Guild Wars 2

I see my problem: There’s another sticky called “Index of Suggestion Threads”, and I thought that was it.

Thanks!

But, while I don’t support auto-forging, perhaps they could sort out items which can only be used in the MF for one purpose. Like, put all the greens together, all the blues, etc. Or, allow us a filter to show just the possibilities. (Sort of like what happens now; when you double-click a green item, everything BUT the green items greys out.)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If there were/will be Dev responses, they would likely be found in the QoL Suggestions Sticky Thread above.

Good luck.

That thread has been locked for months.

Napo.1230:

Revamp of minor/major sigils either let us salvage them into something, even just luck would be great….or just stop giving them to us.

A while back, I suggested having a way to declare certain items as “junk” for selling purposes. In other words, I make by sigil of ogre-slaying “junk”, and then every time I hit the “Sell Junk” button, they would go along with all the official junk.

Interesting. I didn’t realize that. But, I should have, since I seem to have an account.

Also, do they have a preferred browser? Many of the controls don’t work with my usual IE.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Are you both sure Mike O’Brien made that statement? It wasn’t a statement from one of the NCSoft Quarterly Financial Statements meetings?

Actually, I didn’t remember who posted it, just that it was said. I was going off of the previous poster’s statement.

It would be really nice to be able to filter the lists of achievements and collections (such as trees* and leaves*) so that they only show if a/some certain condition(s) is/are met.

Two filters immediately come to mind: achievement points are available and mastery are available points. (There might be more.)

Footnotes:

• By tree, I mean they layers of folders in which leaves* are found. For example, “Story Journal” | “Gates of Maguuma”.
• By leaf, I mean the individual “achievement” under a tree. “Zephyr’s Ascent” under “Story Journal” | “Gates of Maguuma”, for example.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I would hope that Anet is capable of producing an expansion better than HoT. If not, that does not bode well for the future of the game.

I remember that Mike O’Brien made a point to assure the gw2 community that they had learned from the mistakes of HoT. I don’t remember the core game ever needing that kind of caveat.

Unfortunately, Mike did not specify WHICH mistakes.

I listed some of the lessons ANet needed to learn — and correct. I’m sure there are others.

To convince me to buy earlier than I posted above, they’re going to have to publicly state what those lessons were, and what they’re doing to correct them. Vague promises and vague references to “mistakes” aren’t going to cut it, for me.

Ayrilana.1396:

What was gated in HoT which was unreasonable?

The very first mastery was required to advance the storyline. And, that required far more XP than you earned during the mission.

It turns out if I had actually tried to buy one, the message would have made it clear. It says you can only buy it once per account.

Duh!

Thank you all! I can’t mark more than one as the answer, but all your responses are helpful. Thanks!

Thank you!

I’ll post again (for others) once I figure out per account/per character. But, the rest of your post was very valuable.

Thanks!

An Unstable Magic Volley isn’t written up completely on the wiki. Is it an item you use once per account, once per character, once every time you go to the map, or maybe even once every time you want to use the skill?

Same question applies to the other three, but I suspect the answer is the same.

Perfect! I searched before, and couldn’t find it. But, I was looking under armor instead of generally or recipes.

Thank you!

Am I understanding this correctly?

In order to get a full suit of viper’s exalted armor, I have to farm the meta in AB until I get six random drops of the recipe’s?

I sure hope that’s not correct (because I hate HoT), but it seems to be so. Is there any other way to get those armor pieces and/or recipes?

Solo is really hard at first. Until you have your elite spec. done, it’s basically not acceptable. Even after that, there’s a lot that’s going to kill you, quickly and easily.

The gating was intended to keep people from delving beyond their skill level, but it’s hopeless. The gating doesn’t help you get better, only bored. However, there is a way to avoid being incredibly bored at the start: run 2-3 characters through, switching back-and-forth while earning the XP for your masteries. (A side benefit to this method is the later characters will have a better idea how to get the achievements for storyline missions.)

If you see a “group event”, and you’re alone, leave. Until you are an expert, you’ll be toast.

Similarly, if you see a mob of more than two veterans, run. Veterans in HoT are similar to core Tyrian elites and some champions. Most have break-bars that make it impossible (solo) to break through and interrupt them, so some builds are almost useless.

Mapping is a killer. The 3D maps are somewhat interesting, but they’re nearly impossible to navigate, until you’re very used to them (and Tangled Depths never gets easy to navigate). However, the storyline takes you through that fairly well, as regards mapping. It skips much of the onerous map issues.

Bottom line: be prepared to die. A lot. And, be prepared to be frustrated by gating and map issues.

