I’m pretty sure Ascended items are a play to try to keep the hardcore and competitive players in the game until they can get their E-sports ambitions realized.
If the game become a home for only the casual players, any E-sports initiative will be dead on arrival. it should have been in the game from the start, but ANet was probably lacking the manpower to properly support and balance things at a rate that would keep the players happy enough to stick with it.
@Azure: When I had 6 hours a day to play, I farmed whatever I needed in WoW. now I have at most an hour, less if you count all the days I don’t get around to playing at all. I told myself I wouldn’t go farming if it wasn’t fun, it’s just not worth my time. ANet more or less promised it wouldn’t be needed.
I like DE’s and run event chains in Orr, but then I run off to explore or do a different event, I don’t want to do the exact same chain again and again. I mine when I see a node nearby, but don’t go making circuits.
@Kumu: That’s the casual player’s problem: I don’t have mats stockpiled.
After a few days at 80, I have 1 Powerful Blood, 2 Vicious Claws and 10 Ancient Bones.
I have barely enough Ori and 25% of the Gossamer I need, but the 90 Armored Scales for a Knight’s set? And forget about also making a Berserker’s set to have some options.
I do hope you’re right about people finishing their Ascended backs soon, because at this rate I’ll be going for ugly karma vendor stuff, or I would be if Arah wasn’t bugged all the time.
This is written from the PoV of a casual player that only has an hour a day max in GW2.
Crafting has been unprofitable from the start, but it has two uses: quick leveling for a gold investment (not for casual players obviously, GW2 is very stingy with mats and gold drops in open world play) and fairly accessible way to make exotics once you reach 400.
Now the players working on their ascended items seem to suck all the globs of ectoplasm and T6 mats right out of the market, making their prices skyrocket.
At the current rate, dungeon tokens, karma and the TP will all get more attractive than crafting exotics, leaving crafting only as a curious sideshow for legendary gifts and powerleveling.
Surely that can’t be the intention?
99% or more of the resources you gain in GW2 (that includes loot drops) will be destroyed by vendoring, salvaging, crafting or throwing them into the Mystic Toilet.
The remainder are items with skins that players want to use longterm, bought with dungeon tokens, karma, gold or crafted. They’re permanent until the player decides a different look is preferrable or combines it through transmutation with a different item for stats or looks.
Basically, it’s like you have to build 100 small ships and fly them into a sun to get a dreadnaught or something.
Black Lion Trader Express = 60% off
Karma Booster = 40% off
Mystic Forge Stone = 30% off
… so glad I didn’t buy gems with my gold.
Are you representing your old guild when you try to access it? If you had the alts before you made the guild, they might not be representing any guild.
Most of the devs are probably still in a food-induced coma from Thanksgiving, since they’re based in the US. Hopefully some support people had the sense to escalate this issue and call somebody from the security team, but odds are they won’t really get to grips with it until monday :-/
A miss because of blind will not use up the aegis boon, but iirc blind only gives a 90% to miss. So sometimes blind will be used up on an attack but not cause a miss, making the attack eat your aegis instead.
You’re not seeing all the players happily playing GW2, they don’t spend much time here, except for a thank you note now and then.
If you’re a highly competitive player that has to have the top tier gear or is looking for WoW style raiding, there’s not a lot of that here except long grinds for “Legendary” items you get by chucking endless mats in a slot machine. If on the other hand you enjoy general PvE, exploring or think that skill > gear in PvP, it’s definitely worth sticking with the game for a while.
In my experience, leveling to 15 was easy and quick, then 15-30 was a bit slow and after 30 your new skills and traits make the game more fun up to 80. Once you’re 80, if you work hard, you achieve a plateau fairly quickly. You can have full “Exotic” gear in a few days, then it’s up to you to do what you like. There’s pvp, WvWvW, exploring the world, or farming “Ascended” and “Legendary” gear that will take weeks or months of repetitive content.
How long does it usually take for you to get the prompt to travel to your server’s own LA?
