Guild Wars 2

I agree completely. I’ve had them literally standing on my corpse jawing with their colleagues, but ignoring me.

I don’t think this is intended, but it works and needs to be corrected:

In a battle with many players and many monsters, if you fight just one creature, you get at most one drop. This could be despite the fact that it was the most important creature to keep at bay or whatever.

As a player, my first goal in a mob is to make sure I land damage on as many enemies as I can, so I have overall better drops. If there are 10 creatures to kill and I do damage on 8 of them, I will get 3-8 drops. If, however, in the same battle I instead focus solely on creature, and kill it (leaving the rest of the players able to handle the rest of the mob), I cannot receive more than 1 drop.

This is a silly way to operate, and needs to be corrected. If a mob of players kills a mob of monsters, everybody should have a chance of drops equal to their participation in the battle. Whether that participation was in damaging opponents, reviving allies, or whatever, they were part of the battle, and should be rewarded accordingly.

The way it is no, players are rewarded for bringing weak AoE skills over strong single-target skills. A thief excels at neutering and killing single targets. But, if he brings that skillset, he’ll get fewer drops than anybody else. Eles, on the other hand, are disproportionately rewarded for bringing their AoE skills. And, any character who tries to operate as a buff-bestower/healer gets nothing.

Instead, each character should have a tally of damage delivered, conditions imposed, and damage healed added together (not necessarily linearly) over a time interval. Then, the same tally from the whole “party” during that interval should be compared, and the character given an appropriate chance of loot from every dead creature that died in that interval.

Well, I’m finding that the drops are significantly better than they ever have been. Further, the amount of gold I’m getting paid for events has gone up considerably in the last week. My 80 never (EVER) received over 2s for any event completion. But, in the last two days he’s averaging close to 3s.

I think they fixed something, but haven’t announced.

Well, Carter, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I finally figured out how to get to 400 in a crafting discipline, and I was then able to craft some rare armor pieces. They’re not exotic, but they still made me significantly harder to kill. I haven’t been to Orr to test it out, but I’m in Frostgorge Sound, and I’m lasting much longer than I thought I would up there.

So, getting the right gear seems to help. I suspect it will become even more so as I am able to add some exotic armor pieces to my outfit.

I even had my first two “one-hit kills” yesterday. We’ll see about whether the “30-50” has been reduced, but I’m lasting noticably longer as it is.

Thanks for that! I knew there had to be one, but I couldn’t find it.

On my 80, I received 5s 74c, plus a jug, coin and merchant express.

It gets better: I made a pair of gloves. Rare of course, but so were my old gloves. Since the old ones were soulbound, I decided to master salvage it (didn’t think of using a Black Lion kit). I received not just the rune, but also 2 silk and a glob of ectoplasm.

I am pleased.

THANKS!!!

I got it. I bought one recipe from the master tailor, and then I used discovery to create a new pair of gloves, and it raised me from 396 to 399. Now I only need one more thing.

THANK YOU ALL!!!

Einlanzer.1627:

Biggest issue is nearly every Waypoint in Malchor’s Leap stays contested 90% of the time. They need to make a couple of waypoints stay stable, otherwise I have no problems with the zones other than the respawn and DE timers being too quick for the amount of people in them, which needs to be adjusted at this point, and the
rewards need to be worth hanging around.

Otherwise, I like how they did Orr.

Agreed. However, my solution would be to have the Pact attack with differing numbers of troops, such that some times they win even without a human present.

Thus, if a human is there, there’s the element of chance that always exists in war. You never really know if you have enough troops.

Players would have to learn to notice when they’re going to lose and pull a retreat.

It should be POSSIBLE for the risen to overrun a Pact battalion, but it shouldn’t be guaranteed as it is now. And, it should also be possible for the Pact to overrun the risen in an particular location.

If I were in charge, there would also be 2-3 specific locations in every zone (not just Orr) where it is almost completely safe for players. Caves, underwater hidden caverns, etc. Similar to Command Post in Nightfall. They could have different reasons for existing, but they would always be there. Or, nearly always.

