Guild Wars 2

2/10
I would elaborate, but i just don’t feel like re-stating what is already being said.

Anyone else on the west coast playing HoT?

Hi i checked your schedule.
Looks like you guys are playing Pacific time zone?

Hi all,
I am a returning player coming back for HoT.
Looking for a guild interested in playing Raids and PVE primarily but am not adverse to a bit of WvW as well.
I am currently a member of a great guild, however they are active primarily during EST hours and normally logging off just as im logging on.
Soooooo, i am looking for good peeps on a “west coast is the best coast” schedule!
My home server is TC so a server match would be ideal.
However, i am ok with making a server hop for WvW if I find a good fit!
thanks!

Shiren.9532:

This is nonsense.

They aren’t leaving dungeons alone, the issue is they are doing the opposite. It requires resources to change dungeon reward incentives, it costs nothing to leave them as is.

Did you even read the blog post? Do you understand what people are talking about? This has nothing to do with ArenaNet’s resources.

Lol, did you read the blog post? Obviously not, because if you had then you wouldn’t be making these statements.
Also, yes i possess basic reading comprehension skills and know exactly what people are talking about. This entire conversation has NOTHING to do with the dungeon content. The dungeons are not going away, they are simply not being actively developed at this time in lieu of development in other areas of the game. This conversation is about the changes to rewards.
Do you understand the basic ideas of resource management and active development? Adjusting rewards is a one time change. Actively supporting, developing and promoting content is a different thing entirely.
Le sigh, i was going to rant further but then i re-read your response and decided to just stop here. Your 5 sentences manage to convey such an immense and complete lack of understanding, compounded with a deep sense of self entitlement. I just can’t…

vespers.1759:

Really? because it seems to me Anet has been great at putting resources into content that is TEMPORARY and never to be seen again.

LS is a joke. They could be putting those dev resources into permanent content, but nope. Also they’re canning the old Borderlands WvW map… because reasons?

explain to me how that is a good use of resources.

-“LS is a joke”
Ok, so this is definitely a subjective statement. The entire concept behind the “Living Story/Living World” drives the transient nature of this content. More importantly, these concepts are CORE to Anet’s strategy for GW2 and have been clearly outlined since well before launch. I would even say that the very ideas expressed in these CORE game concepts are what excited many people into trying the game in the first place. Personal opinion about the “quality” of this content is irrelevant.

-“They could be putting those dev resources into permanent content”
They ARE putting dev resources into permanent content: Raids, Fractals, Zones (several given to us THROUGH the LS content) oh and everything else that comes with a brand spanking new expac…

-“explain to me how that is a good use of resources.”
I feel like answering this would be redundant at this point.

As a side note, i am not trying to start a debate here. just offering a different point of view

Creating, developing and supporting content requires resources.
Resources are finite.
GW2 already does more to support and maintain relevance on old content than any other mmo i’ve played.
This sounds like a necessary sacrifice.
Unless of course we are all willing to start paying a sub so that we can support the extra staff required to maintain old content indefinitely. No? Yeah, i didn’t think so…

For a bit of perspective, ponder the following;
“Other” mmo’s already charge subscription fees and yet still simply leave old content to rot AS SOON as the new content drops.
I’d say our devs are working pretty kitten hard to allow us to keep as much of our cake as possible while eating it too…

Wow, the amount of threads popping up about this is bananas.
We have like zero details pertaining to the specifics of these changes, so the “knee-jerk” reaction may be a little premature.
Furthermore, the Xpac is going to introduce HUGE economic changes and we have NO CLUE as to how all of this is going to contribute to the massive change that is coming to our economy. To that effect, i for one believe with full confidence that Anet is just as concerned about a healthy economy as we are, so lets keep that in perspective.
I mean lets be reasonable here. Currently, the dungeons are a place where even the most ill equipped and underprepared players can easily go and farm MASSIVE amounts of 100% liquid currency. I guarantee that this is not working as intended and is overall not even remotely healthy for economic stability.
Lastly, Anet is very transparently moving away from the existing dungeons in lieu of creating and supporting the new content. How is this bad? I can only speak for myself, but a quick read through these forums will paint a pretty clear picture of the overwhelming community opinion on the existing dungeon content. Lets face it, it’s broken and has been for quite some time. As a community we have complained very thoroughly and it appears as though Anet has listened and are attempting to give us EXACTLY what we’ve been asking for. I for one am pretty stoked about that.

