Guild Wars 2

goldenwing.8473:

Apologies! It was not my intent to take the quote out of context for any type of agenda.

Just pointing to the merged thread where the discussion was occurring and the (official) suggestion that seems to be the best work around at the moment.

Yeah, makes more sense now that I’ve realised I had it backwards. Use the guild bank as the account storage, and then withdraw each character’s ‘share’ of that into the ‘account wallet’ when you play that character.

Are either of the ‘architecture level 1’ / ‘architecture level 2’ upgrades a prerequisite for the Guild Vault research?

Yeah I’m already resigned to having to buy influence (with laurels or gold), I was more just wanting to make sure about the correct research order (so I don’t waste inf on upgrades I don’t need)

Can anyone drop me a link for an article explaining the process of making a personal guild (specifically for a personal guild bank)? Realise I could just set the guild up (which I’m about to do anyway) and muddle through but if there’s a guide that explains the process of influence-farming/researching upgrades etc. then that would simplify matters.

Ah the ingenuity of the internet. Though I think the personal guild bank solution would probably be more workable (using it as a ‘buffer’ for the character you’re playing and keeping track of the per-character gold amounts on paper), this one is sufficiently hilarious to have cheered me up a lot :p

JustTrogdor.7892:

I can understand how for some tracking the amount of money each character earns adds to the game play though. I suppose you could keep a spread sheet and only allocate funds to the character that earned them. I’m kidding. :P

Don’t worry, even if you weren’t kidding it would still be a more professional response than the Anet dev in that other thread :P

I can see the great utility – it’s something that I would probably have ended up doing (via the bank if this update didn’t exist) once my characters were 80 and geared anyway. It’s just the forced element of it I have a problem with.

I would suggest that you deposit your gold in an individual guild bank, save some small amount to start. When you finish that character, record how much they had on a notepad somewhere. Next time you log in as them, deposit all but that amount. (Or withdraw, if you’re below the amount.)

It’s annoying, yes, but it will allow you to keep the correct amount on that character.

Ah, so just have one personal guild bank (ie shared between all my characters), and use that as essentially a ‘buffer’ for the character’s own gold each time I load the character? That’s pretty doable (much more than one personal guild per character which is what I was thinking I’d have to do!), thanks for the suggestion.

Well actually, the dev answer quoted WAS about someone fearing they’d overspend and who wanted the protection of putting most of their gold in the bank.

Ah, well in that case I apologise (indirectly, to the dev who probably won’t see this thread anyway) as my ‘arrogance’ comment was misplaced.

aophts.9862:

Why so much QQ ??

It ruins the idea of RPing separate characters as separate characters. It’s not about ‘spending too much on one character’ as a dev suggested earlier in the thread.

problem is, I have millions in karma saved in liquid form and I don’t know if there is a cap on it.

Anyone know for sure if there is a cap on Karma?

I don’t know whether there’s a cap, but I’ve seen nothing about it automatically ‘drinking’ stored karma bottles and adding them to the new account pool. So even if there is a cap, you could just keep the stored bottles until you use enough karma to have space left within the cap.

Edit: Anyone have suggestions for workarounds? Only one I can think of is a personal guild, but that isn’t really feasible for 8 characters.

Edit 2: In the ‘general discussion’ thread I posted about this (not knowing there was already a PS forum thread) someone explained the personal guild idea to me a little more clearly. Basically you have one personal guild bank, and use that as a ‘buffer’ for the character you’re currently playing. You keep track of per-character gold amounts on paper.

Or (and I’ve just thought) it may actually work better the other way round. Use the guild bank to store your ‘account gold’, keeping track of how much of that belongs to each character. The ‘account wallet’ thus functions exactly like the per-character wallet does at the moment, with the only added faff being depositing and withdrawing each time you change characters.

goldenwing.8473:

Feel free to add to the thread there. You will find other like-minded players have posted there as well.

Overall, the change to store tokens, etcetera by account is wonderful addition.

There are concerns regarding pooled gold. For multiple reasons.

This. The account-wide tokens (dungeon etc.) is magnificent, and even an easy-to-access account wide gold pool would be awesome of it were optional. I’ll take a look at the other thread, cheers.

goldenwing.8473:

All of your gold will be pooled by account.

You will no longer be able to store gold separately on individual characters.

ANet’s response to this is the suggestion that you create a personal guild.

(Per Martin Kerstein): page 5 of thread listed below

It is not as simple as having both, it is something that is within the code and the interaction of multiple different elements of the game. So it might look like an easy thing on the outside – under the hood there is a lot of programming magic going on.