I won’t buy it at all until after players get a look and comment. And even then:

• It can’t as hard to play as HoT was.
• Gating cannot exist beyond a small amount. LS S3 has gating about where it needs to be. HoT was and still is gross as regards gating.
• The maps need to be not as disgustingly hard to navigate. Some kind of clear method of showing up and down needs to exist. Similar to how nodes are now, except for passages (once they’ve been discovered, of course).

Those are deal-breakers for me. It needs to be much more casual-friendly (than HoT was) for me. If it’s clear they listened only to the tiny minority of players who want things harder, I won’t buy it.

Like Illconceived said, different maps have different burnout curves. It only takes me 15-20 minutes to burn out on the four original HoT maps. But, I’ve played SW for hours on occasion.

What I do to keep things interesting is I send new characters into maps. I usually use dailies to “tell” me where to go, but once I get there, I can do quite a bit of mapping. Mapping doesn’t generate a lot of gold, but you do get a lot of materials, and they’re valuable, too.

My counsel is to pick places you like to play, and play there until just before you get bored. Don’t cross that line, though, or you’ll end up with a growing list of “boring” maps.

It has been suggested that the small number of gathering strikes that unbound implements have is a problem. I agree; here’s an idea:

Create an attachment slot for permanent implements. The attachments would add a particular magic effect, such as unbound magic or snowflakes (or whatever).

The attachments would need to be limited-use, I suspect. But, they could have varying sizes. They could cost gold and/or gems.

Astralporing.1957:

You do get booted even if the message disappears. It’s just that it can take up to an hour. And you don’t get to see the counter then.

I agree that that’s the way it’s intended to work, but I’m fairly certain I’ve played on 2-3 hours after getting one (that later went away). Once. I could be wrong, though; this game has a tendency to make you forget things for long periods of time. If my sense of reality was warped …

The biggest problem I saw was that it was hard to make trades. There simply aren’t enough people to trade with. But, many of the hardest achievements require trading, or else a heck of a lot of grinding.

(FYI: I completed my 50th point about 1 1/2 – 2 years into GW2’s life span. That’s my last experience with GW1. I should go back and see what 13th birthday presents come, but I just don’t have the heart for it any more.)

I thought the story part was maybe a little short. But, the boss fight was so long it was boring. You were constantly grinding through hit points using impossible-to-learn mechanics. I had to read the wiki before I made it through.

But, they DID fix some stuff. You can actually see the updrafts now, at least from the ground. 3D still sucks royally when the bombs are hitting you during that last flying phase; it’s just impossible to make it through without a significant amount of pure dumb luck.

OriOri.8724:

Yea the megaserver system definitely has its problems. Especially where once it decides to close a map, that map will be closed regardless of whether the population rises or not.

Actually, I’ve seen maps get resurrected. It’s very rare, but it does happen.

Now, it SAYS that it’s closing, but sometimes the message disappears, and you don’t get booted.

But, I completely agree that the megaserver process for meta maps is really bad.

Just tell yourself, “It could be worse.”

After all, on the last day of Living Story Season 1, the servers crashed. All progress toward certain things in the tower was erased (if not already completed), and there wasn’t enough time left to complete it once it died.

We all thought they would return the content, but that proved impossible (apparently), so many were stuck with 90% complete achievements and dozens of tokens, and no way to use or complete them.

Being able to select a second level 1 trait instead of the level 2 or level 3 trait seems like a good idea. (Likewise for 2nd and 3rd traits.)

But, balancing the old ones to match the new model would be overkill, and almost impossible to do correctly.

Yes. There’s an article on this forum, however, that says it will be closer to the 3-month gap than 2 this time. They’re apparently having some issues getting it ready.

For those of you who don’t know what a DDoS is:

It stands for Distributed Denial of Service. It’s also written as Distributed DoS or D-DoS.

A DoS (Denial of Service) is where an attacker floods a network device (server, firewall, network segment, etc.) with garbage packets. Individually, they take a trivial amount of time to just throw away. But, although trivial, it’s no zero time.

So, if you throw millions of these garbage packets at a network, that which used to be a trivial amount of time begins to add up.

A Distributed DoS is where the attacker(s) have multiple systems all sending the bad network traffic to one location. Attackers use “botnets”, which are collections of PCs, servers, etc. that the hackers have compromised. So, the attack isn’t just millions of packets, but billions and counting.

Hackers can even hire a botnet to do their dirty work. However, it’s not cheap ($10k per hour for the biggest ones), so there has to be a reason.

ANet won’t tell us what the attackers are after, but to spend that kind of money attacking a game, you can bet your bottom dollar that there’s a reason. They’re probably trying to figure something out about the network, or crack passwords, or any of a number of other things. ANet really shouldn’t tell us what they’re after; that info is better held close to the vest.

