Guild Wars 2

So following the pattern, we need a two-handed warhorn. Didgeridoo confirmed.

Also, where’s my main hand shield?

Mini treasure chest. I want a bunch of people to run up, mash F, and get all confused.

On a more serious note, more mini dragons. I don’t even have the Tequatl yet, but I think they’re cool. Shadow of the Dragon, Claw of Jormag, the Shatterer, etc. Even Blightgast, Horrogos or that other one from the Arah dungeon would be cool additions. Gotta catch ’em all!

For now, though, I’m very satisfied with my mini princess doll.

Bottom line is, she did nothing wrong and they were rude.

But for fun, let’s propose some scenarios.

I’m not sure exactly what the maize balm (is that what it’s called?) is going for right now, but say you dropped 5 gold on them with the intention of farming trick-or-treat bags. As you are farming, a level 80 staff guard with full berserker ascended and fire sigils shows up and steals all your kills before you can tag them.

(Note: this is NOT what happened here. I’m simply proposing a "what if.)

I would be pretty kittened off if I were him. I think that if a person spends money for an item, they should get their due rewards from that item. Or, to be more specific: say he spawned 100 candy corn elementals, then he should get 100 bags. No kill stealing.

He is entitled to his loot. He is not entitled to your loot. The reason people strip down to their underwear for these events is because it allows the maximum number of people to tag each elemental before it dies, given a far greater number of bags. Back to the example, if each person gets a bag from those 100 elementals and 15 people are participating, that’s a lot (1500) bags.

Now, going off of this: since so many people are getting so much loot for free, it’s common for them to “tip” the organizer, either through a percentage of bags or through a direct monetary donation.

Is this required? No. I hesitate to even label it “good manners” because ultimately you are not entitled in any way to give someone else your loot or money. You did not exploit him or steal his loot. If nobody had shown up to join in the farm, he would still have received his 100 bags. His own personal rewards are unaffected by your involvement, thus you do not owe him anything. (Again, this is not including the kittens who kill steal)

However, a donation of bags or money is typically seen as a, “Thanks!” and this is well-received. In addition, someone with an expectation of receiving bonus rewards will be more driven to buy the maize balm, which means more free loot for you. Ergo, if giving him 10 of your 100 bags increases the chance of him coming back for a second round, then now you may find yourself with a 180 total free bag profit after a second round instead of just 100 from a single dine-and-dash.

This is why people donate: it’s nice to the one paying up front and it increases the chance of more free loot. But no, you are not required to give him anything.

Plus he was being a complete tool with his reaction. Even if you had given him 10 percent of your bags before opening, who’s to say you wouldn’t have gotten the necklace in one of the other 90? (I’m sticking with this easy base number from my example)

If someone does something like that again, just ignore him. Or, if you’re the type to do so, feel free to antagonize him in a not-truly-rude kind of way. Pinging salt, the idea mentioned above, is a funny idea.

Congrats for the drop, by the way! I opened thousands of bags last Halloween and got nada. Lots of gold from selling mats, but no big cool and/or pricey drops.

Yes, just as many as with orichalcum. I’ve gotten more than I can count. I purposely dropped all my winter clothing on the random frostbitten boxes so that I could stop paying 4 silver apiece for the tools. Now they’re all I use on a couple of characters. Still raking in the foxfire.

People seem to be giving good advice, but I’ll just thrown in my own two cents for your first question.

1) Correct. You buy the game, you are never required to pay money ever again. Additionally, there is no content locked behind a pay wall (real money, not gems, which are easily obtainable by converting gold) after the initial purchase.

The ONLY EXCEPTION to this is Heart of Thorns, the expansion that was just announced recently. It’s GW2’s first expansion. YES, the new content will be locked behind purchasing the expansion. This is the first instance of “pay-to-play” aside from the initial purchase, and will likely be the last until (fingers crossed) a second expansion some number of years in the future.

This isn’t WoW, with a paid game and paid expansions that get released way too often, and even with those purchases you still need to pay more to play.

No sub fees, no VIP or member fees, no premium accounts. Technically, you don’t even need to buy HoT. You could buy the base game on discount and be done paying forever.

Have fun, thanks for joining us, glad you like it so far, and above all: welcome to the game!

If I wanted to, I could grind this game. I could grind it hardcore. I could take a brand new character, fresh from the tutorial at level 2, and kill those level 1 and 2 wurms at the very first heart in Queensdale until I hit level 80. I could continue killing them until they had dropped half a dozen precursors for me, then sell them to buy mats for ascended gear.

