Guild Wars 2

StevesDad.8213:

Because I’ve seen people banned before something was called an exploit and I’d rather not experience that customer service.

Typically when it comes to ban-worthy exploits, there’s a direct connection between the exploit being used and the trading post, and/or a very clearly incorrect reward for effort expended. Since transmutation stones can’t be bought or sold via the TP (gem store, yes, but buying basic stones here is foolish due to plentiful in-game methods of acquisition, and thus not likely much a revenue earner) and you do have to actually complete the map zones, it’s pretty safe to say it’s not a bannable exploit.

Still, if you’re worried about it, only get map completion on alts you plan to keep. I guarantee that just once character with 100% world completion will yield far more than enough basic stones for at least 4 alts.

StevesDad.8213:

Esplen.3940:

Also, if you want to farm NORMAL stones, make new characters and map complete towns. They are easy, quick, and reward 3 each.

This really works? Seems like they wouldn’t allow that

Why not? Basic transmutation stones are a dime a dozen even without resorting for farming tactics. There’s a reason that basics can only transmute items up to level 79.

Halorin.1398:

Thanks for all the replies, guys!

@Blueshield, that’s my third proposed solution entirely.

Yes, I thought it was worth expanding upon some of the details, given that similar systems are already in use in some MMOs. I’ve edited my original post’s wording to make that more clear.

DaWolv.8503:

Proposal for a solution:

REMOVE the item. I’m not necessarily talking about removing the visual Aq.B. from the game, but just get rid of the item slot. This solves all problems above (except maybe the dye option):
1 – You don’t have to worry about stats, as you’re helmet/mask stats are carried over to underwater combat.
2 – With no item to buy, aquiration is no issue -also the rarity will carry over from your helmet.
3 – You don’t have to buy an additional Rune just to function optimally underwater.

I am in complete concurrence with your analysis, and am of the belief that your proposed solution is the optimum way of handling the situation.

In the unlikely event that ANet has plans of implementing a greater variety of cosmetic options for breathers in future, the gear slot can be treated as a cosmetic slot which comes into effect in the appropriate context.

Increasing Lion’s Arch’s population cap is, I suspect, not a solution in and of itself, as some others have pointed out here. For example:

Karizee.8076:

*Exiting WvW takes you to LA
*Entering & exiting Fractals is done in LA
*Portal hub, many players use the Mists as a free shortcut to the portal hub city of LA

In short, too much transitory traffic prevents increased caps from reliably being effective.

I don’t see a way to solve this problem without substantially reworking the instance/overflow system as a whole. With that in mind, the ideal situation (from where I stand) is the multiple-LA system (similar to those implemented in games with a single server – sometimes referred to as instanced zoning) – your third suggestion.

Every player would have access to his/her primary LA, as well as all overflows (which would be differentiated somehow – numbers, letters, etc). On zoning in, players would be prompted to select which LA they wish to join. Preferably an option to suppress the selection prompt would exist, in which case the game should automatically select either an instance with team/guildmates or contacts in it, or the lowest-population overflow. Additionally, a “change instance” function should exist beyond simply joining the ones that you have a teammate in, using the aforementioned enumeration system.

This would have the advantage of allowing people looking for teams to specifically route themselves to and between overflows.

Another important point in all of this is WvW crafting bonuses. Currently, players only benefit from these when in their home server LA. It seems the most thorough solution would be to have these apply regardless of overflow status, although I imagine there must be some technical barrier to this, given that it wasn’t in place from the start.

TL;DR: Currently there is to much pressure to be in your home server’s LA. Lessen that pressure where possible, and let players opt for and move throughout overflows for FotM/dungeon grouping.

Karizee.8076:

I don’t see how they could realistically increase the population limit in LA enough to accomodate your entire server…..maybe an alternative would be for TC to designate a server with faster queue times as a guesting option? Just an idea to try out

Not a bad idea on the face of it, but flawed for several reasons. First, much of TC’s population is on TC for the sake of roleplay, so designating a guesting alternate server would carry the same problems – the alternate server would become equally bloated. Second, more importantly, essentially the entire RP community is currently on TC. Using an alternate server for RP breaks the community into two pieces, and RP groups that commonly come into contact would no longer necessarily do so – in LA and elsewhere.

skullmount.1758:

Blueshield.6291:

skullmount.1758:

Soo many posts and views and we still haven’t found it…

I really wish a red post would show up here with another hint, or at least a clarification what exactly they meant by large (or rare). Any post would do at this point…

Yeah, it’d be nice to see some confirmation of this alleged conversation between Deified and Mr. Vaughn at the very least (either corroboration from Vaughn or screenshots from Deified would do). An actual substantive hint beyond the supremely vague “(large) boss with (large) chest” would be lovely.

