Guild Wars 2

Cerby.1069:

-snip-
tldr: Mentors are lame if that’s how this has got to go down.

Well, I can honestly say not all raid training runs are like that. Been on quite a few myself with my guild both learning and teaching. There’s a list of guilds and groups on Reddit who teach raids (not sure if that’s where you got the group you went with from or not) so if one group doesn’t work out, try another.

I don’t want to be that girl but because we’re only hearing your side, I don’t want to get into the who should have said/done what. I can understand why you were asked to re-roll if the group already had 2 warriors. I main Necro and sometimes we have people wanting to learn on a Necro or experience the raid for the first time and can only bring a Necro. As I currently don’t feel competent with another class in raids (gearing isn’t an issue as I know I can wear exotics and be fine), I generally drop from the group as there’s always people wanting to join the runs. I can always go another time and I’d rather someone new got to experience the raid than myself.

The thing is, a training run that succeeds always feels better for teachers and students than one which fails. Sadly party composition is a factor in that, particularly when you’re learning. Yes, some groups can do all tempest/reaper runs in greens while standing on their heads (exaggeration slightly but you catch my drift), but they were exactly where you were at one point. Some people forget that, some people don’t like to admit they were anything less than perfect and some people just phrase the need for composition in less than pleasant words.

Quite honestly the only advice I can give is find a guild/group with set out “rules” for raids: what they expect from you and what they will do in return. This is something much more easily laid out by a guild for a guild to follow and enforce, however. That way if you feel that the person hosting the run isn’t sticking to their end of the agreement, you can always escalate it to a guild leader with screenshots etc. If you don’t want to join a guild that teaches raids, then you’re probably going to continue to have negative experiences with pugs. You could always give the Reddit list a try though and see what the non-guild teachers are like if you’ve not dipped in that pool already though.

Karmapolice.4193:

You joke, but I would be all over a Guild Wars 2 Sims. Build a house in Divinity’s Reach, invite Destiny’s Edge over, try to drown Logan in the pool. It’d be great!

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! Didn’t care for Logan’s ancestors, don’t care for him either.

But yeah, I’m with Danikat on this. I don’t get why there’s so many options for body/skin modification and little option to show flesh on males. I’ve always loved Norn tattoos and charr fur patterns, was disappointed to not be able to see more of them.

Given all the drama I’ve seen over alliances and faction in GW1 over the last 6 years (which is still going on!): no. Please no. I know how many bots were keeping the 2 #1 alliances afloat, I know people who had over 40+ accounts to bot JQ and the like for faction (which helped to kill JQ for legit players who got sick of being 1/8 in a team of bots), I know people who had guilds spiked and accounts compromised, and I know how much high school bullcrap drama was (and is) caused because of it.

The only thing I personally ever cared about with regards to faction was teaching people MTSC and being able to buy cheap picks. Sadly a lot of people took it muuuuuch further than that and I’d hate to see a repeat. So yeah, it’s a no from me.

Cyninja.2954:

- not sure how well the LFG groups do since I’ve been running the event in the past with gw2community. My assumption though is: save yourself the hassle and forget about the LFG tool. You really want voice comms for this event, especially the tripple head kill

If the group called ‘Post Reset TT’ with members of AA and other guilds are running it, you don’t need voice comms at all. Not sure if they’re still running wurm as BST has pushed the start time of the run back to 2am for me, but I know that I had multiple successful triple decaps with them for months with no TS required, everything was explained in squad chat every time for the inevitable new people and the addition of squad markers made the whole process even easier. Problem is that TS or no, if people are out to kill husks/spawn merchants on kegs/not listen to their comm to deliberately mess up the run, they’ll do it.
Thankfully the post reset runs I went on weren’t actually that bad for that sort of thing and most people who went along listened because they wanted something out of the run themselves.

But yeah, it’s not a dead event – just requires more preparation and co-ordination than most open world content. Imo the rewards could be improved to encourage more footfall as I have to say I lost a lot of motivation to keep running it after getting 2 of the 3 wurmslayer skins. Teq giving better rewards for less effort is… weird.

ScionKai.4907:

This link has a creative solution that Im surprised is not more prevalent:

http://forums.icarus.nexon.net/discussion/6915/custom-chat-filter-suggestion

It hasn’t actually gotten rid of the spam, though. I imagine gold sellers are talking to all those people who aren’t aware that they can block them and as long as they get some custom, they’ll keep going. Top 11 links on Google when searching for BDO Gold sellers are gold selling sites, some of which are sponsored Google ads seeing as gold selling sites often cover multiple games for maximum profit. That’s before you get into the people buying/selling privately over hacker forums and the like. I see gold sellers on the same level as trolls in map chat – something I roll my eyes over and use the appropriate in game functions to deal with them.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind a personal filter for certain words, however part of life is dealing with people who share opinions you don’t agree on, who irritate you and who try to push things on you that you don’t want.

