Guild Wars 2

Evan Lesh.3295:

If players have inaccurate league mmr, then we’d copy a bad value. I personally prefer to have a single rating because the more ratings we have, the less accurate they all become because of split playtime. Ideally players should have relatively the same mmr on and off-season, but that is dependent on the styles of matchmaking.

Just going to throw out this here, I sort of said it in an earlier post, but wouldn’t the ideal scenario be to take what works from league matchmaking and figure out a way to apply that across all PvP matchmaking.

I don’t know how this would work in practice given the lack of pips and divisions outside of leagues or what changes you have planned for league matchmaking coming up, however, it seems obvious to me that in an ideal scenario there would be no difference in matchmaking regardless of how you queue. The only difference between ranked and unranked should be on the player level (ie. attitude or seriousness whatever you want to call it) maybe in terms of map pool, but less so because of some mechanical difference.

I honestly hope they go for either Kralkatorrik or Bubbles (Steve).

Kralk, because Crystal Desert and Glint connection (we have one of her eggs atm) and Bubbles because we know next to nothing about him/her/it and because the DSD is tied to the quaggan and the largos.

I hate all gear that can’t be salvaged or sold, even if the resulting mats or coin would be trash tier I’d rather exchange this stuff for something over nothing.

Something like karma gear etc. is bit different because it can be avoided easily, but most of the stuff you get from HoT story for instance I still got collecting dust because destroying anything seems like such a waste.

For now, I am probably just not going to use the boost at all as a result. I might make an alt out if it someday. Shame really, for that wasted free shared slot….

They basically said that the first matches under the new system could be like this, they reset some WvW MMR stuff and adjusted it.

So only the upcoming match ups under the new population changes are the once that will actually reflect the state of WvW going forward because of this. Something about the new combined serves moving up and down in rating more quickly for now before the match making can settle into matches where the linked worlds are where they should actually be at.

I crafted, all crafting professions to their respective maximum levels, but after I get there… there really is no use for the crafting itself for me (ascended gear can better be gotten elsewhere etc.) the only exception to this is maybe scribing since it will probably keep evolving as the Guild Halls grow.

The classic crafting though, there very rarely is the need to craft. sans some legendary components or collection bits. The reason I bothered to max crafting at all is in case they add something that I want that requires them, like a few things have. Leveling the crafts at the point when they have already done that is just more expensive than doing them pre-emptively just to have them.

There is only so much Foefire and Forest one can play, or was it Forest and Foefire….

I wrote a whole long post, before your wonderful forums decided to make all of that disappear, so I’ll try to be succinct and have the big main points expressed here instead.

In short, it would be really nice to look forward to PvP changes that encompass more than balance and rewards changes. If through these maps you can regain the confidence to develop actual new PvP content, without the fear of it being shunned by the competitive community from the outset, then you take all the time you need.

So long as you figure out what it is that makes for acceptable PvP maps for this community, get the best qualities right and avoid the worst pitfalls, I am game… PvP needs to be able to expand in the future on more axis’s than rewards and balance.

The major pieces of structured PvP content accepted by the community since launch are Foefire and Temple, and those first came into the game ages ago.

Leagues and reward tracks etc. are systems that incentivize and support playing PvP, while important they can’t carry the entire game type forever, now that they are finally more or less nailed down I guess the need for those to change is less and less also going forward.

John Smith.4610:

We accidentally shipped a MF change that has some rare items like Halloween skins in the tables. So this is WAI just earlier than expected

I have a feeling this isn’t the first time something like this has happened… it would be really interesting to hear how come it seems to be easier than it should to accidentally put stuff in the live game that shouldn’t have ended up there yet.

Faux.1937:

Never again am I buying any skin worth more than 100g now.

That is actually a good criteria to have, the very expensive skins are always a risk. I mean there is never any guarantee they will retain their value. Either because devs decide the skins can be reintroduced for one reason or another or because player perception of the skins changes.

If you think about this a bit longer, the change here makes perfect sense… because the people going for precursors are no doubt toiletting a lot less rares and exotics in their quest for classic legendaries the MF has lost some value as a gold sink for a portion of the player base.

This is just adding some of that value back, although we have no clue what the full intended rework would have been like, but if parts of it include dumping these orphaned skins back in circulation then I’d wager one of the goals is to make the mystic forge more appealing and thus function better as a gold sink and/or sink for exotics and rares.

Question about the bloodbound stuff, does that mean that their old acquisition method got retired with the quarterly patch?

I honestly didn’t pay much attention to them., because I never figured they were worth the time investment using the old system, if the weapons had been cooler I think the system itself was nice though (I mean conceptually).

Shinzan.2908:

Danikat.8537:

GW2 basically does have the district system from GW1, they just don’t call it that and don’t let you pick from all the available copies of a map to switch to.