Well I can give you a screenshot of his response to me. I thought from the way he phrased his response, that he would post a reply once I gave him the thread links, but I guess not. (or he’s too busy right now? but I doubt that)

So we now definitely know that he’s still kicking around, but all of the previous information (confirmation of previous hints, confirmation that staff is dropping as intended from an event that’s functioning as intended) remains unconfirmed. Hopefully we’ll hear something from him soon!

There are a lot of flaws in your argument. I’ll respond to them individually in the order of occurrence.

First, 10 stacks is not the same as 10 seconds. While it’s true that some of the boons last for 10 seconds, some of them stack intensity rather than duration. Additionally, the boons most useful in WvW are among the shortest duration.

You argue that consume plasma heals for more than healing seed. Technically true, because consume plasma only applies to a single target, while healing seed applies in a radius. Additionally, removal of conditions is arguably of much greater utility than direct healing, considering that the healing seed removes all conditions on the player and anyone else in the area of effect. Oh yeah, and healing seed puts down a healing field. A single thief could use shortbow’s cluster bomb into that field once every second for the five seconds it’s active, and out-heal consume plasma. But this is WvW, so we’re not talking about soloing – a team can do much more.

The boons you list as contributing to a “perfect defense” are a far cry from being so. Aegis protects you against a single attack, once, during the 10 second duration. In WvW that’s laughably useless. Stability and retaliation are definitely very useful, but they only last for 3 and 5 seconds respectively, and retaliation doesn’t actually defend the player in any way. Vigor and swiftness – definitely useful, but not far beyond what thieves are typically capable of in WvW. Swiftness is not a substantial increase over Signet of Shadows, and I don’t remember the last time I saw a thief without that in WvW.

Okay, so the defense isn’t so perfect. More importantly, you claim that thieves have this so-called “perfect defense” “every 1/4 of the time.” False. First, there has to be an enemy mesmer handy. Second, the thief has to reliably hit the mesmer with steal and nobody else, which is not exactly reliably doable in zerg situations. Third and most importantly, the thief only steals consume plasma if he hits the real mesmer – illusions will burn the cooldown on steal and grant nothing. So this alleged perfect defense is a very far cry from 1/4 uptime already. Oh yeah, and then you have to account for the fact that the majority of defensive boons have less than 10s uptime (especially including aegis – you only get 10s if you’re not getting hit).

skullmount.1758:

Soo many posts and views and we still haven’t found it…

I really wish a red post would show up here with another hint, or at least a clarification what exactly they meant by large (or rare). Any post would do at this point…

Yeah, it’d be nice to see some confirmation of this alleged conversation between Deified and Mr. Vaughn at the very least (either corroboration from Vaughn or screenshots from Deified would do). An actual substantive hint beyond the supremely vague “(large) boss with (large) chest” would be lovely.

skullmount.1758:

Should we make a thread in the Events forum to see if anyone knows of a rare event that spawns a boss with a large chest? Maybe someone there knows one we’ve overlooked or haven’t found.

Definitely worth a shot.

I’ve completed the map on one character, and have between 40-60% on three others. I have nearly a full stack of basic transmutation stones in the bank (and I use them heavily on characters between 1-79). I have never once seen a fine transmutation stone as part of map completion, and in several months’ worth of dailies and monthlies, I’ve never seen fine transmutation stones as rewards. I have seen basic stones as rewards for daily/monthly completion, including recently, though it’s always been a single stone (which is fairly useless, given the nature of the item and the fact that you almost invariably get 3 for map completion).

According to the wiki (and this is consistent with my own experience) fine stones can only be obtained randomly in Black Lion Chests, and manually via the gem store – neither daily completion nor map completion rewards these.

So in response to your question, basic stones can be unreliably obtained through daily completion, yes. People with “too many” transmutation stones have them from map completion bonuses. Fine stones are always going to be difficult to obtain.

LithePanther.5027:

Actually, you’re wrong. What the OP wants is a way to have his AoE’s automatically occur at his target, which is not in the game nor any other MMO i can think of, because that DOES defeat the purpose of an AoE insofar as you can control where it is.

Actually, you’re wrong. There are plenty of MMOs in which AoEs are cast directly at your target, including this one. Ground-cast skills are one subset of AoEs, point-blank-AoE-on-target are another. See, for example, Fireball or Splinter Shot. The only way to control where those occur is choosing which target to cast them at.

No, there is no way to convert a ground-cast into a PBAoE on target.