The gw2db site is part of Guildwars2guru I think, not linked to ArenaNet in any way.
I did notice the same change. Perhaps ArenaNet asked them to stop scanning the TP or banned them for “botting”?
gw2spidy.com provides detailed info too.
Maybe the game thinks you still have some bundle item equipped (you logged out holding one, I have no idea how?).
I don’t know what class the character is, but try to use any transforms or kits that swap the weapon skills. Also pick up a bundle item (shovel, wooden branch etc) somewhere in the game and drop it, see if that has any effect?
rootap’s suggestion is also worth trying, but I would think you take one single shot then when using #1.
(edited by Cyrus.8261)
Let me guess: you were too late buying gems, the rate has gone way up and you’re trying to talk it down again with an announcement like this? Demand for gems is going increase a lot with those discounts, that’s how discounts work.
I had a side job once in a company supplying to a major supermarket here in the Netherlands. If the supermarket ran any kind of discount on a product of ours, we’d have to ship at least 5 times the usual amounts.
High Ranked players & Commanders hacked [Merged]
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Cyrus.8261
Maybe the hackers have trojans with both keylogging and proxying functionality now?
If they can capture your normal pw and then start their own game piped through your PC, it will look like a trusted network to ANet. I hope they let us disable trusted networks when using an authenticator soon.
And btw, do all those hacked visit the same community forum?
Karpuz, I’m in no way defending ArenaNet’s choices in this regard. I think it’s shameful that they launched without basic account recovery and support mechanisms in place.
I’m posting here to relay the facts as I’ve seen them on the forum here to give you more information to help you deal with ANet support. It’s definitely not the news you wanted to hear, but at least you know it’s not the support grunt that’s not giving a kitten’s kitten, it’s simply that they can’t do much because ANet didn’t build the underlying mechanisms.
Usually when something like that happens, it was pressure from the publisher to ship the game and only work on the areas that will give positive reviews at launch.
(edited by Cyrus.8261)
I’m not going to look it up right now, but I’ve seen statements that at this moment, ANet GMs/support personnel don’t actually have the ability to create items/gold on the spot, so even if they have the manpower to read through all the logs and identify each lost item/stack/character/etc, they can’t create replacements.
From how long it took to send out replacement DDE items for those that never got them, I’d guess a developer has to custom-build something for each such run.
(edit: They’re probably doing just that for the Ancient Karka compensation atm)
I agree that they left out some very basic features for supporting their customers.
(edited by Cyrus.8261)
I logged in at my friend’s computer which had never been used to log in my account before, and it didn’t ask for authentication at all. I definitely have mobile authentication activated. Something seems off.
Is that friend using the same ISP as you and in the same city/region? The authentication checks by “networks”, i.e. pools of IP addresses labeled by ISP as belonging to a certain region/city/area. If your friend’s IP address is in the same pool, you won’t get an authenticator prompt.
I looked up the original post for you:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Anet-still-don-t-have-a-char-recovery-system
Check out Gaile’s replay at the bottom.
I have no detailed technical knowledge of what ArenaNet is building, but usually a restore like this is based on snapshots being made regularly, not in any way on replaying logs. Since they’re not making snapshots of individual accounts yet, they have none to go back to.
Technically speaking, replaying logs that touch more than only the table/object to be rolled back would be a pain. For example: would all those items the hacker sold on the TP disappear from the (usually innocent) buyers’ inventories? What if they used those items? Would someone suddenly end up with -50 ectos in their inventory?
This is not something you can “just do”, certainly not without turning every ticket into 5 new ones.
Have you checked your computer for trojans/keyloggers? Changing your email pw from your own computer will not help you if it’s infected and the hacker that got you the first time can see every password you type.
(Of course, if you have the mobile authenticator activated, please ignore what I said).
@Maetel: Gaile has said several times that the launch of the restoration service will mark the earliest point that they can go back to. So if you’ve already been hacked, that service will not be able to do anything for you. So that’s a no.