…the bolded part is the whole point of the district system. It’s dumb you can’t get into a particular map without already knowing someone who’s in it inviting you in.

Actually, the point of a such a system is ultimately load distribution and/or balancing. Manually being able to select district or an instance is actually counterproductive in terms of that particular goal.

The megaserver system as we know it aims to distribute players evenly, it doesn’t really benefit the mega server system at all to cap a map entirely before spawning a new instance and starting to direct players to it (because then the Join in command would work even less than it does right now). The aim is to create maps with healthy population, not necessarily full population, while trying to get the most out of the actual map servers which are transparent to us.

Being able to move maps on demand, for potentially no particular valid reason, is actually undoing some of the work the algorithms trying to balance the load on particular map servers are trying to do as part of the mega server system.

The way the system exists as it is right now simply ensures you have a reason to try and go to any particular map. The megaserver system is already weighted to try and group people together when possible, the current manual options are just for edge cases.

Is this putting too much faith in an automated system? Probably, however, the system as it exists right now has rationale behind it (whether mine is exactly accurate or not, I don’t know) but some people probably spent a great deal of time when these kind of decisions were made, you don’t make decisions that directly affect scalability and efficiency on a whim.

The GW1 district system was probably working fine for the kind of game and server architecture GW1 had (ie. it had very few maps that can be compared to what all of GW2 PvE open world is like). We can’t simply say that the same system could ever work in GW2, because we don’t know why they arrived at the current system during development exactly.

Do I think the system we have has problems, hell yes… but do I think the solution to it is as trivial as “do what you did before” definitely not.

Danikat.8537:

GW2 basically does have the district system from GW1, they just don’t call it that and don’t let you pick from all the available copies of a map to switch to.

And it had the exact same problem the OP is referring to here: if your friends were in a full district you couldn’t simply switch over to join them, you had to keep spamming the button and hope you hit it in the time between someone leaving and someone else joining.

It was less of an issue in GW1 simply because all the explorable maps were private instances, so districts only applied to the cities and it was rare that anyone wanted to be in a specific district. But every time something like Canthan New Year was going on you’d see people complaining that their guild had an organised district and they couldn’t get in because it was full.

So much this, classic queue system isn’t a real answer as much as people like to think it is… when mega servers still were not a thing and world selection and guesting were real game wide mechanics. Even if we had more of a “real” queues back then it still had fair share of issues (yes I know the queues back then weren’t actual fair queues).

Even these days, with mega servers, all adding selectable districts would do is add a UI to a system people have been trying to work around ever since the start of the game (nowadays I believe people call it map “jumping”). The fact that such a UI would exists doesn’t actually solve any systemic problems.

Even if you could select a target district or a map from a list and queue for it the game would still dump you in a random overflow mega server while you are sitting in that in queue.

In my opinion they should just focus on making the actual tools they have given for us for mass transit better. These tools being squads and the Guild Portal (I don’t know what all the destinations for that thing are, but they should just add a whole bunch more destinations to it). In doing this they would allow guilds to spin up map instances for themselves if they need to while using an existing instance if one has enough room. I don’t think there is a strict need for a system where we can force new instance by explicitly requesting a new map as long as the systems we have can be better utilized.

For the record I wouldn’t be against adding a “guild” portal style mass transit portal in LA for ad hoc squads to use when they need to.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Outside of Anet devs, who considers EoTM WvW?

I do, as it is mechanically the same as WvW (although it has a few unique aspects), people dismiss it because it doesn’t contribute to the week long matchup in any significant way, however, the map is in fact finally able to be used for its intended purpose.

The map exists solely for you to have the option to play in a map with WvW style mechanics while you are sitting in a queue, but the system isn’t going to force you to do that if you’d rather just sit in LA instead.

Puck.9612:

EotM isn’t WvW anymore than stronghold is. The DBl barely makes the cut since it does contribute to the score and they finally fixed the wp’s. It’s still a really kittenty map for WvW though and many people would probably prefer sitting in queue and watching TV or something rather than playing on that piece of crap.

That is their choice, but you can’t then say they can’t play WvW if they ignore three of the four maps tied to the game type and match up. As for EoTM, maybe it is not WvW by your standards, but its intended purpose was always to serve as an overflow map during queues and allow you to play in a map with WvW mechanics while you waited if you wanted to.

I guess the OP wasn’t there when accidentally no (sensible) map cap was enforced on EoTM instances. It wasn’t just a slideshow because of client rendering performance the server quite literally could not cope with having so many people on the map and as such all serverside interactions on the map were literally broken.

For example, one could just walk of an fall down to the watery abyss below the map because the server could not handle teleporting the falling player back above the way point as it normally would.

As nice as increasing map caps for WvW or any map instance for that matter would be, I am pretty sure some non-trivial math has gone into determining what these caps are and increasing them willy nilly is a sure fire recipe for disaster.

