Guild Wars 2

I don’t exactly avoid ascended gear. I like it. And I hope I get some eventually.

But I would not bend backwards for it. If I can get some for laurels, it’s fine. If not: exotic is good enough for my purposes.

It is a great progress. Of course it would be better not to have the divide between NA and EU, but it is better than it is now.

Personally I don’t care about that division but I can imagine how it hurts others – and I remember that I actually did have NA friends in another MMO I played (I am European). I hope ArenaNet will solve this remaining problem eventually.

I admit I am anxious now. I get that paying 21 karma instead of 21,000 karma for a T3 cultural weapon is an exploit. You pay 1000 times less than you should.

But I honestly would have never recognized that the snowflake recipe is an exploit. I am no market player and have no real understanding about the mechanisms; I rely on my guildies for that part of the game. Consequently I did not discover that the snowflake recipe had the potential to make me rich and did not use it.

My point is: Unknowing and stupid (market-wise at least) as I am, how can I try to play the market now? If I discover something profitable, how do I know if it is an exploit or a legit way to make money?

1:1000 as in the karma exploit, that I can understand. 1:2 as the snowflake exploit (profit rate compared to the silk rare shoulder thingy, when I interpret the numbers correctly given here and in other threads about the subject), that I cannot understand. I simply don’t know what is an appropriate profit and the profit made with the snowflake recipe did not strike me as that great. Especially compared to the usual profits the great market players make when a patch comes.

I really would love to get an official statement by ArenaNet. I am not interested in the number of accounts banned. I am interested in a clear rule. A rule for dummies. Like in “more than 10% profit is an exploit”. And please do not retreat to “from case to case” judgement; I cannot handle that.

For the time being I am afraid to try out to play the market.

The wintersday was decent in my opinion. The schedule thing was even great, no time pressure. Now give me the maze and the mini-dungeon of Halloween with this relaxed time schedule and it would have been awesome.

I found the Tixx-Toxx-missions a bit lacklustre. All five events were the same at the core. And there are not even rewards to strive for. The weapon skins are simple, bordering on ugly (with the exception of the scepter and to a certain degree the staff).

All in all still a good job by Arena.Net but I see room for even more improvement

Toast, I think you confuse “RNG” with “endless grind”.

There is nothing to say against using a random number generator in principle. It is used in every battle while applying damage, in the loot tables of the monsters and even while you craft (dishing out extra xp now and then). The problem is not using a RNG but how you use it.

I share part of your gripe. In case of the unbreakable bell it doesn’t concern me because I could not care less to get it. But the same mistake they do there they do with the legendary precursors, too. And the mistake is to have one event (forging in the Mystic Forge) which gives you one very low chance to get the desired result. Instead they should introduce a special “currency” for the unbreakable bell (or legendary precursor) which you can get still randomly from the event (aka forging) but with a higher chance. That way you have at least the feeling of progress and the distribution of randomness is a bit more fair.

An example:

Say the chance of getting a unbreakable bell is 1 in 100,000. Instead of getting a unbreakable bell roughly every 100,000 times (I know, you can get it in the first attempt, and you can not get it even after 1,000,000 times) you should have a 10% chance to get a mini-bell every time you forge. You can then exchange 10,000 mini-bells for 1 unbreakable bell at a vendor. The result is the same (roughly 1 in 100,000 gets you a unbreakable bell), but you have a feel of progress, if you have say 2,000 mini-bells, compared to the long, long stretch of unsatisfying failures you experience in the current system. It could be even more interesting if you can trade the mini-bells, but how that effects the economy I am not sure and I would prefer my proposed system even it the mini-bells (or precursor tokens) are not tradeable.

An additional advantage is that you can get a better impression how dismally low your chances to get an unbreakable bell (or legendary precursor) really are. When you don’t get one of 10,000 mini-bells (or precursor tokens) after say 1,000 attempts you can take that as a message not to bother with it…

Part 2:

Toypocalypse: Yes, I get it. The developers looking at us and smiling gleefully. A good experiment on collective intelligence. Every day the chance to get a pug which can handle the toypocalypse well grows because more and more people get what this dungeon is all about. I am not a developer who can look at it and amuse myself about how the failure rate decreases slowly, I am one of the lab rats who still gets with a not so small chance into a pug which fails. Why, o why is that a pug thing? Why can’t I go in with my guildies whom I know, trust and can scream at in teamspeak? Personally I avoid the toypocalypse. Too much hassle; the dungeon, as interesting as the concept is, isn’t that rewarding and too complicated for pugs. I so miss the dungeon of the Mad King. THAT was a great dungeon and it was good for pugs, too. And of course I miss the Mad King himself, with his really great voice acting.

