I think when people talk Kessex hills they automatically think of the fact that not once have most seen the Fort under siege there (well I have seen it, did it by rushing there the instant servers started during one of the BWE’s) and compared to that and what I see most of the time in Kessex Hills now it gets to a point where the heart for Fort Salama is tricky to complete, because there are barely any centaurs active in the heart area and the traps only respawn every so often.
When I say tricky I mean, as in you have to drag centaurs from outside the heart radius to kill for the heart credit, during the time traps are “down”.
I would ramp up the difficulty if event is stuck in one stage (or a set of stages) for too long, otherwise some of the events never play out and it portrays centaurs as extremely stupid individuals banging their heads against an overwhelming opposition over and over again despite repeated failures from their point of view. Same image applies to the Sons of Svanir events most likely, though I have not spend that much time in the Norn area personally.
Kessex Hills meta event is bit too much like a pendulum if you ask me, it only splits into two or three branches when the centaurs have the upper hand when they are driven back there is only the Overlord’s Greatcamp and that small cavern with a skill point that triggers the occasional group event.
(edited by Crise.9401)
I will also add that initiative generation is perfectly fine for thieves… if you want lot of initiative you need to spec such, the bottom trait line is a perfect example, it has the most initiative bonuses directly or indirectly gained by specializing in it.
Of course if you, for example spam unload (P+P, 3 ability) yes you will get initiative starved for a short while, but the beauty in that is that thieves also happen to have lot of mobility, so having a moment with no initiative does not necessarily mean you can’t do anything (f.ex. caltrops on dodge trait is a great thing to resort to for the moments without initiative, couple that with the endurance enhancing traits and condition damage/duration and lo and behold you have something good for that moment).
The most obvious bandage is of course Roll of initiative utility skill.
I agree and disagree with the points provided by the OP, while “zerging” an event is certainly not fun (and by zerging, I mean literally so many people that it is hard to see the mob you are trying to kill).
Zerging has no downsides to events that do not involve single target focus though, as long as the event generates enough targets or objective nodes (collection events) to count (ie. distribute attention between targets/objectives) for all the people there.
To say that event notifications should universally be removed is an overkill though, like I just pointed out there are events where the downsides of zerging do not manifest. Most downsides of zerging seem to manifest in events where there are relatively few targets to kill or where the amount of NPC’s per player does not scale properly.
As far as I know there are several anti zerg measures that actually depend on event notifications and their easily distinguishable nature. For example the event notification radius (ie. how far you need to be for an event to pop up for you, without talking to a crier) depends on the number of people participating. To elaborate, if there is an event with little to no participation running, the notification shows up to players further away from it, same works in reverse.
In addition to above if the game sees a massive congestion of players (aka. zerg) it might show events further away to the people in this massive group in an attempt to break it into smaller groups.
Also last but not least the game silently encourages users to go into areas players haven’t been in a while by applying bonus experience to otherwise worthless individual mob kills (based on the monsters ‘lifespan’, I have seen upwards 500 bonus xp per kill in places).
If any of the information here is not current anyone can feel free to correct me, it is based on dev posts at GW2G, as well as on the forums from the beta weekends, as well as personal observations. (I don’t know the exact specifcs of the notification system in place right now but these are things that were described by devs prior to release).
Just saying, you can use the notifications in reverse way, to draw player attention to different places from where they are currently at, not only draw players together but also to subtly draw them apart.
So while current notification system may not be perfect, the lack of it is certainly not a solution either, because as said in this topic events are the core content model for the game… the filler, in the most positive sense of the word, between personal story instances, dungeons, and massive world meta events.
The problem with infiltrators arrow is that it is terribly inconsistent. For example in metrica province you can not reliably shadowstep (with the arrow) down or up a set of stairs that you can normally run up and down. However, in the same map you can shadowstep fine up a much steeper ramp than those aforementioned stairs.
Also, the fact that it does not work vertically is also inconsistent, sometimes you can port to a jump high ledge little ways away, but not always. Also, why can’t we port down below however far we want (I would even happily take fall damage if that is an argument, but we can’t even use this to go down small ledges, see stairs above).
Also, as if it wasn’t bad enough, the same restrictions that apply to regular shadow step skills (such as the arrow, or the utility) do not seem to count for the downed skill, so yet another inconsistency to keep track or.
I get that using infiltrators arrow to reach un-routable terrain is an issue, and that is why it is so limited. But at the very least make it consistent in what it can and can’t be used for. Also like I said, let me take the fall damage but please let me port down ledges.
If I can walk five steps and jump to get to the end point, then I should be able to arrow there, but right now as it stands it may or may not happen, there are way too many inconsistencies.
For me the worst issue I had was Trahearne decided to hang back at the entrance to the ruins (during the first and second steps of this section, ie. searching for survivors outside the cave and fighting off waves before entering cave).
Made things hard but not impossible (because the another Vigil sylvari followed me along).