Lord Kreegan.8123:

Face it, guys and gals, the game has bugs…

Hey, we’re not paying any subscription, so live with it until something better comes along…

Well I for one am glad that much of the community does not share your lackadaisical attitude. Reporting bugs is the best way to ensure they get fixed.

After skimming the thread, I haven’t seen any mention of this here. Can we expect a fix on the Hint Completion achievement as well? It’s been bugged for quite a long time, getting stuck at 80-82/83 despite players having completed 100% of hints.

TerrellEdenost.7086:

What I’m really looking for is a path getting a pre-cursor that is fixed and not random. Basically, something that says: “If you do A,B,C for the next X months, you can earn a precursor”. I am totally ok with ~8 months of effort being involved… but tell me what I need to do now so I can start the 8 month journey to a pre-cursor.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying. My point was that we definitely need a fixed path to precursor acquisition, but I’m not certain that “do the same thing every day for 250 days” is necessarily the answer. I think the timeframe there is completely reasonable; my quibble is with the mundane nature of the tasks in question.

As I said, I don’t have a serious alternative. In lieu of one, this is a suggestion I can definitely back. Whatever the specifics, I hope that we can expect a definite route to a precursor at some point in the future.

There are a few things you can do to locate stealthed players, although this won’t remove the stealth buff. Channeled skills will continue to hit stealthed players if initiated prior to stealth. Many of these, like the elementalist’s Arc Lightning, will graphically track the thief’s location. Additionally, non-target-dependent skills can be used to great effect, such as the guardian’s Blinding Blade (which can additionally be used to pull the stealthed character to you, making it so easy to kill them that a caveman could do it).

GummiBear.2756:

stability and quickness finishers are fine imo, stealth are NOT, the reason is even if they are hard to counter quickness if you are fast enough can be interrupted still, and well stability can be bursted down, a stealth you cant even see is coming

Stealth finishers are very easy to counter. If you know where the thief is going to be (which you definitely do, in the question of finishers) then you can easily drop ground-cast skills or spam melee attacks at that location. Since stealth is a thief’s only line of defense when immobile (i.e., when performing a finisher) you’ll find it astoundingly easy to kill them in less than the time of a finisher.

I think you might be on to something.

Athel.2076:

The only thing I havent found a good curry counterpart for is Dwayna, guess thats because I rarely browse the vegetarian alternatives.

Dwayna as beverage: Dwayna Artois. The only reason my mind goes there, though, is that every time I hear Malchor screaming I am forcibly reminded of a certain scene from Streetcar Named Desire.

TerrellEdenost.7086:

The title pretty much says it all. I think there needs to be a way to “earn” a pre-cursor…. not RNG from Mystic forge. If say, the laurel vendor would let you pick any one pre-cursor for 250 laurels… It’d be ok with that.

That way, I would feel like my daily/monthly achievements would lead up to somethin of epic importance.

I agree in principle with the concept of precursors being earned rather than obtained via lottery. I’m not certain that the laurel system is the best way to handle this, though. I don’t really have a fully worked-out alternative, but I feel that daily/monthly completion is too low of a bar for precursor acquisition, regardless of the number of laurels needed.

Perhaps guaranteed precursor mystic forge recipes, dependent partly upon an item purchased for laurels? This could bring precursors more in line with the rest of the legendary system, potentially requiring elements from multiple sections of gameplay.

curtegg.5216:

You should get a precursor of your choice if you complete Slayer achievements.

Not really a viable option, given the astounding lack of giant NPCs in the game. Good luck farming that one in Diessa 1000 times.

Jason King.2647:

Did any of you do another event prior to fighting dragon? It’s possible you’re hitting the DR if you completed another event beforehand.

I’ve experienced this bug (silver completion medal, no chest) when fighting Claw of Jormag was the first thing I did after leaving LA upon logging on, after about 16 hours offline.

It’s worth noting that in that circumstance, there were enough people on my server participating in the event that almost nobody was able to use skills beyond autoattack (they simply wouldn’t activate after keystrokes/UI button presses), and by reports all of Frostgorge was experiencing similar severe lag. Therefore, it’s possible that this specific incident is isolated from the others being reported, as a product of lag rather than a DR bug.

Aye.8392:

Blueshield.6291:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Blueshield.6291:

inathanlite.1769:

On the guild roster, there should be a section which shows when a player was last online. This will help find out how active players are in a guild.

This feature was on the first Guild Wars so I’m a little confused as to why it isn’t on this one too (as well as trading).

Anyway, anybody else want this?