Walk up to a heart. “Kill centaurs.” Well, sure, why not? 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 5 8 2 11 well that was easy. 10 centaurs dead in like two minutes. Pity I had to grind for those two minutes.

Yes, Anet explicitly said that the players do not and should not have to grind to get ascended. What do any of you interpret that as?

“Hey Anet, I’m level 80, where’s my ascended gear?”
“Oh, congratulations! Here you go!”
<insert mail carrier animation>
“Wow, thanks Anet! So glad there’s no grind in this game!”

…….C’mon.

What’s the alternative? How exactly should we get ascended gear? 10 silver a piece? 20? Talk to an npc? Run AC story mode one time? Kill Zhaitan? Defeat Tequatl? Join a guild? Complete a daily?

Anet said you do not have to repeatedly kill mobs in order to farm experience or get the best gear. Currently, you do not need to repeatedly kill mobs in order to farm experience or gain the best gear.

I have plenty of ascended gear. I gained the mats as a side bonus through doing all the things I enjoy, including: running dungeons, running fractals, working towards map completion on multiple characters, and leveling alts. I have never once “grinded” content, using whatever definition you’d like, in order to get my ascended gear.

On to Silverwastes. I think SW is awesome and interesting. It’s also very repetitive. On an average day, I’ll join the first map I get and run around trying to solo defenses like a badkitten hero until more people show up and we hit breach. Then after vinewrath, I leave for the day. Lots of fun, decent loot, not too much time.

Could I farm Silverwastes? Yes. Oh yes I could. I could probably spend hours running chest trains for some of the fastest loot in the game. I could map hop and breach breach breach all day long. I could run around mindlessly killing mordrem because…well, because I felt like it.

If people want to play the game that way, then that’s their choice. If people decide that CoF armor is the coolest stuff they’ve ever seen and they absolutely have to have it RIGHT NAO, then they could farm P1 for 20 tokens a run until they had enough. Likewise, if people decide they need all their ascended for all their characters RIGHT NAO then they are perfectly free to farm gold and/or mats until they get it. It’s a choice.

TL;DR ascended takes time and effort, not grind.

TL;DR 2 just because Silverwastes is an easily farmable map often filled with farmers doesn’t mean everyone has to play that way.

If you’re min/maxing for PvE, warrior is a must to faceroll content. High health and armor, ridiculous damage, and great passive regeneration even when not specced for it makes it an overall easy class to play. “Thousand blades ALL the things!” will get you through 90% of open world content and the vast majority of dungeon content, especially with the stacking mechanics.

On the flip side, warrior is currently underwhelming in PvP since other classes have access to better damage, conditions, mobility, support, and even sustain when built for them.

I personally don’t really like warrior for these exact reasons. Too mindless in PvE and not that fun or great in PvP.

I personally like guardian and ranger the most. Ranger is my preferred PvP and open world class, while I use guardian almost exclusively in dungeons and fractals.

As for race, I strongly recommend playing a Sylvari. They’re a unique and creative race with excellent lore (especially considering recent story developments), they look really cool (especially at night with the glow), and have the most interesting cultural armor imo. A huge plus that they have over other interesting races such as Charr or Asura is that since they are human-sized, they have very few clipping and almost no stretching issues with armor skins.

Have fun and welcome to the game!

I would switch the description to, “the easiest way to waste money is indecision.” Typically, when there’s nothing I’m working towards, I’ll throw my cash at anything even remotely tempting as soon as I see it. But when I actually pick a goal and start saving, I find I can earn the money pretty fast.

Gibson.4036:

runeblade.7514:

I rather Mawdrey gets an alternative.

Its too grindy.

I’d be happy with it if I foxfire clusters had a spot in the materials tab, geodes in the wallet, and I could get the mists thingamabob without doing Fractals.

The pristine fractal relics can be earned in a total of two days, two fractal runs, and ~two hours of your time if you wait for days when there are “daily fractal runner” and/or “daily level 1-10 fractal.” A level 1 fractal even with a newbie group is typically no more difficult than an explore mode dungeon run. Heck, you don’t even need agony resistence at that level.