While on the topic of other MMOs and how they combat gold sellers, I’d just like to share these wise words from someone on another MMO’s forum:

You guys have gone through extreme lengths to try and keep out gold/silver/pearl sellers from BDO. But it hasn’t worked, they’re still here! Chat is filled with them. What you have managed to do:

-Limit player-to-player trading, a huge part of social gaming.

-Made reporting gold spammers cost a whopping 30 energy to do (you don’t even get this back if you report an actual bot, it’s just gone for being a good citizen).

-Force market place pricing (though this does help the economy to a small extent, just needs some serious fine tuning).

-Making players wait a full ten minutes just to interact with trade good vendors after logging in.

-Absurdly high tax rates for anything sold on the marketplace.

Yet none of these have stopped gold sellers from spamming the game. It’s slightly better than BnS at release but that’s mostly because of the buy to play model combined with energy costs for global chat (which I actually don’t mind, keeps chat cleaner).

All you’ve really done is put restrictions and limitations on your paying customers in what is advertised as a “sandbox” MMO.

I love this game and want to see it succeed, but you have to stop being so afraid of gold sellers. Those guys aren’t going to go away, especially when a new MMO launches. Let players report and block them then move on with their day. There’s no need to keep putting restrictions on everyone else just so the few gold sellers that exist can’t do their “business”.

It’s like trying to prevent theft in a retail store by having cops give a cavity search to everyone leaving the store. Sure it works to some extent, but you’re making it worse for the majority of your customers by doing so.

To me, that’s proof you can actually do too much to combat gold sellers sometimes.

ScionKai.4907:

Well if all their players on this forum are just apologists for the inaction, no wonder they never try anything to stop it.

No, some of us are just old enough to remember MySpace trying to block URLs on profiles and such. Gave rise to people commonly bypassing with (dot) com and the like.

Blocking people who aren’t friends from whispering – really nice if someone wants to ask a question who’s just met you in map chat or wants to enquire about a guild recruitment ad. It’s like forcing you to be friends with someone in the street instead of idly chatting while waiting for the bus. I just want to say hey, not know their life story, you know? Also like hell am I adding my main guild’s 450+ roster all to my friends list just in case they need to whisper me about something guild-related. What about people who are in 5 guilds with max roster sizes?

I already see some gold sellers using map chat to advertise so no, messing around with whispers isn’t a solution. Every game out there has some form of gold sellers/botters/advertising. It’s like how basically every website now has some form of ads. You block em and move on. Same with gold sellers just with a report thrown in for good measure.

As for ‘doing nothing’, I think you’ll find a lot of the f2p restrictions are there to combat gold sellers so they’re not worse than they are now. Just saying.

lord.2086:

Other thing is right now I feel like a small fish in a big ocean.

Quite honestly unless you make a crapton of Youtube videos or run a GW2 fansite that’s unique/has a lot of users, you’ll stay that way and it’s no bad thing. For starters it makes you less likely to be targeted by hackers/haters. The important thing is that you have fun while playing because that’s what gaming is all about. If your idea of fun is being e-famous, this won’t be the game for you unless you put in way more time than you say you can, but that’s true of anything.

Find a new player friendly guild (there’s scads of them out there), bookmark the Wiki and enjoy exploring Tyria

I like the idea of the library for the home instance and propose this could also be a guild hall decoration item to encourage members to collect books from around Tyria to fill it out.

Raeat.1026:

kitten off, white knight. I was talking to ANet, not you. I don’t care how determined you are to kitten-lick, I am not interested in your pro-corp, brown-nosing gurglings. I don’t want to have to say “gitgud” with your reading comprehension, but gitgud with your reading comprehension. You made unwarranted assumptions. I have no minions on my skill bar, only Rise, which was nerfed to death. Is that clear enough so that even you understood it?

Have you actually read my comment history? I do plenty of criticism, thanks. My reading comprehension is just fine and I used to run Rise myself when I ran power in open PvE; then I realised condi was far superior – surviving while crippling myself including without minions in fractals and dungeons when I want to control my aggro. Rise is a minion shout so your nitpicking is irrelevant. If you were relying on that to stay alive all the time, then you were doing something seriously wrong.

If you were wanting to talk exclusively to ANet, maybe you should have emailed them instead of posting on a public forum where anyone can post. Also, you’ve shown from your namecalling and rudeness exactly what sort of person you are – a rage-filled child who’s overreacting. Sometimes classes get nerfed in all MMOs. Deal with it.

Quarktastic.1027:

I think you need to git gud.

I’m doing just fine after the nerf to Rise. I hardly notice a difference.

Thank you for verifying what I was saying Waiting for him to come for you next lol

kurfu.5623:

Yes, it’s only the level 10 story that gives a key only once per week. They did that to stop people from key farming.