I don’t PvP much, certainly didn’t during this past season, however, perhaps that is why it is so obvious to me why the match making works better in ranked than it does in unranked.

That is, of course that because of how the season two iteration of leagues worked it would funnel people in the same bracket to play against each other and it would not be easy for skilled people to stay in brackets that shall we say are not congruent to their actual skill level.

However, pre-leagues matchmaking for ranked, even if restored during off season, could never in my opinion reach the same quality of matchmaking that the leagues can potentially reach because of how pips and divisions affect matchmaking in leagues.

But like some others have pointed out, the concept of off season isn’t really necessary at all… there are other potential solutions for the problems that you are trying to address with a gap between seasons.

To tell the truth ideally the matchmaking for seasons could somehow be applied to off seasons, if we absolutely have to have them, because to me it is just silly to have potentially three (unranked being the third) different kinds of matchmaking in the game to begin with. Just stick to the one that works the best… which at the moment, for ranked play is league matchmaking.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

What can possibly be original in a rehash of an ancient 8 bit game?

SAB is not a rehash of an ancient 8-bit game. It is not even technically 8-bit in style, it uses 8-bit like textures on a modern 3D geometry. Yes said geometry is roughly sculpted that make parts of it appear almost voxel like, however, the art style of SAB is in fact actually pretty unique.

As is all the content and mechanics, it is an homage to old games… that doesn’t mean it isn’t original. Compared to the myriad of other games inspired by retro platformers SAB is in fact the more original of the bunch. It is close to n64, in that it uses simple 3D environments, but it combines that with assets reminiscent of 8-bit style sprites.

I agree, however, I can also see the value of it being recurring temporary content.

This subject has pretty much been talked about each time SAB comes and goes, a certain demographic (me included) desires a permanent or at least more frequent access to the box, but alas the powers that be decided that they get better RoI this way.

I got an email, however, as Healix pointed out receiving their newsletter even if you signed up for it is like playing the lottery (albeit chances of winning are much higher than in actual lottery).

Thank You form me as well. Unfortunately real life threw a wrench in my original plans of 20 straight days of SAB, but it was fun.

That said, I seriously envy the first time SAB players out here, as for me… the wanderlust was diminished by the fact that there weren’t that many things I was missing from Back to School. Here is for more things to do next year, I know you said chances are slim, however, I have to try and think positive for once.

I want W3 just for the new soundtrack that entails, there I said it… for me SAB tunes are the best background “noise” for repetitive content, ergo which is why I can’t think of SAB itself as a grind (not that it was, compared to some other things, but it does fit the basic definition of the term).

Here is hoping that today/tomorrow brings something cool, I really would like to stick around until LS3 actually starts rather than looking elsewhere until then.

Edit: Really, forum software, really? You don’t censor “wanderlust”, but you censor plenty of other things where there you have a space between normal words that just happen to line up so that they create a “bad” word.

DGraves.3720:

Software and hardware limitations are not bugs.
Limitations do not indicate failure to work as intended.

So much this, the whole trading post is essentially a very complicated Web API/Application. Not necessarily complicated though because the API is defined to be complex or the front end implementation is complex, although it certainly can be (haven’t looked, let alone compared or evaluated the design of their public API’s).

What makes it complex is that it is not just a web site that implements an API and has to scale really well, but also that it has to interface with potentially several foreign interfaces that were originally designed to be interacted in an entirely different environment (ie. the game client/server connections).

Although John Smith said that he is not at liberty to discuss the game architecture, and while the architecture for the public API’s is no doubt an order of magnitude different (and likely simple, when looked at from the outside, as it plays by vastly different rules) than the internal TP API’s the tidbits their API developer who frequents that section of the forums has divulged both about the API setup and even some vague details that can be inferred about the actual games architecture is truly interesting to read.

Josh XT.6053:

Well I think we have our answer – they know its a bug that is annoying people and has been since the game launched, but its not worth their time to fix it. Cool.

You design an API to be fit for purpose, trying to predict future… especially in a scenario where scalability is such a huge factor is not productive. While good API design is both stable and expandable, accounting for what if scenarios just in case you might run in to issues during development or after deployment is not something you should spend a great deal of time on.

Also, the TP has to interact with systems that are very much foreign to it, that likely both pre-date it and, while central to the game, might impose limitations to this different use case of those system in the context of the TP. The limitation might not even directly relate to the TP itself… it could very well just be something that floats up the chain and we perceive it problem with the TP because the limitation is only triggered through the use of the TP.

The way John phrased it, is that this issue is not even on their “priority list” or a list of known issues to be fixed at all. And yes, while it sucks… I wouldn’t want them throwing what is likely senior development staff on this issue for years to come. They did this with culling and for a great reason, however, with culling parts of the game were rendered literally not fit for purpose. TP is, however, fit for purpose now… does it scale perfectly no, but it isn’t broken either.

