Guild Wars 2

If they do increase the level cap in this I can already see the talk about ascended equipment/gear treadmill popping up again.

As for price point, I can see them bundling the content in with the old base game for new players (in a new shiny box) and offering some kind of upgrade path for existing players. Part of me hopes that it is more than a price drop for existing players or if not more at least different.

Thanks for these, should help me get started (probably will only play up until claw island, because of the changes they made to the story with NPE though).

I for one think that even if Sylvari coming from a dragon (even if indirectly) was somewhat predictable it is actually something I am looking forward to them exploring more in whatever is coming up with Mordy.

One way to put it is that it is kind of bold move, I see why people might not like it, but I also see the opportunities associated with it. Namely how the position of the sylvari in the world will change as a result of this secret and rytlocks quote from the trailer is something I am very much looking forward to as a result (same for Canach).

Whether this is “stupid” or not in my opinion comes down to how they follow up on it. It could be interesting or it could be dull but just from what we have seen I will still hold judgement and be optimistic. If in part because the patch was genuinely great and while parts of it predictable others went into shades of grey I did not expect from this game at all.

So, since it may be that he is now dead and I realized that I really want to make a sylvari for whatever this HoT that is coming up entails I figured I’d ask here first.

What are the optimal choices to make for a sylvari character for the best personal story experience overall and especially when looking at filling any gaps about Trahearne and Caladbolg that you can only get to play as a sylvari.

I remember seeing one of these “optimal” personal story choice listings sometime after launch when the bad state of Orr and the end of personal story was the hot topic of the day. But for the love of it I can’t actually find it now that I would want to go through with it in preparation for what is coming up.

Thinking about the new dailies pragmatically I should absolutely love them, as both laurels and AP come comparatively lot easier under this new system.

However, there is something to be missed about the old system and that is getting dailies/achievements (however insignificant) during the course of regular gameplay. I was never one for optimizing my gameplay for dailies which is why in terms of RoI the new system is ultimately vastly superior in my experience. But there is still something nice about playing normally and having an achievement pop without having to go looking for it and for older accounts the old dailies and monthlies were the only real source of that tiny spec of gratification.

This goes slightly off-topic but if anything, I might be one of the few people that is going to miss the aquatic slayer daily, because some of the underwater environments are absolutely gorgeous so I’d always use it as an excuse to go there. Now though there is no longer any real reason to do so sadly.

Khisanth.2948:

Might be the same as Halloween. Each daily item only counts once for the meta.

Still doesn’t match up, because I had 5 achievements from the Festival category already. (ie. I have now completed Wintersday dailies twice, so if they only counted once for the meta then I should be at 10 achievements towards the meta).

As it says on the tin, I exit to desktop the game freezes it keeps blocking all mouse input outside of taskbar area when alt tabbed (the cursor retains the in-game graphic) from that state as well so actually getting rid of it is a huge pain.

Has happened to me twice now, with the second session, I was alt tabbed for a while before to post some screenshots, this may or may not be relevant.

Also before this happened the sound seemed to bug out, the only audible sounds were some crowd noises and (what I assume is) wind in the Ground Pavilion area in DR, hence why I’d want to restart. The first time this happened was during Bell Choir activity, and the “Guild Wars – Medium” text remained on screen even outside said activity indefinitely. Aside that and the sound the game behaved seemingly normally, until I tried to close it.

I honestly agree with a lot of what the OP is saying. Not that think that all the changes are for the worse, because some of them address other problems that sorely needed to be addressed but still there is lot to be missed as well.

I just did mine today, I had 5 for the meta yesterday, 5 for the meta today… all of which are accounted for by the festivals own achievements so thus far it seems the dailies are not contributing for the meta at all.

Also, monthly completionist is broken now, but at this point who cares… maybe it is related maybe not.

There is definitely a problem with the choir bell daily. It is not just that you can’t get ejected either. My first time through I “completed” a song and got some points for it, but the achievement did not trigger. In my case second time was a charm.

So even if this is a written text not matching the actual requirements the requirement check doesn’t seem to behave consistently.

