Guild Wars 2

After the karma nerf debacle Anet has given up on compensation because it’s too much work for them.
Here’s more work for you, though.

Not at all surprised by this on both sides.
Players afk because the rewards aren’t rewarding enough to actively grind, but feel the need to keep up financially with the farmers and high costs set by Anet.
Anet employee abuses his power because it’s violating his game mode.

At least this is entertaining.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Guesswork with applied sensibility and knowledge of game’s limitation.
Sensibility such as:
Map cap.
PvP population is much smaller compared to PvE population.
Easymode casual player population is larger than “real gamers”.
Many players are ignorant of lfg tool AND guesting.

Like I said, you can still apply some common sense to get a reasonable “guesstimate” on the upper cap on the population and go from there. No need to think this is some impossible thing to guess.

You can apply what you believe to be a reasonable guestimate, nothing more. For example many people may run dungeons only in guilds (like me for example) and never use the LFG tool at all). With people swapping back and forth there really is no way to count.

I bounce around all over the place. I might be in a zone for five, ten minutes, then bounce to another zone, then get an inkling to do Tequatl with TTS, then jump into another server to catch an open Temple of Balathazar.

Map hopping makes it impossible to even guess. How many times do you count me? Where do you count me?

Guesstimate doesn’t mean actually counting you as an individual.
In any case, you’ve just described one of the groups that is counted in the guesstimate: the world boss farm train.
Other groups include, eg.
LA afkers
Guild mission players
WvW
PvP (shared)
Very, very tiny portion of players on dead maps
Dungeon runners (shared)

Like I said, not impossible with applied sensibility.

Vaine is right, its really impossible to make a reasonable guess, you mentioned factoring in the game limitation but we cannot really do that, for example I always though WvW maps had 500 player capacity, not because I wanted to be dishonest but because thats the number i saw in a number of interviews yet the link you gave me clearly proves that might have been the case one time during beta but its surely is not the case today. Not only that but we have no clue on what the real number is. 100 – 150 is an assumption based on what you might be seeing at that time. Even if we knew that for sure we dont know how many people are in the queue.

We dont know how many people guest, we dont know of players that play different content then the ones we play etc… Thing is these assumption are all based on perception and we generally trick our perception into seeing what we want to see. We can try being realistic as much as possible but inevitably we’ll try to skew the numbers towards our vision. Example I mentioned in my previous post that even in maps considered empty I still generally run into 2 – 5 people,I dont way point around, I enjoy walking to were I want to go .. how will someone who always way points perceive that same zone? chances are they’re going to waypoint for something specific, do whatever they want to do and waypoint out. If that specific content they do happens to be devoid of people at the time they’ll claim the zone is dead cause in their perception it is even though its not. I on the other hand saw those 2-5 people and estimate that odds these 2 – 5 people are just a subset of the actual players in the zone because obviously i wasnt everywhere all the time. So trying to be conservative I said probably there is 3x as much in reality. That might be a fair assessment or it might be me trying to see more players then there truly are, after all the 2 – 5 people was the only factual data, the 3x multiplier is just my opinion.

Then there is the time factor, I mean even if mid level zones are not very popular if a guild has a guild bounty there or trek or whatever thats 20 – 50 players right there. if they’re not doing a guild mission in that mid level zone though does it mean these players arent playing? no it means they’re somewhere else so with which group do you count them? You might say guild mission but thats just once a week deal for may 2 – 4 hrs is that all these players play per week? definitely not …

its impossible to come up with a good number thats not skewed one way or the other.

The assumption is reasonable due to how a PvE map can begin to struggle at cap, so applying it to WvW where the server has skill lag when two zergs clash, the assumption is reasonable.
Regarding guild missions, apply a reasonable average since it’s only once a week per guild.

If people don’t want to research what ANet have said on their technical limits, and piece together other information, apply reasonable logic such as upper bound limits, typical player behavior, then I guess they can remain ignorant.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Absence of knowledge? Knowing the map technical limitations, the upper limit of concurrent players, the ascended gear grind panic, dead maps on many servers (I didn’t say all) aren’t knowledge? Astute people can apply sensibility to said knowledge and put pieces together themselves.

Except people can’t know how many people are in dungeons. They can’t know how many people are scattered around the world even.

The fact that people can server hop changes everything. I can be on three different servers in the same night.

It’s ALL just guesswork.

Guesswork with applied sensibility and knowledge of game’s limitation.
Sensibility such as:
Map cap.
PvP population is much smaller compared to PvE population.
Easymode casual player population is larger than “real gamers”.
Many players are ignorant of lfg tool AND guesting.

Like I said, you can still apply some common sense to get a reasonable “guesstimate” on the upper cap on the population and go from there. No need to think this is some impossible thing to guess.

You can apply what you believe to be a reasonable guestimate, nothing more. For example many people may run dungeons only in guilds (like me for example) and never use the LFG tool at all). With people swapping back and forth there really is no way to count.

I bounce around all over the place. I might be in a zone for five, ten minutes, then bounce to another zone, then get an inkling to do Tequatl with TTS, then jump into another server to catch an open Temple of Balathazar.

Map hopping makes it impossible to even guess. How many times do you count me? Where do you count me?

Guesstimate doesn’t mean actually counting you as an individual.
In any case, you’ve just described one of the groups that is counted in the guesstimate: the world boss farm train.
Other groups include, eg.
LA afkers
Guild mission players
WvW
PvP (shared)
Very, very tiny portion of players on dead maps
Dungeon runners (shared)

Like I said, not impossible with applied sensibility.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Absence of knowledge? Knowing the map technical limitations, the upper limit of concurrent players, the ascended gear grind panic, dead maps on many servers (I didn’t say all) aren’t knowledge? Astute people can apply sensibility to said knowledge and put pieces together themselves.