Oh I’m well aware of that change. It came in just as I was about to start key farming myself. It’s just been a while since I began a new character so I’d forgotten that the Lv 10 story is there from the get-go. I got into the habit of doing it as soon as I started a character which was less than once a week because of the key farm nerf.

Astralporing.1957:

If that was their intention, it backfired, as after the first day i have yet to see a map that is even interested in spawning him, much less fighting him. If it’s going to make average players realize something, it would be that this boss is definitely beyond their reach.

Hm, I can’t say I’ve had the same problem so I guess I’ve been lucky with maps. First time I fought the Guardian was pretty much straight after the patch dropped. There was a new build, then we spawned him again in the map I was in. Next day I went to the map to mop up journal pages and saw the spawn being called in map chat. I think it’s luck at the moment as to whether you have enough people to do the pre events to spawn him but once things shake down in the map, he’ll be spawning more frequently. As others said, he’s a valuable source of Blood Rubies as well as the pre events so I’m sure people will soon be aware that the event’s worth their time.

I’m pretty sure as others have said that they went for the ring/amulet/backpack as they were the most desired/lacking so far so I’ll agree to disagree on the wait on accessories. I agree that the situation shouldn’t have happened to begin with though. I’d rather they’d have added the trinkets et al to map vendors for map currency with the raid as an optional way of obtaining them, not the sole way. Or made Jeweller 500 a thing finally kitten .

Berelious.3290:

Considering I suck at adventures, I’m rather glad there are more points being added.

I’m at 170, sucked at adventures and am glad they’re adding more points. Most of the adventures I’ve not touched since unless I’ve been trying to show a guildie how to do them or it’s been a daily.

I think it’d be cool if some of the amulets and rings were scaled up, particularly the ascended ones. I mean, we can’t see them in game so it’d be nice to wear them IRL instead. I’d happily wear a Petrified Skull Juju to honour my character’s Kurzick roots or Jurah’s Jewel in commemoration of the old Master of Whispers. The Triforge Pendant would also appeal to Zelda fans.
Also strikes me as this could be a way to bring back the Jewel of Ahdashim and/or other retired amulets/rings…

Astralporing.1957:

Maybe, but then locking out said stats behind raids is a problem so big they really shouldn’t wait with introducing any solutions to it. In fact, it should have been fixed long ago.

So far, their “solution” doesn’t help much at all.

I do wonder if part of their logic of introducing the Legendary unbound Guardian in the new map was a way for people who wouldn’t normally raid to experience raid mechanics in a setting that’s not as high pressure as a raid. That way people can learn the basic mechanics and realise that they do actually stand a chance at least at clearing Vale Guardian. In turn this would mean more people trying raids, hopefully progressing to Trio in SP where they can get the accessories if they want them before they add them to LS3 rewards.

Just a theory and I do agree that the current solution is only a part solution. However as Ramoth said, I guess 2 months isn’t such a long wait when we’ve gone for an alternative for raid accessories for so long already. I’m fortunate as a Condi Reaper that I can run Sinister mixed in with Vipers, sucks for those who aren’t as lucky :/ At least they’ve acknowledged the missing stat spreads from the new ring/amulet/backpack and will be adding those into the selection soon.

Yobculture.5786:

the average player skill level was a lot lower pre HoT which caused this kind of reaction within the forum playerbase

also anet have had to nerf mobs due to them absolutely shredding bads inexperienced players to bits.

I guess that’s what happens when you play Farmville with swords and magic for 3 years :P I have to say as someone who started a couple of months before HoT came out, I felt a shock to the system between Central Tyria and HoT, but adapted pretty quickly as I still had good PvE habits such as kiting and I like relatively steep learning curves. Prior to HoT, I felt the game was too easy and was feeling a bit ‘meh’ but different strokes for different folks I guess.

From what I understand, voice actors don’t work for a specific company; they’re contracted to do voices as needed as obviously one game/company won’t provide them with constant work. Looking at her IMDB page, I can see she did some ESO voices between GW2 vanilla and HoT. I also can’t find anything via Google to say she had an exclusivity deal with ANet or has ‘left’ them. Eir was the most ‘famous’ NPC she voiced, the others seem to be statics which won’t be developed past standing around. I feel Eir’s death was to forward the story for both DE 2.0 and Braham/Dragonhunter in particular. Much like how Belinda died and bequeathing her sword to Marjory gave us Reaper.