NOTE: I have seen no statement by ANet which would indicate a DDoS has occurred. And, they really should only tell us if they have a good reason, so I wouldn’t expect to see anything official about this, (if it’s a security issue, and Chris’s involvement would imply that there’s at least a possibility that it’s a security issue).

Chris and Gaile, it does look like it’s up again.

According to the wiki (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone-Warped_Hide/Drop_rate), about 10% of hides salvage to hard leather. This is using a basic or master salvage kit. Using a crude kit is much lower.

NOTE: Not many people have added info, so this should be taken as tentative.

fishball.7204:

It’s a sale because for people who buy gems with real money they get more for their gems. Also applies to those who stored gems up using gold->gems before the sale.

Yup, that’s what I did. I bought five character slots. I would have bought more, but I’m unemployed right now …

ArchonWing.9480:

It would seem more bag slots seems simpler.

Perhaps. And, it would be closer to a direct revenue stream (gems), whereas buying bigger bags would be primarily in-game currency.

But, I would actually lobby for both.

Mystic.5934:

so, are you prepared for the cost?

I would accept it, but I’m nowhere near being able to actually buy them.

I’m not sure the exponential increases need to continue at that rate, but they would definitely need to cost a lot more.

However, my larger problem wouldn’t be the cost as much as the old bags. I don’t want to have a bunch of 20-slot bags laying around.

So, they should have a “rune of holding” concept, where the extra cost would be applied to the existing bags, as opposed to all new ones.

insaneseagull.7063:

Daddicus.6128:

insaneseagull.7063:

I’ve got a couple of 22 slots and some 18 slots. I guess I could invest in more 22 slot bags,that’d make my gw life a bit easier but I definitely see where you’re coming from.

22 slots? I thought 20 was the biggest. Or, is that a typo?

I don’t know where I got 22 slots from lol. I meant 20.

Whew! I thought I might be going nuts. (Which would mean your account name might be rubbing off … :o.)

Tom.6478:

One thing to keep in mind. We don’t actually need a 40 slot bag, just more bag slots.

Agreed.

I would think something like a 22-slot bag for another 25g, and go up from there. The 24 slotters would be maybe 40g.

But, if they do after such a long time (and have the high prices I’m recommending), it would be better if we could “upgrade” our 20s into 22s or 24s (etc.) Sort of like a rune of holding in GW1. But, the runes of holding would need to be customized per bag. So, you would need to buy a rune to upgrade a 20-slot bag to a 22-slotter. Etc.

insaneseagull.7063:

I’ve got a couple of 22 slots and some 18 slots. I guess I could invest in more 22 slot bags,that’d make my gw life a bit easier but I definitely see where you’re coming from.

22 slots? I thought 20 was the biggest. Or, is that a typo?

Rangers are easy to play up through level 80. Once you get elite specialization, however, all of the other classes are stronger.

Necromancers are my favorite. Easy to play early, and once you have Reaper, they’re really hard to screw up.

Elementalists are harder to learn, but in the long run they’re one of the most powerful professions.

I think the other six professions all have higher learning curves, so I wouldn’t pick one of those six as my first (if I had to do it again).

THANK YOU!

I’ve been waiting for what seems like forever.

OK, maybe a 1/2 year, but I’ve told myself a billion times not to exaggerate, but it doesn’t work.

OriOri.8724:

So why the hell are they ok with artificially forcing the price up to over 10 gold per exotic piece due to the asinine cost of leather?

Trying to fix a price for commodities always … ALWAYS … causes unintended consequences. That’s because markets (like the TP or the Dow Jones) operate under chaos mathematics. In other words, they can’t be controlled in a small way.

They CAN be controlled in a large way, and doing so just happens to have had the unintended consequence of high-priced leather materials we see today. They upped the requirements from 2 to 3 for most things.

But, they also upped the requirements for most of the other leather items, so that (and your post) gives me an idea:

They COULD try reducing just one tier of leather crafting costs, and see if there’s a migration towards upgrading materials at the Mystic Forge (due to having excess available at the next-lower tier). I would think dropping thick leather from 4 to 3 would have a small impact on hard leather prices, but without destroying the economy in the process.

What neither they (nor we, if we’re honest) want is a return to levels where the best thing you could do is sell leather to merchants.

Crinn.7864:

But as a programmer with experience with game engines and object oriented programming in general, ….

The development cost is nothing.

So, you did your development for free?

Crinn.7864:

Cost is irrelevant. The limit of bags is just a integer, that can be changed easily by a single person in minutes.
The server cost is likewise irrelevant because that’s not how software design is done. ArenaNet is not going to upgrade servers over inventory, so inventory limits will be based on existing server limitations.

However in reality the bag limitations are a design decision not a cost decision. Hoarding is bad for the game economy so they will want to discourage such behavior.