I’d add this to the list of guild-related QOL features that are nonsensically absent from a game with “Guild” in the title (intuitive MOTD editing, MOTD in chat, coaltions, officer chat…)

/signed

You understand the the Guild in Guild Wars does not refer to players in any way, right?

That’s funny, because it did back in the original.

No, it didn’t. It referred to a historical period where the guilds battled each other for control. King Adelbern outlawed guilds in Ascalon to keep history from repeating itself and guilds were not able to be created until players entered Kryta.

Hmm, so you admit that players are demonstrated to be a reversal of the lore regarding guilds. Considering that the game was marketed primarily for its GvG PvP, I think it’s a pretty big stretch to say that the word “guild” in the title is in no way whatsoever a reference to player guilds, even when considering the lore.

If the title wasn’t meant to invoke player organizations in any way, it would have been a different title.

Regardless of nomenclature, the point is that GW2 has not lived up to GW1’s standards of community-oriented features (the lack of GvG being one of the more blatant ones). This thread is an attempt to rectify that. Unless you’re trying to argue that we don’t need QOL features because of the game’s title, bringing it up in the first place is of questionable intent.

Saulius.8430:

why would you want aoe at target location? it would miss moving targets.
there are aoe effects like mesmers feedback that have no targeting and works at target location. i find it highly disadvantageous. because i need to carefully select target. likewise with ground targeting aoes i can just point mouse in that direction and cast it (with smartcast on, a.k.a. fast ground targeting somewhere in options).

The OP is talking about ground-cast skills. There’s no way to make them not ground cast, typically. He’s just asking if there’s a way to ground-cast that isn’t dependent upon the mouse.

eXs.6210:

That kind of defeats the purpose of AoE… plus even if that was possible, most AoE attacks take time to cast/travel so whenever your target would be moving, you would miss because you didn’t aim ahead in your target’s path…

Bottom line… impossible and even if it was possible would be a terrible idea most of the times (unless you’re face tanking everything on a guardian)

What the OP is talking about is already an implemented feature (not only possible but already done), so I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Frankly it typically works quite well.

In response to the OP’s question, I don’t believe there is any way to designate your ground-cast targets without the mouse. Much of the mouse-related controls are not configurable in virtually any way. Fast-cast targeting will eliminate the need to click, but you’ll still need to indicate your target area through cursor placement.

Protoavis.9107:

Blueshield.6291:

Protoavis.9107:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server.

Same mechanism but COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GOAL/END RESULT IN MIND.

If ANET do nothing about this their reputation is going to further decline and given the amount of distrust towards them it’s not something they are going to be able to afford.

How do you figure? Both gw2spidy and Zicore’s notifier do nothing beyond tracking market data and providing that information in real-time. Sounds like the same goal to me.

GW2Spidy isn’t real time, it’s in 1 hour intervals…

GW2Spidy just tracks and records data, it’s purpose isn’t to notify in real time.

Spidy’s graphs render in 1 hour intervals, but its market data is accurate in real-time. Evidence of this is that Zicore’s notifier can use gw2spidy’s data to run its notification functions.

DarkSpirit.7046:

To all you “lawyers” and “judges”, who offers your own free interpretation of someone else’s EULA/ToS (and some even added their own stipulations), I suggest you come down from your high chair and find out what ArenaNet really thinks.

If it is a violation then why did ArenaNet allow it? As far as I am concerned if ArenaNet allows it, it is legit, case closed. Too bad if it affects your personal gains in the TP.

Exactly, ANet’s actions (or lack of actions) speak loudly in this case. A thread announcing and dedicated to Zicore’s notifier has been bouncing around the first page of this forum section for something like a week now. When threads discuss, propose, or glorify EULA/TOS violations, the mods tend to lock them down quite rapidly.

SlimGenre.6417:

The best way to handle the Raving Asura fractal is to drink beer, and play with friends on TS. That way the constant falls are funny, not frustrating.

I have a guildmate who tried that once (although it was Jack and Coke). The result was that he fell frequently on his own power, got hit by every single knockback, and made the whole process vastly more frustrating for us.

The problem there was, he didn’t provide alcohol for the rest of us.

Protoavis.9107:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If gw2spidy is ok, then so should this program be ok as they use the same mechanisms to access the trading post server.

Same mechanism but COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GOAL/END RESULT IN MIND.

If ANET do nothing about this their reputation is going to further decline and given the amount of distrust towards them it’s not something they are going to be able to afford.

How do you figure? Both gw2spidy and Zicore’s notifier do nothing beyond tracking market data and providing that information in real-time. Sounds like the same goal to me.

rozcinana.7249:

lunawisp.2378:

It’s a shame that people are doing this. On the other hand, the only safe place to go afk in the ‘world’ is in a major city. If you go afk anywhere else, you’re taking a risk on your character dying in your absence.