Having not lost a gaming friend yet, I have to admit my first impulse was to get the upgrade to create a grave marker for Taco Bell’s quesalupas to tease a guild member with an obsession. It was worth the 100g for his reaction and my guild loved me for it.
Having read the comments by those affected by player deaths IRL on Reddit, I felt a bit disrespectful in retrospect. But then I think about a send off we had a couple of years ago for a forum admin for a community I was part of for many years. He lost to the struggle of depression – no, not getting upset that you don’t have the latest iPhone, proper clinical depression. He wouldn’t have wanted us to mope, he would have wanted us to laugh and carry on with our lives. So that’s exactly what we did along with us all getting a ‘named’ bottle of Diet Coke and taking a selfie of us with it to honour him. We actually crowdfunded his funeral as he had no insurance and raised over £3k in 24 hours. After reflecting on that, I didn’t feel so bad about using the grave marker as a light-hearted joke. So while there is a serious and deep use to the markers, please remember that you can still use them for something humorous without being disrespectful

Donari.5237:

I may be missing something here, not being a total guild missions expert, but why do you need this? If you complete just one race while repping your guild with your guild having launched the mission, and another guild does the other 14 completions, then your mission succeeds. So you only need one completion yourself, and you’ll know if you got it because you’ll get the personal rewards.

I’m talking about guild credit for favour, not personal credit. Afaik, you still need the completions from the correct number of your guild’s members for the guild to receive mission credit if you’re using someone else’s race when you launch the mission. If we’re taking part in someone else’s guild race and say they’ve done 14 runs but not ended the mission, it’d be pretty ridiculous if only one person from my guild doing the race while the other guild’s race is active could score our whole guild credit for favour. If that’s how it works, I’d like someone to confirm that because we’ve not wanted to waste everyone’s time on mission night by trying it. We always have enough people for the race so it’s not something we’ll stumble on by accident.

Raeat.1026:

No survivability left at all for the necro – even in PvE. Just spent 3 frustrating hours in AC only to die over twenty times. Absolute kitten move, ANet.

No more money from me. I don’t pay people to kitten me over.

Uh, Necro can survive just fine without minions. I did CM yesterday with my guild and was fine, didn’t die once – no minions on my bar at all, swapped out Lich for CTTB. Had no problems in the new map or story. Not had any issues with my Lich Form minions either (running the MB Viper Horror build still) so I’m not really sure what to suggest for you. I don’t want to say ‘git gud’, but Necro is just fine right now. We got away lightly with the changes in this patch.

Maybe they’ll be coming later in LS3? Would be a bit lame to give us everything at once, plus would make the new map we just got get stale faster.

Imo I think they could stand to rework it like the experience boosters – add WvW track progress to them and/or rank exp boost. I’m hoping that would help to appease WvWers who have no use for the existing enrichments as they are now. That way if you plump for the exp enrichment, get stalled on mastery points and play multiple modes, your enrichment still has a use.

tolunart.2095:

You start with the level 10 story no matter what, so just use the scroll immediately and start at level 30. Continue with the level 20, 30 chapters and use tomes for a few levels to 40 or 50, then it shouldn’t be hard to finish the remaining chapters, you’ll still have plenty of tomes.

Oh snap, I’d forgotten about that. You can tell how long it’s been since I last started a new character to take advantage of story keys.

OriOri.8724:

And yet, magically, newer players are not drowning in tomes like older players are. Not every package has to cater exclusively to veteran players, most of whom already have extra character slots in the first place. This one was clearly aimed at newer players

Not even a newer player here and I snagged the bundle as I’m not drowning in tomes quite yet. Next time I make a character it’ll be tomes to Lv 10, personal story for the key, scroll to 30, 10 tomes for the next personal story step level for a key. By the time I’m done with the 20-40 story, should be around Lv 60 and ready for the next story key, then tomes to finish off to 80 if needs be.

Just need to decide what I’m making next >.<

- Build saving – not gear, just skills and traits.
- Keyring
- Accountwide gathering tool slots (after all, we have accountwide recipes now)
- Guild mailing system to mass mail certain ranks
- Capes
- Fixing the BLTP so people can no longer place unfulfillable buy offers
- ‘Open All’ option for bags of fractal relics
- More enrichments that would be beneficial to those who have little/no use for the existing ones coughWvWerscough Reward track boost (one for WvW only plus a combined one with a lower bonus) and map reward boost would be two ideal ideas imo. Or add all the tavern buffs to enrichments.
- Stacking more than one guild buff at a time – still mad that we can’t have multiple boosts like pre-HoT
- More incentives to play as a guild; Blaeys floated the idea of the Current Events being made into guild missions which I think would be perfect new content as the current guild missions are becoming boring as heck for me after not even a year. I’d even say they could be made into a separate Guild Event (much like some world bosses can be guild world events) which could reward some extra commendations. The achievements could also stick around seeing as ANet are being shy about discussing removing the daily AP cap and it seems most new achievements are 1-5 AP
- Increase the availability of BLC home instance nodes
- Toggle function for outfits so you can still see the headpiece but not the body part
- Ability to salvage green runes/sigils; even t1 mats would make me happier than I am now with them

misterman.1530:

You are totally missing the point. What if you don’t do fractals? I don’t have any AR at all. None. Zip. I don’t do fractals. What I do have is 6 infusions I can’t use and 6 amulets with no infusions because I don’t want to spend 20+ laurels on “enrichment” ones. I primarily WvW. Enrichment infusions aren’t really all that useful.