Snowball Mayhem: I like that. It plays smoothly and in this case it is not that big a problem that you are forced to pug. An improvement to the corresponding Halloween activity.

Bell Choir: The thought behind it is awesome. Now, I never liked guitar hero, but I know that in my guild some people are really smitten by the bell thingies, and I can get why. So, while not catering to my personal, more basic needs, I think that is a good part of the Wintersday event.

Jumping Puzzle: I find it awesome. Of course I cannot do it, but luckily I have my son for things which need dexterity (my fingers are old and gnarly already, my youth is over since the sixties of the last century…). It looks great – as did the clocktower puzzle of the mad king. Personally I would have liked a reward-free “test-mode” without time pressure, but I know, I am at the very low end of jumping puzzlers, so I won’t try to impress that opinion on the developers too much. But if there was, you would see me jumping and jumping and jumping until I could get it right and try my hands in the real thing…

The overland presents: It is better than the doors of Halloween in my opinion. Challenging, and you can expect a free silver piece for your efforts.

Summary: In some aspects the Wintersday event falls behind the Halloween one. That does not mean that it is a failure but my expectations were very high and they were slightly disappointed. The game has much to offer besides the event, so no harm done.

After the really awesome Halloween event I looked forward to Wintersday. Here is my feedback which contains some comparisons of both here and there.

First of all: this event is much better than most (if not all events) I saw in other games. It shows love and diligence. But for me it lacks in certain areas. I would like to know if other people think the same or if I am a lone naggler seeing a giant cake and complaining about the missing meat.

Ok, here it goes:

Decoration of Lion’s Arch: We are accustomed to ArenaNet’s greatness in the graphic department and it does not disappoint. I miss the playing children of the Halloween event in Lion’s Arch, though. You know, the ones, who cried: Hello… Hallo… Candy time! To be more general: This Wintersday event LA seems to be more quiet, less busy with the event than during Halloween times. I hear only the event barkers near the snowball most of the time.

Skins: With the exception of the princess wand I don’t like the skins for weapons you can get at all. They are bland and uninteresting. Of course the idea of toy weapons is funny but the execution is all in all so not princess-wandy… Let it sparkle, glitter and shine. Why does the head of the staff not glimmer a bit? It is a piece of wood. As old-fashioned toys were. Which died out for a reason.

Minis: This one is a general complaint. I don’t use minis. I like the concept and I would use them but as of now I think they are highly impractical. Why? Because I continuously click on “Deposit collectibles” when I look into my inventory, and then the minis are away. I have to, otherwise my inventory would suffer from serious overflow. I would so like a right-mouse-click option in the inventory with which you can flag and unflag a specific item as depositable. I know there are special bags for that but those are impracticle for other reasons (I like my inventory as a whole area – “Hide Bags” on). So all parts leading to crafting minis are a bit pointless for me. But it is an extra source of income, which is always welcome.

Tixx’s dungeons (the five town-dependant missions): They are really lightweight dungeons. That is ok; not all content has to be difficult. The rewards are as crappy as the dungeons are easy. For me the content is so easy that I don’t like to do it; I prefer to go into the fractals. I get more fun and more reward in the same time I would get if I did Tixx’s dungeons. I wouldn’t say that the dungeons are outright bad (they are somewhat beautiful designed) but fractals are so much better (and will be even more so when the January update comes). Halloween had the maze as easy-going area. That was much better in my opinion. I liked it when the map instance I were in was full of shouts “Champion spawning in NE” and all players tried to get him down (and succeeded, because that dungeon was also easy, but not THAT easy, and the rewards were good).

end of part 1

Same here. I didn’t get any present. I went to Tixx, got instructions, went to the chest beside him, it was open and I did not get anything. And no, I didn’t get one with another character – it was my first attempt to get it.

After it I tried with my alts, same again: got nothing.

No chest for me. Sigh…

Attended, didn’t just get to the boss (lags/dcs), got the karka chest per mail.