It’s probably one hell of a job, combing through gigabytes of logs to find the players that were in the fight, then finding a reliable test to see if they didn’t already get the loot on another overflow. It’s not as easy as checking for a bag in every players inventory and mailing them a loot bag if they don’t have one.
I’m sure a number of players have already hidden their 20 slot bag and amulet in a guild bank or other storage (level 2 alt) hoping they’ll get another shot at precursors.
They probably need to make a patch just to create a new item that has the same drop rates as the real chest. Simply mailing random exotics will never be accepted by those that don’t get a precursor.
Just give it a week or two before deciding ANet “went back on their promise”…
I’m having a great time each day I get around to playing some. Whatever I feel like doing, I can pick an alt and go do it. There’s so much to do and discover and the only thing I’m a bit disappointed in is the very low drop rate of fine crafting mats (and the slow gold acquisition) that’s preventing me from crafting more gear for my characters.
Great news! I’ve been holding off on leveling crafts hoping for this.
And compensation for all of us affected since day one?
How would you determine a fair compensation? It would be an insane amount of work to try to figure out from logs who should’ve had which bonus. Picking a few stats like hours played or current gold stash will end up being unfair to some. And all of that is assuming that they can even see who was affected and when, which is in no way certain.
It’s quite a different situation from the compensation with the DC at the end of the Ancient Karka event, which has clear data in very recent logs. Even then, they’re already working for days to figure out how to fairly determine who gets what.
Aside from the practical matter, giving out compensation for bugs sets a bad precedent, leading to increased demands for compensation. Think “You nerfed my thief after I got a legendary yesterday! I want a new legendary for my Warrior.”
I think Lord Yoshi has a point. I’m not sure though whether it’s a cap on players that can tag a mob or maybe only when no players meet the 5% that the first few players that tagged the mob get credit.
Reminds me of an old web-based game that always resolved grouped attacks in alphabetical order. If you chose a playername starting with P-Z, your allies would often kill the target before you did any damage. On the other hand, if your name started with an A, you’d be the one to get retaliation shots in your face.
I used to be in a hardcore raiding guild in WoW, but then RL happened.
Now I feel I can’t do much group play, because I get interrupted all the time and have to comfort/chastise/rescue/clean up after my two little boys. I’m the kind of person that can’t join groups and then abandon them whenever I fancy, I feel bad about that, so in the end, I don’t join groups.
GW2 is the first game without a pause button that I’ve played since my kids were born. I went for it because I loved GW1 so much and it promised lots of easy-to-join world events. I’m having a blast running around and joining whatever DE is going on, knowing that either they only last a few minutes, or it doesn’t matter if I log out in the middle.
I’d like to be able to play dungeons by myself, so I can pause when needed, but I don’t really miss them, there’s plenty to do in the world of GW2.
Winter is coming!
Sorry, just couldn’t resist.
Omg, I have this awesome twist in mind: What if the alcoholic brawling dwarves are actually GIANTS?
Omg, I have this awesome twist in mind: What if the ancient elves are actually the YOUNGEST race in the world?
Omg, I have this awesome twist in mind: What if the beastly Charr are actually an ADVANCED race with TECHNOLOGY?
Omg, I have this awesome twist in mind: What if the most brilliant and advanced race are actually looking and behaving like CHILDREN?
Omg, I have this awesome twist in mind: What if the dominating humans that always replace the older races are actually IN DECLINE?
Yup.
It gets worse: The consortium has been looting all the corpses that we didn’t get to loot because we did less than x% damage to each Karka. They’re stuffing the karka shells into “Consortium Chests” and selling them for a crapload of gems, promising they might contain something much more valuable.
What makes you think “the Consortium” didn’t provoke the Karka into attacking LA?
The Consortium were obviously already established in Southsun Cove and probably thought it would be cheaper to get the Lionguard to come to the island and put down those profit-draining Karka than hiring mercs themselves.
Thanks for the answers.