So if you need to have a bankspace to protect yourself from – well – yourself, you have to use the “individual guild” route.

Please see this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/jubilee/Token-Wallet-Thank-you-a-net/first

That “protect yourself from… yourself” quote shows either stunning arrogance or an inability to understand the question (not aimed at you personally btw, but at the dev who said it). It’s not about buying ‘too much’ on one character, it’s about the fact that gold is the most basic measure of character progression (well, until you’re 80 and fully geared anyway). This honestly destroys any idea of roleplay for me, and though I’m not normally prone to such feelings it really would kill off most of the enjoyment I get from GW2. It basically means that your characters have no greater individual identity than the buttons to ‘choose class to spawn as’ in Battlefield or CoD.

Will the new account wallet force all my characters to deposit their gold in a common ‘pool’, rather than being able to progress individually? I don’t want this to be a moan thread – just a question – but it would be game-breaking for me personally if it were compulsory (though an optional ‘deposit collectibles’ type system would be fine).

Anymras.5729:

(Shields override back items as well, but that at least affects every class instead of one.)

Well, except the five out of eight classes that can’t use shields :p

Mammoth.1975:

Force.2841:

Since when did your opinion and a few others become all of us or in your words “we”. There is plenty of people that enjoy this game and have no problem waiting for content. Why didn’t did you just quit the game instead of creating such a stupid post.

Pretty much. If they quadrupled the size of their living world staff, it’s because there’s high participation in living world stuff. Personally I couldn’t give a kitten when people cry over pve or wvw, but both those areas have higher participation than pvp, so I accept that they’ll get more attention. Hell I don’t even give a kitten about 99% of the pvp whines, so whatever I guess.

It says they’ve gone from one team to four, not that they’ve quadrupled the size of the living world staff. It could be four teams of twenty-five instead of one team of one hundred for example.

multivira.7925:

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

There seems to be a misconception that GVGers (particularly at the borderlands windmill) “aren’t affecting the game”. Sorry, but you are. You’re taking up (say, for a 20v20) 40 slots that could otherwise be used by people who want to play WvW. If you want your own private map, buy a custom arena. If you’re too cheap to buy a custom arena, ask Arenanet to introduce a GvG mode.

They are playing WvW. It’s those 60+ people running around in a single blob that are taking away spots in WvW from real WvW players. If they want to run around farming PvE they should go to orr. GvG wouldn’t be necessary then.

See how easy it is to fling random opinions at people? Just let everybody have their fun and stop the whining. And once again, sPvP maps and the whole structure of sPvP has nothing to do with how guilds want to fight eachother. WvW maps are perfect for guilds fighting eachother, guess why they do it there?

They aren’t playing WvW though. Zerglings might be playing WvW less than optimally, but they’re at least playing WvW: taking/defend keeps, camps, towers and so on. They aren’t taking up WvW slots simply because they’re too cheap to pay for a custom arena.

If the GvG is going on when there isn’t a queue for the map in question, I have no problem at all (since the whole point of GvG is equal numbers, they won’t even be risking giving one team an ‘outmanned’ buff).

There seems to be a misconception that GVGers (particularly at the borderlands windmill) “aren’t affecting the game”. Sorry, but you are. You’re taking up (say, for a 20v20) 40 slots that could otherwise be used by people who want to play WvW. If you want your own private map, buy a custom arena. If you’re too cheap to buy a custom arena, ask Arenanet to introduce a GvG mode.

Jayne.9251:

Get out there for the fights. Ignore the score. WvW is about challenging you to improve, and you can’t do that hiding in towers or keeps, or complaining about who you’re up against. Just pick who you want to hit, give it your best shot, and walk away laughing.

Of course it isn’t about the score. But when you’re a server with a daytime population of 30-40 per map facing a server with a daytime population of 70-80 per map, it’s difficult for the fights to be fun. The old system, with servers facing skill-matched opponents, was far more enjoyable than this kitten-brained mess.

ShawnBuzu.8045:

Why is Orr so underpopulated these days? Is every player seriously in it for the karma and gold? What happened to just playing for fun?

Orr was never overplayed because it was any more (or less) fun than the rest of GW2, but rather because (before the, very welcome, adjustment to rewards for downlevelled areas) it was the only place you could get level-appropriate rewards.

XGhoul.7426:

Glad they got rid of magic find (see posts that were made a long time ago) since it basically meant your party was carrying you on dungeon runs because they weren’t being done effectively by having 1-2 ppl running full MF while the rest up the group picks up the slack running normal gear.