3 exotics, 2 yellows, beside the bag and the karka shell trinket. Very nice.

Gaile Gray.6028:

I am pretty sure, from what I’m reading now, that you not need to kill the boss to get a chest. I believe that you did not need to be in the final event (but that’s sort of speculation on my part, based on player comments and I could be wrong). Again, and as you can see from people who got a chest, the distribution was on the generous side of things.

I can only confirm that from my personal experience. I tried to participate and got to Lost Shore. There I fought with the zerg at the coast and followed it to the interior of the island. But then, before the boss appeared, dcs and lags became so awful that I gave up.

Even so I got a chest. That was on one side very generous, on the other side a decent comparison for the frustration I experienced with the lag fest on my computer. So count me as a satisfied customer

The contents were quite nice, btw. No precursor, but the 20-slot-bag and the Karka shell accessory alone were worth it.

My gaming background:

I bought my first own computer when I was 25 (an Amstrad CPC 464 with cassette drive). My first game was Elite by David Braben. But I played a lot of other games, too (Bard’s Tale, Wasteland, a lot of action games…). With 28 I changed to a PC with staggering 1 MB memory and a 20 MB hard drive. Nethack was my first game on it. When Civilization came out I took a 14 day holiday, bought several pounds of white bread and butter and did nothing else than playing Civ. But of course I played a lot of RPGs, too. Especially the AD&D RPG games I remember quite fondly. And Wizardry 7, a master piece.

MMORPG-wise: I played Dekaron for 4 years, then Atlantica Online for another 4 years. Now I went over to Guild Wars 2 because I was fed up by the evil greedy company which runs Atlantica Online (Nexon), by the clunky interface and by the never ending gear treadmill.

I love GW2 so far. But I really wish they hadn’t introduced another gear tier. So far I can ignore it. I hope that remains a viable strategy.

1) (Little to do, looking forward to new content): 3

I had still a lot of dungeons to do. But I am glad about the fractals.

2) (Obtaining ascended gear gives me something new to aim for and boosts/refreshes my enthusiasm for GW2. ): 0

3) (wanting better and better gear): 0

In fact, when I started playing, that would have been something like 4 or 5. But GW2 convinced me: it is possible and much more relaxing to play without a gear treadmill.

4) (new expansion packs = new gear tiers): 0

5) (ascended gear was a high priority change): 0

Senik.6549:

Honestly, the best fix for this is to somehow share MF across everyone in the group. Like other players gain a % of the bonus from the guy with all the MF gear, since they are carrying him to a degree. Obviously it would need to be designed so it couldn’t be abused via stacking (caps or something else), but it would make people feel a whole lot better about bringing players who are stacking MF.

I think that would be best. Simply average the magic find in the party (may be excluding food). So if I have 80% MF gear and the four other guys have 0%, we both have 80/5 = 16% MF in a dungeon. Everywhere else MF is applied as before.

Hm, it is called a massive MULTIplayer role playing game. I like to do a lot of things solo, too, but isn’t the feature to play things with other players together the one which distinguishes games like GW2 from games like Skyrim?

Don’t misunderstand me: I am strictly against the ascended gear tier and the beginning gear treadmill (so far it is not really a treadmill, but the threat is there now), but to argue with “I want to play alone” seems not adequate to me, when the subject of your criticism is a multiplayer game.

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

i just need to know if all the monsters in the new dungeon are karkas.
maybe the sigil 10% vs karkas will be nice to farm for.

They are not.

They have very good ideas. They obviously work a lot. Sadly they have more good ideas than good coders, or so it seems.

And while I really enjoyed my first fractal run, I don’t like the ascended gear thingy. Time will tell, which weighs heavier.

But still: I like that ArenaNet tries hard to deliver.

I did only

a) the aquatic thingy: not as bad as underwater fights usually are, but I don’t like the luminous-plant-poison mechanic. Still an ok fractal.

b) the dredge fractal: Nice ideas, a bit chaotic, but I really liked to empty out a lava bucket on a boss Nice dungeon.

c) The Colossus: Great looking, not too difficult, if you know what to do (which I didn’t at first…). My favourite so far.

I am really looking forward to the next runs.

Desolation server: Noll stands around, doing nothing. Since hours.