Ayrilana.1396:

OmniPotentes.4817:

I’m putting in a refund request for the endless continue coin I bought. No point in owning such kitteneless item. I feel cheated.

Your request will be turned down. Others have tried already.

There is going to have to be a point when persisting on not giving a gem refunds for this item will be worse for them than continuing as things are now. That said it is likely not happening unless SAB, or the lack thereof, gets another 15 minutes of fame in a spotlight again eventually.

After Gaile’s statement about SAB two months ago now they bought some time and the discussion died down. Personally I have contemplated about asking a refund once or twice but never actually created a ticket for it. Eventually I’d wager it comes down to making a compelling argument which shouldn’t be that hard as time goes on.

Actually, thinking about it from a different angle, making a case for a refund might be easier when SAB is not getting a lot of attention because they are not getting many tickets on the subject. Honestly can’t really say.

If I had to guess next discussion on this topic will spring up around April or so, unless the current content landscape changes drastically between now and then.

Dynamic Events are fairly ingenious way to deliver content, sadly what makes them good also makes them bad. My all time favorite dynamic events are the Fort Salma chain, as it appeared originally, or the setup going on in Bloodtide Coast dealing with pirates, booze and some down on their luck Priory researcher.

The reasons why I like these two is because while one of them is easy to follow and grasp it is a nice example what what a DE is in simple terms. Meanwhile the one in Blootide Coast is a fairly complex setup that few ever see as a whole but if they do it can really show what Dynamic Events can be when they play to their strengths.

For those who don’t know what I am referring to below is a short summary. It has been a while since I played all the events though

If we start with the Priory group who, as one might expect, go looking for some artifacts and eventually end up finding some rare beverages in crates, they bring it all back to their camp decide to sample their find (though the decision is not entirely unanimous) get drunk and as they sleep it off get attacked by bandits. Fairly standard affair nothing out of ordinary here yet.

However, lets look at things from a different direction, what happened before Priory made their remarkable find. Well, in an entirely different part of the map there are events tied to a bunch of Pirates who also at one point happen upon a selection of rare beverages (there is probably an event that deals with their origin as well but sadly my memory fails me here). However, this kind of treasure is not to the liking of our good pirate captain (who is an excellent performer btw.) so he orders it to be disposed of, cue your average escort event to a site to dump this “treasure” this site just so happens to be where the Priory will in time come to make their remarkable find.

These events that appear at glance to be two simple chains consisting of couple of events each. Yet, when looked at a bit closer the connection can be made. There is no meta event shouting that there is a small story here as a matter of fact, unless you actually look really closely at the world around you and listen to what the people say there is no way you could ever make the connection between the two events because they never happen close enough together to make the link obvious.

This is only one of the many examples where seemingly random events end up being connected, if you run from event marker to event marker or don’t pay attention to what is actually happening and instead just read the UI you will miss out on so much.

The kid with his snow Norn army in one early Norn zones is another good example, follow the kid into an opposite direction of some often active nearby dynamic events and you see connections between events that you can’t see if you just follow your map blindly.

Compare this to Dry Top, while it is a fun map with nice gameplay elements there is nothing to it like any of the above examples. It is merely an area stuck in a loop void of any deeper meaning to what is going on. Outside of its living world tie ins the zone is void of any personality. It is endgame content so I can forgive it for that, however, to be honest I miss events with these fun little hidden stories to discover and all the flavor that they bring.

It is truly unfortunate that most of the well known events such as world bosses do not have the events surrounding them crafted with the same level of attention to detail as some of the examples I have given here. I guess the logic is because they want to cut downtime because world bosses are sort of repeatable content, however, they really do not do right by the Dynamic Event system at all, yet they are the stuff that most people see and gravitate towards.

While you are correct regarding dynamic events filling hearts that is only if a dynamic event that adds contribution happens to be ongoing while you are doing said heart. All I am saying is what they did to earlier zones in fact does not encourage doing dynamic events when it comes to someone who has no idea what a dynamic event is.

I know you level faster doing events, at least after level 15 that is, but based on my rather limited experience with the new low level zones if they are unlucky or simply coming from another more traditional MMO a new player likely has less chance to realize that before he reaches level 15 because of the accelerated leveling.

