fractal weapons should be 40+, and I could care less about a tonic, especially since it’s account bound so there’s not even a gold value to it. However, I think the fractal skins need two changes: Box selection like ascended weapons to let you pick the skin you want, and make them an actual skin, rather than force you to buy a gem item in order to use them.

Resetting levels to 30- I understand how difficult of a decision this must have been, and there really is no answer that will satisfy everyone. I realize that they catered to the majority of players to allow them a glimmer of hope of seeing this new content, but at the same time they are seriously angering those hardcore players by removing yet another outlet of endless challenge. There is no 100% way to fix this, because the original mistake was made a long time ago. Promising “endless levels” and then not actually making the content scale beyond 48 when the real limit was 80+ was the original problem. There is no excuse for this, the difficulty should have gone up to 80 to begin with. Then, it was “fixed” by hardcapping the difficulty at 49 without any real explanation why. It sounds like the reason was “oops, we didn’t think anybody would get this far, there’s not actually anything to see here, move along.” Because of this quickfix, there’s no good place to put the new content. Put it at 80, and only the people who made it to 80 before or despite the hard cap will be able to access it, and the majority of players will never see it because they won’t want/be skilled enough to get that far. Put it at 50, and those people who made it beyond 50 will be unhappy. Put it at 30, and more people will be able to see the content, but more people will be unhappy. The solution: I really don’t know. It’s a pretty big hole anet dug themselves into. Personally, I think 50 is probably the best place for the new content, since they already decided to make the hardcap at 50 a while ago, and there is content up to 50 already. Might as well stick to the decisions that were already made in the past.

Leaderboards- No. Just no. Ironically, I think the leaderboards would have been cool if there actually was endless levels of difficulty. It would be cool to see who managed to break into the 100s and far beyond what you would expect the average player to dream of, but since there is a level cap, all you’re going to see is a long list of players at the level cap. And doing it based on who gets there first is lame, because then it would be all about who happens to be most free next tuesday and wednesday.

I’ve definitely seen trends in this game throughout the year and two months since I started playing. In the beginning, the game was swarmed with bots and gold selling advertisements. Every time I ever posted something in map chat, I would get a mail soon after advertising gold selling. Then it died down for a long while, with only the occasional mail. But during the free weekends, it flared up to a whole new extreme. After those free weekends, it died down for the most part, but not as much as it did when anet first banhammered the mass of bots. Those weekends must have given them a decent supply of accounts to hack, not to mention the 40% off sales caused more advertising accounts to be bought.

Mel, you don’t need to worry on either matter. You were not attacking me, you had a legitamate concern and so I addressed it. I have played this game for around 1500 hours and this is the first time I have ever reported a bot. I don’t assume that someone is a bot, in this particular case I initially assumed they were another player and said hello to them. It wasn’t until afterwards that I followed them around and that was when I noticed their behavior.

Overall, I think it’s wrong to assume that any random player you see is a bot. There are plenty of people that farm, myself included. I make resource runs daily, gathering Orichalcum and Ancient Wood, Soft wood, etc. When I was making my legendary, I farmed Skelk and Sparks for hours. If I do it, there’s no reason to believe that there aren’t other people that also farm and make resource runs. But there are telltale signs of a bot, and if and only if all of the following are true, then I feel it is okay to report.

Signs of a bot: (If all are true, you have a bot. If any one of these is not true, it is most likely a human player.)
1. They are making repeated, robotic movements, over and over again with no sign of human error. This can be reinforced if they then make stupid mistakes like running into an obstacle repeatedly and do not easily remove themselves from the obstacle. (Be aware of the fact that players will occasionally press the auto run and minimize or go afk, so running into an obstacle alone does not make a bot)
2. They patrol the exact same path over and over and over again.
3. You see them in this area performing these actions repeatedly over several days. This is a big sign, because many human players will farm, but very very few will farm the exact same area consistently for 8-10 hours every day. Give it some time, and check back later to see if they are still there.
4. If all of the above are true and you are suspicious of the person, say hello to them (with /s, because many players ignore map chat), wave, jump around in front of them, drop a guild banner, etc. Don’t accuse them of being a bot, just try to get a human reaction out of them. If it is a human, they will give it away somehow. Even if they don’t respond, if they pause to look at you or notice you in any way, it’s a human. A bot will pay absolutely no regard to you as if you don’t exist.
5. If you’re not completely sure they’re a bot at this point, don’t report. Give the person the benefit of the doubt. Only report if you’re 100% sure.

Under the “Rank and Abilities” tab of your WvW window, you can see how many bonus chests you have remaining. Under the World Experience bar it says “Next title at Rank #”, right below it, if you have any bonus chests, it will say “# Bonus World Chests Remaining”

I remember reading somewhere that the bonus chests would be obtained one at a time with world rank level-ups because it did not come as a surprise to me when this happened. But I looked through a bunch of the old release articles just now and I can’t find mention of it.