I’ll be staying with my (Sylvari) guardian. I do have an engineer, but he’s a Charr, which seems to make some of the puzzles more annoying. I’m sure I’ll get better with practice, but I thought it was worth checking whether changing class would make things a lot simpler.
I was wondering if the Blink ability allows you to cross gaps and whether it works going up or down from your starting location?
My guardian’s jump abilities seem limited to where I can run and I’m not great at jumping puzzles, so I was wondering whether it would be useful to level my mesmer alt a bit more and use that char for JPs.
Portal seems attractive too, but mostly as a waypoint you make to skip a difficult part after you made it once. How long does an open portal last?
They just had the bad misfortune of building their colony on top of a very valuable resource (A big golden chest with precursors in it), much like the Na’vi in Avatar.
We’re lucky that there wasn’t some “heroic” human that switched sides to the underdog and showed the Karka how to be better at being Karka…
It made me realize things too:
1. When playing with 10+ seconds of lag, green stuff, death rolls and dart volleys kill you long before you see them.
2. Closing to melee range under those circumstances can accurately be described as assisted suicide.
3. Rezzing other players is then the only valuable contribution you can make on a melee character. So much for no dedicated healers…
I think we stopped the Karka advance on Lion’s Arch by destroying their guiding force, so they’ll just go back to basics and defend their colony until another Karka grows big and smart enough to lead them.
It’s kinda like the brainbugs in Starship Troopers. The bugs were only able to mount a planned defense/offense because a brainbug was on planet P guiding them.
During the 3 hours the event ran last night, I unfortunately had lots of time to think about how the event could have been better.
Why? I had lag of 5-10 seconds with spikes up to a minute, unlike anything I ever experienced even in the big dragon fights or DE zergs in Orr. Got disconnected twice and sent to overflows that hadn’t progressed as far yet, and with my melee class I was unable to do anything except revive people. In all of that time, I got loot from maybe 5 mobs.
After about 3 hours, I realized I was one of the lucky ones, actually able to loot the chest. I was very satisfied with the reward, no matter that I didn’t get any precursor.
For 3 hours, I didn’t have fun. It was frustrating, slow and I only kept going because I wanted to see how it ended. Every time the screen froze for up to a minute, I feared getting kicked to yet another overflow. During the reinforcements stages I found my character instantly defeated after lagspikes so many times, I considered just running the event naked to save on repair costs. That shouldn’t happen.
Please redesign future events to run for a longer period so the peak load doesn’t kill the servers and let players that missed the initial run on the home servers to queue up and then launch into their own overflow zone in groups of 50-100.
If you keep track of players’ progress in the event chain (like a personal quest) you could match them to an overflow that most closely matches their progress in case of a disconnect or abandoned attempt and also prevent them from looting twice (on the same character).
The tools are not real stacks, they are single items with a number of uses.
We are currently looking into this issue as one of our higher bug priorities. We want to thank everyone who posted and helped with the investigation of this issue. We are working daily on improving the overall state and experience of WvW. We would like to thank everyone for their patience and consideration.
-WvW Team
I’m happy to hear it’s finally been acknowledged as a serious bug. It’s very frustrating to always be playing at a disadvantage.
My first run through the story was with a Sylvari and that alone made things more coherent when Trahearne is reintroduced to lead the pact. I don’t dislike the guy, but the storywriting leaves a lot to be desired.
When Trahearne was talking about never having led and the orders not having any faith in him, I thought I was going to see him fail bigtime then letting my character redeem him (or help him redeem himself).
Instead I get to talk to some NPCs that confirm they don’t trust him, then go and kill some more Risen. After that, every success is suddenly credited to his great leadership and the whole “no faith” matter is gone. No Order threatening to leave unless some mission is done, no failures whatsoever, except the one where you indicate your worst fear and see that happen..