I said earlier in this topic that it seems strange they would postpone personal story until level 10 and then make the content before it is available wholly insignificant because it is over so fast. I am not saying they don’t have the right idea here, just that the execution is not very good.

I think dividing up the story is the logical conclusion of the story journal being added anyways and besides the personal story was episodic from the get go, so in that respect highlighting the fact can’t hurt. I still think there is absolutely no reason for them to not figure out a way to put the removed content back in, the story does suffer for those bits not being their (albeit I am slightly bitter in part because I had yet to experience 2 of the 3 fears available and now I can no longer do that).

Danikat.8537:

Partially because you’re even less likely to have officially recognised photo ID if you’re 12.

Yeah, that piece of plastic is kitten expensive considering it is only good for 5 years, the one alternative being an actual passport (which I think costs even more), and neither is rarely needed before you get something like a drivers license which most places accept even though I guess they technically should not (at least not over here, anything even remotely affiliated with the government is so annoying to deal with in that regard).

Danikat.8537:

But I was being sarcastic. I’m quite sure a lot of under 12’s play GW2

I figured as much to be honest but I was bored.

Vayne.8563:

First of all, it’s not just hearts…because events exist and events are an important part of this game. And I believe Anet wants people to think that events are an important part of the game.

Yeah but their changes at least for the first 15 levels with their new accelerated leveling seems to contradict that when each heart gives almost a full level. In other words until you reach level 15 under the new system the effective way to level directly contradicts with their goal of familiarizing users with the concept of events.

Then the XP gain normalizes and hearts give the usual amount of XP as far as I know. So the shift in focus on what a player should actually be doing or what appears intuitive to them is more jarring than it ever was under the old system.

Vayne.8563:

You’re right that the personal story gave you variety for leveling, and when leveling those levels was much slower, that was important. Now, I’m not thinking it is.

For the first 15 levels maybe but after that you’ll still have stretches with no personal story that I would guess are far longer than they would be under the old story delivery.

Danikat.8537:

Under 12 (which no one should pick, since the game is rated 12)
.

The games rating has nothing to do with it, they are actually not legally binding in most countries, as far as I know, beyond the ratings for 18 and possibly 15 or their regional equivalents.

Guild Wars 2 user agreement is a different story though. Of course the reality of the situation may be quite different.

By the way a 12 year old in EU can play GW2, but a 12 year old in the US can not as per their respective agreements (of course the requirement parental consent applies to both regions for minors).

Vayne.8563:

I played with my friend. I just didn’t feel the need to preempt the game for him. I hung out, let him take the lead and explore. I didn’t say you should wait. But trying to show him a bunch of stuff he doesn’t have access to, doesn’t help him or you. It’s not giving the NPE a chance even.

Fair points, however, is there a reason to so heavily restrict access in the first place. I mean they take away access to PS for the first 10 levels all the while making that first 10 levels lack in variety.

I mean the idea should be to get people away from the heart to heart to heart checklist mindset and get them into the whole events thing, but right now with these changes the first 10 levels do the exact opposite (because you have nothing to do but hearts that give you almost a level per heart, if anything I’d call that misleading).

Right now, the first 10-15 levels feel like they exist in a vacuum, the focus changes so drastically after the starting zones.

Edit: hiding stuff on the minimap makes sense to me, weapon skills too (even if it makes initial combat dull), but this whole oversimplification of the initial 15 levels as a whole combined with the lack of personal story for the first 10 doesn’t because it results in play style that is counterproductive later on.

Vayne.8563:

So let him alone to explore the game for an hour —- How is showing your friend a bunch of stuff he could discover helpful anyway?

Why should two friends have to feel like they have to wait an hour to play together when they didn’t have to do so before the last feature pack.

As for how is showing a friend bunch of stuff helpful, well it is about playing together in the end. Maybe he could discover all of it on his own as well but this is an MMO and playing with friends is always more fun.