Except people can’t know how many people are in dungeons. They can’t know how many people are scattered around the world even.

The fact that people can server hop changes everything. I can be on three different servers in the same night.

It’s ALL just guesswork.

Guesswork with applied sensibility and knowledge of game’s limitation.
Sensibility such as:
Map cap.
PvP population is much smaller compared to PvE population.
Easymode casual player population is larger than “real gamers”.
Many players are ignorant of lfg tool AND guesting.

Like I said, you can still apply some common sense to get a reasonable “guesstimate” on the upper cap on the population and go from there. No need to think this is some impossible thing to guess.

Absence of knowledge? Knowing the map technical limitations, the upper limit of concurrent players, the ascended gear grind panic, dead maps on many servers (I didn’t say all) aren’t knowledge? Astute people can apply sensibility to said knowledge and put pieces together themselves.

Galen Grey.4709:

550 people is way too low. Taking just WvW, those maps hold 500 players each and there are times when you have to queue and considering they did the edge of the mist map to fix that i am sure thats not an issue on 1 or 2 servers. Thats 2000 players right there.

Then you have champion trains that all in all i would be sure they add up to 50-100 players on most servers

you got mini games, dont know how it is on all server but every time I felt like playing one there were always people there thats another 20 or so people at least there.

Then you have LS events that always go into 1 or 2 overflows. dont know if open world maps have the same WvW player capacity but if they do thats another 1000 at least.

Then you got dungeons and fractals, there quite a number of people who just play WvW and fractals!

You got players exploring and doing Dynamic events, players doing Jumping puzzles, guild missions, etc..

Running around in a mid level map still has you meet 2 – 5 people easily and considering you cannot be everywhere at once I think its safe to assume there is generally at least 3x as many people in such maps which means if 15 are the maps people generally consider empty you still have at least 100 – 200 players there, at least on my server thats probably true.

again I have no clue how many people are online at the same time ankitten ot pretending to know but 550 sounds a bit low to me, probably its at the very least 2000-3000 per server.

Regarding 500 players per wvw map, that is incorrect, as I point out in a older thread.

BlueZone.4236:

Banzie.5248:

WvW pop cap is about ~100 or at most 120 per map(Per server, So 300-360 per map total)

This is most likely the correct answer.

WvW does not support 500 per map as per this interview translation:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/196tgh/jeuxonlineinfo_made_an_interview_with_mike/

I mentioned the number 500 as a possible population limit when we first started revealing WvW and honestly have regretted that ever since. I really shouldn’t have mentioned any numbers at all, because I only had some early tests to base that figure on. Soon after, we started full scale testing and it rapidly became clear that just because we could put that many people onto a map didn’t mean we should do it.

PvE maps are most likely 100 soft capped and 120-150 hard capped (hard to guess the hard cap). This became somewhat evident during a teamspeak organized Tequatl event (with 100 players on TS), taxiing players off onto an empty overflow.

Also, you will be quite surprised how little players are required to make a map look deceptively more players than there really are. Even with just 40 players on your screen in LA can make a place look “really full”.

Take a guess at how many players there were in the Crown Pavilion map at full capacity. 150? 200? Nope.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

And the map capacity of Crown Pavilion is limited to 75 before it starts to create overflows.

Latinkuro.9420:

Seera.5916:

Those population levels are NOT that of the active population. The Very High to Full is an indication of how many people have selected that world as their home world.

So even the player who bought GW2 and only played it for one day and will never play again is counted.

hahahahahahahahahahahahah
this made me laugh so hard because it is so kittenty for lack of a better word

come on use your brain for a bit.
server population is about currently logged on players not about who has ever created an account on a particular server.

think about it, BG and the likes have always been a very high pop server and NA had maybe 5 servers on high. now all of a sudden after the Wurm update Bg is always on full and you’d be hard pressed to find any NA server on lower than very high.

just because you do not see players in the same area you are in doesn’t mean the server is baron, have you looked at how freaking big the gw2 world map is lately ?

Server status has always been about current players NOT about how many accounts are created.

I would like to know who started this BS rumor so I can smack him around and give him some more grey matter to up his IQ a bit, maybe than he’d be up to par with average intelligent human beings.

It’s one thing to hate on the success of the game but, this rumor / misinformation is just low blow scumbaggadery.

So that’s a personal attack on an ANet employee? No wonder this game is dying!!

CC Eva

Hello everyone.
Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.
Answering to your second question: no, there is no chart that shows that kind of information at the moment, I am afraid.

The gold/material gain is miniscule, therefore negligible.
You don’t need it, it’s optional.
You can still get sprockets through tp/normal play.
Let’s wait and see where they go with this instead of preemptive whining.
They never said weren’t going to do things like this.
etc
etc

Notice the similarities in these argument, compared to something that starts with ‘a’?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success/

Now let me pose a second question: If the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number of people paying a monthly fee, how does that impact game design decisions?

The answer can be found in the mechanics and choices made in subscription-based MMOs, which keep customers actively playing by chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible. In other words, they design content systems that take more time to keep people playing longer. If this is your business motivation and model so you keep getting paid, it makes sense and is an incredibly smart thing to do, and you need to support it.

When your game systems are derived and designed to fill this prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you potentially sacrifice quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

https://twitter.com/PersistentWorld/status/418816619825999872

I can’t wait until you guys find out what’s in store this year. People are going to die with excitement/shock

I kid, I kid.
Or do I? :P

I’m sure people will say achievement points doesn’t reflect the population, but I personally believe there is some truth about the state of the game, at least for the long term PvE players.
Also, there have been multiple discounted sales for this game (I think at least five times), for a game just over a year old now.
Even discounts weren’t enough, they had to resort to giving the game away for free, which probably failed, as well.