I was opposed to trying fractals because I thought they sounded too difficult. I had all the other materials for mawdrey and put off the fractal runs for months (not even kidding, just finished mawdrey about two weeks ago) because I didn’t want to do them. But I finally sucked it up and did them, and now they’re my favorite dungeon content in the game. I’m up to the scale 20-29 fractals.

runeblade.7514:

I rather Mawdrey gets an alternative.

Its too grindy.

And it’s fantastically useful. Worth every bit of effort to get. And that’s not including the ascended backpack and badkitten skin that comes with it.

I would likely do almost that level of work for a dragonite ore eater by itself.

In contrast, the sheer little amount of effort it took to get the star of gratitude shocked me. I was prepared for another super effort (I strongly resist calling getting mawdrey II a “grind”) and instead I basically just logged in, chatted with a couple NPCs and re-did a couple of easy jumping puzzles. Boom, done. What? That’s it?

Star of gratitude was way too easy to get, while in contrast mawdrey II was maybe a bit too much work. For the dragonite ore eater, if we get one eventually, I would opt for an aquisition method somewhere between the two others, though preferably closer to mawdrey.

To the OP specifically, I sympathize. You’re correct, this is a QoL item, not a skin or other aesthetic. Do I believe an option should be made available for new players to acquire a fragment eater at any time, provided they put in the effort? Yes. However, I do not have an inherent problem with temporary rewards tied to time-gated content. Like I said above, I think making a QoL item time-gated was a strange decision, but I personally chalk that up to Abet wanting to maximize login numbers during the festival season.

I personally like the idea, but would be surprised if they implemented it. Cloth is not especially hard to get, and adding these nodes for free would devalue the gemstore items. Anet is not typically in the practice of making things easier and less expensive to acquire.

As a tangent, I consider the gem store nodes to be a terrible waste of money. 800 gems is ~100 gold on a good day. For how many days do you have to harvest your copper or your wool or your jute or your soft wood logs to make up that ~100 gold cost and finally start earning free materials?

Back during the festival of the four winds, I bought the watchwork node for tokens. Even taking possible comparative price into consideration, I’m making ~25-30 silver per day in sprockets not counting any extra blade shards I get. Considering it only cost tokens to get, I consider this one a valuable investment.

Sorry for turning your question into a rant.
TL;DR I agree with you that cloth nodes in the open world would be nice to have.

Wanze.8410:

Isnt staff a ranged weapon?

Mesmer already ranges with greatsword. Clearly Anet doesn’t mind using magic to change the nature of weapon use.

I personally think it sounds cool.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Yakubyogami.7586:

I am prepping my house to sell so I can get married. I was busy stripping paint, removing wallpaper, patching walls, cleaning to prep for painting and changing air registers. Excuse me if Guild Wars was not on my mind.

I’m glad your life is so incredibly simple that you can think to yourself, daily, ‘oh yeah, let me log into Guild Wars real fast!’. Congratulations. The world doe snot revolve around you, though, no matter what you have been told.

Translation: “Everyone who had the time to get these wings has no life.”

If there is truly someone whose life is so busy that they cannot spare five minutes to indulge in their hobbies any given day, then, well…

I get that real life is important, but few excuses short of “no computer” or “no internet” are adequate to explain why any person absolutely had literally zero spare time in a 24-hour period.

Sincerely,

A second-semester college senior working on his thesis

When the conversion is stable and normal, that’s only about 100 gold. 100 gold for a new character is, imo, not a bad deal at all.

Sincerely,

A guy with 11 characters.

“Anet is kittening us.”

Top lel. This kind of thing is proof that what they did with the wings was a fantastic idea from a business standpoint:

1. Wings appear in wardrobe. Generate hype.
2. Wings release day announced. Generate more hype.
3. Wings are released to overwhelming hype.
4. Insert key words and phrases such as, “sale” and, “limited time offer” to prompt quick action.
5. Hundreds of players see skin on gem store and, driven by the sneak-peak sale, prepare to buy it.
5.1. Players check the gold conversion, see gems are 800 for ~150 gold.
5.2. Hundreds of players panic that they don’t have the gold and reach for their wallets.
6. Hundreds of players happy with their skin, and Anet has made $10x(number of players who bought 800 gems on the gem store).
7. Fear not, those who missed it! They will be re-released in the future (at which point we can repeat many of the above steps again).

Result: resounding success.

See, what Anet did was create a cool* skin and quickly convince a large percentage of their playerbase that they NEED IT NAO. So, they turn a decent profit, while simultaneously convincing players that they just scored on an excellent deal.