Mind you, there are also things in this game that a player coming for example from a different MMO wouldn’t even know to look for.

shadow.6174:

I can’t see what was wrong with the story before

Subjectively unless you either went through at least two different paths at the end or happened to go through one very specific set of choices, or better yet both, in particular the end of the story was rather badly represented in-game (and I am not talking about Arah story mode obviously, as that is not personal story technically).

In any case, the changes they made fail to address either of these problems in terms of the narrative leading up to Arah story mode while they do add new ones and objectively make it worse.

Splitting the story into chapters is a logical follow up to the introduction of the story journal and the current form of living story I assume the reason they did it was for the sake of consistency going forward (or maybe they have plans to allow replaying personal story chapters, it could be done if they simply prevent you from making conflicting choices on replays, how much added value that would be beats me though). The needless juggling and removal of story instances, however, makes no sense whatsoever beyond having a single focus per chapter but to remove content to achieve that makes no sense either.

Ok, so now that the free trial and a sale are ongoing, would be nice to hear from a dev or anyone with access to how this new NPE has affected actual new players. Especially, since we have heard nothing about this for a little while. I don’t think it is unreasonable to want an update once the trial winds down this weekend.

Likewise, more discussion on any potential plans to address the plot holes you introduced would be nice, even if only on a very high level. In part because one of the more popular theories about the recent Living Story closing cinematic just so happens to do with what some of the removed stuff pertains to.

If it turns out to be an orb, a la the deep sea orb in Fort Trinity… I have to say I fail to see what the logic behind them removing the very step of personal story where you retrieve said Orb.

It just feels strange to remove in-game exposition about these orbs just as you might be preparing to pursue another one of them. Especially when lore represented in-game has been one of the more popular criticism of GW2, in particular post launch content.? Are we to take this to mean that the lore about these Orbs is no longer important enough to warrant that exposition.

Why couldn’t there be two chapters of personal story at either 70 or 80? Why do every chapter have to have its own level range? It certainly is not a technical limitation that is for sure.

Gaile Gray.6029:

According to Colin Johanson, Guild Wars 2 Game Director, Super Adventure Box will be back in the future. We don’t have a timeframe for the return of the SAB, but we will be bringing back this popular content.

I know you would like more details, more info, a date, etc., but that’s not available right now. I hope the above comment reassures you, though, because at the core, the important answer is that yes, SAB will be back in the future.

Thank you for a statement that does not scream non-committal from the get go. With this there is no room for interpretation. Although a time frame would have been nice, I have waited for over a year already so for now this will do.

Leave it at this for another year though and we’re going to have trust issues going forward.

Few points about level gating. Honestly I am fine with it, except when it comes to weapon skills for the most part. For professions like Elementalist with so many more skills than others I can see unlocking them by level to actually be easier. For everyone else though it seems like artificially slowing down progression.

As for the restructuring of personal story the concept of chapters is great but if it comes at a cost of loosing content from a story that already required playing through at least two paths to get the full picture of it, without outside help, then you are doing something wrong. I get the idea behind having one chapter focus on one narrative thread but as far as I am concerned the price for it is too great without any extra effort.

As far as removal of bundles from early areas and other more complicated interactions they always had alternatives to them so while I understand where the designers are coming from with this on some level since a player is not required to engage with this more complicated interaction in the first place it does not hold as much value in my eyes.

If you want to improve the concept of bundles in early levels make them more intuitive don’t remove them (ie. the cow feed in Queensdale never did look like something you would instinctively think of to feed to a cow, so instead of removing it address the actual problem). Forgoing common sense and logic to achieve simplicity is not something I can honestly get behind (see revitalizing plants by standing next to them versus using a water bucket to water them).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Orr-Personal-Story-Changes

Whoever decided that this was the right course of action needs to take a long hard look in the mirror.

I know Apatia and Tonn etc weren’t the best characters, but I remember doing the story missions related to Apatia in particular and not having them is a huge omission. Tonn apparently even more so. Besides having to kill Apatia myself was a good moment. Although Tybalt still tops it by far :P

What, why remove story… :S

This is another good post on the subject: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2ghcku/so_there_are_quite_a_few_plot_holes_now_in_the/

You go and remove bits from a story that is already confusing unless you play through multiple paths to begin with. Not a smart move.