Also, they still believe in PvP/esport, despite some of the more competitive teams disband or leave.

You’ll have to draw your own conclusion on what you think of the state of the game.

Azure Prower.8701:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Azure Prower.8701:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Azure Prower.8701:

The old content is stale. The new content is just the old content slapped on with some stale paint.

So what would you define as new content?

The entirety of Crystal Desert.

Other than setting, what would be new about the Crystal Desert?

A new place to explore.

And a coherent story/continuation of the main story, and it not being drip fed! You forgot to mention that.

mesme.5028:

I don’t understand the way the devs think.

In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff.
Enjoy Guild Wars 2, and good luck.

I believe you would still do slightly more damage with the ascended weapon even at night.
The ascended weapon’s Weapon strength is +5% damage, but the Power stat increase adds in an extra sliver of % damage.

If my understanding is correct, the + 5%/+ 10% damage is done on the final damage, so the ascended weapon would actually do a little bit more than 10% overall.
eg. using fake numbers as an example, and extremely simplified:
exotic: 100 base damage + 10% sigil = 110 damage
ascended: (105 base damage + 1 damage from power) + 5% sigil = 111.3 damage

Also, you need to factor in the extra precision and the extra crit damage (assuming you’re not dealing with crit immune foes).
The precision may actually be negligible to the point where the crit chance doesn’t increase.
I’m not 100% sure how crit damage increase calculation works, but regardless whether the +damage % on the sigils are added within the crit damage multiplier or before/after, the ascended weapon still edges over it because of the base damage (weapon strength & power) increase over the exotic weapon makes the multiplier work in favor of the larger base damage.

The situation has reached the state where if anything sounds like an attack on the dev’s effort (but it’s ok for them to diminish player’s efforts) then they’ll have a knee jerk reaction and just ignore whatever you post forever. So don’t worry, they do ignore the negative people!

Eg:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Guhracie.3419:

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

1. We didn’t want another tier of gear; you guys knew that and implemented it anyway, so now we’re stuck with it.

Players rarely ever want their pet class nerfed, but its still necessary to the health of the game to do it from time to time. Consensus and Balance are distantly related on the best days and full-blown adversaries on more than a few.

While I have some issues with the specifics of Ascended acquisition, it’s not that hard to recognize the pressures at work that convinced them that the concept needed to be introduced to the game.

Keep in mind that prior to the release of the first Ascended items, the single most efficient way to advance your character was play the Trading Post. Full Stop. If you spent your time doing DEs or running dungeons you were a serf laboring in the fields in the service of your Trading Post betters. It was soul-sucking. Nothing you could do swinging your sword came close, and even today most people have this obsession with amassing gold when doing so mostly fattens you up to get fleeced at the market. The range of rewards that must be earned rather than bought is still astonishingly thin.

If anything the current crafting-only model of weapons and armor is a bit of a backslide towards ‘TP-uber-alles’. I sincerely hope that the currencies of heroism like skill points, karma, and various tokens get moved back to center stage as the means and the measure of characters’ mechanical advancement ~ vertical or horizontal.

I really just set out to summarize the thread to see if anything new was actually being said about vertical progression, or if we were just going in circles, this far into the discussion about it. And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion. Regardless, that was basically the first sort of comment that was picked up and addressed in the thread.

I’m in total agreement about consensus vs. balance, but I think it’s clear that balance isn’t being discussed here, on many levels.

I’m all for progress, and there’s truly no way to please everyone, but given the possibilities for vertical progression in a game like GW2, it seems like a middle ground other than “gear treadmill” might have been a more viable solution.

Hi Guhracie,

Will all due respect there has been a huge amount of dialog, discussion, ideation, summary and proposals. If you want to add value to the thread then I suggest you read it. Until then I am going to take everything you say with a large handful of salt. Sorry.

Chris

Vertical progression is the “easy” is the more obvious form of progression, and tends to be the universal progression. It’s easier to understand (bigger number = better).
However, it creates disparity between the have’s and have not’s, further aggravated by characters with poor builds.
One of the worst things I find in games is when you progress too far such that your build essentially locks you into a certain style.
For example, imagine spending all you gold to make your zerker build, enter a new content that specifically built for soldier gear (eg. all enemies constantly apply conditions on you 24/7). No back up gear? Tough luck. Just look for a group and hope they’re ok with carrying you.
On another note, selling vertical progression items (for BIS) on the TP further promotes farming as method for “progression”. This game already encourages players to farm gold, not sure why we want more reasons to farm.

Horizontal progression provides more options, however, this game currently does not encourage you want use those options due to grind/gold/time investment and lack of UI functionality to make it easy to swap between them.

Going back to the previous CDIs, I think that there should be a PvE “global domination” game mode, with the idea to unlock abilities that do not directly impact your class, but rather give options within this new game mode.
Examples such as:
- commanding a squad of NPCs
- use of interactable items (mortars, tanks, etc)
- building offensive/defensive structures
- provide buffs/debuffs to nearby friendly/enemy NPCs
- summon airstrikes, dragons, etc etc.

Perhaps you can only have 4 abilities at a time, and these should take up the keyboard F5-F8 slots.

In my opinion, this might serve as a better type for horizontal progression.

Abramelin.7356:

Yes a 5% increase in power should increase damage by 5%. The actual damage is subject to a number of modifiers, but since they are all either multipliers or dividers, they should not affect the proportinate increase.

I did the numbers on getting ascended armour for my thief. I calculated a 2.6% damage reduction from the armour alone, increasing to 4% if I slotted 6 toughness infusions in the armour. The damage increase was a paltry 1.3% (against a base of exotic armour and ascended trinkets/weapons, no might buff). I used this site to calculate the damage increase:

http://jsfiddle.net/joelpt/NtTRm/2/

I am disappointed. Going by the stat increase from the weapons and trinkets, I expected +5% damage dealt and -5% damage taken.