*note: matter of opinion. Some people love them, some hate them.

The complaints by those who didn’t get the skin just justify this business practice; those who are complaining will likely shell out their money for the skin once it’s released again. In the meantime, more players will be sure to be prompt when checking the gem store this week for more exclusive releases. Result: even more profit.

I personally refrained from buying the skin for two reasons:

1. The wings, though very nice to look at by themselves, are imo scaled somewhat too large to adequately match any race (though weirdly enough, Charr look the best imo).
2. New skin hype trends. Most people with the skin look as though they just hopped on the hype train, to ride until the next fad hits. It’s like the blade pack all over again. We’ll have to wait until this fad dies out before we start really seeing people who have coordinated a character look specifically to compliment the wings.

(This is why, for example, I avoided the blade pack when everyone and their mom were wearing them. Now that that fad has long-since past, I’m about to finish making my own, to go with a character whose look compliments the blade pack skin.)

No, nobody is entitled to this skin, and Anet has no obligations to make things available for a duration that suits every individual players’ needs (read: indefinitely). If you got it, good for you. If not, deal with it, life goes on, and you can buy it later if you still want to.

Once a little over a year ago, I found out the day after that I had missed a Lindsey Stirling concert in my town. My reaction was not to phone her up and complain about how she unfairly cheated me out of a concert by only holding it one night.

To Anet: awesome marketing job. Proof you guys know what you’re doing.

To disgruntled players: if you still feel you really want it when it’s re-released, then you’ll actually look unique instead of “just another one of the crowd.”

Are you looking for just stats, then? (i.e 80 exotic berserker or whatever you prefer)

What RoseofGilead said. I occasionally make that mistake as well; my Hero panel will be set to, say, wardrobe, and I’ll be trying to click and drag or otherwise edit my trinkets.

Just make sure your panel is on Equipment, and that you have nothing else selected.

Yes, for every hair style, both starting and kit-exclusive.

Just for grins, I deleted the character and rerolled with the exact same settings. The blue is still there.

I checked another race first to make sure the Accessory Color wasn’t blue; the default was an orangish red. I changed it to solid red just so it would be super obvious in case that was indeed the issue. But there’s no red on the new one.

On this new character, I’m experimenting with more color selections. The blue seems to exist on every hair shade that uses some amount of red. i.e. all the Cotton Candies, Peaches, and variations of Red. For the default colors, it even shows up on dark colors like Midnight Rose and Scarlet.

There seem to be other issues as well. For example, Starry Night has a red tint. For the most part, though, colors that do not use some amount of red as a base are seemingly unaffected.

I’m attaching an image of the effect on Chili Red hair.

Hello,

Trying to make a new Sylvari character, and there seem to be some color problems with both the base character customization and the Total Makeover Kit customization.

The issue is there seems to be a bluish hue in all the hairstyles even though I have no blues selected.

My skin color is set to Shy Rose.
My pattern color is Pale Pink.
My glow color is Pale Pink.
My hair color is Dark Cotton Candy.
My eye color is Dark Cotton Candy.

Clearly, no blues anywhere. The only thing I can think of is that Sylvari have a hidden color setting corresponding to the Accessory Color tool belonging to the other races. I tried making a Norn just prior, and I set his Accessory Color to a blue.

If this is a known issue, I’d love to find a fix.
If it’s not, well, then I guess I’ll have to do a fair bit of experimenting. Otherwise I may have to abandon the thought of new Sylvari characters for the time being.

Thanks in advance!

Oh I know. They just sit there like “gaahhh help wat do I do” and just die. Literally the only time a see a supposedly bunky build go down like wet paper.

jportell.2197:

Man what is with all these people suddenly thinking mesmer is easy mode… I just had a power necro, a condi engi, an S/D Thief and, a D/D ele tell me mesmer was easymode, autowin OP….

I
can’t
even.

Don’t look for logic or reasonable arguments from the “gud” players.

Testudo.4620:

turret engis be like “only bad players complain about turret engi” meanwhile players decades ahead of them skillwise want this build to be destroyed

……….which clearly means that no, they are definitely not decades ahead skill wise.

I’m a complete terribad noob, and I solo turret engis with a condi bunker warrior. On the point. Easily.

uberkingkong.8041:

Blair.3796:

So, to summarize:

23. If there’s a team fight at mid, full cap far. Every time.

This is the main reason why games are either lost or won, especially true in solo que.