(We had to clear out Sunspear Sanctuary and Command Post before use, and that was fun. So, every time a new player comes to a safehouse, some bugs or wurms or something might pop up that they have to “clean up” before it becomes a safe haven. Other players who are there will have to join in to help the new person clean it up, but to the ones who already have the haven as “safe”, it would be nuisance, not a war.)

Thanks, all!

Kwolf: Can you point me to one, or give me a string that might catch the right places in Google? Thanks!

DeumReaper and Berkut: I think I see your point. So, I don’t get credit for the recipe (since I bought it and know it by the time I use it). But, that allows me to craft something else (armor piece or ring or whatever), and doing that gains me crafting XP. Is that about correct?

If so, that’s easier than I thought. And, a LOT less expensive.

Thanks to all!!! Great insights!

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Edit: Has anyone tracked how often they get “extra items” if you do the daily consistently? Because for a while when I was logging in every day and getting it done I was getting a fairly consistent flow of “extra items”.

Starting with tomorrow’s, I intend to. I’ll log them here every couple of days. If more people want to track them, though, I’ll start a new thread so the tally can be kept at the top rather than at random pages inside the thread. (Or, on the wiki. The wiki folks might already have a page tracking daily drops.)

ref.8196:

30-50 hits is a gross exageration. It takes me less than 10 seconds to kill a normal risen in cursed shore. Any mob in caledon takes me 1 swing, since it’s a level 1-15 zone.

Well, I must be doing something wrong, because it’s not exaggerated. I could be wrong (I haven’t counted), but I almost always get to use my 30-second recharge skills 2-3 times, so that’s a minimum of 30 seconds. The upper cap is something south of 90 seconds, so I would say yes, 30-50 is pretty much right on target.

I don’t think I’ve ever killed anything in the game in one swing. So, again, I must be doing something wrong.

NOTE: I haven’t tried Orr since I got sick of it after finishing the campaign. Perhaps I should go back and count now that I have at least something close to max in a few pieces of gear. I would probably do better, but then that’s the whole point of this thread, isn’t it?

For a new person trying to play the game, those areas are nearly impossible to complete. And one gets mighty sick and tired of slogging through it, paying twice for every death, and making virtually no progress at times (because all of the waypoints are contested, so you have to start over).

I have two characters that are in the high 300s. However, there’s nothing left by which I can gain crafting experience any more. I could go through all of the other tiers and find things I haven’t made yet, but you get a pretty tiny amount of crafting points with lower-tier stuff. No way it can get the 100k I’m going to need.

How does one get from tailor 395 to 400? Or from Jeweler 388 to 400?

You know, I noticed something else today. My 68 was getting over 2 silver every time on renown hearts. But, my 80 always gets less than 2 silver. Always.

Hydrophidian.4319:

Ditton.3149:

…
I like it for a brief time..then it does get old, I just leave the area when the feeling becomes monotony.

And that’s the design flaw right there. It’s a common reaction. I doubt it was the intended reaction.

Right.

The game plays the same in any zone. There are stories going on all over the place. One is down-leveled, so the excitement/risk factor is always there. If I play in Celadon or Straits, there are stories all over. And action.

The problem is that in Orr, there are three things working against fun:

1) The monsters are more difficult than in any other zone. I don’t mean level 80 difficult. I mean they are harder to kill. I take 2-5 swings to kill something in Caledon. I take 30-50 to kill something in Orr. So, it takes extra time.

2) The number of monsters is overwhelming. They are everywhere, and I mean EVERYwhere. They’re even in the towns. There’s no safe spot of any kind. So, #1 you take forever to kill them, and 2 you have to do it over and over again just to move.

3) The respawn rate is too high.

Put all those together and you get … tedium. Then boredom. And finally hatred. I know I need to go there to get the better stuff. But, I hate doing it, because it is such a dreary trip.

Now, go back to my first paragraph: In Caledon, I fight THROUGH the stories to get to other stories. There is a rich depth to it. The monsters are varied throughout.