Basically what lunawisp said. It’s unfortunate but you shouldn’t afk for too long outside of a city.

That’s a fair point, but the real problem (and purpose of this thread, I believe) is not that the potential to grief exists in the game, but that the Daily Healer encourages griefing behavior by rewarding it.

I can verify that this also happens to me, and in dungeons. Since 28 Jan, I’ve observed the cluster bomb projectile vanish in midair during Fractal runs and HotW (story and explorable), as well as the open world in Orr. It seems to be the only thief projectile to do this.

I might try Fraps-ing a full Fractal run later on to try and catch it in the act.

Avatar Rage.4369:

They do make sounds, at least some do. There is one or two that don’t which kinda bugs me.

They have audible queues for the player casting them (i.e., you, the guardian) but not for teammates.

Ethics.4519:

As of right now it isn’t worth it, because your supply of laurels is ridiculously low. In a year when you have the amulets and everything you want, you could easily grab these boxes to get some ectos or maybe even a precursor.

Also, they hinted in the future that you may get laurels for other achievements, not just daily and monthly.

Even then, it’s pretty hard to make a case that it’s worth the laurels. Narrowing the field of potential drops to a certain class is pointless when the stats on the items obtained are vastly more likely than not to be useless to you. You can get two rare drops in an hour or two just running dungeons/FotM, or hitting dragon bosses in the open world (i.e., playing at endgame). Unless at some later date you can learn 5 laurels in the same amount of time, once per day, it’s unlikely this will ever be “worthwhile.”

The same is true of Mystic Binding Agent – all that they’ve accomplished is to state that the lower-end of currency value per laurel is 25s (the price of a Bottle of Elonian Wine). The possibility of laurels being more plentiful at a latter date doesn’t really change anything.

Awesome.6120:

She is up there with Tybalt for me. I’m not doing claw island on my priory character.

That’s cherry!

Kal Spiro.9745:

Blueshield.6291:

inathanlite.1769:

On the guild roster, there should be a section which shows when a player was last online. This will help find out how active players are in a guild.

This feature was on the first Guild Wars so I’m a little confused as to why it isn’t on this one too (as well as trading).

Anyway, anybody else want this?

I’d add this to the list of guild-related QOL features that are nonsensically absent from a game with “Guild” in the title (intuitive MOTD editing, MOTD in chat, coaltions, officer chat…)

/signed

You understand the the Guild in Guild Wars does not refer to players in any way, right?

That’s funny, because it did back in the original.

inathanlite.1769:

On the guild roster, there should be a section which shows when a player was last online. This will help find out how active players are in a guild.

This feature was on the first Guild Wars so I’m a little confused as to why it isn’t on this one too (as well as trading).

Anyway, anybody else want this?

I’d add this to the list of guild-related QOL features that are nonsensically absent from a game with “Guild” in the title (intuitive MOTD editing, MOTD in chat, coaltions, officer chat…)

/signed

While the wiki makes it abundantly clear that you will lose your infusion-slot upgrade when upgrading an item, this is still problematic mostly due to the stupidly high material value of non-laurel infusions. It’s very easy to conceive of players who jumped the gun and created an infusion immediately before it was apparent that the infusion slot is vacated through the Mystic Forge upgrading system.

Possible fixes would be:

To not use the Mystic Toilet for important recipes like this one. There are enormous limitations to the Forge’s system, and this is an obvious product of one such limitation. Either implement a new system not tied to the Mystic Toilet, or rework the existing system.

Implement a tool to remove infusion slot upgrades. Current methods of doing so are limited to salvaging and transmutation, and neither is applicable to ascended gear. This should not be tied to the gem store. Personally, I’d recommend making it purchasable for Pristine Relics. If you need to remove an infusion-slot upgrade, then you’re almost certainly at Fractal level 10+, and it gives us something to do with those useless relics.

Surferboy.1649:

I observe The Lover since 2 months I know what I am talking about.
The arise at the same time and they get dropped at the same time.
No other offer is dropped when they arise.
And if you don’t believe me, there a some threads with evidence already existing, which proof that precursors prices are controlled by a few rich people. Well maybe not all of them are gold sellers, but that doesn’t make any difference to the problems.

That doesn’t address the logical inconsistency of one player outbidding himself by 1c. It would make vastly more sense to just post 2 buy orders at the same level.

Additionally, it makes a huge difference whether this is being conducted by gold sellers versus normal players. One is an actionable violation of the EULA, the other is legitimate – granted, obnoxious – gameplay.