Very true. I was just summarizing for the purpose of the thread.

So, to summarize:

23. If there’s a team fight at mid, full cap far. Every time.

22. Focus the orb. Preferably zerg it with the whole team. Orb gives way more points than holding nodes.

More people have more time to waste, so everyone with even a mild interest in PvP does some PvP. Whereas during the weekdays, when most people have work and/or school, most of the people doing PvP are those who like to spend their sparse free time doing so.

So really, most of the “problems” with rangers exist in abundance among other classes as well, it’s just that people decided ranger will be the focus of their, “muh stealth, rangers OP” arguments.

They’re still wet paper. SoS is nice for 1v1s, but it’s little more than a panic button otherwise.

You can either shadowstep or just dodge like everyone else. Relying on stealth 100% to avoid attacks is a problem.

Pew pew. Power ranger. There is a high skill cap, to be sure, but it’s very easy to pick up. Especially if you’re just learning PvP, you can still provide adequate support damage in team fights just by sitting farther away and shooting.

Of course, considering the build rips like wet paper if anyone so much as glances sideways at you, if you lack PvP skills you might get trashed in 1v1s until you get better.

I use:
1-5 for weapon skills
R for heal
T for elite
ASD for utilities
QE for strafe
B for call target
G for select target
Arrows for move
Shift for autorun
Tab for target switch
~ for weapon swap

Turret engis are superbly easy to kill for ranged builds. Please don’t nerf my easy kill opponents, please.

And of you lose to AI then it’s a l2p issue.

It’s not the turret engi’s fault that so many self-proclaimed “gud” players can’t l2p.

Less nerf for viable builds, more buffs for less-viable builds.

Amen. Hobo sacks too OP. Needs a serious nerf. Like…removal.

If this is actually a thing, then Anet needs to change it so that if your character ever leaves a match for any reason, you are unable to re-enter the match. Or else find a way to lock matches to characters instead of to accounts.

No other way to handle it that I can think of.

Alternatively, you could always just consider it a pve expansion. Which in many ways it is, but that’s largely because pve players are the largest percentage of the player base. When the majority of your players do mostly pve, then it only makes sense from a business perspective to cater to those pve players. PvP and wvw, though important, are not the focus. But even so, the new wvw map and the new PvP game mode are meant to cater to those groups. Shoot, casual pve players don’t gain anything at all from stronghold.

And specializations effect everything, remember. You might not care about the maguuma maps and some of the masteries, but both the new class and the specializations are meant for everyone. I for one am more excited for specializations than anything else.

If you don’t want to buy it, don’t. It’s that simple. But don’t complain when you lose to rangers over and over because “staff ranger op” or some kitten like that. I swear, the expansion will probably be out for 30 minutes before “HoT is pay to win” threads start popping up.

Yes, fighting turrets is a l2p issue. Saying so isn’t mean, it’s fact. There is nothing about turrets that need a nerf because they’re not at all hard to deal with. On the other hand, they likewise do not need a buff because they’re still an effective way of turning team fights. Or soloing the less experienced players.

It’s been said over and over, but just focus the rocket and then range the engi and you’re fine. If your build has zero ranged combat built in, then burst the rocket and then avoid the thumper. Not that hard.

Keep in mind that most turret engis are not yet super experienced with the class. That’s not to say that there aren’t any really good turret engis, but that rather it’s easy to use turret ai to partially compensate for lack of experience. If the turrets (or just the rocket) die, then it comes purely down to a contest of skill between two players, a contest that the other player usually has a good chance of winning.

And yes, sometimes very good engis still play turrets just for fun, and their skill level can make up for the inherent disadvantages of using turrets. But the turret ai has no skill, and there’s still nothing stopping anyone from quickly bursting down the rocket turret or ranging down, well, everything. And skill level aside, a turret engi with no turrets is not in a good position.

And, you know, you can always ignore that point. If you’re a pure condi melee build and are truly incapable (*cough) of winning those fights, then go somewhere else. There are two more points that you can capture and hold for your team, and basically any game can be won by focussing only two points. Ignore the turret engi. If he goes to a different point, go back and take the first one.

So, the strategies are:

1. Range the engi. Giggle uncontrollably when he can’t do anything to you.

2. Range the turrets, the smash the engi.

3. Burst the rocket, then melee the engi.

4. Leave.

If you are incapable of managing with any of these, then yes, this is truly a l2p issue.