Not quite sure how that site works, nor the stats you were going for. I can only assume you went for non zerker stats, and/or assumed the enemy was in defensive gear?
I think certain stats, eg. Soldier vs Soldier in equal ascended gear could potentially cancel each other out (not sure how well Vitality scales, so it may be better or worse).

Oniyui.8279:

Is it really that surprising that zerker damage is going to scale better than its mitigation?

You do know it’s not the only gear you can get, I hope.

It’s called power creep (which applies to both PvE and WvW).
What this means is that some types of fights will end quicker than the original intended fight duration.
eg. zerker vs zerker for ascended geared players would have a shorter fight duration than zerker vs zerker for exotic geared players.
Actually, I think zerker vs anything will end probably quicker if both players are decked out in ascended gear (not necessarily in favor on the zerker, though I think glass cannon builds that rely on spike damages would be able to take better advantage of this creep).

GoldenTruth.2853:

Things wrong/missing:

- Exotic jewels can be outfitted with upgrade jewels while ascended cannot. 1 embellished brilliant ruby is +21 power, +2% crit damage, +13 precision (in fact the only reason why the stat points are so hugely different for trinkets is because of this, however, few calculations take this into account)
- How crit/crit damage scales with power (I know you aren’t taking these into account since you want to look at just power, but this is important)
- Not the Power of the weapon, but the Weapon Strength (1045 – 1155 vs 905 – 1000) and the relation of this to the Power stat.
- Hard to read the short hand of your calculations but I think you didn’t take into account ascended armor can only have defensive infusions.

There’s probably more that I didn’t catch.

So many of these math posts are done wrong that all they do is spread the wrong info (though I couldn’t do any better) >.>

1. I have jewels accounted for already, in terms of power.
2. I’ll probably take a look at the secondary stats on the jewels another time, but at a quick glance I don’t think it’s enough to equalize or be greater than the ascended combined equivalent?
3. More power = more crit damage, that’s at least understood.
4. Unless the wiki is wrong, weapon strength is directly proportional to damage, so it’s 5% increase in damage.
5. I’ve had to double check this (I don’t have any ascended armor), but I think you’re right about ascended armor having only defensive slots. Will have to correct this (EDIT: done)

fadeaway.2807:

You are working out the damage increase totally wrong.

Care to elaborate?
Power = directly proportional to damage.
Weapon strength = directly proportional to damage.

TriggerSad.2597:

Exotic-tier equipment doesn’t come with an offensive or defensive slot they’re all considered the same. Also exotic gear can’t be equipped with infusions.

Thanks, that’s what happens when you start to copy and paste text all over the place!
Removed that now.

They had a bug with the tonic recipes, they had a bug with charged quartz in winterboxes (assuming that was a bug), the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic was white quality then rare quality then white quality again.
But salvage rate RNG must be ok.

Ok, I’ve calculated things for my zerker Guardian, and was surprised by the armor increase being rather small.
My traits are 20/20/0/30/0 (not completely optimal, but good enough).
Anyway, here’s the working:

Keep this as reference to understand how the increased stats affects the damage output: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Greatsword weapon strength
Exotic average
179

Ascended average
188

Therefore, 5% increase in weapon strength (100 * (188 – 179) / 179)

Power increase from gear (Power as the major stat)
Exotic power
Greatsword 179

Head 45
Shoulders 34
Chest 101
Gloves 34
Legs 67
Boots 34

Necklace 90
Ring1 67
Ring2 67
Accessory1 56
Accessory2 56
Back Item 22

Jewel x6 150 (6×25)

Total power stat from gear: 1002

Ascended power
Greatsword 188

Head 47
Shoulders 35
Chest 106
Gloves 35
Legs 71
Boots 35

Necklace 126
Ring1 103
Ring2 103
Accessory1 91
Accessory2 91
Back Item 56

Infusion x6 30 (5×6)
(x6 = 2 wpn, 4 trinkets)
Only 1 ring and 1 accessory can have offensive slot

Total power stat from gear: 1117

Power from class + trait: 1116
=>Exotic power total = 2118 (1002 + 1116)
=>Ascended power total = 2233 (1117 + 1116)
Therefore, 5.4% increase in power (100 * (2263 – 2118) / 2118)

Armor increase from gear
Exotic defense
Head 121
Shoulders 121
Chest 363
Gloves 182
Legs 242
Boots 182

Total defense from gear: 1211

Ascended defense
Head 127
Shoulders 127
Chest 381
Gloves 191
Legs 254
Boots 191

Infusion x8 40 (5×8)
Only 1 ring and 1 accessory has defensive slot, others in offensive slot
x6 armor with defensive slot

Total defense from gear: 1311

Toughness from class + trait: 916
=>Exotic armor total = 2127 (1211 + 916)
=>Ascended power total = 2227 (1311 + 916)
Therefore, 4.7% increase in armor (100 * (2227 – 2127) / 2127)

So, in a fully decked out ascended gear, my zerker guardian can get a minimum increase of 10.4% damage over exotic gear.
I say minimum, because I actually did not include the secondary stat of Precision and Critical damage, and can’t be bothered working that out.

I was a bit surprised the armor is only +3.3%.
I thought it was +5%, but can’t find where I got that number from anymore…
That negligible increase…hmm…
Ok, +4.7% armor looks more reasonable in terms of the original 5% thought, still doesn’t cancel out the entirety of damage increase from weapon strength and stat gain.
Looks like spike damages will hurt more than before in WvW!

