Guild Wars 2

Good luck trying to explain anything to these devs.

Yup just more poorly thought out game designs.

ANet isn’t that big. NCSoft on the other hand.

The problem I had with the OP is passing off company and game as the same thing. They would like to see the game have sustainability. A game that is sustainable can mean further growth for the company.

As for the article. They seem to think that the LS is successful at providing the illusion of a living world. There simply isn’t any reasoning with crazy like that.

WoW:tBC sold 3.5m in one month (2.4m within the first 24h).
WoW:WotLK sold 2.8m in the first 24h.
WoW: Cata sold 4.7m in one month.
WoW: MoP sold 2.7m in the first week.

Couldn’t find much on the original game other than that it was the best selling PC game for ’05 and ’06

D3 sold over 12m copies in the first year.

As for EVE, you can download the client for free. You simply sign up, sub up, and play. It’s P2P without the B2P to start. It’s older than WoW and still going with a decently sized population. They only had a peak of 65k players online at the same time. However, EVE is a niche game and always has been. Imagine if you died in WvW, you got returned to a waypoint with no gear and had to gear yourself up again. As for the person who killed you, they get the chance to loot some of your gear off your body and do whatever they want with it (no soulbinding). On top of that, you have to pay the waypoint before you die to prevent yourself from losing levels the next time you die.

As for the player base. Spend some time browsing the eve forums. I know of a couple dozen people that would tell most of those here to HTFU.

The one I’m really looking forward to is ESO. 1.4m likes on their facebook, half a year before release. I’m not just looking forward to what kind of numbers it will be able to pull when it does release but also the impact its release will have on GW2. Wanna bet that ANet is planning something for the same time ESO releases?

They already have Tequatl rising on the 17th. Sure enough, the same date that GTA V is being released.

So the first link doesn’t show anything that would determine the health of GW2.

Instead we have the graphic that can be found on various sites…

http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/28/guild-wars-2-turns-one-has-shifted-3-5-million-copies/

Over 3.5 million copies sold over a period of 1 year (not that impressive) and an all time peak of 460k users online at once (probably when the game first released).

It’s also not very impressive especially when that number is no doubt global. WoW:tBC caused a 800k peak in just China alone. I’d like to see what the global amount was.

The real test will be to see if they they can beat their current peak at some point in the future.

I’ll have to wait till after work to check the link but in the mean time I’d like to clarify something.

Using the definition’s example reference above, those fairs don’t have to be open all at the same time. I’ll explain.

3 art fairs are going to take place for one week all at the same time. The same week. However, their doors won’t be open 24/7 for that time period. One will be open to the public for 9am to 11am per day. The other is 10am to 3pm per day. The third will be from 5pm to 8pm per day.

The week that they are taking place is equal to the 3 months that make up a quarterly. The hours they the fairs are open during the day are equal to the time the players are logged in.

So over a quarterly period (3 months) 400k seperate accounts have been reported as having logged into the game at least once. That would be 400k concurrent users for that quarterly period.

Now I won’t include people with multiple accounts as that applies to both active accounts and games sold.

However I will mention people who bought, played it once, then never touched it again. Since these people bought it, would show up in the report since they logged in at least once in the quaterly period, but since they only logged in the once and quit, they don’t count as an “active” player. So I would say that the number of ‘active’ players would be less than the reported number of concurrent users over a quaterly period.

It’s already been said how it’s better to just let them cap and then go in behind them to back cap after. More rewarding, but why?

After all if you have two opposing forces at a keep with one attacking and one defending, each side can collect loot bags by killing the players of the opposing side. Both sides get either an ‘event successful’ or ‘event failed’ reward. Where’s the difference?

The difference is with the tower and keep lords and the reward you get for killing them.

We already have siegerazer for the southern towers. Why not, not only have them for all towers and keeps, but require them to even take the towers and keeps?

As it is now;

Break in,
Kill Lord,
Stand in Ring,
Keep enemies out of ring, and
Cap.

Change this to;

Break in with siegerazer,
Kill Lord,
Have siegerazer stand in ring,
Keep enemies out of ring, and
Cap.

If the defenders kill the siegerazer npc, a ring appears around the body. The defenders then stand in the ring, keep the enemy out, and cap it. By capping this ring, it returns the dead siegerazer back to its starting point and the defenders get the exact same reward as they would’ve if they simply went to cap something instead of defending.

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

A simple Google search of the Dev Tracker finds the answer to this question. Here is the reason the game is called Guild Wars 2.

Martin Kerstein
Head of Global Community
This has been answered (Name is based on lore), so I close it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Where-are-the-Guild-wars/1621260

Such gullibility.

Perhaps you should consider trying to find something from the person(s) who gave the original game its name where such evidence is dated as close to the time in which they came up with the name as possible.

TooBz.3065:

This is true, but in the MMO space there aren’t a lot of shiny new alternatives out there. Especially if you are looking for a grind-free sandbox (no MMO has this). So if that’s what you are looking for, this is the only place to even get close.

I both agree and disagree with this. I agree that as far as non-grind sandbox MMOs go, there are none. EVE is one of the best sandbox games out there. The problem is that it will cost you in-game currency to do the things that are not grindy. This is why many players have at least two subs and at least one of those is used to mine or mission run. Both of which are mind numbingly repetative.

The part I don’t agree with is when you say “this is the only place to even get close” in reference to a grind-free sandbox. This game simply doesn’t come close. While it used to be close to the ‘grind-free’ part. It was never close to being a sandbox.

I feel your pain though. A sandbox RPG that keeps the grind to a minimum would be great.

LoneWolfie.1852:

I’m almost sure anet must be laughing in glee because people started buying more gems (in cash) to transfer.