And lastly, here’s my jab… If a player is that concerned about generating piles of cash with relatively no effort, well there’s still the gem store…

OMG i can’t support this enough.
The UI needs not only DPS/Healing/Buff monitoring tools but also things like MUCH better player and enemy health monitoring, a more robust target frame in general and (I know i’ll take a raft of abuse for this) CAST BARS!
I mean lets be honest, how often can you actually see an enemies “tell” animations through the constant cloud of particle effects?
IMHO These are ESSENTIAL tools for high level content designed around team dynamics.
At this point, if we are finally getting raids, i don’t even consider these tools as option as optional, but essential.

Arctarius.2649:

Someone posted to remove enrage timers from raids.. please do not listen to him or anyone else agreeing with him. If you want to continue producing good pve content it is required to have enrage. If there is no enrage mechanic everyone will just build the heaviest unkillable specs in the game and slowly whittle the bosses down with zero effort and allot of time. I personally like a challenge, im tired of “Face-Roll 2” I want the raids to remain hard. I love what you guys are doing and for the people complaining about berserker? there will always be people running it. Raids require DPS just as much as they require tanks and heals. its more about strategy than your kitten gear build. If people really want a fix on damage output for raids..look at Engi’s and their insane condition dmg.. mabey it will finally make for a nice fat nerf for them in pvp too. (Love: a thief with no condi cleanse..)

^^This +R9K

Doesn’t the fact that it’s RNG completely negate anything meaningful that would otherwise be derived from your statistics? IE: lets say that there is a hard 16% chance that you get a drop. You can roll on that chance a billion times, however, your chance will always be 16%. Or maybe im wrong, which in retrospect is probably more likely… lol

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

FWIW, i really like the idea of having to “dig” into your party comp, skills etc in order to traverse the raid. GW2 has a fracking amazing and fun build system. It’s really encouraging to see that it’s being utilized as a tool to design difficult and diverse challenges for us to conquer. I look forward to the conversations with guildies as we work together to build the most effective team to tackle a specific boss’s or room’s mechanics!

First off, CONGRATS!

And secondly,

Wow, that boss fell quick…

skullmount.1758:

Except we shouldn’t be punished for having a small/low player count server. These events shouldn’t require dedicated guilds on only certain servers. These events (Teq/Wurm) should scale to the number of players participating. And what about the players that do want to do it, but play at a time when there’s hardly anyone on?

These are actually pretty good points and I agree on some levels. While i don’t feel like anyone is being “punished” per say, I will definitely admit that you need a LOT of players to finish this stuff. This has pro and cons of course. I feel like all of the issues you mentioned are somewhat related and could be addressed with some sort of tweak on the open world idea. I don’t necessarily want to drop the “instance” bomb. But maybe open instancing? Maybe something where you could see instance queues in looking for group. When your queue fills up, the encounter starts. It could even use the overflow system that’s already in place, just with another layer that allows a level of control over it. Heck, taking it even further they could possibly allow guilds like TTS or whatever to start private instance queues so they can funnel large numbers of guild members in etc. Then even allow the option to turn the queue public once they get all of their members in.
IMHO the content is a LOT of fun. But a better system of implementation i fell would go a long way towards making it a better experience for everyone.

“…only a Minority of the players enjoy this kind of stuff…”
I have to respectfully disagree, this is awesome content. The encounters are epic in scope, the community of people around them is awesome, (I was playing the marionette encounter last night with somewhere around 100 ppl) and they are just a blast to play. If you don’t want to play them, that’s totally ok of course. Just like in other games if you don’t want to raid, don’t raid. This game is huge, there is tons of stuff to do. And the best part is, all of the content is easily accessible to all players. So play the stuff you like. But if I were to call for the removal of an entire type of content just because I didn’t like it, well I would be being short sighted and quite frankly kind of narcissistic.

Necros, Rangers and Engineers.