EDIT: removed inf slots in exotic armor calculations.
EDIT2: armor set only has defensive slots (probably)…

The damage formula is (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage):
Damage done = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

I haven’t properly looked into it (will probably do another time), from what I quickly calculated (so there might be errors) for a zerker build guardian :
Ascended weapon provides +5% Weapon Strength compared to exotic (all ascended weapons do, as a minimum, I know this is correct).
Ascended armor set provides around +5% Armor (note, this is not the same as defense).

Now the total major/minor stat boosts are the things I haven’t fully worked out yet.
Only considering power as the major stat, I think it provides around another +5% Power (including offensive infusion slots vs exotics with rubies). That’s not factoring the minor stats, which would be increased crit rate + increased crit damage.

So yeah, hit harder and take less damage vs an exotic geared player.
In fact, 2 equally ascended geared players hit harder each other, since the defense on the armor set isn’t high enough to completely cancel out the increased damage output (assuming you use power as a stat in your gear).

TLDR: Play smart = farm as hard as you can before ANet nerfs it, or flip items on TP, or gamble via Mystic toilet.

Looking at your post history, I see you did a lot of Orr farming back in the days, which gave you 200g in some 2-3 months so I get a general feel for your playing habits (plus you enjoy farming). Not saying that there is anything wrong with that, just pointing it out there.
Sometimes, people just forgot how hard they farmed, and are now are in cruise control mode because of all their accumulated wealth.

In any case, congrats on your legendary.

Substance E.4852:

Not until the game really starts dying and they throw a Hail Mary and try to draw in the classic MMO folks to stay afloat.

Agreed!!! This game will be in serious trouble if they introduce things like:
Dailies
Stand in a circle 50 times
Kill 100 Dolyaks
Complete 50 door events
Press F 24 times around the world
20000 candy corn for a mini.

And maybe do those every 2 weeks or 1 month.
Of course, the last one would be for the truly insane, or perhaps they’ll purchase them off the trading post by farm for gold instead via a champ train, which might encourage farming behavior.
Things like that would mean they’re trying to draw in the classic MMO folks, and that would definitely be a bad sign for this game.

There is speculations going around that maps “deactivate” when there are no players any players on the map.
Is there any chance you’re doing your run on a dying server and/or low usage map?

I haven’t been keeping track, but isn’t this around the fifth discounted sale now?
Well, I don’t find it surprising they’re becoming desperate for more players.
At this rate they may just turn the game into full blown F2P and give a title to anyone who purchased the game.
They have been pushing the game to make gold→gem less attractive, in order to get cash→gem, so it does make sense.

Alissah.9281:

I believe that quote from Mike’O’Brien was from a half year before release :P.

They’re not going to improve the level cap… I hope x.x

It was exactly 1 year ago, ie. post release.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/c7762pk

Don’t worry, they will increase the level cap.
How else can they easily implement gear grinding for players who finished grinding their legendaries? Grind for new legendaries and obsoleting the old level 80 legendaries!

Swagger.1459:

Clockwork Bard.3105:

So, reading those quotes, they really do intend to create a gradual but constant power growth. For example, they fully expect to one day raise the level cap. In doing so, all that shiny ascended gear will cease to be the pinnacle of gear and you’ll need to suit back up again. Only your legendaries are safe.

interesting point, i never thought of that.

Most likely incorrect on legendaries on being safe. Raising the level cap will make them obsolete. The skin is obviously safe, and that will be the defense from every white knight around the world.
They will most likely only remain BIS for a level 80 gear.
It’d be silly for ANet not to make them regrind for their gear since they’re the ones who they’re trying to target the gear grind in the first place.

How many levels does an endless (or infinite) dungeon have?

But seriously, what would be a reasonable number for something that claims to be infinite?
We know that old school arcade games bugged out because of integer limitations rather than capping it, surely computers today are able to hold values greater than 50 (or 80), right?

Lord Kuru.3685:

BlueZone.4236:

Colin Johanson:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/6/8/4392552/guild-wars-2-developers-eye-esports-with-aims-to-create-the-most

Our goal is for Guild Wars 2 to be the number one PvP game in MMOs and we feel there is a really open space right now for PvP within eSports, in particular for MMOs.
…
We’re seeing a ton of response from the PvPcommunity, we just need to get those last bits in place and then we’re really going to dive in and try to become a big part of eSports.

They’re almost there, apparently. Those pesky last bits!

I really hope that quote is just for publicity purposes and that they don’t truly believe they will become an esport. The sooner they give up on the esports idea (because it’s just not going to happen) the sooner we can have better balancing in PvE/WvW.

Just in case anyone didn’t notice, that was 5 months ago. However…! In a thread named “Gw2 and the state of Esport” in the Structured PvP subforum (2 weeks ago):

Justin ODell.9517:

Personally, I think we can get there.

It’s awesome that each day I get to help move things a little bit closer to that goal than the day before.

And keep reading, as there’s more dev posts further on.
They haven’t given up.

Esports!

Colin Johanson:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/6/8/4392552/guild-wars-2-developers-eye-esports-with-aims-to-create-the-most

Our goal is for Guild Wars 2 to be the number one PvP game in MMOs and we feel there is a really open space right now for PvP within eSports, in particular for MMOs.
…
We’re seeing a ton of response from the PvPcommunity, we just need to get those last bits in place and then we’re really going to dive in and try to become a big part of eSports.

They’re almost there, apparently. Those pesky last bits!

I completely agree with StriderShinryu’s post.
The majority of discussion was between ourselves, which made it nearly the same as any typical thread here on the forum, other than some devs essentially adding post counts just to say ‘requoting for justice’, or going ‘yeah, that’s nice’.
I’m sure there are many parts where you’ve said ’we’ve had that discussion amongst ourselves’, but you almost never delve into your (or your team’s) views on the pros and cons of the ideas thrown around, and which side you think is more preferable to lean on.
A good example is the “global domination” idea that went on in the thread.
You guys have the metrics, you tell us where the idea may possibly fail.