But, in Orr, I fight merely to survive until I get to the spots with good stuff, only to find that I can’t get there in a fun way except by teleporting there. When I do, there is only one kind of monster to fight: Risen. The only stories even remotely interesting are the Cathedrals, but I can’t even consider tackling those without a huge party.

Add that all up, and what do I get? I hate it.

Unfortunately, asking in map chat only works if there are people in the zone. Unless one is in a city or dungeon zone, or Cursed Shore, map chat is useless, as there are essentially no people there.

3/4 events, 1/4 kill variety.

If there is a buff for cash, I would like to know about it. Is there?

For a while I didn’t pay much attention to the cash reward I was getting for finishing my dailies. A few days ago, however, I accidentally got the reward on my level 62 character. Normally, I would always switch to my level 80 because the reward was a full 5 silver each time.

However, when I took it on my 62, it was 4s 75c. I thought this was awfully close to 5s, so I would just take the reward with my 62 (62, now 68) so I didn’t have to swap characters. BUT, the next day I got 5s 35c, and the day after that 5s 41c (he was 65 by then). The key is that both numbers were higher than the consistent 5s I was getting on my 80.

I ALWAYS get 5s on my 80. (Including yesterday.) I have never received more than 5s.

So, I have two questions:

Has anybody else noticed a 100% consistent 5s for dailies on a level 80?

and

Has anybody else received more than 5 silver?

Thanks!

Hydrophidian.4319:

… There’s no real extra challenge in that. If I can defeat 1-3 mobs the first time, then I can defeat them the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th time as well. The scenario doesn’t get more difficult. It does get more exasperating, though.

There are other things I want to do, things I want to look at and explore, events I want to get to. But it reaches a point where the endless aggro actually prevents me from experiencing anything else in the zone.

I call that a design flaw.

This makes my point better than I did (I should have read ahead before replying). I found it insanely tedious.

Carter, you’ve got another really good point there: The respawn rates are about a 10th of what they should be. Once you clear a small area, it should STAY clear. Especially when battles against veterans are simply a matter of slogging through their enormous hit point count. I’ve had the other spawns reappear 5 times in one location while I was still fighting the veteran. That’s rediculous. And, as you say, not fun at all.

I don’t mind grinding to get numerically better armor. But, having to grind just to make it through a single opponent is stupid design.

This is a suggestion for the forums (as opposed to the game):

How about a sub-forum for people who want to engage other people heading into interesting zones or dungeons?

I find some areas particularly difficult to solo, and I would love it if I had a comrade. While such a sub-forum would contain many short-lived threads, it could provide a useful service until ANet finds a way to do it in-game.

Like? Don’t like?

If like, what are some things that need to exist for this idea to prove useful?

Eladriel.7295:

I don’t mine Straits of Devastation, I was able to finish it, but Malchors leap, I literally despise.. Been trying for a while to get all the vistas and skill points and waypoints.. just too many mobs and fast re-spawn.. if they didn’t re-spawn so fast it might not be so bad. And the contested waypoints all the time is irritating.. It is fine to make them constested letting us know there is events going on, but let us make the choice if we ant to use them ore not.

It’s the opposite for me (I despise Straits but find Malchor’s tolerable). I suspect the difference is profession and play-style.

Carter.3865:

It is not challenging at all.
It’s impossible to survive.
Respawns are just stupid. I’m at the Shore now and wanted a skill point so a group of us went on our way. Theres a champ to kill to get to said Skill point.
We clear the trash and then start on the Champ. By the time we get the champ down to a quarter of health all the mobs respawn and we die
How is that challenging unless you are in a massive group and as I said, groups are hard to come by.

You are correct. However, it’s not the size of the mobs. There are three factors that play against you in this zone (which are NOT your problems; ANet needs to correct this for first-timers):

First, you aren’t as experienced. There are tactics and strategies that work against the Risen, even in mobs. One still cannot solo champions, but they’re called “Group Events” for a reason. Skip the skill points, hearts, and vistas until you have more experience.

Second, you don’t have the skillset yet. People close to 80 and those newly arrived at 80th level don’t have all their skills yet. So, some of the valid tactics one might use aren’t available to you.