Why should an entire game mechanic be taken away from players just to suit the dungeon-speedrunning minority? Ask people to ping their gear before you start if it bothers you that much that someone might have +3% magic find instead of +12 vitality.

Mkalafut.1273:

What? Did we read the same blog? How is anything being taken away from you? You’re getting free magic find as an account bonus, how is that better than sacrificing stats on gear?

Some people will complain about anything facepalm…

The magic find runes that they paid 2-3g each for, the magic find Ascended trinkets they paid 50 laurels each for, etc. are all being taken away from them.

Chopps.5047:

Maybe you can convince me but I’d hate to not have the option to run from a phastasm mesmer. Mesmer with high speed sounds likely OP IMHO. Convince me otherwise.

But you don’t have the option to run from (for example) a full zerk D/D elementalist, or a Heartseeker thief, or any of a number of other great 1v1 builds.

John Smith.4610:

The exchange is far from a mystery, if you take what you know of how it works, and applying knowledge of MMO life cycles in both game and economy, everything you want to know becomes pretty clear.

To be fair though, he isn’t saying it’s mysterious or difficult to understand. He’s saying that it’s terrible game design. Whether one agrees with that or not is, of course, a different matter.

Malevil.2104:

Oh and u can buy ascended gear and infusions from WsW laurel merchant too : 25 laurels + 250 badges for ring – yea something that is ’ REALLY HARD ’ to get if you have problem with fractals …

So rather than getting the items to drop as Fractal players do (and as WvW players were supposed to be able to do six months ago), we get one item a month as a consolation prize?

zeromius.1604:

For example, the best gear in the game can be crafted so that you would never need to set foot in a dungeon if you didn’t want to. So now the playing field for drops will be evened out as well. In the long run we might actually see a more stable market.

No it can’t. The best gear in the game requires an account-bound item which is only available from Fractals. There were supposed to be ascended item drops in WvW and (I think) PvE by January, but we’re still waiting on those unfortunately.

I mainly play WvW, so ascended gear doesn’t bother me as much as it might bother a dungeon/fractals etc. player. Basically most of my GW2 play is about tactics, about picking fights carefully, and if the zerg decides that I’m its next snack then the 5% or so boost compared to Exotics isn’t going to save me :P

Darkdanjal

walking in LA has never been for me like wow you LOOK awesome or have an awesome TITLE because they are easily to get, both gear and titles.

If you want a grind-based title then go to WvW. To get the ‘Yakslapper’ title, for example, you’d have to do nothing but kill Dolyaks for about two years.

HawkMeister.4758:

Running CoF endlessly to buy stuff from the market or other Dungeons for their specific gear.
Orr´s karma gear is actually the only exception to the grind.

True, though with CoF (assuming multiple paths, and not just p1 farming) the player at least has the choice of whether to do 3 runs/day to get the grind over with quicker, or 1 run/day to make it less irritating to do. Of course the simpler solution would have been for Anet to honour their pre-release pledge that excessive levels of grinding would not be necessary for gameplay advantages (it would only grant prestige/skins etc. as in GW1), but I think that promise is in too many pieces already for us to put much faith in it.

So long as I can still use my Yakkington’s Ring and Amulet of the Traveller (which are more for RP value than the MF bonus) I’ll be reasonably happy. We managed fine in GW1 without magic find boosts, and if this change means they’re finally fixing the broken loot system (which MF was only ever an attempt to redress) then it’ll be a good thing overall.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

It seems one part of the player base that complained enough about MF has gotten their way.

It’s nothing to do with the playerbase. They’re just annoyed that nobody was buying their cash shop MF cheats.

ArchonWing.9480:

You don’t solve the problem by killing zerker. People just bandwagon to the next fotm.

What you need to do is somehow find a way to make toughness and vit and healing power help. I’m thinking of something endurance related but it could be hard to balance.

Though tbh, if I wanted to be “forced” into anything, zerker isn’t too awful since that makes the pace faster and forces you to dodge more. Problem is when this feels like the only pace.

Maybe there could be different emphases in each dungeon? Maybe have a DPS dungeon, a condition damage dungeon and so on? I’m thinking specifically of the different areas of the Underworld and FoW in GW1: you had some with heavy enchantment removal, others with lots of snares, and so on.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Admittedly, I do miss the days where I could walk up to a vendor in KC, or Droks and craft a base look of max armor. After which, I could seek out and craft the other ‘looks’ as I felt like it. It was much simpler in GW1.

They have to sell those cash shop mf boosts and gems-to-gold cheats somehow.

Malevi

How the hell you want to get highest rank of gear to be satisfied ?