I don’t like achievement hunting, but I also don’t like the fact that in PvE you can get achievement points extremely easily by comparison to either of the two other game modes.

I like the weekly achievements idea, but it is not anything like what I was expecting tbh. I expected to have a week long meta achievement each week consisting of varying achievements you could do to complete them. Then a meta that is the combination of those four weekly meta achievements.

Proposal Overview
I see a lot of discussion about primary and secondary guilds. Here is what I think the multi-guild system should be. Right now there is no point in being in multiple guilds whatsoever when practically every piece of functionality in a guild is locked behind the represent status. This might be a logistical nightmare systems wise, but for me the represent button should be no more than an indicator to which guild the influence or merits should go to or whether I am eligible for rewards on completing, say a guild mission (ie. I should only get full rewards or even be able to only participate while representing).

Goal of Proposal
Reduce the necessity to jump between guilds to access certain elements of the Guild UI there is no reason why the full roster, chat, bank or (read only?) queue access f.ex. should be restricted to the represented guild only (some of these may need additional options for added security or finer control on the guild leaders part). I am a leader in one small guild, and a member in another bigger guild, as a leader I would appreciate the possibility to be more present in the guild I am a leader of without necessarily representing it 100% of a time, because as things now it does take unnecessary steps of hopping between guilds to potentially do a single task in one guild and be right back with the other. I imagine this would be even more hectic if one was say a leader of guild A and an officer of guild B and tried to balance activity in both.

Proposal Functionality
Add UI functionality to access wider array of information and services for all guilds equally versus the current design of only being able to access any and all functionality of a singular guild (which makes the concept of multiple guilds less relevant in my opinion).

Associated Risks
None, apart from the implied risk of loosing some exclusivity from the represented Guild.

Alternative Proposal (the bandaid solution)
Allow easy and fast “one action” access to choosing a represented guild from eg. a regular dropdown list outside of the main Guilds UI (for example the party UI) and from any Guild tab inside the main Guild UI without resetting the selected tab.

The removal of bundle items from early level zones is a huge step into the wrong direction. I can understand simplifying things but what you have done is forgo logic and common sense to achieve that.

It makes perfect sense to use water buckets to water plants, what doesn’t make sense is you standing next to them magically revitalizing them. Also, how is entertaining a cow helping with the business of the farm in any way. If the feeding was too complicated then what was wrong wasn’t the act of using a bundle to feed a cow but how obvious the fact that said bundle was food is to new player (ie. you need to make the bundle look like something you would instinctively feed to a cow rather than a small brown pouch that could contain god knows what).

Just using the farm as an example here, like so many others. Why would you dumb down the early levels so much when you are simultaneously forcing them to go through with it before granting them access to personal story is beyond my comprehension. There is no point in delaying access if you simultaneously take steps towards trivializing the content that you offer in its place.

Kysin.6349:

Haha, sad but true… Although you wouldn’t find me anywhere in that thread. I would be collecting baubles!! Woohoo!

That is the universal truth when it comes to forum communities centered around a product be it a game or something else entirely. Forums tend to be a concentration of the negative things surrounding that particular community because positive posts rarely get the continuous exposure and community attention that negative postings do.

In the case of SAB the people most happy about it had no reason to comment on it at all on the forums when it was around and might not even be aware of the struggle’s surrounding its second release whatsoever.

Boneheart.3561:

“Long, hard day keeping civilization from crumbling under the relentless blows of an Elder Dragon? Take a break in the virtual world of Super Adventure Box!! Mordremoth will understand. wink”

I would be absolutely fine if they went with that angle to be honest, however, there are number of more elegant ways they could go about it. Some of which I point out earlier, like the fact that apart from Taimi not a single prodgeny, hopefully that’s how you spell it, is in any way involved in fighting with the Elder Dragons and they can’t be either because this is T rated game.

To be honest. I hope Taimi grows up quickly because I hate the way they have to shoehorn in reasons for her not to actively fight in most of the major encounters. I love her as a character, but some of the things they have to do with her are so transparent that it kinda ruins it. But, this is going off topic.