It has always been this way, as far as I know, although when you do zoom in on your main map screen it is possible to see some icons outside the zone you are currently in (ie. skill challenges), so it is not exactly consistent.
For PvE I use D+D with passive healing and toughness with some crits and condition dmg.
Secondary set is either P+P or SB depending on situation. Caltrops on dodge is also useful.
(edited by Crise.9401)
Just speculation, but it was probably because Main hand weapons have 3 skills normally, and that is just how the core weapon skills were created… Thiefs dual wielding is probably something built on top of the weapon skills system used by other classes.
Also, no profession starts with off-hand equipped, should thieves have the short end of the stick for those first 15-20 minutes.
Charr zones have the best lore and ambient chatter. Human zones are the most straightforward. Can’t say much about Norn, Sylvari and Asura get the short end in terms of square feet, but otherwise their zones are visually great.
In terms of events, some of the best early events are also found in Charr area, the human 15-25 are also has a nice meta even chain (too bad you don’t often see it in the worse end).
I don’t mind most vistas, but when vista and jumping puzzle is one and the same (ie. you get a puzzle achievement from doing the vista as well) it goes bit too far. For example the wall scaling in Diessa Plateau.
Most “normal” vistas are easy, and short.
Edit: for above post, jumping puzzles have their own achievements, I think they are under the exploration tab. I am a fan of jumping puzzles myself, but some of them are simply so complicated that it is hard to think they are suitable for world completion, but like I said most vista’s are not classified as jumping puzzles.
(edited by Crise.9401)
Waypoint costs, should depend on the zone you are currently in not player level. It is annoying when you are playing with someone 20 levels lower than you and you have to explain to them that you’d rather walk in the lower level zones.
Simply because afaik the event rewards at least in terms of money on low level zones do not scale well enough to even cover quick travel costs at the late end of the leveling curve.
I have no problem with waypoint costs in general though.
Secondly please add XP announcing, not important but the absence of it feels strange.
That is the popup for the carnival game in Beetletun why would it pop up that far away is obviously a bug (and the correct choice should be random, at least it was during the BWE’s).
No rewards is intended, I think, it is just a flavor thing. But yeah definitely should not pop up there.
Guild banners are an advertisement. There are plenty of things you can’t take advantage of without actually belonging to a guild. Besides it is inherently awesome to spot a guild banner in the middle of a difficult jumping puzzle for swiftness (i’m pretty sure that was the buff anyways).
Exclusive/private guild banners would be like saying that only chefs can eat foods and gets the associated buffs and that food items should not be able to be sold (because you use karma for some ingredients).
No lol. They are available when I pick them again but I have to fill in the blanks every time I rejoin the mists.
Sounds like the same issue I’m seeing. When I enter sPvP, the trait points are still assigned to the various trees as before, but several Major traits are usually deselected (i.e. blanked out completely).
For me, it tends to happen primarily on Mug and Thrill Of The Crime (thief). I often get half way through a match before I realize I’m missing 2 or 3 traits.
Also seeing this with two of my major traits, thief here as well but for me it is the first major trait slot of two bottom lines.
I also noted that there seems to be no reward, beyond the story itself, I vividly recall there being some kind of reward at some point in time.
Trasmutation stones are the best work around, They work as follows select the look you want with the top box, select the stats you want in the second, select the rune you want in the third. Sadly one of the 2 items is destroyed but you get the rune stats on the new item created
I wasn’t aware of that third selection, I assumed runes and sigils would just be retained from the stats item, I have yet to transmute anything, figured it would make most sense to save those stones for something good.
@Crise After you transfer the rune to another item with the Transmutation Stone, you can extract it.
So, if I change the skin on a karma weapon it becomes available for salvaging?
Interesting, does this also mean that the other materials you get such as copper, iron, silver, etc are actually determined by the skin and not the actual weapons power level.
Transmutation stones transfer the skin to another item, this has no relation to recovering upgrades from these gear pieces.
Also, for the recodr I am pretty sure that piece of equipment I got through mystic forging some crafting trash equipment in early levels of crafting so the only method to acquire “karma gear” isn’t karma vendors so you can’t just avoid them, nor for certain know in advance.
ossus u aint right im playig thief and cant use any elite underwater
For thiefs basilisk venom is usable underwater.
A while back I applied a rune to a piece of equipment and when I found an upgrade for it I figured I would salvage the piece of equipment for the chance of getting my rune back.
However, no dice, turns out the piece of equipment in question could not be salvaged, and for the record was not bought from a karma vendor. Besides even if it was, that rune was added by me, so even if you don’t want me to have any mats because it is karma gear or whatever please give me the 25% (or whatever, depends on salvage kit) chance to obtain back the rune or sigil I added to the particular piece of equipment.
Luckily I had a spare of the rune in question so I did not loose any bonuses because of this, but with runes more rare something like this would be very annoying, especially since the game does not in any way attempt to inform you that a particular piece of equipment cannot be salvaged for (a chance to) recovering upgrades when one is applied.