I’m not missing the point, I get the point you were making. However if you noticed, I wasn’t responding to you but someone else with an issue that was AR-related and was clamouring for a refund that they have already been given.
Yes, it sucks for WvWers – I don’t exclusively PvE, you know. Oh you didn’t know? Shouldn’t have assumed. I have never once denied or disputed that WvWers deserve an equivalent refund to that which was given for simple agony infusions. Yes, I think WvWers should have been compensated – maybe not with laurels as that could cause t6 mat prices to go nuts but at least the ability to swap WvW infusions for badges or a WvW specific enrichment. My post was aimed at someone who doesn’t suffer from the issue WvWers have with the amulet change. If you don’t want to buy an enrichment, that’s your call. Some people do find them useful, you don’t. Some people think Game of Thrones is awesome, some don’t.

So no, I didn’t miss your point, you missed mine. Take your anger out on the right people (ANet), thanks.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

But Marjory tells you. She pretty much says “everything caught in its flux will have its magic reversed”
Not to offend you, but I’d expect someone who plays for the story to pay more attention to the dialogue.

I take back my comment about NPCs giving more hints then. This is what I get for playing story content while on TS with people :P

My guild was actually saying last night about how sad it is that we have all this new awesome content but nothing has really been added for guilds outside of the halls, scribing and hall upgrades. I love the introduction of guild anthems though we’re still lacking a Gift of Music which we should easily bang out soon enough seeing as we used to be a dungeon guild (plus dungeons aren’t exactly hard now).

I adore Blaeys’ idea of adding Current Events to PvE guild missions. With a lack of GvG mode, ‘Guild’ Wars feels like a bit of a misnomer now so some new group content for guilds would be very welcomed. I remember the Bonus Mission Pack in GW1 involved reliving past events as certain famous NPCs so this could be a cross between that and guild challenges. Go out to the spot where it happened and pop the mission.

Moyayuki.3619:

Why is a guild hall and a raid on the world map, though? Even dungeons were their own instanced thing, so they don’t actually visibly show up on the map. Since I don’t do raids, I guess that spot will be forever blank for me?

Guild halls were on the world map (admittedly the Battle Isles) in GW1 so to me it’s something that they’ve done before and not weird. In GW2, you have to go and claim the guild hall from Mordrem nasties so it makes sense to have those locations on a map so you can go and claim them as well as using them as a shortcut to HoT maps.

And yes, if you don’t raid, the areas will remain covered. You can always hop into someone’s completed raid instances if you’re OCD about it though

Thankfully due to raids, I was familiar with the special action key already and had it in an easy to access position on my mouse. I was baffled by the bloodstone beams on the golems for a while and even restarted the instance because I thought it was a bug. Then I happened to get one in the beam and saw it was breaking down the shield.

Once I got to the boss, I realised that as she was moving, I’d need to keep the beam on her to break down her shield as she wasn’t stationary. Managed to solo without any deaths but then again I main a Reaper and we’re the masters of death. I can see how it’s slightly unintuitive and I guess the NPCs could give more helpful hints, but I honestly wouldn’t say it’s solo unfriendly. Kiting is a good habit to get into if you’re someone who solos content (or are just squishy), therefore strafing alongside the boss to keep her in the beam feels logical. I was able to keep up with her just fine on my Reaper with 0 swiftness boosts.

Cristalyan.5728:

Well, I have now a +7 agony infusion and an amulet slot. I tried to put the +7 AR into the amulet but it was not possible. What are you saying about ANY SLOT?
On the other hand, in the morning I had 150 AR on my gear. After the patch I have only 143. If I want to do now the lvl 99 fractal, I will be 6 AR short. So, I have to do something (to work) to achieve the same lvl I had before the patch. They give us the +7 AR back? Is useless. I want my Fractal Relics I spent on it back.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/INFUZ-5959

You can get the relics back if it was a simple infusion so actually they did compensate us. Amulets now only accept Enrichments which are basically the old utility infusions and can be bought from the laurel vendor.

Xevv.9175:

I just wish I didnt need to kill a raid boss to unlock the last ones Ive needed forever. I gave up even trying to find a group when my only options were pay a bunch of gold or link insights which I obviously dont have.

You also have the option of joining a guild which will teach raids as you have 5 guild slots

The new map has an open world boss which is essentially Vale Guardian – it won’t unlock the mastery track or give the same rewards, but it’ll let you experience some of the mechanics of the first boss of the first wing in a setting that won’t be elitist. Just don’t take any of the raid related comments by players during the fight to heart – we’re just messing around.

Dara Potocska.8196:

We are tracking an issue right now where npcs on long paths can end up out of sync between the server and the game client. Some clients will see them in the right place, while others will not.