Unless they pull some surprise on us at last minute I have to agree that I am kind of disappointed about this anniversary. The birthday blaster is better than the 6 or so Queen Jennah’s I got last year and its a nice addition to my collection of toys However, it would have been nice to get something more especially with no LS going on right now and next update we know of being the feature pack.

Andred.1087:

Season 2 and the fight against Mordrey could have been an expansion, but it’s far too late for that now. And as Naus said above me, they’ve gotten themselves so deep into Living Story that they really just have to stick it out at this point.

The only thing they can feasibly do in terms of boxed products is probably do a “boxset” release of LS episodes at the end of each season that bundles all the episodes in one pack for a gem cost that is slightly less than buying them individually. Then they could sell these physically in similar fashion as they do gemcards if they want a retail presence.

I can’t see a traditional expansion being a wise move for them at this point. However, I do think they need to get the benefits of the elevated presence an expansion would normally bring at some point. Because this is the best way to reach out to new players that might not even have GW2 on their radar otherwise.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

If they functioned like a typical crafting station, yes, it might be a bit much. But I could see them removing the bank access from the mobile station if it were an issue.

Although we already have precedence in the game for mobile stations (guild upgrades and the consortium stations) and I believe those function just like typical crafting stations. These ones would just be personal, similar to personal banker golems. It would give people a reason to use / carry them at the very least.

You make some good arguments, but still I’ll advice not to get your hopes up and temper your expectations. The blog post says something about combat utility or some such I think, portable crafting stations couldn’t be used in combat so I have no clue what they could be referring to… I simply find portable crafting a bit too good to be true, even if you could not withdraw anything through them (ie. only have access to discovery and recipes tabs which can still use mats from bank and collectibles but can’t be used to withdraw anything afaik).

mtpelion.4562:

If you don’t want to make an alt, you will still have the option to get cloth for a LOT less money soon.

This is what I honestly think too, because like you said farmers will be in it for the silk and with this loot change it is likely they will get more silk than they did before thus bringing the prices down. Unless all farmers decide to game the economy as one to keep the prices stable, some may try but unfortunately the economy is too massive to be controlled that easily for a long term.

pdavis.8031:

So they don’t do anything? just look pretty? Or do they allow for portable crafting stations to be dropped wherever you may be?

The portable crafting station thing is an over the top rumor. Common sense says that them functioning like that would be too much utility, because portable crafting station also functions as a portable bank (unless they function differently to normal crafting stations in this regard). Look at how much permanent bank access costs on TP, it would absolutely destroy the value of these items.

I think backpieces that are not wings, plants or other odd contraptions but something more normal are a welcome addition to this game.

I don’t see myself using them but they are a nicer change of pace from all these back items that make no sense for you to have on your back whatsoever.

I think this is a good change. Cloth acquisition could be changed from how it is, because it is different from most other common crafting components. However, that is not a valid reason not to implement a change like this.

If you are so worried about cloth scraps go make an alt that uses light armor. Honestly it is a bit premature to be too concerned about the fate of cloth scraps. I am pretty sure they have considered the impact on the economy when they implemented this change. They don’t have an economist on staff just for looks.

Boneheart.3561:

Queen’s Jubilee & Zephyr Sanctum.

Fair point, I assume you are talking about the Festival of the Four Winds cameo. But those are both festival content. Whereas SAB + Living Story would still be a bit of a different mix.

Kaspar.3892:

What if Moto decided that he doesn’t even care about the Dragons and their terror they bring. So Moto decides to continue working on the SAB while everyone else in the world seems to panic.

This would actually make lot of sense considering how asuran geniuses typically are. For all we know Moto may be so absorbed in his work he doesn’t even realize what is going on. Besides the arcane council has been known to hide crucial information about the elder dragons before so maybe they are trying to keep this whole thing low key inside the walls of Rata Sum. After all only one member of the arcane council reluctantly appeared at the summit and even then to mainly point out that this wasn’t really their problem.

Kaspar.3892:

Why can’t more than 1 thing happen in the world at a time?