Surferboy.1649:

@Ursan, if 2 offers which differ 1 copper arise almost at the same time, then they are probably from the same person. Now tell me, why should someone buy 2 shortbows?
Will he equip both? Yeah, that makes sense.
If you can explain me, why someone else than a gold seller should do that, then pls go ahead.

I’m not Ursan, but I feel like tacking this anyway, because it’s easy. Heck, I’ll even allow your gigantic assumption that posts made at the same time must be the same person, and operate under that.

1) Could be building two legendaries at once. I’m effectively doing that with a guildmate now – we both are focusing on different aspects of the non-soulbound components of the Flameseeker Prophecies, and working together to build two at once. Therefore:

1a) A single player might want to make two of the same legendary in order to sell the spare.

1b) Perhaps (you use the example of a bow) this player has both a thief and a ranger, and wants the Dreamer on both.

2) You don’t need to be a gold seller to try to make a profit off of the precursor market. John Smith confirmed earlier in this thread that players have raised the kind of money necessary to buy legendaries without daytrading. I’ll take him at his word on that.

No. As it stands, my guild was barely able to talk me into the purchase at all – though I’m glad they succeeded.

Reasons why I wouldn’t pay a sub fee:

Lack of end-game content. My personal standards for subscription games require more end-game content of higher quality than GW2 brings to the table. I feel that the current status of end-game is laudable for a buy-to-play game, but very sub-par for a sub-to-play one.

Lack of polish. A lot of minor details are wrong with GW2, and there’s often no indication of these being addressed in a timely manner. Without making a laundry list, it’s things like the right-click targetting issue, or the FotM disconnect issue – often these get addressed by a staffer as a “known issue” and then nothing happens or is heard for months. Once again, the level of quality here is well in advance of many buy-to-plays, but below what I would expect from a subscription game.

Surferboy.1649:

well, offers for an ecto that differ by 1 copper is a big difference, because they are sold every second.

Who said anything about ecto? Look at buy orders for virtually any item, be it crafting components, gear dropped as loot, trash items, etc. There’s no shortage of out-of-date buy orders that never get changed.

Even if you apply your logic of “difference of 1s or less in buy orders not changed for days indicates gold seller” to the comparatively limited section of the market you’ve just outlined – items which don’t buy/sell on a several-per-second basis – then you’re implying that gold sellers are trying to control not just the precursor market, but markets for 5c salvage items, markets for cooking components which can no longer be sold, and just about every market in the game.

Surferboy.1649:

oh, i’m speaking about the buying offers, they don’t cost money. In you’re case, you’d be right of course.

Then your rationale is still incredibly flawed. You can look at buy orders for any item, and find a plethora of orders that differ by not only 1 silver, but 1 copper, and which do not get changed. I seriously doubt that gold sellers have a vested interest in the shallot market, though.

Lazy players, people who are offline, etc. versus gold sellers. Why fabricate conspiracies when laziness is a far more probable solution.

goldi.3129:

Olfinbedwere.5049:

How is botting the TP ok and botting mobs isn’t? It’s an unfair advantage over other players. period. Unless they implement these features in-game.

The mentioned tool only provides information. A player must still act based on those informations.
A bot would take automated actions.

Exactly, this is very clearly not a bot.

As for giving unfair advantages (which users in this thread claim the tool does, likening it to combat macros), the tool is much more comparable to a damage meter than a combat macro system.

If we define having information as an unfair advantage, then any third-party applications/information sources become EULA violations. Luckily the wiki is at least officially-sanctioned, so it’s okay. But youtube videos, cartographer sites, character builders, crafting guides, item databases…

Dang, I think we’re all going to get banned under that definition.

Surferboy.1649:

well Ursan, why are there always offers for precursors who differ just by 1 silver or less. If these where different people, there would probably be a fight between these. But the offers stay this way for many days.
That’s why I think these offers are of goldsellers.

I guess you’ve forgotten about the non-refundable listing fee? At precursor prices, that’s not an amount to sneeze at. I for one wouldn’t try to conduct a price war on a 500g precursor when each re-list costs 25g.

Oglaf.1074:

3) AI is not programmed to avoid cliffs so it is open to abuse.

As far as I’m concerned, the dev team lost the ability to use that as an excuse when they made content that requires players to put themselves in compromising, cliffside positions.

This part of a bigger problem with the Daily Healer category, which is that it encourages poor gameplay in general. As you point out, this rewards us for watching players die rather than stepping in and saving them.

The same is true of NPCs – its now more sensible to wait around until a friendly dies, than stepping in and getting merely a kill. The reactions to this are amusing on Tarnished Coast, when a roleplayer encounters you watching some poor kitten get murdered.