We ran into this last night with Tricksy Trekksa – the person who had the ‘real’ Moa on their screen said on TS they didn’t have permissions to start the bounty on the Talk prompt. As co-leader I had a ‘fake’ which wouldn’t respond to the Talk prompt. As a result, we had to give up on all bounties for the night.

We also had a couple of bounties spawn in mid air for some reason which was concerning. Yanonka’s rats also teleport to where you revive at a waypoint if you go down, if you guys weren’t aware of that bug already. It’s caused some people to die instantly on reviving which can be a real PITA if you’re nowhere near a repair anvil given the timer for Hard tier bounties.

The only fault I’ve been able to find with the patch so far was that /fistshake (my personal favourite from GW1) wasn’t brought back as an emote, but I understand that the new emotes we were given access to already existed in the game. I hope in the future we’ll receive more emotes and this is coming from a non-RPer who just likes to mess around in the guild hall before missions start.

While on the subject of guild missions, I echo Blaeys there in that they need some TLC. Especially given that bounties were broken beyond belief last night with spawns in the air, out of sync for various people in the squad and interactions not happening to trigger fights. Was glad to see that races now seem to be fixed though. One thing I’d like to see added is a counter in the guild UI that lets you know how many more successes you need for guild credit if you’re piggybacking on another guild’s race which is already in progress.

LOVED the story so far for LS3 – this is the ANet that I fell in love with in GW1 in terms of lore and story. Will obviously not give away any spoilers but even though I and some guildies had figured out parts of the story (and the location of this installment) through lore musing on Teamspeak, we didn’t get the twist at the end. The one person who did guess our next destination is probably feeling smug as heck because the rest of us went with totally different options.

The new map gives me echos of the Realm of Torment which I’m pretty sure was the intention. For me, it’s how Tangled Depths should have worked in terms of verticality and I love it. Will be spending a fair amount of time there earning my Viper’s amulet and the other nice things on sale. One quibble – how come the home instance node is 50g on top of the map currency? That seems incredibly steep given costs of other nodes that are buyable from NPCs.
I’m enjoying the events a lot, even when a new build caused me to respawn on a champ (which I might have kited onto a nearby ANet staff member…). Open world VG was a hoot with many of us jokingly calling as if we were in SV (GREEN!).

Not tried the new fractal yet but am so grateful that Vials/Globs/Shards are now buyable and that infusions are a lot more user-friendly (and affordable). Not happy that it seems that certain testers leaked information to give friends an economic boost as was being discussed on Reddit last night. The new fractal UI is a work of art and I had a guildie breaking my eardrums with his squeeing when he saw it, followed by me returning the favour on my discovery.

Special shoutout to the QoL updates, particularly ‘Salvage All…’ and seeing % health on HP bars – as a Reaper who got frustrated with timing Gravedigger, this makes me a happy corpse-fondler!

All in all, thank you for a great patch and I hope to see more of the same standard in the future!

ZanchinFissure.7981:

This comes up like every month. Still +1 this, but actually start adding HoT nodes too.

There are currently 4 HoT-related nodes. The Aurillium mining node, Airship Cargo, Exalted Chest and Crystallized Supply Cache.

I believe that_shaman also found a Noxious Pod for the home instance but it’s not available in the live game. Possible LS3 reward?

A flax node would be next to useless with the farm just inside VB, but I wouldn’t mind a Jungle Plant node for the slightly increased chance at getting a Maguuma Lily (which imo needs a buff in terms of % chance from the existing nodes as it’s quite ridiculous).

I doubt any underwater combat reworks/buffs/improvements will see the light of day until we start to approach taking on Bubbles, even then I don’t know whether we’d go for a direct assault without Asuran submarines or something similar.

uknortherner.2670:

Yeah, until the next “epic” flash-in-the-pan dance fad comes along… Should take a couple of weeks.

Seriously, fad emotes and stupid internet memes are the last things this game needs.

Aw, you wouldn’t want to jig along to The Ketchup Song in DR or Cha Cha Slide your way down the Shiverpeaks?

I have to say /dab could be fun for anyone wanting to listen to the radio in game though.

We had someone doing this in guild, PMing members asking for gold and items. Needless to say his backside was out the door immediately seeing as an officer explained in detail to them as to what we do and don’t allow regarding asking for/about items, then they turned around and PMed someone else in the guild. So no, it’s not ‘illegal’ as in the police won’t arrest and jail you for it, but it’s highly discourteous and will get you kicked from most guilds for annoying twattism should you carry on doing it.

I had the same issue myself when I started in August last year. Support confirmed to me that it wasn’t a game key/serial number, just a placeholder. They changed it to what I wanted on request and confirmed that my account was at 0 risk from having that as my account name, just messed up the guild/friend panel was all lol.