Excellent question, sadly the answer to which is likely because the developers don’t trust people to be able to multitask or handle parallel events. They would detract from the living story narrative and experience so they are no good.

Kiwicharr.8051:

Also why do we get a lot of big changes not listed in the patch notes? Communicating things like these would really go a long way i think. People would really like to see why you make the choices you make with how you develop the game moving forward.

I second that, I don’t know why but most game companies seem to think the reasons behind changes are either always obvious or entirely irrelevant. Putting the reasoning behind some major changes out there, especially if the system changed a lot as it was being iterated on would be extremely insightful and help in users realizing what kind of things you already considered when implementing a particular system when suggesting future improvements.

Piogre.2164:

Once again bumping this thread

Better not use that word, thread bumping is against the forum code of conduct. Your post is probably fine since it contained meaningful remarks about the topic, however, lets not give them excuses to close this topic.

timmyf.1490:

Crise.9401:

I mean I know developers probably have access to similar things a these new official GM’s do, if needed, so besides it being clear distinction between the two technically not that much has changed.

Actually, ArenaNet has been pretty clear that developers do not have any special access on their live accounts. They can rep the ArenaNet guild to show the tag, but otherwise, they have the same options as we do.

What I meant was that they always had access to accounts that do. Obviously their personal accounts do not have this access. I don’t know what sort of access they have specifically but I know for a fact that the game has several developer overlays to access stuff like stats and graphs about the map and the server instances (which are much less useful on their staging environment that does not have a lot of active players), there are couple of examples of these out there f.ex. in an old GDC presentation I believe.

From an old live stream ages ago, I also recall a dev saying that all developer actions on live are logged and that typically each such action on live needs some kind of approval or something (this was like back when Scarlet’s invasions were a thing though).

Southern.8973:

Michael Henninger.7451:

timmyf.1490:

This is really cool information! Thanks Talon.

Also, and not to be overly snarky here, but this is a good example of one of the ways players can feel like we’re not receiving the necessary communication from ArenaNet. I’ve been playing this game for 731 days (though a paltry 2200 hours or so) and I just today learned that official communications from a GM have a special chat color.

We’ve only recently started using visible and active GMs in the game. Prior to say – 2 months ago? – you wouldn’t have seen a GM.

Look for us more as we’re slowly ramping up our presence.

GM’s are going to be innundated with “Can you give me a Legendary?”, “Duel me!”, and other snarky type chat, though.

Well the fact that they have a separate account (since their display names also follow a pattern not just character names) specific for doing whatever it is they need to do as a GM I doubt they even log onto it without a reason.

Also, seeing as they can hide their guild tag if they need to or use a different character on that account which does not use the naming convention it would be easy for them to fly under the radar if that was necessary for some reason (they would still get found out if they were in a party, but other than that it would be reasonably incognito).

I am sure they have thought these things out. It is nice to hear that we have in-game GM’s now. I mean I know developers probably have access to similar things a these new official GM’s do, if needed, so besides it being clear distinction between the two technically not that much has changed. Still nice to know though. This kind of information should really on the support site though shouldn’t have to find out about this in a forum thread for the first time.

Thakkian.1856:

Are Devs supposed to use power like that?

Dev (or GM) actions on live are all logged, if I recall correctly, using these commands on the live servers requires some manner of approval. So if this did indeed happen, either someone approved it or the person responsible is now in some sort of trouble.

Basically dev actions on live servers aren’t that common so they are easy to track. Also to be fair, if they really wanted a screenshot of dancing creatures they could have probably fabricated such a scene in their stage environment quite easily.

It is such a pity that they seem to want to be non-committal about SAB, if it was permanently available or on a rotating schedule I couldn’t care less even if they only updated it once in a blue moon (although I’d prefer if updates rolled out say once in a year so there is no ambiguity about its future).

SAB was the most ambitious and out of the box game update I have seen from ArenaNet for many reasons. Even those that did not particularly like it should agree that because it is so totally different from the rest of the game the fact that it was even doable makes it an impressive accomplishment all the more for a small team.