They are doing something or other to address issues with HoT open world content, betas for WvW coming, Alpine Border Lands to come back at a later date. Oh, and a third raid wing at some point too.

That is about all we know for official sources, they are being quite cagey about this April update the bottom line seems to be address issues with HoT, but there is barely any context to that statement either. Hero Points and Adventures will likely see changes, but that is all in terms of specifics if you can call them that.

There isn’t a whole lot to look forward to if you aren’t playing WvW or waiting for more raid content if you ask me. Or really want a legendary shortbow but don’t like rainbows.

The only things in the cannon area on W1Z3, that I know of, are a 1up and 50 bauble dig spot. If anyone knows anything else from overthere I would like to know.

The 1up is easy to get, as for the dig spot I don’t remember exactly where it is (I probably wouldn’t have remembered it at all if someone else hadn’t mentioned it elsewhere to be honest).

OtterPaws.2036:

Ill suffer through that kitten show if Im able to get pink versions.

It’s an acquired taste, or so I am told.

ekarat.1085:

As a programmer myself, I believe it is easier to let it languish and fix it all at once than to fix it each time you patch. There are two reasons for this.

This certainly can be possible, but it depends on more than just the nature of the problems in the code in question. I don’t think we can be absolutely certain with the lack of info about their workflow as to which applies here, however, personally based on how they have addressed bringing back old content (see S1 and Alpine Borderlands in addition to SAB of course) on prior occasions I would lean towards the idea that it is by default more cost effective if a piece of content remains in the game (again, the nature of future changes could of course change this at any time its not like it is a constant).

ekarat.1085:

First and foremost, you only need to do comprehensive testing once rather than each time you patch. Testing can be more involved than just seeing if it builds and loads. What if just the eagle didn’t work? You’d need to test enough to see that, rather than just seeing if the levels load.

Whether this is the cost effective approach depends in my opinion on how much responsibility on the testing the actual developer has, because in many instances the time of the actual developer is more valuable than the time of a QA tester. Also, QA can effectively be free or almost free (see ArenaNet’s volunteer testing opportunities and public tests), while its objectivity and efficiency may suffer slightly as a result.

There is also an argument to be made for the fact that a code which you have to keep working with, if even periodically, remains fresh on your mind so there will be less moments where you will go “what the kitten I was thinking here again”. Whereas doing it only once a year those moments grow more and more likely. Because no matter how exhaustive your documentation, it will never beat actually being able to recall the thought process behind a change or a piece of logic.

I have worked with massive changelists caused by precisely this kind of approach to maintenance and it puts more pressure on the one that has to sign off on those changes as well as on the testing process because the changes are not incremental (ie, testing has to be more thorough).

ekarat.1085:

Second, sometimes later changes cause you to undo previous changes. When you do it all at once, you can see a bigger picture and can rewrite sections of code that you would be tempted to write a quick fix for a smaller patch.

The smaller your patches are, in a production environment, the better… however, I agree that seeing the bigger picture is useful when your goal is specifically to improve code quality. When the primary goal is for the code to remain operational and at the same quality level, rather than improve it, you try to change as few variables at once as possible, because as long as conditions remain constant there can be no code rot.

ArenaNet’s development practice is iterative, I don’t know if it qualifies as something like agile specifically, however, I don’t think that having to forward port old code over several sets of changes meshes well with that philosophy. It also has the downside where if the code is old enough the people familiar with the old system vs the new system might be different (you tend to actively work towards forgetting the old ways to do things if you can).

There is no version in which you can, cost effectively, avoid code rot entirely… one kind or another will show up eventually, you want to simply minimize it as long as you can.

Disclaimer: entirely theoretical section to follow, not really part of the discussion per se.

The most cost effective way for a piece of code to remain compatible across revisions, requires tremendous effort from the low level engine developers (and any layer on top of that, really).

This is the principle in which all API’s start off as minimal and remain stable. If your API is to remain stable you define it as minimally as possible to start off with because everything you add to it can never be removed or change in behavior so that it appears to the user in any way.

If you can retain that, there can effectively be a situation in which, because capabilities are never removed, no matter how old code you need to run that relies on those API’s it will at least function as it was designed to function. If you add binary compatibility in to the mix, well then you are in for a fun fun ride.

Of course that is the ideal scenario, and in real world applications where you have to rely on middleware and other dependencies sometimes keeping those principles intact can be quite challenging., maybe even impossible if your product lives long enough (ie. operating system level dependencies getting deprecated f.ex., and we know how horrible Microsoft historically is in their API design).

Edit: this is, of course, entirely speculative. I am basing this on the assumption that the changes in the scale that HoT introduced happen at most once per expansion cycle (the length of which we don’t know), if it is once a year or once every two years f.ex. the situation could be completely different.