OEXTRA.1780:

I’m greatly disjointed in how most of you forum gamers are behaving. Yeah sure the new armor rank has its ups and downs but why are ya’ll acting like it’s the end of the world? So what the stats are better, but not enough to make exotic obsolete.

It is not the end of the world, of course. For some it is the end of playing this game what is much much less than the end of the world. And because of that it happens more often (I would be very surprised if the world would end more than once).

Exotic is in the same way not obsolete as rare level 80 gear wasn’t obsolete before this patch. It is still good for ectos and mystic forging.

Basically I share OP’s view. With the exception of the introduction of ascended gear – that is the one thing they shouldn’t have done.

I am very excited about the ascended gear. In a very bad way.

I was of the “wait and see” faction before this patch. Now I have waited and seen. And what I saw is horrible. I could live with the slightly higher stats on the items themselves (they have no runes, so there is a bit of compensation there). But now I know that infusions themselves give stats, too.

That means getting ascended when fitted out with exotic is like getting exotic when fitted out with rares. You CAN play most, if not all the content with rare gear, but you really, really want exotic gear because it makes life a lot easier.

That is not a treadmill yet because a treadmill does not end – but it is a very bad game design decision. I won’t quit because of that but it is a bit like the infraction points ArenaNet awards if someone breaks the TOS. ArenaNet got some points now from me. I will suspend gem purchasing, play less and wait until I know how they go from here.

It took a lot out of my excitement over a grind-free game…

Because it is the successor of Guild Wars 1. And it uses the same lore, continuing the story of Guild Wars 1.

I like these dungeons. As long as they work. There are too many bugs in my opinion. We just did AC explorable path 2 and the end boss would not come. We did not even skip, we killed Kohler and all other mobs but while the NPC and the cannons were all flagged with red shields/cog, the Ghost Eater did not appear.

That is a huge letdown. But in general dungeons are really fun and they are not die-rez-die-rez events when you know how to do it.

The one real qualm I have is the hit point bar. It is ok for me that bosses are really strong. But why has the tree at the end of Twilight Arbor so many hitpoints? After half of them are gone we have proven already that we are able to kill him, have learnt to kite/not aggro the spiders and what we do then is mindlessly autoattack. Don’t misunderstand me: bosses should be hard. It is ok, that the end boss causes lots and lots of red circles which really hurt when you get caught in them. But it is boring and repetitive to do that as long as you have to do it with some end bosses (like the tree in TA). When you finally killed the boss you have proven more your patience than your skill.

I have no legendary weapon.

I want that BiFrost remains difficult to achieve. It should be as rare as it is now. I want something to work for. And I like especially that it is only cosmetic.

That said: I would really like the precursor weapon be achievable in a more deterministic manner. For example: Let us buy the precursor for 1.000 legendary tokens. And you get one legendary token with a probability which is 1000 times higher than to get a precursor. The time you need to achieve the precursor would be the same that way (in average). But it is so much more satisfying to be able to say: “Hey I got already 200 tokens” instead of having to say: “I got nothing but rolled the dice a lot already.”

And personally I would prefer to let these legendary tokens only from bosses (champions and dungeon bosses). That would it make more interesting to fight bosses instead of aiming at dynamic events with a lot of trash mobs (penitent/shelter etc.). The mystic forge may retain a VERY slight chance for a precursor but it shouldn’t be the main source for precursors.

Nurvus.2891:

The problem is that the dragons are easy.
PvE is super boring.

Everyone at max level does WvWvW, farms or spams dungeons.
The rest is leveling, and you barely see players areas except starter and final areas.

“Everyone” is not correct. I don’t. And I know of several other level 80 players who don’t, meaning: yes, I go to lower level areas and entertain myself there. Looking up corners I haven’t discovered during my level process can be quite rewarding. And I find PVE quite interesting.

The downlevelling system was one thing which attracted me to GW2. Personally I find it is not harsh enough. I would vote for a complete downlevelling (not +2, and restricting traits and skills) but also for level 80 loot and event reward. Nodes should of course produce the normal ressources (no orichalcum for level 15 areas). If you want lower level loot you can always use an alt…

Act 1 was not so great but Act 2 with the Mad King’s Realm was really something (and still is). While I am not at all happy about the Halloween BLC lottery the new content you dished out is great and more than outweighs that in my opinion.

Thanks for that. I am eager for Act 3.