On the issue of NPC resuscitation, the achievement creates unnecessary conflict when players “save” friendly NPCs from being killed. The players “saving” the NPCs get called trolled, the players trying to get rezzes get called leeches and/or farmers… it’s unpleasant.

Even the one socially positive aspect of the achievement is not without problem. Many guilds (and charitable, helpful players) have resorted to tossing themselves off of cliffs to help others with the achievement. This is seemingly in line with what ANet’s objectives were (getting players back into unpopulated zones, facilitating community gameplay, etc) because it is unquestionably an example of using teamwork to accomplish one’s goals. However, it was labeled as farming and an exploit, and ANet implemented a cooldown to prevent this from being used (it has failed in that regard, but the point is that ANet tried to shoot down the single positive result of Daily Healer).

I simply cannot believe that ANet fully considered the negative social impacts of the Daily Healer category when they implemented it. I hope that they address this in the future.

This has been suggested in the past, and the ANet staffers to reply usually shoot it down, typically citing concerns with making events, renown hearts, and missions non-completable by knocking enemies into inaccessible locations.

Personally, I’m all for it. The developers deliberately design circumstances where players get knocked off of cliffs (Uncategorized Fractal immediately comes to mind); so it seems a bit trollish to prevent access to the same mechanics for us players. Mission-critical enemies often have permanent stability mechanics already, and those who do not can easily have it added to them.

RoShamBo.2618:

I completely agree. It needs to be kept in the devs’ faces until they offer up some sort of acknowledgement of the issue. Don’t they play their own game? Are they all keyboard turners? I just can’t understand why this is not being understood as a major issue.

I’m quite confused as to why there’s been no meaningful feedback on this issue since it was addressed by a staff member months ago.

This should be a priority issue. /signed

Mr eX.3420:

1. You cannot dodge-roll to avoid the attack because you will fall off the platform, period. The game mechanic all players are supposed to use to avoid attacks is not viable on those tiny platforms.

That’s a valid complaint. It’s pretty easy to jump to another platform to dodge, although I’ve noticed sometimes you’ll collide with the projectile in midair doing so.

Mr eX.3420:

2. The AoE red circle is bigger than most of the platforms, making it very difficult or outright impossible to see depending on where you are standing.

This is one of the most obvious design flaws in FotM, and could be so easily fixed by just modifying the art asset for “red rings” (add “crosshair” lines, concentric circles, globe pattern, anything).
Until this gets fixed (if it ever does), a workaround is to stand on the extreme edge of a platform. This way, if the attack is targeting you, the ring should be partly visible on the platform.

Mr eX.3420:

3. Not all professions can give themselves or the party sufficient evasion, stability, aegis, or reflection/absorption to negate all the attacks. For instance, necros can do none of those things except for self-stability which is tied to a grandmaster trait or elite transformations—try doing a jumping puzzle in Lich Form sometime (hint: you don’t have feet.) Furthermore, the attack is so frequent that eventually even a guardian will have all skills on cooldown.

A valid concern. To my knowledge, only three classes have group projectile reflect/block, and most of the group skills in this regard are on the Guardian. I don’t see an easy way to resolve this without substantial rework of all classes. In other words, this is a problem of content “requiring” a specific class, in a game where the classes are ostensibly largely interchangeable.

Mr eX.3420:

4. The reduced movement speed you have in combat makes jumping to the next/previous platform to avoid the attack more difficult. This is exacerbated by the fact the harpies have a cripple attack and seem to like hitting you with it while you’re in mid-air. I love jumping puzzles (completed Mad King’s Clocktower 8 times) and I still find this tricky—I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to jump puzzle haters.

Yes, the gaps between platforms are no problem with out-of-combat speed, but in-combat speed makes some of these gaps just large enough to be scaled, and only barely. The cripple attack just feels like a developer troll here. If you get hit with it in midair, there’s nothing you can do. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever been hit with the cripple while trying to dodge the knockback attack. I can see how it would happen against multiple harpies at once, though.

Which leads to a severe problem with this section by my reckoning – the aggro range on the harpies. Especially true at the beginning of the Fractal, where harpies directly above you can aggro seemingly before they’re intended to. Then you’re dealing with too many targets, too many knockbacks, and too many cripples.

Mr eX.3420:

From a mechanics perspective, the jumping sections do not work well within the existing combat system because of #1 and #2. From a balance perspective, it’s not fair that specific boons and defensive skills are pretty much required to get through these sections in a reasonable amount of time.