Yeah, I had the same issue when I started GW2 as I wasn’t fully paying attention to the dialogue on creating my account (was so eager to get into the game and was unfamiliar with the account name system). It’s not a box number/serial number/key, it’s just an overly long unseemly placeholder account name. Just give support an email with what name you’d like to use for your account and they’ll change it over for you.

I want an option for massive boobs. Because I have them IRL so I’d like to be able to properly represent myself in game. I feel that the current options are discriminatory to those of us who have been amply blessed in the chest department and I’d like more armour options to show them off.

coso.9173:

No, others getting it easier doesn’t remove the feeling of satisfaction, it is not retroactive, I know what I had to endure to get it. I know I earned it my way, the hard way. others getting it easier don’t take away that from me at all. I don’t get that line of thinking.
There are thousands of things that are made easier with time, in GW2, in games, in life. ALL the time. If I got upset each time it happened, I would go crazy.

Huh. Well earlier you said

coso.9173:

I don’t want the skins. They’re n ot my cup of tea to be honest. and I barely have enough time to play GW2 to start another game now.

and you seem quite upset judging by your responses in this thread. Responses to a topic you admitted you don’t even care about. I’d say that you’d be better off not worrying about things that don’t concern you in any way as that’s more likely to drive you crazy. Just a thought.

Also, no one’s seriously going to lose sleep over this topic (interesting to see that you think that people would have such severe reactions), even if ANet did decide to crap on the loyalty of thousands of players over the last 10+ years. We’d just be very disappointed and as we all know, that’s worse than people being angry at you

Andraus.3874:

Darknicrofia.2604:

The dragon festival is based on the lunar calendar new year, an Asian, more specifically, Chinese celebration.

I think you are confusing different events. The dragon bash happened in mid June to July in 2013

Mm, the Dragon Festival in GW1 was held in June/July as well – it’s in progress as we speak over there in historyland with today being the finale (well, in 8.5 hours). Canthan New Year became Lunar New Year in GW2 and I think we’re all aware of how it links to Chinese New Year. I’d love to see Celestial minis return over those ugly backpacks :P

Also good catch there, Donari -snorps with laughter-

coso.9173:

It is not unreasonable, but not fool proof either.
Is someone who never spent a dime on the game after buying it, and started playing after HoT, and just got GW1 to get the fancy stuff for GW2 more loyal, than a player who started to play GW2 at the beginning and has spent maybe hudreds of dollars on costumes and stuff, but doesn’t want to try GW1?

If they’ve spent hundreds of dollars on GW2 costumes and want the reward skins from GW1, they can afford to buy GW1 and earn them. Loyalty isn’t all about money spent, but time invested as well. As for not being foolproof, that’s down to ANet. I don’t see why they would open up the rewards to the gemstore or whatever when they’re still making money on GW1 box sales almost 4 years after GW2’s release. They have no reason to do so, therefore no one with the rewards expects them to.

Quite honestly, the rewards aren’t as great as you’re trying to make them out to be; I was frankly underwhelmed once I saw some of the skins in game as opposed to what I thought they’d be like, but that’s life. They’re fine placeholder skins on new characters but it’s not like transmutation charges are hard to come by in any case. I didn’t bust my butt per se for them, simply integrated HoM points into GW1 gameplay (gave me something to do when the exodus at GW2’s launch happened). The only real advantage is that they can be applied free of charge as many times as you like, same as Zenith/Radiant/Hellfire skins. They’re mostly quite bland skins that I doubt most people would even spend gems on, even buying with gold > gems. They’re simply there as a ‘thank you for playing over the years, here’s a little token of gratitude’. The fact you see them as something more and begrudge people of that speaks volumes. As we’ve been told that GW1 won’t shut down as long as GW2 is alive, there’s always the chance to save up to buy GW1 if you can’t afford it outright. Skip the daily takeaway coffee for a month and you’ve got the cash right there. If you don’t want to put in the effort however, then you don’t want the rewards that badly after all.

So they wouldn’t look like this then? Was all I could think about when I read ‘Pengu’ lol

Orpheal.8263:

A better suggestion!!!

Make all Minor, Major and Superior Sigils SALVAGABLE into Dust

Minor Sigil salvaged = Chance to obtain Tier 1-3 Dust
Major Sigil salvaged = Chance to obtain Tier 4-5 Dust
Superior Sigil salvaged = Guaranteed Tier 6 Dust

this way would become especially the Sigils of all tiers more valuable, because if you have no use for a sigil, then you know at least, you can make something useful in form of materials (dust) out of it … and especialyl the sigils that have nearly to no value would receive then more value based on the values of the dust that you can get out of the sigils when you salvage them …

Means, all for example Tier 6 sigils that have currently no value, because the sigils are so useless, no butt wants them ever worth like only maybe 1 silver or so would then suddenly have at least the worth of the Tier 6 dust you could get out of that sigil, when you salvage it …

I’m so totally for this to happen. The only times I get the TP error message is putting up kitten ed minor sigils/runes for sale. I’d much rather be able to salvage em down into dust which I at least have a use for.

mtpelion.4562:

I think a more feasible change would be to sell a basic unlimited use tool for 400 gems. It is account bound so it can be traded around and also pretty cheap so players will likely buy a few sets of them.