I believe that was most people’s intention, as it seems that it is ALWAYS the intention of the majority of people doing the invasions these days, but I don’t understand the relevance of that question to my problem. Farming each event for the champions would cause less event completions, rather than more, because a large group of people take much longer killing each event. But I was not doing that, I was attempting to close as many portals as possible both to gain more experience from events and progress the invasion in an attempt to finish it. But there were less than 5 minutes left on the timer when the Aetherblades appeared, and by that time, I had already started getting diminished rewards on my events.

Mel, I understand your concern, and I assure you I would not report a bot if I wasn’t 100% positive that they were, in fact, a bot. I understand how annoying it is to be accused of doing something wrong when you are clearly not doing it. There is a big difference, however, between running around and killing everything to blow off steam, and running around the exact same path repeatedly for 8+ hours every day for four days in a row. When i say exact same path, I mean it. They were there every single time I ran my Soft Wood path in Diessa Plateu, running that same exact path. They did the EXACT same movement over and over again, with pauses to change direction and a jump several seconds after they start moving forward every single time. I’ve also seen them get stuck in a tree for about a minute, and repeatedly try the exact same method of slightly turning to the right, running foward, jumping, running forward some more and then stopping, just to try again. No human being would be perfect enough to run the exact same motion repeatedly that many times, and yet careless enough to get stuck behind a tree for a minute.

If anybody wants to confirm or argue my bot claim, the person in question is back in Diessa Plateu on Jade Quarry again, patrolling the same area, same exact path as yesterday. I’m not going to name drop on the forum, but it’s a Guardian with a pearl greatsword and Armageddon armor.

If you take a look at the Ascended materials section of the Collection tab of your bank, you can see that there are already slots for 5 items that have yet to be released. Those are: Crystalline Ore, Crystalline Ingot, Spool of Silk Weaving Thread, Bolt of Damask, and Xunlai Electricum Ingot.

I have a feeling that Ascended Armor crafting is going to be very similar to Ascended Weapons with slight alterations in the building process, and Spools of Silk Weaving Thread are going to be time gated just Elder Spirit Residue and the others.

Khisanth- That does make a bit of sense, you’re probably right. It seemed strange, it’s the last place I would ever think to go farm at level 80, the only appeal to me of the entire map is Soft Wood. So the fact that it’s the last place you would think of is probably why they picked it.

Lordkrall- I ran through Diessa Plateu around four times over an 8 hour period yesterday to collect Soft Wood, and I ran into this person patrolling Butcher’s Block every single time. They were level 80 (Pearl greatsword and armageddon armor) so they weren’t a new player. The most recent time I saw them (the time right before I posted this forum topic) I said hello to the person and said “I keep seeing you a lot here today!” They ignored me. It then occurred to me how strange it was for me to see the same level 80 in the same desolate map four times in a row. So I followed them around for a little while and that was when I noticed their behavior was off. They were making the exact same clockwise loop around and through the village over and over and over again, with consistent jumps and stops to recalculate direction. They were aggroing every enemy within a particular range and always used the same attack pattern every time. So i asked the person if they were a bot, and still no response.

I just came across a bot (which I reported of course) that was patrolling in a circle around and through the Village of Butcher’s Block in Diessa Plateau. The bot was running around and attacking random enemies it came close to.

Now setting aside the fact that botting is wrong, if someone was going to risk their account with a bot, why would they possibly choose that area to farm? It’s not like that area gives you any good loot. Why not go for T6 mats or lodestones? There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it at all, which makes the idea that this person is using a bot even more silly.

Just as it the title says, I was leveling an alt in one of Scarlet’s invasions, and near the end of the invasion succeeding events started giving me almost no exp, karma, and gold. It then lingered even after I left the map, giving me also almost no reward on the Frozen Maw events afterward as well. I had to log off my character and wait a half an hour before I started getting the normal reward from events again.

I don’t particularly understand why event diminishing returns were put in the game in the first place, but I can understand the desire to prevent the repetition of the same event over and over again. However, I was taking part in a living-story related dynamic event. The reason why I did so many events in a short period of time is because there are that many events in the invasion. And the fact that this restriction lingers after moving to a different area is extremely unfair. I felt like I was being punished for taking part in the invasion event. As if I didn’t hate Scarlet enough already… (but that’s a different story entirely)

P.S. I wasn’t sure if this belonged in this thread or the “Dynamic Events” thread, but from a coding standpoint I feel as though this situation is not “working as intended” and therefore could be considered a “bug”

Tl;dr- the title says it all.

My guild is an extremely large, casual non-rep guild, (450+ members) with bi-weekly missions. We’ve been having a serious issue with coordinating missions (especially Challenge and Puzzle) because once we start the mission from the guild menu and everyone starts way-pointing and travelling towards the mission location, sometimes someone activates the mission on the site before everyone is there, even despite our spamming “DON’T START THE MISSION YET”.

Why isn’t there an option for large guilds to only allow officers to start these missions? I am not referring to activating the mission from the guild menu, I’m referring to starting the mission on location, after the mission is activated from the guild menu. We’re having a serious issue with this, and the only solution we’re coming to is the idea of gkicking members who start the missions early, which is really not what we want to do, considering we’re a casual guild.