Third, you don’t have the gear needed. It is simply amazing how much top gear is worth. Not Legendary, but just exotic (or close to it). In Malchor’s or Cursed Shore there’s a temple of Lyssa. To defeat it took about 30 people an hour or so. But, at the end, a Karma armor merchant showed up. I bought a chest armor piece. (I could only afford one piece of armor.)

I am simply amazed at how survivable I’ve become due to that one piece of armor. Add to that a couple of near-max weapons, and I’m a lot tougher now. I can’t solo my way through Straits or Malchor’s yet, but at least there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

I believe two people can run through most of these zones together. Find a guildie or sit around in Trinity a while asking if anybody wants to explore with you. If you can’t find anybody, try looking me up in-game: Naif Foundstone or Clarissa Clawshadow.

Carter.3865:

…It encourages cooperation: Many of the chain events are impossible to complete with only a handful of players. The map and terrain will remain hostile and inaccessible to everyone, if an effort isn’t coordinated to take back territory. These dynamics are designed to encourage players to communicate and cooperate to accomplish feats (events) that are larger than themselves.

You are missing his point completely: He CAN’T cooperate with others because there aren’t any other people there. Any who are there are merely going from one zone to the next to save on teleport fees. There are (usually) very few people either farming those zones or going through them for the first time.

Furthermore, when he is there, he’s finding (as everybody does) that there are usually few uncontested waypoints. So, if he dies (because he is forced to solo it), he has to start back at Ft. Trinity. It’s darned frustrating going through there. It almost got me to quit playing entirely, and I’m sure it has ended many people’s attempts to continue playing.

ANet needs to nerf the overall structure, so that the NPCs can more commonly take back some of the waypoints without human intervention. Otherwise, they are basically permanently contested.

If we could buy recipes at times other than Halloween, then there would be a use.

Manipulation is impossible unless there’s a bug in the code. Your analysis is fatally flawed: The gems are not purchased all at once, but rather in small batches. After each batch is bought, the price rises slightly. Their actual cost will be the average of all of their purchases.

Krosslite.1950:

Those happy with the game do not come to the forums. For the most part. They play the game and that it.

This is false. I make an effort to spend a certain amount of time on the forums, but I still enjoy the game. I can complain and I can praise this game. But, to say I don’t enjoy the game is hogwash.

I agree completely. GREAT suggestion.

It’s been brought up before. Recently, too.

It needs to be averaged over the actions that occurred on each character. So, if you spend half the time with your level 40 and half with your 80, you should get 3/4 of the reward (give or take). What I do now is run my low-level character until I have one 1-3 things left to do, and then I switch to my 80 until I get the reward.

And, yes, I’ve reported this as an exploit, but until they announce a fix, I’m going to continue.

While you are partially correct, the real problem is much more fundamental: Solo players can’t compete. The mobs are way too large against single characters.

Further, the few people who ARE there are just moving around, some being particularly dirty while doing it. I wish I had a gold for every player who, having risen chasing him, ran through my character so they would aggro me instead. It’s unbelievable that anybody would do that, but it is worse because it’s so common.

Part of me wants to respond in kind, but I’m just not that kind of player. But, the game REWARDS players for doing this to other players (they don’t have to repair their armor or teleport to rez). Thus, knowing human nature, it’s simply unavoidable.

I think there should be a severe penalty for leaving the aggro zone soon after pulling enemies to another character. It has to be a minimum of 3-4 silver to match what they would have to pay if they stuck around and then died.

I thought that might be the answer.

Is there any way to become vigil after starting as whispers? (etc.)

How about a way to use their teleporter, at least?

Jia Shen.4217:

It is indeed annoying for those of us who want to use the tools cost effectively to make sure we have the right tool equipped. In many threads in the past I have posted what probably is the best solution to this. Have one tool than has X number of uses. …

I like it except for one thing: It prevents players who want to conserve space from having an advantage over those of us choose to save money. That’s probably an acceptable loss, IMO, but others might disagree.