I believe this event was exclusive to Wintersday, as part of the holiday season. So, no, I don’t believe you can anymore.

This is a “thank you for your awesome game” post.

There are a lot of great things about GW2, but what I want to touch on with this quick post is how much I’ve gotten out of this game relative to the money I spent on it.

Most new games cost between $40 and $60, US. From most of those games, I’m lucky to get a 60 hour playthrough. I’m even luckier if, even after that long playthrough, I’m still eager to jump right back in and do it again. Even in the best-case scenarios, I’m still typically exhausted after several playthroughs.

Take some of those more rewarding games. I have played games like Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas obsessively, logging several hundred hours in each game across countless playthroughs, and by the end I had done literally everything I could think of. The high point (or low point?) was when I did a playthrough on Master difficulty using no magic and nothing but shield bash to do damage; everything else had lost both its fun and its challenge. Other played-to-death games include Ocarina of Time (10-15 hours per playthrough) and the Pokemon series (20-30 hours per playthrough).

I would say I definitely got my money’s worth for all of those games. Even for less optimal games, such as those where I pay $60 dollars for a 30-hour playthrough with little replayability, I usually feel it was worth it so long as I enjoyed myself.

And this brings me to GW2.

I payed $60 for the game and have currently logged about 1400 hours over the last year-and-a-half. I have seven level 80 characters and two more well on their way. I have map completion with one, some WvW experience, and lots of PvP experience. I’ve done plenty of dungeons, some fractals, and for newer characters a decent amount of trait hunting. The story is decent, the lore is superb, and the experience has been very enjoyable regardless of whether I’ve played by myself or with friends.

What’s even better, there’s still so much I’ve hardly tried yet. I have yet to get Dungeon Master. I have yet to make a Charr character. I have very little experience with fractals or WvW. And of course there are still plenty of jumping puzzles to complete and Living Story achievements to tackle.

And the game is expanding. I payed $60 for the base game. Since then, I have been provided with two Living Story seasons, a couple of new maps, and plenty of improvements and balance fixes. Things that most games would never receive (or would have locked behind a payed DLC wall) I’ve been getting for free, simply for logging on. This game is not pay to win. It’s play to win, or rather (and even better) play for fun.

Boiling it down, I’ve payed about $1 for every 23 hours of enjoyment I’ve gotten from this game, and the ratio is constantly increasing.

I am super hyped for HoT. New class, new zones, and new mechanics all sound good, but in addition there will be plenty of incentive to continue with or revisit all my other characters for specializations and mastery. Not to mention the sheer number of things I have yet to do just with the base game.

I love GW2, and I will continue playing for a good while yet. I would happily drop $60 for this expansion.

I would also like to express my disappointment to the members of the GW2 community, particularly many of those frequenting the forums, who do little besides complain about the game and bash Anet over their own severe entitlement issues. Price-to-reward, I believe we’ve all gotten much more than we initially expected and hoped for when we first purchased the game.

And to those who still complain excessively about issues such as “muh free content” after logging 1000+ hours… Grow up.

Thank you Anet, and I look forward to a bright future.

OP seems to be misunderstanding some points. Currently, if you click a character you see their level number next to their name. If they are ranked up or down, you also see a corresponding arrow.

Once HoT is released, characters level 1-79 will still continue to display their level, as they are now. However, level 80 characters will not display their level (it’s basically just a, “yay I’m max” tag right now) but will instead show their mastery points.

What this means is that for level 1-79 characters, you will not be able to see their mastery points. If you are mastery points instead of a level, then they are level 80.

How they will distinguish in appearance hasn’t been elaborated upon yet. My guess is that they will use different colors (such as white for level, red for mastery points) or else put some sort of M or other corresponding symbol next to the mastery level on 80s.

Rest assured, we will be able to tell the different between a level 25 and a level 80 with 25 mastery points in some obvious way or another.

rainbow.4695:

Yes I have two accounts. Does it really matter ?

He wants to see your match data for two reasons. The first is to analyze exactly how your matchups went, in case there are more problems than the devs realize with the current mm system.

The second is to make sure you actually did experience these situations, and aren’t simply misunderstanding, overreacting or intentionally spreading misinformation. Which sounds kind of overly suspicious and a little Big Brother-y in my opinion, but if I were a dev I’d probably want to be able to make sure of this as well.