Karalaza.6021:

A leaderboard for pve stuff… I don’t get it :p

I could possibly understand it if there was anything “really” difficult or challenging in GW2 PVE. But, the bottom line is, even the “toughest” dungeon encounters are nothing more than stack and dodge at best.
On a related note, everyone is up in arms about the agony changes. But have we even stopped to think about how lazy the entire idea of agony is? This is supposed to be the top tier end game content for GW2. But instead of hardmode encounters with interesting mechanics, you get a ridiculous debuff that can only be countered passively with gear. Don’t get me wrong, Im all for gear requirements. I think they are interesting and add a bit of flavor to end game stuff. Heck i would like to see more of that sort of thing. On top of that, imho it would be cool if we had to go do activity A to acquire the gear to complete activity B. You know, spice it up a bit. But i digress. Im just saying there is huge vacuum in end game content when it comes to interesting and challenging encounters. Agony is not the answer, it’s part of the answer, but there needs to be more to it.
[/rant]

"";Chrispy.5641:

Everything Chrispy said…

This^^

run into each one of the lightning things. one will teleport you to the other side of the vines. the other two will hurt you.

Edit: Also I wonder if MF has a factor on the drop rate. In about 2-3 hours or so of running around in there (and doing only 3-4 chambers where I got keys twice) I had enough for a full key (not counting the free one you get in the mail) and then about 2-3 of green, 1-2 blue, and 0 pink left over. Oh and then a key of your choice from finishing the “story” instance of the tower. I have about ~105% MF and was using some food for most of my time running around. I did notice getting a good amount of rares (about 6) and exotics (1 from drop, 1 from the ~10 or so champ bags I got) dropping inside the tower too.

I personally doubt that magic find has any effect on anything. Which is probably why they removed it from gear stats. If it ever was intended to actually increase drop rates, I think Anet’s lack of any discernable explanation on the subject is testament to the fact that, even they have NO IDEA if/how it actually works.

There is a meter to indicate progress.
Therefore, it is apparently entirely dependent on us and how many times we inject the anti-toxin. (If this is ACTUALLY the case, then that is freaking awesome btw).
So hypothetically, if we all just stopped doing the final instance then the tower would remain forever…
But honestly, i want kessex hills back. (It’s one of the nicest zones in game IMHO) So, lets rock that tower!

Evans.6347:

Tri-chest. Which requires three keys, for which you can also barter with Marjory.
And then there happen to be three weapons wielded by Marjory and her little helper Kashmere which have been found in the game data.

Coincidence?

I REALLY hope that you are right about this. It would be awesome to be able to actually participate in challenging content to receive unique rewards related to said content.

The only thing they can do is give us unique rewards I guess.

Unique items related to the content are gem store only! silly, what were you thinking?

Isn’t this good news? I have destroyed thousands of piles of bloodstone dust…

Just crafted the recipe last night. Talk about a boring grind. I don’t mind a grind, but at least give me a long ridiculous and nearly impossible quest chain to complete. At least that way i feel like I’ve accomplished something. Honestly, I am getting bored with “Farm Wars 2”. Everything in this game basically comes down to, grind gold, buy from TP. I mean, i just crafted the gift of souls, and honestly i feel no sense of accomplishment. Lame.

Buy it off of the TP

Unfortunately, this is the correct answer. This game has literally devolved into “zerg farm for gold, buy from trading post.” Rinse, repeat.

Or, (and i know this is going to sound crazy) instead of being any form of gem store purchase. You could actually obtain them by, wait for it… Playing the content?
/rant

++++++++1
agreed, adds a LOT of diversity and potential to combat and encounters

wat is with these threads? i don’t get it. Marjory and Kashmeer are, imho, two of the best characters in the entire game. Why cant we appreciate good characters when we get them?

I will not stand idly by while people trash talk marjory and/or lady kashmeer! They are the best characters in the game! Marjory is necro, so of course she knows about poison. Kashmeer is a mesmer, so she’s totally hip to illusions and whatnot.
In all seriousness though, they are my favorite 2 characters and I do feel like they make sense. I hope we see a LOT more of them.
Also, Girl Power FTMFW!!!