Olba.5376:

It’s not that you’re mistaking it. The pickaxes clearly state what you can mine, so to me it’s more like a person using an inadequate tool because they did not listen to the guidelines they were given when they made the purchase. Modern equivalent here being not reading the user manual.

No. To simplify, I have a copper tool and an iron tool. I used the copper last, but don’t swap to the iron one for the next node, which happens to be iron-tier.

This failure is an artifact of simplifing the game interface. After all, we don’t manually switch between weapons and gathering implements, do we? No real person would make this mistake, but we can in-game simply because there would have been a player revolt if they did it realistically. This idea is simply carrying the game-simplification one step further.

[quote=833528;Olba.5376:][quote=833528;Olba.5376:]

There’s a fatal flaw in your reasoning: Just because you could get a special item in this one-time event does NOT mean you will never be able to get one again.

Consider the possibility (one of many avenues they could take) that they are intending to do one-time events often, perhaps several times per year. In fact, given that this one occurred only weeks after Halloween and that they obviously had the survey prepared in advance, this seems like a very good possibility.

Why on earth would you ever need to say the same thing three times in 2 minutes? That SHOULD be blocked, because it IS spam. In fact, it’s a terrific example of why they need to be muting actions like that.

However, I agree that the time interval is too large. You would have gotten muted for 3 in 10 or 20 minutes as well, and that’s no longer spam.

In real life, nobody would use a pickaxe to split a diamond or a claw hammer to clean ones teeth. In-game, it simply shouldn’t be possible to ruin items without warning. Nobody is going to mistake a copper axe for a steel one, for example.

When you went to gather something with an improper implement, how about having the game warn me?

To be fair, perhaps one would have to ruin one of each type of node with each implement before one “knew” what to use.

I’m not sure this is feasible, but it would be great if there were a toned-down version of the game, such that mentally-challenged players could still play. My son has Trisomy-21 (commonly called Down Syndrome), and he operates at the level of a 7-10 year old (he’s 24). He can’t read, but he plays games well.

Obviously, this would have to be a special server, where the items would only be a subset of what the regular servers have. Leveling would have to be easier, etc.

Most importantly, there would have to be voices in addition to typeface for the words.

There are probably a whole host of things I haven’t thought of. But, I know my son would be tickled pink if his siblings could play with him on occasion. Obviously, rewards would have to be far less for guests on this server, but we wouldn’t be playing for in-game rewards. Our goal would be a much more lofty reward: time.

One idea I had would be to simply have effective level be 1-5 levels higher than it would be on a “normal” server. There are probably a host of other ideas.

Whenever a character has no armor on in an area outside of a city, there is a high probability that said character is a bot.

Here’s an idea for how to catch bots: Auto-lock the account after some number of reports has been made. Essentially, trust the user community.

Three other changes would have to be made first, though, or it would catch real players.

First, there needs to be an auto-unlock. If a real human gets locked, then show them a screen with those obfuscated “words” that only humans can read. Uncritically accept successes (probably human), but keep track anyhow. Some bots are monitored by their owners, who could bypass this security easily.

Second, keep track of accounts that report a lot of bots. Note the track record. If the person seems to report real bots most of the time, then add weight to that person’s bot reports. And, vice-versa.

Finally, keep track of accounts that have been called bots, locked, but then later unlocked. These accounts should be monitored for a time to test whether they were incorrectly or correctly reported.

Right now, when you open the crafting panel, it’s always exactly the same size. There is no way to resize elements.

The idea would be to allow the window to change size. Also, the inside window where usable items are shown in discovery should be changeable. I would like to widen it so they all show on one screen, but I can’t.

I think you may have a misunderstanding of how catching a bot works for them: They must know absolutely that they are bots. And, they do it with human eyes looking over log files, and sometimes in-game.

I think they should be more agressive, but they’re kind of stuck: They don’t want to ban legit players.

That’s my take, too. Gems cost the same, but the stuff you can buy with them is cheaper. So, in a way they’re partially making gems worth more for this event.

But, the implication is that only some things will be cheaper, and the items being put on sale varies with the day.