SpehssMehreen.5897:

BlueZone.4236:

SpehssMehreen.5897:

As much as I like Matt the video is hardly giving good reasons for an expansion, its also plagued by the same misconception that an expat is easily made and is required for the game to survive, the rate at which a player devours content is tremendous.

could you imagine if the flame and frost, aetherblades this patch and everything in between was rolled up into an expansion can you imagine how messy it would be? how fast that content will go? not to mention having 6 months + of pretty much no content update, then we will go the wat wow is going where people jsut wait till the next expat, oh and dont forget the whining about the game beign a grind and nothing new

An expansion would not have been done like the current living story.
The mess is because of how poorly planned everything is in the current development state. An expansion would have an actual plan instead of some whimsical thought of the day.

I don’t know how everyone else feels, but I’d rather eat the a plate of the world’s best steak for dinner and have a good lasting feeling for it than rather eating scraps of
the world’s best steak served every hour.

People keep wondering, ‘This is just filler stuff, right? The “real” content’s being made secretly in the background, right?"
It’s going to be really embarrassing for the devs when people finally realize what we’re seeing now is them working at full force, and this is actually their “meaty” content.

Were we go again with all the presumptions, assumptions and sweeping statements, its just another argument with people having their own opinion on certain things, kinda like how many people like the difficulty of the latest tower and then another side says its far too easy.

What? Have you read the dev posts in the collaboration thread?
They said themselves they keep plans short because they need to be able to change things on a whim and that’s because of the state of how they’re developing the living story.
Looks like someone hasn’t done their research.

SpehssMehreen.5897:

As much as I like Matt the video is hardly giving good reasons for an expansion, its also plagued by the same misconception that an expat is easily made and is required for the game to survive, the rate at which a player devours content is tremendous.

could you imagine if the flame and frost, aetherblades this patch and everything in between was rolled up into an expansion can you imagine how messy it would be? how fast that content will go? not to mention having 6 months + of pretty much no content update, then we will go the wat wow is going where people jsut wait till the next expat, oh and dont forget the whining about the game beign a grind and nothing new

An expansion would not have been done like the current living story.
The mess is because of how poorly planned everything is in the current development state. An expansion would have an actual plan instead of some whimsical thought of the day.

I don’t know how everyone else feels, but I’d rather eat the a plate of the world’s best steak for dinner and have a good lasting feeling for it than rather eating scraps of
the world’s best steak served every hour.

People keep wondering, ‘This is just filler stuff, right? The “real” content’s being made secretly in the background, right?"
It’s going to be really embarrassing for the devs when people finally realize what we’re seeing now is them working at full force, and this is actually their “meaty” content.

chemiclord.3978:

They HAVE told us this though.

The very reason that the LS is a side story is because they DON’T want it connected to the bigger stuff they have planned. They have four Living Story teams, and OTHER teams working on other content. THEY HAVE SAID THIS.

It’s RIGHT HERE: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-unlikely-to-get-expansions-Interview/page/2#post2343665

I mean… nevermind. I give up. If you don’t want to get it, I can’t make you.

Long term projects = “making the core Gw2 experience as strong and compelling as possible”, things like gear grind, precursor hunt, “fixing” old content, code optimizations, epsort, release in other countries, etc.
When you read some of Anet’s posts, there’s quite a few of them saying how undermanned/under-resourced they are.
It is highly unlikely the have any staff working on long term project that is content related.

I’ve noticed sometimes the bosses go past their spawning window and doesn’t appear.
I originally suspected the event is bugged (since this game tends to have quite a few buggy events), but now I no longer suspect that.

There was a thread recently regarding resource nodes resetting outside of the usual weekly reset, and some posters suspected that a map “deactivates” when no players are on the map (probably after a extended amount of time).
If true, then that explains why some bosses don’t spawn after hitting the spawning window, because the map deactivates due to no players!
You can see this pattern on most of the low tier servers…

Taku.6352:

BlueZone.4236:

Alukah.2063:

Are you talking about an old update? I’ve been around here for like a month and a half and those electrical fields have always been there.

Before your time, Golem had no electrical field.

Golem alwyas had electric fields but before the update they did like 300 dmg per tick.

Ah, you’re right (had to look at youtube to remember it…). Most people just stood in the electric field, and everyone just out healed it.
I stand corrected.

The original Golem boss wasn’t really fun as melee. You just stood there auto-attacked…

At least this time, you are expected to move around a little, once in a while….and continue auto-attacking.
Ranged users are terrible people making the fight longer than necessary because of their terrible dps.
I don’t know about the other classes, but it’s really simple to melee as a guardian.
Stand your ground + Retreat for the arm slams, or dodge (dodge if soloing, SYG/Retreat if others are nearby, or low on endurance).
Greatsword to pull & whirlwind spawned enemies.
The golem has 3 hitboxes, so you can actually position yourself so that you hit 2 of the hitboxes in one attack.
Also, you have about 2-3 seconds before the electric field downs you from full health, which you can also block via aegis or evade via dodge.

Alukah.2063:

Are you talking about an old update? I’ve been around here for like a month and a half and those electrical fields have always been there.

Before your time, Golem had no electrical field.

coglin.1867:

Aeolus.3615:

coglin.1867:

Aeolus.3615:

As a WvW player only, im so poor i cant even level from 400 to 500.

Wait….What? I spend at minimum 50% of my time in WvW, and 100% on many weeks. I tend to do so in around 4 hour sessions. I always make at least 1 gold, generally around 2g 50s, and often more. What are you doing that your spending all of your money on?

Buy siege, upgrade stuff, repair from kitten trying to figh unbalanced builds and bad situations, nourishments sometimes can get expensive, all money i do i spend it on WvW.

Actually im trying to save money and collect materials, waiting for mat price to drop, after that will be the same story for armorsmith.