My own preference should also be fairly obvious, however, ArenaNet might not base decision on SAB availability purely on cost effectiveness. It might also be based on that they assume best RoI comes from temporary content even if bringing SAB up-to date each time might take some extra time. Also, the presence and lack of future development on SAB itself probably impacts which is actually the most effective strategy be it in terms of RoI or cost effectiveness.

I still maintain that keeping SAB functional should not have, in theory, any large associated cost than say keeping Sanctum Sprint/Southsun Survival operational. Whether that is less than more than the cost of bringing it back as yearly festival I can’t say for certain.

Vayne.8563:

But since part of the problem seems to deal with resources, and we’re not getting everything, that becomes a valid complaint. Id’ rather have legendary weapons in the game than raids.

I don’t agree with you on this… even though I don’t play raids, because while I might go for an additional legendary, I know that the things made for raids can be re-used elsewhere while almost anything made for the new legendaries can not.

I mean any map props or effects, art., animations, AI, fight mechanics etc. we can potentially see adapted to be re-used for other content where as an effect or a skin of a legendary weapon we will likely never see on anything but that legendary.

I don’t like feeling like raids is the only thing they are developing now, because as a result I have nothing to do, however, I would rather see them develop any content that expands their toolset for future content development over skins that a fraction of the player base might pursue.

Yeah, let’s not do that okay…. legendaries are fine and all, but I would rather see them develop something besides fancy looking art assets and effects for weapons. Something that could potentially see re-use, like I don’t know, maybe game mechanics, monster AI, animation rigs etc.

Dondarrion.2748:

The argument that not leaving it in is because they would need resources to make sure it works with every future patch… but honestly, you’d think it would require less effort if you continously ensured it worked with new patches being put out than leaving it derelict until such time some dev stumbles over it and they want to bring it back – at which point so much work might be required they just can the idea and then it’s gone forever.

This is absolutely true, btw. the reason SAB was so badly broken apparently is most likely because it is content that has not been part of the game for a long time. Code that is not maintained tends to rot like food… not because it is any worse than it was when it was originally written but because things around it keep changing. This is usually called code or software rot.

There is a another kind of code rot as well though, and that is when there is too much forward change and not enough maintenance, which means that the code becomes brittle as it evolves because more and more things in it change and not enough attention is paid in keeping the code at a constant quality level. I suppose if one wanted to differentiate the two, one would be rot that affects functionality and the other rot that affects quality.

I am positive that HoT broke more existing content than just SAB, but because most of that content was actively part of the game it got pro-actively prepared for HoT to become a thing, which means if something broke when HoT released addressing it would be easier (I believe Grab Toss, for example had some issues… potentially some other activities that are now resolved if I am not mistaken).

Edit: sorry, as someone who has had to deal with both kinds of code rot I couldn’t resist extrapolating on it a little.

Well, the original plan was for the SAB weapon skin colours to follow the bauble color scheme (ie. red and purple would have been next).

I believe Josh even basically confirmed this either in one of his many forum posts around the release of Back to School or as an answer to a question on a stream for that same release (I have a vague recollection of the latter personally, but it has been years). This is also supported by the datamining done around the same time that Nero referenced to in his post.

However, the fact that they chose to add orange colored weapons tells me one of two things, either they are completely shifting to the weapon rarity colors (in which case, I want me some white SAB skins, pretty please) or they used the orange color here because they want to reserve the existing red and purple skins for their original purpose, if they ever get to develop SAB further, as rewards for remaining Tribulation modes. It could also be both mind you.

Angel.6085:

I’ll try removing and readding. It’s a strange thing.

I’m 100% that both numbers are him, its just really quite odd lol.

Both of our accounts were pre order CE accounts so it couldnt be a free account issue.

This can happen when you link accounts together f.ex. I had a different 4 digit suffix in the betas than I have now…. this changed when gw1 account was linked and/or pre-purchase key was changed to retail key. Not sure if it happened again when I added HoT key as I wasn’t paying attention, their system may also have changed since launch.

This stone wall indeed requires the upgraded glove of wisdom. Where is it? Somewhere in W3 or W4.

That much was confirmed by Josh himself during the back to school release. It is basically the start of metroidvania elements inside the box, much like the cannon in W1 Z3 that needs the regular glove to get to.

As for the item behind it… looks like it could be the next wallet upgrade, frankly I am surprised there is an item at all, considering it is not meant to be accessible at this time (during back to school the camera was more restricted, yay for new camera options).

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Sure, but it’s too late now. If they’d stayed quiet then there’d have been some exploits, but nowhere near as many. LFG is filled with trib sellers. The skins are completely devalued, thanks to that single unnecessary ANet post.