That single person spending minutes costs money, does it not? I happen to think it’s not a trivial operation, or they would have already done it. But, it’s still a cost, regardless how small. Also, remember it’s balanced off against an even smaller number: the real-world money made by selling widgets that increase capacity.

Reducing your second paragraph to the absurd, then they should give us infinite storage. Since that’s obviously impossible, there must be a finite number at which it actually costs money.

Hoarding is only bad for the economy as gold is “bad” for the economy; they’re not bad. They’re both resources to be managed.

The leather farm isn’t working very well. You MUST have an organized group, or at least a zerg with a commander to follow. A “farm”, by definition, doesn’t require that kind of input.

I found it extremely difficult to farm that “farm”. There are just too many bad guys. Perhaps they could scale it better. When there are only 2-3 people in the area, scale the bad guy count down. A lot.

Crustydog.9825:

Well, I completed all the adventures in the HoT maps. I am NOT going to say now that “aw, it is easy” or “if an old man can do it….” There are definitely a few of the adventures that remain scaled extremely hard.

I am not an elite player, but with over a decade of serious playing and being retired – I was able to spend wayyyy to much time on completion. Some may call it tenacity, others stubbornness, and still others stupidity – I tend to think my efforts on testing the adventures were the latter.

I stand by my assertion that a couple of the adventure’s level of play to achieve the gold achievement needs to be scaled back. The adventures are for the general PVE crowd and should be fun. Those who want to poke themselves in the eye can tourney PVP, Raid on hard-mode, or run high level fractals with four people.

This is Crustydog, signing off. Semper Fidelis

I’m not a Marine, but I applaud your service, and thank you for it!

But, if you’re older, and yet still succeeded, perhaps “impossible” doesn’t completely apply to me (I’m just shy of 59). I think I’ll try some of them again. I’ll start with silvers as my target.

Thanks for the nudge!

Wondrouswall.7169:

Isn’t that how the world works nowadays? It’s my problem that you have a problem and it’s a problem that your problem is a problem which makes it a problem for me – and that’s a problem.

:)
:D

kitten.4078:

More storage is not a solution, just a band-aid on the actual issues.

I agree, but I wouldn’t call those the “actual issues”. There are two classes of issues on this front: the ones you mention, plus the actual storage space available.

My arguments are entirely about the latter. I completely agree on the former needing help as well.

Cyninja.2954:

Cost to players, not arenanet. Big difference.

The cost to you is simple to solve: don’t buy them. So, there’s zero cost to you (unless you choose otherwise).

The cost to ANet is (at a minimum) development effort, ongoing maintenance, server and storage costs, and overall management of this piece of their infrastructure. That would be set against the real-world revenue stream they get selling extra slots.

(NOTE: They wouldn’t count the entire cost of buying slots, because some people use in-game gold to buy the gems. But, they certainly know what that ratio is, so they can factor it against the revenue.)

Cyninja.2954:

No it’s not YOUR problem, it’s literally every players problem and while you and others might be willing to pay, others might not. Stop looking at things through only your perspective.

How is it your problem because I am disorganized and like it that way?

Oh, and lest people think I’m favoring near-infinite space: the cutoff comes when ANet is not earning enough revenue selling more slots (of all kinds) than it costs to make those extra slots.

Now, what it costs to make those calculations also factors into ANet’s costs. For example, someone has to do the math to figure out if 800 gems is making enough to pay for extra server space, development time, etc. That person’s time (the one who does those calculations) should also be included in the cost/benefit equation. The 800 gems must pay for that person’s time as well.

steve.2945:

" any legs up?.

This probably meant “are any legendary villains active”, so it’s not as strange as it sounds.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

… But, hoarders are always going to hit the limit. Its in their nature.

Exactly. If it’s a problem, it’s a problem for me (only). And, I like it that way.

Cyninja.2954:

More bag space comes at a higher cost to get said bag space.

But, that’s MY problem, not yours. And, I choose to pay money to ANet so that I don’t have to spend my time in game doing something I abhor: organizing.

I could have saved a bunch of in-game gold by only using 18-slot bags vs. 20 (which are five times as expensive). But, I made a choice to pay the extra for those slots. (I would have paid real-world money to do it if I could have, but I thought the exchange rate was too high.)

I DID pay real-world money for bank slots and inventory bag slots. And, I’ll continue to do so as long as they’re available. I have and will also add character slots for storage.

It’s definitely not a “problem”.

OriOri.8724:

The actual problem is inventory management.

Inventory management is not a problem. It’s a difference in style.

I personally do not want to do (much) inventory management. How is that a problem for anybody else?

It COULD be a problem for ANet. But, it’s not because they’re earning money off of it.