I have to agree, your analysis is pretty solid. Effective completion of this segment currently is too reliant upon very specific, class-oriented mechanics.

runeblade.7514:

We have something like this.

Orrian Jewelry box.

Exactly. Karma remains character-bound, as it should be (seriously, it’s the only character-bound for of currency), but you can convert it into gold and unbound karma, with some losses.

Unless you were talking about total loss-less conversion of karma from one character to another. In which case, no. It’s character-bound for a reason.

Completely agree. I was surprised to find that in a game called Guild Wars 2, the MotD implementation feels very sub-par. My fellow guild officers were all equally struck at how glaringly wrong Achrmaeiad’s “Major issues” are.

Achrmaeiad’s suggested fixes look very solid. /signed

xCrusadentx.2784:

Rally hasn’t gone anywhere, what is the issue?

^^

There’s been no change to rally.

While in general I’m of the opinion of several others in this thread (map completion is map completion, not “PvE only map completion”), I have to say that with the revised server transfer system this is a bit problematic.

Some of the explore points in WvW are nigh-unobtainable depending on which quadrant of the map your server is on. This isn’t a problem in and of itself, except that it’s very possible for servers to retain the same WvW color (and therefore placement) for weeks to months.

Which, again, isn’t a problem alone, except for the fact that it now costs money to transfer servers. And you’d get hit with a double-bill if you wanted to return to your home server.

All of that said, it’s very possible that some of the upcoming WvW changes will address any of the constituent components of the issue above.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

I’ve seen debates about which profession is the overall fastest in sustained movement on other forums (Search doesn’t show anything here, oddly enough). I’m interested in sustained, non-combat movement for map completion. (I’m rolling an alt to go for map completion for various reasons I’ve found with my norn main such as jumping puzzles lol)

For sustained non-combat movement I’d have to say thief. I say that in spite of having used a 100% swiftness uptime ele for several months.

What the thief has going for it are:
Signet of Shadows: 25% passive speed boost (which is really quite comparable to swiftness). Enough said.
Infiltrator’s Arrow on the shortbow: depending on initiative-related traits, this can be used twice or thrice in immediate succession. In addition to being the teleportation skill with the lowest “cooldown” (measured in the amount of time to recover the initiative used – true even while untraited), is astoundingly useful for vertical movement (you can scale up staircases with it by firing at the floor above you – awesome for Cliffside Fractal).
Stealth: the utility of stealth should be immediately apparent. Combat speed is one of the biggest hassles in open-world movement, and stealth is the only surefire way to avoid it. Additionally, stealth can be an enormous time-saver for vistas, skill points, and POIs, especially in zones like Orr (without having counted specifically, I’d estimate off the cuff that about 1/3 of all skill points in Orr are places of power with a high-tier mob guard).
Dodging: on the off chance that stealth somehow fails you, thieves have access to a wide range of traits which enhance dodging (including a trait that refunds endurance after a dodge – effectively giving you 4 dodges instead of 2). Definitely not necessary to overall mobility, but the option is there.

Having played an elementalist, a quick outline of the cons:
Active rather than passive: To maintain 100% swiftness uptime, you will at minimum need to be constantly swapping attunements. This is easy, but tedious compared to a signet.
Traits required: While traits enhance a thief’s mobility, they are definitely not required. Elementalists require certain traits to maintain 100% swiftness uptime. They’re easy traits to pick up, but they’re necessary.
Certain traits must be avoided: You can’t put 15 trait points into Air Magic and reliably maintain mobility. The reason for this is that the Master-level Minor Trait (Electric Discharge – hits foes with a bolt of lightning when attuning to air) will often pull you into combat against enemies you wouldn’t have otherwise aggroed. It’s definitely doable to avoid this trait, but you’ll be excluding the lion’s share of the Air line.

munkiman.3068:

Blueshield.6291:

munkiman.3068:

There may be things there, but Abbaddon is dead and replaced with Komir. Not really forgotten, just dead/gone.

It’s referred to as the “Temple of the Forgotten God” in the story mission, hence the wording.

I realize the wording, i was just saying that the events revolving around him wouldn’t seem to actually involve him like the other temples. This is pure speculation of course, since i’ve not tried anything around that temple.

True, I’ve never seen any manifestation of Abbadon, direct or otherwise, at the temple. That wouldn’t necessarily rule it out as a site for the staff, though, unless there is no legendary there at all.

I agree that it doesn’t seem all that likely.

munkiman.3068:

There may be things there, but Abbaddon is dead and replaced with Komir. Not really forgotten, just dead/gone.

It’s referred to as the “Temple of the Forgotten God” in the story mission, hence the wording.