[QUOTE]By your statistics I should have like 1 Aussie for every 20 NA people. And that’s just not the case.[/QUOTE]

No, of course not. That is not how statistics work. On European servers many more people are European than the relation of 740:530 would suggest. And on German servers most people are German, though the population of Germany is only about thrice as large as the Australian.

What the numbers don’t say is how many Australians relative to their continent’s population play GW2 compared to North America. It is theoretically possible that the rate of Australians playing GW2 is twenty times the rate of North Americans playing GW2, making the number of Australian GW2 players roughly equal to the North Americans.

But is it probable or realistic? I don’t think so.

The quoted people argued only for Oceania/Australia.

Ask them.

It illustrates how everybody only thinks of his own problems.

And does Arenat sell this game into Asian countries? I thought I had read that they didn’t, but I have no source for it.

[QUOTE]: The fact that ANet has then decided to pull the “Spoilt” card has made it quite obvious that ANet do not think ahead, or simply don’t care about their Oceanic player base.[/QUOTE]

Population comparison:

Europe: 740 million
North America: 530 million
Australia: 28,5 million

Seeing this number I think ArenaNet may care about the Oceanic population (if you really meant Oceania, I assume you meant Australia). But if they have to choose between the gamers of a population of more than half a billion or 28,5 million (time-wise) it is obvious what they have to do.

If there is reason for pulling the Spoilt-Card or not can only be judged after the event. You and I don’t know what ArenaNet has in store for us.

[QUOTE]Coming from a oceanic players perspective, I’m pretty disappointed. We payed for this game just as much as people in America and Europe and yet we have a one time only event which a lot of the oceanic community won’t be able to participate in.[QUOTE]

No, you didn’t. To be more exact: You personally did, but Australia/Oceania did not compared to all European and/or all North American players. Australia/Oceania very probably is only a small fraction of all players. ArenaNet could not survive without North America or Europe as market for the game. But it could do without Australia/Oceania.

That is not to say that I like that. But I can understand that – as hard as it is for Australians/Oceanians.

(me = European)

1. Will you or will you not be buying black lion trading company or random number generation materials again?

No.

2. Did you buy them in the past?

No.

3. If you would not buy trading post material/gamble, would you support direct to buy weapon skins and what general price do you find acceptable from a business standpoint both as a customer and realizing that they must make money as a business?

Yes. About 10 Euro.

4. Do you believe that future events will also be handled with random number generation to make profit based on limited time item acquisition?

Yes.

5. If you believe that the future events will be handled in the same manner, does this realization negatively effect your trust of Arena Net in regard to handling micro transactions for permanent content?

Yes, slightly though because they do a great job otherwise.

6. Did you obtain a skin or whatever it is you were looking to get from the black lion trading chests? From the Mad King Chests?

Yes (just so: a shoulder skin)

7. Have you bought any of the direct purchase, set priced halloween items. If so, will you be buying more?

No, and I won’t because I don’t want to encourage ArenaNet to continue their random box practice. But I have gladly bought bank expansions. Ok, not gladly…

That would be a good idea. Personally I would like a direct sale even better, though. And while greatswords are quite impressive, don’t underestimate staffs

I come from a game called “Atlantica Online” (run by Nexon). I did not left it because it was a bad game (it was a great game, a turn-based MMORPG) but because how Nexon handled it. Especially the item shop. They offered random boxes with one very good item and a lot of bad ones, the good one being obviously quite improbable to get. I hated that system and went over to ArenaNet because I was told that it was a quite honest company.

Then I came to know that in GW2 is an Item Shop, too. Ok, only useless or cosmetic items so far (except for the bank and inventory slots, but you can do without if you want). So no biggie.

And then came halloween.

On the plus side: these weapon skins are still only cosmetic items. As an elementalist I would LOVE to wield a scythe shaped staff. But it would have the same stats as my current staff. Compare that to Atlantica Online where they now sell really good weapons in random boxes which make a huge difference in game play (at least for the people in level 140 and below, 150 being the level cap there).

But on the minus side: I start to feel uneasy. I simply don’t like random boxes. Especially not ones where the odds are not published and where one good item with a very small chance is hidden beneath a heap of rubbish. I find that scheme, applying to hope and unreasonable lottery instinct, despicable and “fishy”. It is, to apply an even more evil attribute to it, “nexony”.