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! cough, cough, AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Who said anything in this thread about grinding?
kitten , NM first post… my bad

OMG agreed! whole heartedly. I mean really, look at halloween. Only way to obtain mats for creating EXISTING skins is via trading post which is a round about way of pushing people towards gems. Fine whatever, we got new skins for this year anyway! wait, claim tickets only? oh, so again buy gems! Now we have the “Toxic Alliance” (don’t even get me started on how corny these lame alliances are. or about how un-freaking acceptable it is that the Krait are making an alliance with anyone…) But hey new armor, Sweet! Wait, gems? again? really? Oh, and the new weapon skins? Gems Gems Gems! kittening REALLY!?!? I spend more money on gems than I would a subscription fee. Heck, I would rather pay a sub fee and actually have cool rewards that i can obtain by, i dunno, PLAYING THE GAME! Wat freaking reason does a player have to continue logging in when the game is basically devolving into, swipe credit card, collect trinkets, wait 2 weeks, swipe credit card again.
I am really starting to fall out of love with this game. More and more every single patch, my eyes start wandering to possible alternatives.

I am still holding out hope that there is more to halloween…

I half agree with both arguments in this thread. As far as the 20 slot pale? That should have been cheaper. Maybe like 1 cob or something. The mini? could have been a little cheaper, but it’s also a collectable and i can see them wanting to make it rare. The halloween weapon skins? well it took me a while to come around but i think they are right where they need to be as far as the cost goes. If they were any easier, then they would have not prestige and would be worthless.
TLDR: Halloween pale should have been the “easy” item that everyone could earn. The other items are pretty fairly priced

i see what you did there

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Snip…

Yeah, when put in that perspective they are definitely not the “good” guys. But aren’t we all (societies/races/etc) only after our own self interest at the end of the day?

zwierz.9012:

Snip…

Agreed, whole heartedly. I have never played the original, but I have been catching up on the lore. And i have to say, the lore and stories are AWESOME. Makes me wonder just what the heck is the deal with the living story.

Psycho Robot.7835:

BoogerSammich.7189:

I have been farming that stupid labrynth as much as possible in an “attempt” to collect the candy corn needed to create one of the halloween gifts. I can definitely confirm that people are seriously burnt out. I am on TC so we still get decent zergs, but it’s often the same core group of us all farming for the same reason. And we are burnt… Mindlessly running the loop, chatting in map chap just trying to pass the time while we spam liche and viscount for the bazillionth time…
The worst part is, I LOVED halloween last year. I was so sad to see it go. But this year? Even the thought of having to go back into that labrynth to farm more candy corn makes me want to pull my hair out.

why on earth are you attempting to collect candy corn to make the gift recipe? Just sell all the candy corn you get and buy the finished weapon. It’ll be WAY cheaper. And for that matter, leave the labyrinth and go to frostgorge sound.

You are definitely correct about that. BUT, that’s not really how i wanted to acquire the weapon. I don’t mind picking up the last of the mats on the TP but outright buying the weapon just completely takes the fun out of it for me. I mean, if i were to just buy everything that i wanted, then what would i be working towards you know? It may seem a bit weird, but these are the kinds of things that just generally give me a goal and something to work towards. They make the game fun for me. I do the little role play in my head or whatever, do my little fantasy questing, forge my weapon, feel like a general kitten, show it off to my guildies, run around LA flaunting it, and just generally feel good about it LOL. Maybe it’s corny, i dunno.

So i just watched the wooden potatoes video about the white mantle, mursaat and khilbron. If the mursaat were trying to keep the titans locked in the realm of torment, does that mean that they were not really “evil”?
I get the impression that they were just ruthlessly trying to accomplish this goal, which just so happened to involve murdering scores of humans.
Also, khilbron was a kitten.

Rainshine.5493:

Korossive.7085:

I never use the mini’s that get auto-cleared into the bank and always need to manually be told to spawn.

Just an FYI, invisible bags and lockboxes will “hide” your minis from the “deposit all collectibles” function. I have one on every toon I use a mini on for that reason alone.

Completely off topic, but when are we going to get a minis slot added to hero panel?
Once that happens, I imagine many people (myself included) would be much more interested in using minis.

were you actually partied together?