I still don’t get it. The amounts I listed were after expenses, upgrades, repairs, and siege. You must be doing something wrong bud.

From what I can see from your sig, you’re on Jade Quarry and from his post history, he’s on NSP.
Outlook not so good on his server?
Seems like a server population/morale issue (=> lack of loot).

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Nothing has changed.

Untrue, my friend! Your own post explains what’s changing!
They’ve been increasing the grind slightly more and more with each release and making the real content slightly smaller and smaller, to test how far they can push it and pass it off as content without players noticing.

Just according to keikaku.
Keikaku meant plan

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

What do you and the other Devs think about the idea of having a static server that people are transported to for their personal story? People could play on their main server with all of their friends and participate in the LS, while still being able to complete the personal story as intended. It would also give you guys the freedom to change the world as you see fit, without being anchored down by the Personal Story.

The switch could be something simple like the NPC is the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where talking to him transports you to the Inquisition or Clocktower.

I think this is an interesting idea. Let’s flesh it out some more. Can you give me some more details around your idea?

Chris

I’m not videoboy, but this just sounds like another “game mode” which is essentially a sandboxed version of the existing maps.
Like how WvWvW resets weekly, I’d say this sandboxed version (call it something like WvE) should “reset” after an extended period of time (monthly or more, maybe?), and upon reset you add in the new content, which essentially just means new and/or different battle mechanics.
As I said before, this is essentially a PvE version of WvW (except more grand in terms of what’s allowed)

Randulf.7614:

Chris – is it possible to get a separate thread for the DE discussion? Largely because it doesn’t directly pertain to the Living Story and there is a small fear some of the LW feedback has got lost amongst the DE discussion (I understnad they can connect, but they are 2 big topics and if you guys are as busy as you appear, it would be easier to sift through as well I’d imagine)

There’s a weight of great discussion going on here, but the title isn’t advertising it is about DE’s. You could feasibly get more people involved in a separate thread (and it doesn’t need a cut off date either since people can opt in/out at will)

Sadly, I think we’ve got this backwards. The DEs are the dev’s original idea on a “living” world which is why Chris is focused on this idea.
The story is the thing that’s tacked on (or feels tacked on/“flavored text”) to these events to try to make them meaningful.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also please also be aware that there is a lot of judgment around Scarlet when the arc has not completed yet. I agree with many of the points being made at a foundational level but please don’t assume that the direction of the arc is understood by all just yet.

Chris

Sounds like a quality issue due to poor presentation and lack of story progression. The fact that it’s been a few months already means you probably won’t change the majority of the player’s perception on her anymore, unless you magically add a lot more story content to the game…which is too late now due to the 4 months production lag.

Force.8632:

lol, are you being sarcastic? i hope you are…

Am i the only one experiencing this because i am low lvl??

He’s on a tier 1 server, hence ignorant of state of the other servers.
The rest are kinda dying, so you might need to guest to a tier 1 server to see players (google them since I don’t know which ones are tier 1 off the top of my head).
Also, considering maps overflow at 100 players, overflowing isn’t really that impressive…

A couple of points I’d like to say:
1. All this talk about larger scale dynamic events is good and all, and is exactly the type of “end game” content that would be good instead of all this AP/gear grinding.
2. I really wish that the main story/lore aspect content be considered separate to this end game stuff (and instanced) since I consider DEs a really poor way of telling a story since the majority of time DEs are halfway in progress, or purposely made to be inconsequential/extremely localized. Personally, I do not mind that the personal story is in a inconsistent state with the “real” game, that’s why it’s always instanced off (the ability to revisit the instanced version of player’s state of the world would solve that issue). Also, the current releases aren’t meaty/long enough for decent story telling, in my opinion. Too much fluff and tease, not enough substance.

Anyway, regarding the dynamic events and failure events, I think another approach would be to apply the failure mechanics on the AI rather than on the players.
For example, if the players are holding too much ground or the AI recognizes it is losing in the current event, the AI commander should decide to crunch some numbers (based on it’s current state and what the zerg has done on the past hour or so) and executes its next move.
These moves could potentially be:
1. Dig multiple underground tunnels to infiltrate a player owned areas on the map (maybe throw in karka queens to pop out of the ground if it manages to successfully dig out).
2. The enemies hordes together to protect a makeshift fort/defense area.
3. The enemies hordes together a tower where a wizard has some magic amplifier allowing it to destroy/heavily damage buildings.
4. Summon dragons or airships.
5. Commander purposely withdraws, but is actually setting up a trap in the area it withdrew from.

It would be possible for the AI to launch multiple offensive “events” instead of just picking one.

I also think the enemy should have the ability to capture downed/dead players as prisoners of war (hello anti zerg mechanic!). Those players will then have to break out of prison and escape.
If they don’t manage to escape, then they die and multiple zombies spawn aiding their battle.
The only potential issue with this mechanic is players just zoning/logging out and back in, which I don’t have an idea on solving.

If you’re really desperate to adhere to the whole bi-weekly release thing, you should change these “end game” maps so that each release rotates between a random set of legendary monsters that the AI can summon (and maybe change their fighting mechanics every now and then).

You could also add in weather/season effects that could apply special buffs to allies/monsters that affect their fighting abilities (eg. winter = extra cold damage, more maps with snow, summer = extra fire damage, less snowy areas etc), or even a different density of monster types.

I should also say (probably against the wishes of the majority), I would prefer these event to be scalable down to 1 player (or at least spawn multiple allied AI as temporary substitutes to help aid the fights), especially due to the population dying on lower tiered servers. The idea of “guest or GTFO” just puts players off, in my opinion.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are committed to quality not quantity.