In my opinion, the SPVP “game modes,” if you want to call them that, are good in theory. For experienced players, there’s ranked. For intermediate players, there’s unranked. And for newer players, there’s practice. This system, in theory, allows players to play with others who fall into roughly the same skill categories that they do. This is good; it’s not all that fun for anyone if players of vastly different skill levels play against one another.

There are some problems in this area, such as newbie players joining ranked (and so costing their team a match) or highly skilled veteran players joining practice (and mowing down all the newbies who are just trying to learn the game). Some are jerks, while others legitimately made mistakes. It happens. And there’s no way to handle the trolls.

No, my biggest problem with practice is the spectating and team balance, and how they work together.

I recently got Champion Paragon and decided to move onto a different class that I have little experience in PVP with. So, I started playing in practice to “train” until I was good enough for unranked. The plan, then, was to further “train” in unranked until I was ready for ranked. Pretty straightforward.

However, there are a large percentage of players in practice who aren’t really there to play; they’re there to AFK, yank dailies and milk their reward tracks as quickly as possible before calling it quits for the day.

Because practice is fairly unstructured, there is no matchmaking; players are free to join an ongoing game and then pick a team. That’s one of the beauties of practice; new players can play constantly. However, because of this the teams are rarely even.

I hardly ever see 5v5 games. Games usually start as 3v3 or 4v3, sometimes working their way up to 5v4. If the teams are balanced at the start, players will spectate until one team has a clear advantage, then join that team. Either way, eventually one team will have a one player advantage over the other.

While it’s not impossible to win a 3v4 or a 4v5, it’s certainly difficult. And considering there’s no penalty in practice for leaving a match part way through, ragequitting is common. In my past 20-some matches, I have not once not seen a player on the losing team quit prematurely.

So here’s how it plays out: you have an unbalanced (3v4 or 4v5) match. The smaller team starts losing. Spectating players don’t join the smaller losing team. Eventually, one member of the losing team ragequits, bringing the teams to an even more unbalanced 2v4 or 3v5. This causes the game’s auto-balance to kick in, forcing one player from the larger team to go to the smaller team. Now that the teams have been forcibly balanced, a spectating player quickly grabs the now-open spot on the winning team.

The problems are:

-Auto-balance doesn’t ultimately end up balancing teams
-The bigger team wins
-AFK spectators can swoop in and grab a victory they didn’t deserve by intentionally not joining the smaller team and waiting until the larger team is forcibly downsized

This is frustrating regardless of which team you’re on. If you’re on the losing team, then you’ve spent all match playing down a player. Eventually, one of your own ragequits, forcing auto-balance and giving you a new player, which doesn’t end up mattering since one of the spectators just grabs the spot on the winning team anyway. Plus, now you have a teammate who doesn’t really want to be there getting all worked up over his team’s lack of skill. (Reminder: this is practice)

On the flip side, your team is winning, and eventually an unbalance is triggered. Every player is forced to volunteer to go to the losing team or else risk losing their “win” status. So suddenly I’m on the losing team, playing against my former teammates, and some spectator quickly grabs my spot to capitalize on all my hard work by grabbing an easy victory he didn’t deserve. And now I’m playing numbers down.

Of course there are other issues with practice and the free selection of teams (such as teams of 4 meta rangers against hashup teams of a guardian, an elementalist and an unskilled necro), but it’s the lurking players who want rewards without effort that bother me the most.

I don’t know an actual solution for this problem, or if there even can be one, but I figured I’d see if anyone else shares my frustration over this.

They don’t have to be consecutive though. Just basically play until you get the Toypocalypse achievements.

Juvenile Dust Mite Twister when, Anet.

Randulf.7614:

What do people think of the skin itself? Worth the time investment? I have nothing against it, but it seemed nothing spectacular over another skin so decided against making it in the end. I do like the scavenger bit though, so I did hunt down a lot of the pieces.

What are other people’s views on it for the time involved.

The first backpiece is unremarkable imo, though I haven’t tried it on a Sylvari. It’s just too small and doesn’t stand out much. There isn’t much “grind,” though; I was farming elder wood for artificer ascended weapons anyway, so the foxfire came as a byproduct. The “grind” necessary for this backpiece was probably about 2-3 hours in Dry Top to get geodes for the recipes and clay bricks.

BUT the first backpiece gives you the seed to make the second, and the second is at least okay. Waiting on pics of the ascended/infused version(s).