So much this, I feel sorry for anyone who went through TM properly with anything more than very low ping. I am sure there are people who have had to put in some real effort either in improving their own execution or fighting latency when it comes to going through Tribulation mode (the latter being why I don’t do Tribulation mode myself, and my ping isn’t even that bad).

While with this single action from ArenaNet, there will now be people who have finished the entire collections in flash just because they have superfluous in-game wealth.

This is such a pointless set up, I mean of course I would take LS3 over both of the other two. But that doesn’t mean that these three have to be mutually exclusive with one another. I am thinking purely in terms of the order/priority here (because ideally, I would love to have all 3, but legendaries interest me the least tbh).

However, seeing as the best thing that has happened in the game since HoT launch is them reactivating some content from 2013, in my personal opinion, which ever they can get to us the fastest would be my pick at this point.

It is obviously not legendaries or LS3, seeing as the former just got iced and the latter is coming after raid wing 3, the time table of which we have no clue, the wildest speculation has seen the summer months being thrown around (for LS3). Personally this is way too late. I need things to do in this game in order to keep playing after the 19th, but right now there aren’t any… and chances are before LS3 kicks off (unless the April update is some miracle that rewitalizes HoT zones for me) there don’t seem to be any coming either.

Of course if they were to change gears now, in one direction or another, it would do us no good… because any changes would start showing few months down the line. I don’t know what their roadmap for 2016 is like, not really, but so far it feels as if they were still in the pre-release crunch for HoT, which we know they are not… so what gives.

Vayne.8563:

Raids were advertised, but I think it’s obvious many people don’t want them in the game at all.

I don’t mind raids being in the game at all, I will most likely never play them… however, what I do mind is if raid development is the reason people like me who have no interest in them have nothing to do in the mean time.

I don’t know if this is the case, maybe we would simply have had no releases at all if it were not raid wings they kept putting out, however, if this is the case then there is some major problems in terms of how long it takes for them to produce content.

We are now almost half way to April and we have still to see them add any other actually new content into the game post HoT (excluding raids obviously). Supposedly they are hard at work on season 3, however, we still don’t even know when that is supposed to be coming at all (besides, after raid wing 3, the timeframe of which we have no idea).

Burtnik.5218:

Its beena while and still no word whatsoever.. I guess they will get away with it. See ya at xpac #2 with another 3 legendary weapons /shrug

What ever made you think they wouldn’t… I am going to be honest, how many months has it been since HoT, yet they only have one weapon completely finished.

I am not going to act as if I know what is the best way to invest the development time of those 6 developers (we don’t even know what their particular skill sets are), but I am pretty sure if this is where they are at what they have been doing up until now isn’t where they can be put to the best use.

I don’t think that a lot of people are ever going to go for more than a couple, maybe one or two legendaries. Some none at all… it sucks that everyone do not get equal choice, in terms of which to go for, because some weapons will have more legendaries than others, however, that is just how the cookie crumbled.

This wasn’t really ever a discussion on whether they should move ahead with this decision or not, they simply let us know what had already been decided. They didn’t actually have to do that or they could have waited until those six people had produced some other piece of content so they could have said " — but they brought you this instead".

It is by no means an excuse, and yeah they definitely should update all HoT marketing material now, however, the fact remains we never hear about a whole lot of stuff going on at ArenaNet when it comes to content in development. Things change and not always for the better, we have no grounds to claim that it wasn’t their intention to deliver all legendary weapons as promised or that they didn’t put all reasonable effort into delivering on those promises before this shift in priorities,

Do they take a PR hit for this? Definitely, but I don’t doubt that they knew it the moment they announced this… and they decided to take it anyways.

ImTasty.2163:

1) While I can see jewlecrafting getting bumped to 500 I really don’t see the benefit of increasing cooking to 500. Food in its current state is already strong. Even for JC we still have numerous easy methods to obtain ascended trinkets so I don’t really see a need for them to work on it now but could be something they introduce later.

What I want to know is why they decided against 500 jewelcrafting in the first place? They were obviously either in the progress of doing or very much intending to do it at some point, looking at the fact that obvious mats for it exist in the game, we just can’t get them.

I mean, yeah… ascended trinkets drop like candy if you do the right kind of content, but with raids the acquisition of weapons and armor has also been made a lot easier. So in retrospect if they added the ability to craft ascended trinkets it wouldn’t really be any different from how armor and weapons are now.

ImTasty.2163:

2) Can you provide a link to Anet saying they were going to “complete” the core skills? I’ve never heard it before and would love to read up on that.

I would like to know this too, because I really want this to have a chance at happening.

ImTasty.2163:

3) I will agree with underwater combat needing some overhauls but tbh I’m not expecting that until the Deep Sea Dragon expansion.

I don’t think the DSD expansion would come before this overhaul happens, or if it does they would probably do some weird contrivance to allow land combat to happen in it no matter what. I think underwater combat is in a bit of a catch 22 situation, it makes no sense to develop major content if underwater combat remains as it is and it makes no sense to rewamp it because there is no major content tied to it and people have been predisposed to dislike it.