Chris

the hard adherance to the two week release schedule seems to indicate the opposite. there has clearly been releases that just seem unfinished. Cannach’s lair comes to mind of something that left the majority of players thinking the content was rushed out to meet a 2 week schedule. There have been others but that was the one that comes to mind first. I think its ok to just have a balance patch and delay content that clearly isnt ready so that our enjoyment of great content is merely delayed not ruined by clearly rushed release schedule.

Hi Gidorah,

To be clear we are absolutely focused on quality. We feel that we can have both this cadence and high quality and are continuing to work toward this. If we feel that we cannot reach this balance then of course like everything, we will evolve as necessary. This said there is a lot we can and are doing to meet concerns regarding the cadence and really polish the positives we have already achieved in this area.. My point is the current plan is to continue with this cadence.

Chris

4 months = 1-2 hours content (only 5-10 minutes story/plot progression within that 1-2 hours) and 1-4 weeks grinding.
Develop with the tools and man power that you have, not to the tools and man power you wish you had.
I personally don’t see you guys improving your quality without using the obvious solution: time.

I originally planned to write something long winded, but finally decided to make it short and simple.
Anet, what I see is you having 2 separate situations:
1. Players who want a decent amount of story content. Obviously an expansion is the ideal case, since the entire story is dumped in one go, allowing players to go at their own pace.
2. Players who don’t give a toss about the story and are fine with a 1-5 minute explanation on why this map is this release’s farming spot of the month.

I’m sure there’s some who want to mix the two, but these recent releases show how poor and grindy mixing the two together is (eg. halloween achievement grinding to progress the story, which only amounts to about 5 minutes worth of story…wow, unrewarding to say the least).

Anyway, from my understanding, what you want to create with a “living world” is the really the second situation.
You really just want something like the PvE equivalent of WvW with RTS/MOBA/Tower defense elements, and allowing for more “game-breaking” stuff like summoning dragons, golems, siege tanks, pew-pew lazer beams on sharks, pirate ships, ghosts etc to help out. Then add things like buffs/debuffs based on the season and weather…I dunno, anymore.

Mind you, I’d personally prefer more story content/fleshing out lore, but being in the minority sucks and a sad reality.

RagingDragon.9475:

At 200 people per overflow (it’s actually closer to 180 I believe) that is 4400 people who killed Tequatl yesterday.

I think a PvE map only supports around 75-150 players (might even be hard capped around 120).
This is (my) anecdotal evidence based on an organized group with 100 TS users taxied off to an overflow map (the taxiing was only advertised on TS, then one of the commanders couldn’t enter due to the map hitting the hard cap).
If your estimate is based on eyeballing the number, it’ll most likely be wrong.
If you have harder evidence on how you obtained 200, I’d be interested to know what method you used.

eisberg.2379:

BlueZone.4236:

haviz.1340:

Dragonite ore and time gating are the sources of most complains.

Personally, I would be more tolerant if it had been introduced along with an expansion where you’d get the full ascended gear set halfway through the expansion content.

eisberg.2379:

Ashen.2907:

eisberg.2379:

the word ‘by’ means next to or close to, also means upto and beyond. Close to, well that is going to be a matter of opinion, getting ascended is beyond hitting level 80.

That is a contextually incorrect use of the word. If you are supposed to be at your work desk by nine AM you have failed to adhere to that requirement if you arrive any time after nine.

If you put your car into the shop for repairs and the mechanic promises to have it ready by next Friday, would you consider him to have kept his word if he did not have it ready for ten years (which would be beyond next friday as per your misuse of the word) ?

So you would expect to pick up the car at 12:00 am on Friday, since that is when the day leveled to friday? Would be done by friday also mean it could also be at 11:59 pm friday? I read that in context of gaming, meaning that I would never expect to have the highest gear the moment I hit the highest level. Close to after hitting 80 sure, but not the moment of hitting 80.

Definition of by:
Close to or next to
Up to and beyond
at or to

In the context of gaming, the first 2 definitions make more sense.

“Your car will be ready by 12pm on Friday”
I guess the mechanic means Sunday, right?

again, using the word ‘by’ in the context of gaming 2 other definitions of the word make more sense for an MMO game.

I disagree. It was an obvious call back to gear acquisition in Guild Wars 1.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/by

1. Close to; next to: the window by the door.
2. With the use or help of; through: We came by the back road.
3. Up to and beyond; past: We drove by the house.
4. At or to: stopped by the bakery; came by the house.
5. In the period of; during: sleeping by day.
6. Not later than: by 5:30 p.m.

Using 1 and 3 is a misuse of the definition in Colin’s sentence.

haviz.1340:

Dragonite ore and time gating are the sources of most complains.

Personally, I would be more tolerant if it had been introduced along with an expansion where you’d get the full ascended gear set halfway through the expansion content.

eisberg.2379:

Ashen.2907:

eisberg.2379:

the word ‘by’ means next to or close to, also means upto and beyond. Close to, well that is going to be a matter of opinion, getting ascended is beyond hitting level 80.

That is a contextually incorrect use of the word. If you are supposed to be at your work desk by nine AM you have failed to adhere to that requirement if you arrive any time after nine.

If you put your car into the shop for repairs and the mechanic promises to have it ready by next Friday, would you consider him to have kept his word if he did not have it ready for ten years (which would be beyond next friday as per your misuse of the word) ?

So you would expect to pick up the car at 12:00 am on Friday, since that is when the day leveled to friday? Would be done by friday also mean it could also be at 11:59 pm friday? I read that in context of gaming, meaning that I would never expect to have the highest gear the moment I hit the highest level. Close to after hitting 80 sure, but not the moment of hitting 80.

Definition of by:
Close to or next to
Up to and beyond
at or to

In the context of gaming, the first 2 definitions make more sense.

“Your car will be ready by 12pm on Friday”
I guess the mechanic means Sunday, right?