Then they can sell the various versions (Cosmic, Molten, Flute, etc.) as skin unlocks for the unlimited tool. These would then be in the 800-1,000 gem range.

This system could ultimately lead to players getting the basic functionality for less gems, but the full experience would cost more gems as you are now incentivized to buy new skins as they are released so that you can customize each character.

I’m fine with the “change looks all the time” people bearing the brunt of the cost of maintaining the game, that’s how the game was designed after all.

I’d add that the basic unlimited pick should produce sprockets. There’s many people like myself with the Watchwork pick who were/are reluctant to use another pick due to losing the sprockets. I’d happily buy skins for that pick if they were available.

coso.9173:

The feeling I will never understand is: " I earned this, so I dont want others to have it with less work". I couldnt care less if others have it, it is not going to take away what I did to earn it. They are taking nothing away from me. I dont need to go around showing off what I got. Im just happy I got it.
I remember the core game went free after a few months after I got it, and I couldnt understand why were people angry at it. I kniw we paid for it, so what? Things change and they will keep on chaning all the time.
That is the elitist way of thinking Im refering to.

I could list numerous things that ANet have changed over the years to allow people to earn rewards more easily or changes to gameplay that have made things easier for people. I’ve been on the ‘rough’ end of a lot of them and quite honestly, I don’t care how easy it is for other people to get x because it doesn’t take away from the work I put in. I bought HoT a couple of weeks before f2p happened, but I didn’t care because I knew I’d have wanted the expansion any way and didn’t want f2p restrictions.

However, this is a matter of a lot of people having invested a lot of time and money over the last few years and the request to change the method of obtaining those items completely. I’d argue that the main reason they’re still selling GW1 copies is because of HoM rewards. It gives people a reason to go back to the original game, as well as experiencing the lore which, sadly and realistically, only a handful of people care about enough to go back to the first game for. However, a lot of people get into the lore while working on HoM rewards and come back to GW2 with a greater interest in current lore. To me, this is a good thing.

I like that ANet are rewarding players with their loyalty to the series with a small number of cosmetic skins and titles, which I might add I have never seen anyone brag about or show off. The only comments I’ve had from other players about my HoM skins is generally ‘where can I get that flaming sword, it looks so cool!’. Heck, if you want a flaming skin without buying GW1, Volcanus says hi.

I don’t run around in maps yelling ‘LOOK AT MY GWAMM TITLE, YOU SCRUBS’ nor have I seen anyone else do so therefore I question your claims that people ‘show off’. If you feel that people using the HoM skins/titles are doing that by simply using those skins and displaying those titles, it sounds more like the issue is how you’re perceiving things rather than other people having those items/titles. FWIW, I use the GWAMM title on my Necro because she’s essentially my main character from GW1 who was my first GWAMM. To me, it fits her biography that I made up in my head. I’m sure it’s the same for other people, or those who use certain skins/titles to fit in with character aesthetics. As for the Fiery Dragon Sword, I just like the fact that it lights up darker areas of the map like caves. I’d be all for lantern weapon skins that would do the same thing (or a lantern item).

What you’re talking about isn’t elitism, it’s more entitlement from the other side imo.

Also +1 to Black Iris Flowers regarding the loyalty side of things. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Andraus.3874:

It used to be celebrated in a sense through dragon bash. But that isn’t happening apparently. And yes there were fireworks.

From what I can gather from Wiki, Dragon Bash had more in common with the Dragon Festival in GW1 (which had Canthan lore based reasoning and roots) than any holiday outside of the game.

Having said that, I’d love to see more regular festival events in GW2. Helps break up the waits for new story content. I’d have thought that with Current Events (pun intended), Dragon Bash would have been a great thing to bring back this year seeing as how it was meant to be about laughing in the face of the danger of the dragons. Would have been a great morale boost for those under Jennah as well as the Pact.

rhapsody.3615:

However, I do agree that there should be an instance for crafting, and this should be in the guild hall.

I’d rather that on exiting the terrace/airship, you get given the option of returning to where you were originally. I don’t see them adding crafting stations to guild halls as they wanted to keep cities populated and said that was why they didn’t add them to guild halls. Crafting stations in the Hall of Monuments would also work lore-wise, seeing as how in GW1 you’d go there to speak to an NPC to make consumables and the like.

I agree with you on it not being a negative from a WvW aspect 100% other than you need to make sure your siege is sorted out before going in, which to me is no different to going into instanced content like raids/fractals and sorting out your food/utilities beforehand.

I had no idea there was a Tyrian Independence Day on July 4th :P