ImTasty.2163:

All in all, Anet doesn’t really need to “prove” they can finish something because there are tons of finished things in the game already.

Yeah they do, but with recent news and lack of content, and shall we say underwhelming expansion (I think the content we did get with HoT is, in a sense very high quality, but there isn’t that much of it and it is pretty formulaic unfortunately), I can understand where the OP is coming from even though his choice of words for expressing his opinion might not be entirely on point.

Melanion.4892:

Why is this needed? I don’t play the game more than 2 times a week and I have more than enough tomes and leveling things to level 5 characters over.

I am in much the same boat in terms of tomes, however, think of it this way… would them offering this service (even though it really isn’t needed) realistically somehow detract from your or anyone elses enjoyment of the game? Except maybe the one who used this service if they have never played the game normally. But is it our job to protect new players from making poor choices, I think not.

I can understand why some people are so against this… it is in essence a bit of a content skip, however, there are just things you don’t want to do more than once. At least I don’t, because they are not the type of content I play GW2 for (renown hearts, I am looking at you).

I can’t even begin to count the times when I had been playing in Silverwastes (pre-hot) on my mesmer alt and thinking, maybe I should do something else… say kill the mega destroyer for example, until I realize I haven’t even set foot in any map south of Bloodtide Coast on that alt and I just forget about it.

In my case at least allowing some way to accelerate map completion or get past the parts of it that make me not want to go play certain piece of content would actually result in me playing the game a lot more specifically on my alt characters.

Crinn.7864:

Another thing people need to realize about WoW is that WoW has way lower graphical fidelity, and a thing about graphics is that the lower a game’s fidelity are, the less manhours are needed to make assets for it.
WoW can put out huge expacs because Blizzard needs far less manpower and money to make content compared to modern mmos.

This is so true, at least as far as 3D games go… for games with locked perspective or ones that use a lot of 3D on a 2D plain it is not quite so straightforward. But in any MMO the longer the games history the more of the costly stuff you will in a backlog like animation rigs etc. you can just make minor adjustments to.

Once ArenaNet stops rebuilding in-game systems at every turn, and only then, will they enter a period in which their content production will begin to be truly streamlined and we’ll see more content for the same investment from their end. I really hope we will start to see this once the WvW overhaul and map restoration are done, but we’ll have to wait and see.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

We know this and ranger botting are cool, but what else could we be doing?

Well for a start if pets are okay, then turrets must be fine too… but let’s remain topical here. I mean personally I am curious to see what will happen with this. There are probably many unintended things players could be doing that simply aren’t widespread enough to be on any radar yet.

It will be interesting to see if someone responds in detail, to see if this gets moderated or not.

Let’s at least be consistent when it comes to this now shall we, ArenaNet.

I think this game needs expansions, not because it has to have that expansion style content drop but, because it needs the publicity in general gaming media as well as the retail presence an expansion brings.

Personally, as an existing player I couldn’t care one bit if we got every piece of content in living story / feature pack style updates. Content is content, and with season 2 they showed they can reach a satisfactory quality (I don’t think the quality of HoT content, in particular the story, was much different from season 2).

I think there is a model they could adopt that is not really expansion packs but carries the same benefits in terms of media coverage and retail presence if they play it right. However, this would put more pressure on the gem store when it comes to existing players. This mode would be release content at a steady pace into the game, use some variant of LS2 model when it comes to monetization… then periodically release “season packs” through retail and make big deal out of stuff that has come to the game since previous pack.

Call it a periodic re-launch of sorts. This wouldn’t totally exclude the possibility of actual expansions, but it would mean there is not as much pressure in their production and they could take their time. This game definitely does not need yearly expansion packs (I think it would be detrimental actually), but it could use the media presence from something similar to an expansion pack every so often.

They can’t really play the P4F card more than once after all.

This is why I don’t do Tribulation mode, except in a moment where I experience temporary lapse in judgement.

If someone wants to pay for that… go for it, I have more than enough tomes for 2 or 3 more level 80’s in my bank.

Personally, I would pay for a profession change over insta 80 any day.

DeWolfe.2174:

A big problem with the “exploit” definition is that it’s missing a key ingredient, the “to one’s personal advantage”. The benefits in this are mutual between multiple parties. The benefit’s are also open to every player in the game.

Oh, so selling run for 30g per spot is not a personal advantage, when that run shouldn’t have been able to be sold in the first place. Also, the benefits are not in fact open to every player in the game because discussing how the exploit works will still get you moderated here for example, or at least it did until very recently (at least two topics got moderated after this thread was a thing afaik). So it is hardly generally available information, meaning not everyone could take advantage of it (for reasons that have nothing to do with skill).