I have to admit, I am from Germany, where such things would simply be illegal (you have to publish the odds – in every casino, even in every restaurant where a gambling machine is installed, there is a “Gewinnplan” (plan of winning) hanging at the wall beside or printed on the machine where the odds are described). This influences my feelings about gambling a lot.

In the end it is not a question of entitlement or right or wrong. It is simply (from ArenaNet’s point of view) a question how many people do not like how the BLC are handled. I am one of those who don’t like it. Consequently I haven’t bought any. I only tried my BLC where I got keys for during the game. As you can imagine: without any success to speak of.

I like this game very much. I do not want ArenaNet going the Nexon way (or you could say: the usual way most ftp game go). So I voice my opinion here in the hope that ArenaNet will consider it for future events.

I needed about 150 hours to reach level 80 with my elementalist. Until then the game was great and already worth the 57 € I had paid for it.

Now I am at 290 hours. It is still ok but not as good as it could be. Very repetitive grinding in Orr. Dungeons are ok for me but to organize and then play one I need uninterrupted time – something which I only have in modest quantities (wife, 3 kids, full job). WvW is amusing though I don’t understand a lot of what is going on there. And I don’t do pvp if I can avoid it. Lots of bugs which are annoying.

But the world is beautiful – and I still have no world completion yet. So I soldier on.

All in all, yes, it was worth the money I paid for. And I like the feeling that I can stop anytime without thinking about a subscription which runs while I don’t use it. I have great hopes for the future while the present does not completely cut it yet.

They should downscale better. That means:

a) Make us weaker in low-level areas. As of now I am too strong when I play in a level 20 area as level 80 character, allegedly downscaled to level 22.

b) Give us karma, gold, xp like in level 80 areas.

c) Give us level adequate loot like in Orr.

Then it would be the same (loot-/xp-/karma-/goldwise) if I play in Kessex Hills or Cursed Shore. And that would be a very good thing because the high level player would spread all over the world.

For me the waypoints cost system is fine, with two exceptions:

1. Teleporting into a low-level area (but not out of it) should cost the same as it would if you had actually the level that you are downscaled to. I have several times detected myself wondering whether I should help a guild mate or not. I like to help but the waypoint costs – 3 silver or more for what? I am usually quite poor, 1 g is the usual amount of money I have on me which is – or so I have heard – not much for a level 80 char.

2. Teleporting into any town should be free. It is already some kind of free (via Mists, Lion’s Arch, Asura Gates) but if it is officially free, it is a bit faster and you have that option when you have died, too.

I had lags today everywhere. Started playing at 20:00 h local time (CET), ended 21:00 h. It was practically impossible to play. Skills I triggered were displayed two minutes after I pressed the key. Twice the client disconnected.

I tested other programs, they worked beautifully.

Edit: Flashing action icons, like Laurreth described, here too

Server: Desolation
My town: Kiel, Germany
My provider: T-Com
Broadband connection, 16 MBit/s

In the morning hours I have no lag at all and GW2 runs beautifully.

I am looking for a guild for my son (14) and me (male, 52).

It should be a guild on a European server. Though we are from Germany we would prefer to play on an English language server. We play regularly but not very long (typically 2 hours per day, longer on weekends). We both prefer PVE and would like to experience dungeon runs with our guild.

My son currently plays a ranger (lvl 80, main craft: cooking); I am playing an elementalist (lvl 80, main craft: tailor).

Norn Elementalist Claudia Skullburn.

Claudia derives from Claudia Cregg, a character of the show “The West Wing”.

Skullburn is the result of pondering too much about which race and profession to choose…

I like the game very much so far, but I am only level 71 yet. But I can imagine that the fascination will lessen after you’ve done it all. If that is the case (and I really hope it isn’t) I comfort myself with the thought that I paid 60 € for 120+ hours very nice gameplay which is already a good bargain in my opinion.

That said, I haven’t done any WvWvW of substantial meaning yet, no PvP, only one dungeon run (AC story mode – which was really great)… So I keep my hopes up that the fascination with GW2 will continue.

I have got only 1 spam mail regarding gold selling. I have encountered only a few bugs (not counting the Trading Post desaster in the first days). There were some skill challenges which were bugged but are not anymore (I only refer to those I know, still have to do 45% of the map).