By playing content other than Fractals? We’re still waiting for the Ascended drops in WvW that were supposed to be launched in January, for example.

Surbrus.6942:

The only valid use of MF is if you are being a leech, letting other people kill the enemies for you, and simply tagging them. These leeches are bad for the group in some events where a champion or some such might scale up to account for more players being in the fight, even though some of them aren’t contributing to chipping away that scaled up HP pool.

So why don’t we ban engineers/healing support guardians/etc. from events too? Like MF users, they’re not contributing as much damage as the noble zerked 1-spammers.

kokiman.2364:

What is so fun about farming? I really don’t get it.

It’s a way to get the money for decent gear without having to grind boring Fractals.

Edit: Of course lots of people love Fractals, but that’s the attraction: it’s a way of getting money without grinding fractals/dungeons.

Villious.8530:

I’ve played a Necromancer, Elementalist, Thief and Ranger. I’m now leveling a Mesmer, and the movement speed compared to the others is painfully slow. In order to get swiftness, you’re locked into using a focus.

Are you suggesting that Anet got the default run speed in this game badly wrong, and that the ‘signets of running properly’ are just a band-aid to try and mask the problem?

Zeno.8493:

I honestly wonder if they will admit how bad they messed up matchmaking this time.

They have. In the big thread, someone from Anet said (and I paraphrase) “We know it’s awful, but we’re still going to leave it as it is because we know best”.

Does firing the treb skill again require you to lift the key, or can you just hold it down? Might just have put a weight on his 2 key and left?

SleepingDragon.1596:

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

Ending free transfers (and banning new-transfers from wvw for a week) sorted the stacking problem.

Actually I think the opposite is true. Ending free transfers created worst stacking than ever before. With free transfers, people will stack onto servers to force those who wants competition and those who wants to play onto other servers. The queues will be unbearable and thus forces people to move away. Now with paid transfers, people want to only spend their gold/gems to transfer into a server that is guaranteed to win even though they know they are super-stacked. Most guilds loves to go to a server who they can out-blob another server. Their mentality is hit 1 key repeatedly and close eyes since any other skills probably won’t activate. Wake up and see badges and other loots.

Maybe they need to be stricter then? Still allow server transfers, but you have to play on your old server’s wvw team for a month?

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

except stale matchups, there is problem of population. we still didnt get the fix for that.

so now we have randomized matchups so no more stale, but its still not balanced population vise…

Surely with all the metrics Arenanet have, a solution could be found to the population issue? Maybe feed population into rating in some way, measuring how many ‘active’ WvW players a server has (say at least an hour a week) and how many ‘very active’ WvW players a server has (say aty least ten hours a week). Of course that also means going back to matching servers on skill rating, rather than the randomised system which produces pointless wipeout weeks 80% of the time.

laquito.5269:

As of now, I’m a bit dissappointed tbh. I was really looking forward to some nice small scale playing, but the only thing I’ve seen by now is mostly zergplay. :|

OT: Is Kami still commanding and Avlis still playing @ FSP? I remember them from my time there

Zerg play can actually be good fun, and tactically challenging, so long as the servers are reasonably balanced and both have roughly similar zergs. It’s one of the reasons we need to get rid of this random matchup nonsense. Last week for example was mainly boring (because DL and RoF had much lower WvW populations than us) but on the occasions (mainly overnight) where roughly equal groups of Gandara and DL faced each other it was much better fun, with much more scope for good commanders to tip the balance.

So fewer people will be taking up WvW slots to play a jumping puzzle that shouldn’t even be there? Good. One of the few sane changes Anet have made to WvW recently

The solution to deserted servers/unbalanced matches is for Anet to admit defeat and scrap the random matchup nonsense. It’s failed guys, get over it. Outmanned itself works fine as it is.

Secondly Anet is not to blame for these lame match ups, most servers have about the same population

Anet are to blame for the lame match ups. The match ups were usually fine until they decided to break the skill-based matching.

Refund everyone, then make them non-gold related. Perhaps require a certain World vs World rank? The number of foul-mouthed know-nothings who have commander doritos on Gandara seems to have gone up recently. One the other day didn’t even know the difference between Bay and Hills for goodness sake!

LilMcGinley.3890:

Players created this problem by stacking servers and are now asking ANet to fix something we broke.

Ending free transfers (and banning new-transfers from wvw for a week) sorted the stacking problem. Then Anet, for reasons I still can’t fathom, decided to utterly break the matching system. Being unpaid alpha-testers for a product we’ve paid for is starting to wear a little thin IMHO.