Just a quick reminder, there actually is an objective definition of what an exploit is in video games. It really shouldn’t be subject to such wild reinterpretation on a case by case basis in my opinion.

ArenaNet is free to do as they wish, however, you can’t dispute that this is using an exploit by that objective definition of the term.

In video games, an exploit is the use of bugs or glitches, game systems, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game’s designers.

I think there is no argument to be made for the case where joining an in-progress Tribulation mode run would ever have been something intended by the game designers in this instance (both the devs and the game itself have made that clear).

This is an instance where they are directly overruling their own user agreement and code of conduct.

Guild Wars 2 Code of Conduct

17. You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars 2 and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 User Agreement, section 8

You acknowledge that You may not, without signed written consent from a legally authorized representative of ArenaNet, do any of the following — Use, or provide others with, any “hack,” “cheat,” “exploit” or “mod”;

Yes, they have given their consent in this instance, however, the fact that this is an exploit has not changed. The point of discussion as I see it, isn’t whether this is okay or not, because in that one statement they made it okay, but whether they made the right call in overruling their own policies so blatantly.

We can not really dispute the written consent given by Chris Cleary (although, I guess technically it isn’t signed etc. but that is just nitpicking). We can, however, discuss and provide input on whether this was the right thing to do in our opinion.

I think this would be a nice change, however, I agree that it should absolutely be optional… here is an idea I had a while back on this subject.

The idea would be being able to craft a consumable by using f.ex. one of the two gifts of exploration from world completion along with something else. That when consumed then unlocks world completion for you.

As for rewards disabling them would be fine. Also another possibility, sort of derived from above idea is to be able to craft a consumable that only unlocks waypoints and nothing else (dunno what materials it would use), but in the latter case an argument could be made for keeping rewards intact if a player then afterwards finishes completion on a character that used a waypoint unlock (because they still have to do majority of the work).

Either way, I think there should be some sort of convenience feature when it comes to world completion, or waypoints specifically, because right now I barely play my alts because they don’t have waypoints unlocked.

Seera.5916:

Actually, selling dungeon runs does add currency to the game as the end of a dungeon gives gold to those present at the end.

You are absolutely correct, and thinking about it if you can still salvage dungeon token armor even more so.

To tell the truth I haven’t ran dungeons in ages, I am in this weird in-between were dungeons are too easy if not trivial (and since liquid gold was changed, unrewarding) and raids are way too stressful. Which on a personal level sucks because I have very little to do (you can only kill mossman so many times before you go insane). I am going way off-topic now though, so lets just leave it at that.

Not that I personally agree with ArenaNet’s stance on this issue (as is evident by one of my earlier posts), but I suddenly feel the need to play devils advocate for a moment.

The exploit, and yes it is in an exploit as has been pointed out by many, doesn’t actually introduce new currency to the game. The reward systems of SAB are entirely separated from gold (or rather they are entirely SAB specific and most of the stuff is account bound this being one of its good traits). Yes, rare drops of skins can be sold, but those only shift currency through the trading post and thus in effect remove it.

The selling of any SAB like group content only shifts wealth from many players to a smaller subset of players… which is not necessarily a good thing, but it isn’t the same as introducing new currency.

I completely agree that this should be treated as a bona fide exploit… because that is what it is. Unintended game behavior is being used for personal gain and while it is not as bad as things that interact directly with primary currencies, or introduces new currency, or the material economy it still isn’t entirely without ramifications.

Not to mention this could be seen as setting an unfavorable precedent… granted that is their prerogative to do so if they so choose, but this could potentially result in countless needless/bogus appeals of other exploiting behavior even if the appeal process is entirely under ArenaNet’s control.

I both agree and disagree with this… it would make sense for them to be account wide. I mean store upgrades once vs store them separately for each character, I don’t need to tell you which is more cost effective solution from ANets point of view in terms of persistent data stored per account and character.

However, I can also see the views expressed here as positive, but it also sucks that I will now have to run SAB with my Asura forevermore if I want to be efficient. Not that it makes huge difference other than aesthetically.

Also there is a bit of a disconnect, because rewards are afaik once per account per day, yet upgrades are per character.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

One problem I have with the shortcuts is that the baby clouds also follow these shortcuts… There’s now no longer a way to scout the path before doing it in full mode…

True for Z2 (and maybe Z1), not so much for Z3. I guess they removed them from the first two zones either because they were somehow interfering with the new shorcuts (like being were the new clouds are, I dunno… been too long) or that the two potential paths in infantile mode were seen as confusing and they wanted to avoid that.

I mean for Z3, the cut out portion is nice and separate from the rest of the level so there never is a moment where on infantile mode you would have two infantile clouds going in different directions. The same isn’t true for the other zones.

Still sucks that they are not consistent in their treatment of these new changes though.