There was so much potential for the story with the inexperienced hero thrust into command, but they just glossed over that. Having a hero fail, fall into despair and overcome it to rise up vs the Big Evil is huge cliché, but it WORKS. In this case it would also allow for some failure to happen without players raging about a no-win situation. After all, they’re not responsible for the failure, Trahearne is. And they get to drag him through the low point and out of it by his sorry roots, after which it would make sense that Trahearne follows the player’s choices in the story.
I agree completely with the OP.
It would have been good as a way to dump unwanted items and occasionally get something nice back. Dyes, mats, etc are fine, but making it the only way to acquire legendary items? That’s just ridiculous, might as well call them Jackpot rarity items then.
I’m inclined to think that this gambling process wasn’t what ANet intended, but they didn’t have enough time to implement questlines etc per Legendary item, so they opted for the quickest way to still get them in the game, which was the Mystic Toilet.
If any developers are reading this: It would have been better to launch without Legendaries and add them later on with a story and specific difficult journey to get it.
99% of the game is still free of gear progression. Only this one endgame dungeon requires increasing amounts of “Agony” resistance, this is the one area where they’re building in progression, so people that would otherwise stop playing have a place to run 20 times per day.
It’s kinda like a Diablo minigame in the game. If you don’t like it, just skip it.
Besides, I’m sure that the next endgame dungeon will have… “Corruption” or something, that makes your Ascended gear full of Infusion completely useless, so you can start over again slotting “Purity” upgrades. (and at the same time, not having Infusion will not set you back in this new dungeon).
A slight difference in stats doesn’t your exotic gear outdated unless YOU make up your mind that it is. Aside from one endgame dungeon, there’s no content that needs this gear.
ArenaNet provided a wheel for all the hamsters that complained they didn’t have one. That doesn’t mean you HAVE to jump into that wheel.
Boycott all you want, it just means less lag when the event starts.
Please give us the option to never remember a network when using the mobile authenticator. It takes away most of the security that an authenticator provides.
It’s only a matter of time before the hackers figure out how to get in from players’ usual networks, for example by dropping trojans with a proxying functionality. I’ll happily enter a code every single time I log in to not be at risk from that.
As far as I know, that is the upgraded version. The first one is blue rarity.
Could it be that you can’t see/fill your own buy orders?
Perhaps you are running into the anti-farming system?
After killing the same type of mobs in the same area for a while, you will get less and less drops. It takes a break of at least 30 minutes to reset that, I think.
You can only have one kind of those stacking bonuses, it’s to prevent you from cycling through different weapons with all of those runes and getting them all. You’re supposed to choose one.
In the end it comes down to; shall I ruin the game, or invest in it’s future?
This.
I find it hard to believe so many people even consider getting gold from a clearly immoral and illegal source. Other people just like you are losing their characters, accounts and all they built up in the game just so you can save a few bucks on imaginary gold. Is it any less terrible because you don’t know the victims?
Are we really down to “can I get away with it (yes/no)?” as our only guiding principle?
Goldselling was/is also rampant in WoW. It doesn’t have a way to buy gold with real money (or didn’t when I quit last year) but since it had a subscription model, it had huge timesinks instead. People bought gold as shortcut to Epics and other things that would’ve taken days to farm together (reputation items).
GW2 is cleverly aimed at the market of gamers that have less time and more disposable income, which includes a bulk of avid gamers that were in school or university when WoW came out but now have jobs and families. Because of this it has more things that are directly or only obtainable with gold, so by definition the desire for gold will be higher.
The “problem” is also directly ArenaNets own problem, since black market sales directly compete with their own gem shop. Blizzard in contrast already gets their money at the start of the month, so they don’t care as much. This means ArenaNet will work harder to reduce botting and RMTs and the risk to illegal gold buyers will also be higher, balancing the increase temptation.
To add to this: It’s advantageous to complete the daily on your highest level character, since the XP and coin reward scales with your current characters level.
Most of the XP you get completing the tiers of the achievements, so even if your highest is already 80 and doesn’t need xp, it’s better to complete the daily on that one.
Note that complete means fill out the last category, not opening the chest. The chest will only be available to the character you were on when it appeared.