All of the above seems correct to me. However, I’ve noticed one anomaly: The times that things occur is off by 1 minute from the clock. Dailies reset at 12:01 AM UTC, not at 12:00 AM. I suspect this is on purpose, but it could be a coding error. In either case, if you complete an event before 12:00:59 (that’s a guess), it counts as the previous day.

Thanks Derk, Razarei, and Eveningstar! Very good summaries.

Thank you Fozzik. In my defense, I did check the wiki, but it didn’t explain the flame-fest on the forum. And, I was confused because I couldn’t find a table that showed the relative differences between them. I’m sure that was simply a product of the timing: It had only been 2 days since Lost Shores completed. I’m guessing the pages are continuously being updated and are probably more detailed even as I write this.

Derk: Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly (I don’t have the game open right now), but when I went to those vendors, one of my armor pieces had superior armor level to the same piece (chest armor) that was there. I could have misinterpreted it, however, and so will check again next time I’m in LA. (FYI, I got the chest piece I referred to from a Karma merchant after finishing a monstrous event at a temple of Lyssa somewhere in the endgame areas.)

Thank you all for your replies!

[Moderated: Please refrain from threatening other players with the report function.]

I’m not trying to be funny: What is ascended gear, and why is there a big bruahaha about it?

All I want is simple technical answers. I previously asked what was “max armor” and “max weapons”. I was directed to some guys selling stuff in the south-central area of Lion’s Arch. Well, that was incorrect, because I’m wearing armor that’s better than what they sold. So, my question has returned.

What is “max” armor? Where do you get it, and how?

What happened to all of the posts?

I agree with you completely, Tuccos. This game was advertised as being playable by one person. I don’t mind if they have non-required areas be impossible to do alone. But, anything that’s required should be possible without endless dying.

I clicked “Play” on my minion-master necro. 25 enemies. I’m alone, and surrounded by 25 enemies. I lasted less than a second. I was dead before I could even get one skill used.

The problem was that this is NORMAL in Orr. Yes, it was a bit of an aberration since I just spawned in. But, being surrounded by an overwhelmingly powerful group is very typical.

Perhaps I need better gear. (Heck, I’m sure of it — I just don’t know what that means!) But, how am I supposed to get this better gear when I can’t even get to the final mission?

The week I spent trying to get to Arah will go down as the most frustrating game experience of my life, without question. I grew to hate the game at times. Not only is it beyond playable, but they penalize you every time you die.

Don’t put impossible content in areas required for progression in the game. Bring back hard mode if you have to, and let the people who want that kind of challenge get their jollies there.

HOWEVER, those of us who are complaining need to remember how impossible GW Prophecies was before heroes. I would have hoped the designers learned at least a little of what “fun” means in 7 years. And, they definitely have made huge strides in this area. But, they have to divorce themselves from both impossible foes and innumerable foes. That’s not fun. It’s a means to an end; it is nothing more than a grind to get through.

Cryptic Legacy.8192:

I would like to just be able to adjust the reset time. I find myself getting reset often because of when I play. Seriously, is 4 p.m. (6pm for me) the best time you could think of? Why not early a.m. or even late a.m. for that matter? I often play then next day and have to wait for reset as well. Maybe find a way to let the user select a semi-permanent reset time and only allow them to change it for cost or on a time based schedule. Or at least a time that would make a little more sense. All I know is it is becoming really really irritating.
Thanks for your time.

That time is midnight UTC; Americans aren’t the only players, after all.

Using the system’s clock would simply allow gamers would reset their clocks.

So, I think that when you join a world/server, you also choose a time zone. Then YOUR daily-clock would reset at midnight.

By the way, this would also be a security booster, because most players play pretty much the same hours every day (except holidays and weekends). If they saw a guy who routinely logs on at 6 PM every day suddenly logging on at 5 AM, this would be a red flag.

It wasn’t really tricky: You have to have several people in the area. Once you get the Waypoint uncontested, another issue comes up (the dungeon), but this part was simple in concept, difficult in execution.