Redenaz.8631:

Goobers.8509:

So because they made a way for players to convert gold into gems, we have to suffer? If they are relying on gem store revenue to keep thisgame going that wasn’t a wise decision. The reason the gem prices are at an all time high is because they want it this way. They want us to see that buying gems with dollars is the quicker route. Not a very smart move since this isn’t a free to play game. The only thing I’m seeing is a knife being shoved into the heart of guild wars. I’ll rant on more later after I get some sleep

As I explained, the fact that you can pay cash for these items generally doesn’t matter, because even if you do pay cash, it’s cheaper to buy them directly off the Trading Post than via the “upgrade candy” mechanic, which negates the usefulness of the upgrade mechanic regardless of how much gold you have. The issue isn’t merely “the prices are too high;” the prices are too high compared to existing ways to get the same items, whether you farm gold or buy it with gems.

The only exceptions are Mini Bloody Prince and Mini Carlotta, since candy corn cobs are the only way to get them. For everything else, though, Sonder the Seller is just a redundant, overpriced way to get the same items.

^^This, sort of. The only caveat is the fact that you can save yourself a significant amount of gold by farming as much candy corn as possible. (Don’t even bother trying to farm for the other upgraded items as apparently they drop about as frequently as precursors)

How you do it is up to you. My point is that a lot of people in this thread seem to think they need to do it ASAP and so have to either burn themselves out farming continuously or spend a small fortune buying gems to convert to gold and since the merchant is permanent that’s not the case.

Maybe true for the candy corn. But the upgraded mats for the weapon recipes are only available until the end of halloween. So we do indeed need to acquire them ASAP. IMO, the entire halloween event this year was carefully designed to drive us to gem purchases. This sort of move leave a HORRIBLE taste in my mouth. I buy gems just about every month. But not for this sort of thing.

I have ~4000… I have farmed the labrynth, A LOT. and quite honestly, i literally have to drag myself in there at this point. I have come to kittening HATE this kitten content. Last year, I loved it…

I have been farming that stupid labrynth as much as possible in an “attempt” to collect the candy corn needed to create one of the halloween gifts. I can definitely confirm that people are seriously burnt out. I am on TC so we still get decent zergs, but it’s often the same core group of us all farming for the same reason. And we are burnt… Mindlessly running the loop, chatting in map chap just trying to pass the time while we spam liche and viscount for the bazillionth time…
The worst part is, I LOVED halloween last year. I was so sad to see it go. But this year? Even the thought of having to go back into that labrynth to farm more candy corn makes me want to pull my hair out.

here here. Lunatic Inquisition is booooooring… RR was awesome!

what’s with the halloween mat requirements?

I would ignore them. as long as you are aware of the candy pools. I always stack because i play a dagger necro so i get my highest DPS with the melee dagger. But i find that if I switch to staff and range the whole fight then i can stay on my feet the entire time. But in melee, you will frequently go down from his huge melee DPS spikes.

Here is my tinfoil hat theory behind the entire halloween “mats gate” situation. In two words, the Gem Store… That’s right, look at the amounts of materials required. Look at the drop rates, and look at the available activities where these mats can be aquired. HUGE cost, low drop rate and a very limited set of activities to participate in to acquire said items. (they even removed activities that were present last year). This all paints a pretty clear picture. We were NEVER expected to be able to actually acquire these mats/items. We are meant to buy them. Or, more accurately we are meant to buy gems, convert gems to gold, and then buy them. Plain and simple.
Well guess what? I don’t want to buy the items. That is not fun. I buy QOL items, or black lion keys, transmutation crystals, etc. Every month, i spend ~$20 on the gem store, simply because I want to support the game. But if everything is buy only, then what am i playing for? what am i working towards? what reason do i have to continue to log in, when logging in and acquiring the cool new gear is deliberately reduced to a swipe of the credit card? The simple answer? That leaves no reason to log in.

Thanks for the reply! Also, I found this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/bam/The-crossing-and-other-Halloween-weapons/first#post3030062
which corroborates what you stated. This makes much more sense than disabling ALL of the recipes after the event.

Looks like someone copied/pasted incorrect info into the wiki…