So, foxfire and geodes were both okay. However, if we have to grind fractals to get materials for the ascended/infused versions, I will not be a happy camper. Fractals aren’t really my thing.

The backpiece is cosmetic. It’s purely optional. You could do the LS episodes, complete all the achievements, and then take the couple of trophies for crafting the backpiece and delete them.

If the grind were required for the story, or if the backpiece was otherwise required in some way, then I might complain. Then Anet would be basically forcing us to participate in the large grind in order to have access to/complete content. We should not have to grind for that type of stuff.

But a new, unique set of skins? Grind if you want a new flower on your back? I’m perfectly fine with that. I don’t have an ascended/infused spinal blade pack because I didn’t participate in the second half of LS S1 and didn’t get copious amounts of blade shards. The amount of gold it would cost me to get all of the watchwork sprockets necessary to make the ~500 blade shards I still need (to say nothing of the other materials) is not worth the completed backpiece to me. The grind is not worth the skin.

TL;DR if the grind is not worth the skins, then don’t grind for the skins.

Lore hints that the Sylvari (or, more specifically, the type of being that the Pale Tree is) might have originally been Mordremoth minions, but that Rowen and Ventari’s influence on the seed may have altered the Pale Tree’s nature. The current Sylvari are in turn mostly under the influence of the Pale Tree, save for those that reject her control (Soundless) or her philosophy (Nightmare Court).

Malyck from the Sylvari PS confirms the existence of more trees like the Pale Tree, but possibly without their own Dreams. So, where the Sylvari as we know them are “good” and Mordremoth is “evil,” these other Sylvari might be more “neutral.”

It would be interesting if in the second half of LS S2 we encountered Mordrem Sylvari, which might be closer to the “true” nature/origin of Sylvari.

Edit for some clarification:

Malyck is not a Soundless. The Soundless are a village of Sylvari founded by one of the Firstborn and located in the middle of the Caledon Forest map. They reject the control of the Dream and the influence of the Pale Tree, but are not looking to corrupt, subvert or destroy her like the Nightmare Court are. Malyck is from a different tree located elsewhere in Maguuma.

Vexander.9850:

So my options are to try and convince Taimi, a genius with a bright and promising future, to give up a recently built device that will no doubt look like child’s play when she is an adult and making truly amazing things, so that I can get a Councillor of the Asuran leadership to attend a summit with the purpose of saving the world…

Or I can tell Taimi to keep her invention, tell Plunt to go grease his own wheels, risk the summit, and probably kitten the world to destruction, ensuring Taimi will never become an adult and never surpass what she’s done to this point?

I’m sorry. My character, being a rational adult, would try to convince Taimi to give it up. There is a big picture here. Taimi’s got a long life ahead of her to do better than the measly work Phlunt is going to steal now.

Right. And if I understood correctly, her device calibrates waypoints. Calibrates. Once Mordremoth is gone, I can think of no practical use for it, unless the Asura decide to start min-maxing their electricity bill.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I’m not okay with brining the world leaders together instead of ambassadors. I’m not okay with the most famous guild that was formed to slay Elder Dragons not bring present for a meeting about slaying an Elder Dragon. I’m not okay with only Vigil having a Pact/Order representative at the summit. I’m not okay that all the world leaders gave in so simply. I’m not okay with Knut claiming to be over 150 years old and knowing such youth when aged norn live to only roughly 120 while still being physically active. I’m not okay with someone who agreed to show with no strings attatched earlier suddenly spouts she cannot help when Kryta is arguably in the best situation it’s been in for roughly 2 generations.

But I guess I don’t have a choice.

I think I saw Caithe at the summit, at least. Not the rest of them, though.

I honestly had never even considered this when I made my Asura warrior, and she’s got the tiniest frame possible (I did it to contrast with a new guildie who make a max-frame size Charr).

Maybe now I’ll have to give hambow a shot :p

I would love for season 1 to be re-released in a way that allows players to effectively complete content together. I would even be alright with paying a modest amount of gems for the content.

However, I would be quite unhappy with having to whip out some cash or the ol’ credit card to obtain this feature. Thus a traditional “expansion” is not what I want.

New content should be free. Old content should either be free or unlockable for a reasonable amount of gems. Adding a cash expansion would ruin the “pay once for all the features of the game and then you’re done!” advertisement and would certainly alienate a large percentage of the community, no matter how popular such a release would be to the remaining percentage of players.