They don’t need new WvW titles, they just need to fix the existing ones. To get the ‘Yakslapper’ one for example, you’d need to do nothing but kill Dolyaks for about three years.

mrmadhaze.8706:

People wants to play without playing.

In next patch we will see:
- Autoevents: they starts and then they finish. Ofc you win.
- Jumping Puzzle: Just jump baby. A magic crates will happears at you feet
- World vs Door: The Lord gives you the tower’s keys, then you can dinner with the enemy. Including strippers. No AC’s allowed. They stink.
- Bash the thieves! Becouse every learn to play issue needs his scapegoat! (pegi18+)
- New spvp map: try the new chat while holded to the ground. You can’t move. Or fall!
- Living story: added new spoiler button. You can press and discover how finish the story. Audiobook avaiable.

No. People just want to get PvE achievements without having to play Anet’s broken PvP jumping puzzle.

stinkypants.8419:

ANet said they wanted the new rating system to be in play for a bit before they decided if it was working or not… I’m just curious how long that is.

Honestly, I don’t think the matches up we’ve had have been too bad, but given all the complaining I see I don’t know if that’s just me, or if the rest of CD feels that way as well.

Ours (Gandara) have been pretty terrible. Either we’re up against a server with far fewer people than us who aren’t much opposition (like last week) or we’re getting steamrollered (like this week). Every single week since the new matching system has been one of the two (not a single ‘fair fight’ in how many months?). Neither is much fun.

How many more weeks of 2/3 of each matchup not playing much will it take for Anet to learn that unbalanced matchups are a bug, not a feature?

Conan.8046:

A musket is not a rifle

Actually some of them are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle_musket

So basically you bought a big stack of these prior to the end of the event, to try and price-gouge them on the trading post later, and are upset that Anet made them easy to acquire?

Blame the map travel fees. If people could zip from one end of the map to the other without paying the fee, then they could be at most events instantly rather than doing the wvw → lions arch → racial capital → event fandango.

Everflame.1305:

No, it’s not 1000, or even 10,000, it’s100,000 drinks. Contrary to what they said at launch, it just seems like Anet is making this game more and more of a grind, at the expense of the fun. I still think it’s the best mmo around, but things like this are just frustrating. Everyone enjoys finding the little loopholes and tricks. It’s a valid part of the game as long as it doesn’t give anyone an advantage over another player or cause imbalance.

The WvW ones are worse. To get the “Yakslapper” title for example, you’d have to do nothing but hunt caravans in WvW for three years.

Ursan.7846:

Are normal foods like Omnom Ghosts P2W? They provide stats too (More specific stats too, instead of all-around.) Are Runes of the Divinity P2W? They are exorbitantly expensive, and people can gain gold through purchase of Gems.

But the dragon cakes (unlike Omnomberry Bars or whatever) can only be acquired through the gemstore whether directly – by buying it yourself – or indirectly by acquiring it through however many degrees of separation from someone else who bought it from the gemstore.

If it was disabled in WvW, or the recipe was acquirable as a random drop (obviously a very rare one), then I wouldn’t have a problem.

In short: normal in-game stat boosts, which you can increase your chance of getting through the gemstore, are fine. Stat boosts which are exclusive to the gemstore are p2w.

lekyii.9856:

“The Tome of Knowledge has been added as a rare drop from Black Lion Chests. Using the Tome of Knowledge will grant the character one level and all associated benefits. If a level 80 character uses the tome, they will gain a skill point.”

yep now is pay to win.

The Dragon Cake is awfully close to pay-to-win, but the Tome of Knowledge is definitely not. It’s no different from buying gold with gems, and then using that gold to level a crafting profession. In fact it’s less pay to win than that, because the Dragon Cake recipe is not a guaranteed drop.

Mainly through competitive gameplay types?

Well the magic find boost gets the RNG purchaser an advantage on the trading post, and the stat boosts give them an advantage in combat with other players in wvw.

Still happening. World vs World inaccessible from 6pm to 12am every night. Taking people’s money and then not providing enough servers for them to access the product they paid for: are Arenanet pitching for an EA takeover or something?

Woljnir.7810:

Terms and Conditions folks. Anet could put in there “If we wake up and feel like banning someone, it might be you” and if you agree to terms and conditions, you can’t complain about one kitten thing. This game is Anet’s property, they can set any rules they want.

Not quite. There are Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations in the EU, and probably similar laws in some US jurisdictions. While it’s true that they are not covered by ‘free speech’ laws (which restrict governments, not private individuals or corporations), it isn’t quite true that “they can set any rules they want”.