I don’t know how long SAB originally took to develop but assuming it was the usual it would be around 3-4 months, now if we look at the other pieces of content that got launched around the same time out of all of them, except maybe the Molten Dungeon, SAB felt like it had the most content in terms of sheer volume and diversity of gameplay to me.

Which is why it is all the more confusing that they refuse to even so much as comment on this. SAB is a substantial piece of repeatable content, sure it is not for every one but neither are fractals or dungeons. Sure release two had problems and it was not as popular but problems are there to be overcome and popularity of a particular content type is not a constant.

Interestingly enough SAB also does not generate any gold if I recall correctly. On the contrary it is a gold and time sink albeit a small one (I think some purchases from Moto also had a gold fee associated with them but I might remember wrong). It has no real profit margin most of the purchasable rewards were account bound and the tradeable skin drops were rare and only serve as a means to move currency between players not create it.

So in my mind the impact on games economy if it were to be available permanently or at least frequently would be relatively minor. Additionally it neither cares or impacts game balancing so in that sense it is completely isolated from a major aspect of regular maintenance of the game.

doombreaker.3710:

Has somebody tried to get a refund for the coin?

Several people have submitted tickets according to posts on reddit and elsewhere. But as far as I can recall none of those people posted again about whether they actually got a refund.

So far the CS reaction regarding SAB has been that nothing in that “unofficial” interview by GuildMag should be considered as an announcement of any kind. One person had his refund ticket escalated for future handling but beyond that I can’t really say if people are getting refunds.

If I had to guess, however, you are likely to not get a refund easily if their official stance is that there has been no announcement one way or another regarding the future of SAB unless you can make a compelling case for it that extends beyond… because it has not been accessible for a while. They are likely reluctant to give refunds for this item because, at this point, it would only serve to fan the flames and be seen as another indirect confirmation that SAB is not coming back.

Pifil.5193:

This thread has bugged out. Annoying.

This is something that has been going on for ages, it has looked slightly different sometimes but certain topics at some arbitrary page/post threshold become essentially inaccessible (in part due to the automatic “move to first unread” feature in some cases).

Aedelric.1287:

The amount of time Moto has been working on world three, it better blow our socks off!

That is another problem they have to contend with… the longer they keep SAB away the higher the expectation when/if it does come back will be. Because they never talk about stuff in advance anymore people do not know, nor should they care, how long an update for SAB has actually been worked on and all most will think about is that it has been away for so long.

Liraela.3601:

Maybe we must start make new topics (not posts) and do it till Anet answer us ?

That isn’t going to get us anywhere, they will either be closed or merged to this topic. At most you will get an infraction out of engaging in that kind of thing (repeatedly).

Edit: if people want to attract attention, outside of this topic, to SAB it is arguably best done through venues other than these forums because the rules here make things pretty straightforward and there is no point in being penalized for voicing your opinions.

Ashen.2907:

They did, earlier this year.

Did they really, because it honestly doesn’t feel that way. If they really did address precursor acquisition in some way that goes beyond their usual PR speak then they really should work on getting such points across to the wider community better.

ipan.4356:

Why would they have to retract them in the first place?

Example: long long time ago, ArenaNet made a statement about alternative methods to acquire precursors. Going so far as to say that there was a designer working on such system at a high level.

Now unless that designer has been working on said system for the past year without getting anywhere (which means they have some problems to address in their management of of their development resources) then they really ought to address that old statement in some way other than evading the subject whenever it is brought up.

I know that every development decision made is always backed by a reason, some of those reasons can’t necessarily be made public but if that is not the case then these old lingering statements that the community from time to time likes to cling to should be cleared up.

It might be disappointing to hear f.ex. that the precursor changes are not coming for the foreseeable future or at all. But it is still better than this false hope that if not this feature pack then maybe next. At least if backed by some reasoning, that not maybe everyone can agree on, but the fact that those reasons are out there would make it lot easier to swallow than just having to draw that same conclusion regardless from all this evading and dodging they are now forced into doing.

Then if the plans change again, or they can resolve some of those reasons or problems at a later date, we can all be pleasantly rather than saying “It’s about god kitten time”.