I’m sure they are. Welcome to cash shop development.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Deamhan.9538:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

You obviously not doing any challenging content GW2 has to offer OP.

There has to be some first.

EHhh PvE……… AI is easily beaten no matter what the game is. Try Pvp. and if you think you are the best at that , then go pro and play in one of Anet’s tournaments.

Or I can do what I already did. Go back into playing EVE. Get involved in the various forms of pvp in EVE and then come back and talk about pvp in GW2.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

You obviously not doing any challenging content GW2 has to offer OP.

There has to be some first.

My HDD must run at a higher RPM because I load into LA in half the time. SSDs are great and all but they are more expensive for less space. While I don’t know from personal experience, others who do speak from personal experience, have told me that you’re more likely to get a bad one from the factory. I’ve been to two different computer stores that do repairs on top of selling hardware. The guys at both places independently said that as far as hard drives problems go, they’ve seen more pc brought in for failed SSDs than HDDs.

When I get around to upgrading my HDD, I’ll just go with a high rpm HDD with SSD cache drive.

Just going to run a little example…

Let’s say that we have one server box running all three BLs and EB. That server is over loaded with the amount of information it’s trying to process by all the activity going on in these maps. So it begins to lag.

If you add a new map and then lower the population per map, you will still end up with that one server trying to keep up with the same amount of information.

You would need to add a new server and then divide the maps across the servers or just reduce the population limit of the servers without adding any new maps.

His take on party size was interesting to hear in light of some 80 person requirement that I’ve been hearing about.

Until the next “balance” update when different builds become the new “best” build. This should happen about the same time ANet notices that most of the population is done gearing up their mains (and maybe an alt or two) with the new gear.

Well I don’t know about other people but my idea of what ‘grind’ is, is having to perform a small tedious task dozens or even hundreds of times to reach a goal instead of doing just one big task.

In other words…

Doing something that take 10 minutes to do, 12 times would be a grind vs doing something once that takes 120 minutes.

Crafting is a whole different issue with me. Looking at the size of your typical steel ingot, you could fashion a sword from just one. Yet in games it requires a dozen or more.

I’d rather see more realistic quantities, with the more rare materials gated behind game content that takes time to do (see one 120 minute task and not 12 ten minute tasks), and instead of the player crafting the item instantly for simply having the materials, the creation of the item should go into a crafting queue for which the player can go do other things while they wait. So not only is getting the materials not a grind, it’s actually more realistic and can still be something that takes the same amount of time to get in the end.

I think he is saying that the combat is too complex to make use of a feature used in EVE. Clearly he’s never played the game. EVE combat is way more complex than GW2.

It may be ANet but it’s also still NCSoft. Honestly, the game being about grind should’ve been expected.

F2P content centered around a Cash Shop.
Gind, grind and more grind for new shiny skins.
Borderline cheap combat mechanics (stun chaining, stealth, etc.)
WvW where NPCs are involved making it PvPvE.

Welcome to Aion Wars 2

Edit: I forgot about all the RNG.

I’d have to go looking but it has been stated by a dev that the ranger is balanced based on 100% pet up time. The fact that 100% is pretty much impossible in situations where it would matter most, Rangers are not balanced when balance is needed most. Play as a ranger and you play with a handicap.

I don’t know, I like my human necro. He’s a vampire (no he doesn’t kittening sparkle) with a noble background who never knew his real parents (or rather doesn’t really remember his real parents because of the time that’s passed).

His parents played a key role in causing the fall of the White Mantle and returning Queen Salma to the throne of Kryta. Yes, that would make him over 250 years old.

Edit: Nvm, got the pic to work.

Jamais vu.5284:

Deamhan.9538:

The only conspiracy here is yours Timi, especially since after looking up “skill Lag” youtube videos for GW2, they occur during zerg on zerg engagements.
[…]

Deamhan, posts with a red tag are developer posts. You might be unaware of this, but Devon is the lead of the WvW team at ArenaNet. A few posts above yours, he confirmed that it’s a server side issue, specifically due to server CPU computation issues, as well as in countless other threads.
Skill lag is also an entirely separate matter from framerate.

Yours is a futile position.

Also thanks for chiming in Devon.

“If the spike was server side, all areas of the game that rely on that server would suffer from it. I’m simply not seeing that at all”

Oh and sorry but the state of the game and the direction it’s headed leaves me with little to no faith in the capabilities of the Devs.

Let’s look at some numbers for the reality of it.

Now I use knights gear and went with knights stats. I found out that there isn’t actually a knights jewel, orb or crest.

However, looking at the numbers, if there was, it would be like this…

Exotic Knight’s ring with a knight’s stat exquisite jewel

power: 48 + 15 = 63
precision: 48 + 15 = 63
toughness: 67 + 25 = 92

An ascended ring with knight’s stats

Power: 68
Precision: 68
Toughness: 103

So the ascended, as just a base value, offers 8% better stats to power and precision and 12% better stats to toughness than the exotic and jewel combined.

The pattern that I’m seeing is that for every 30 point increase provided by the exotic, there is close to a 4% increase. So how would this work with armor?

Exotic Knight’s chest piece with a knight’s crest or orb if there was one.

Power: 72 + 14 = 86
Precision: 72 + 14 = 86
Toughness: 101 + 20 = 121

So what would the ascended version supply?

Power: 96
Precision: 96
Toughness: 140

For a % increase of 12/12/16 respectively. Now people don’t really use orbs and crests. They use Runes. So the ascended would offer better stats than what the exotic armor plus crest/orb combined, and still offer a rune slot?

I’d certainly hope not.

If they follow the way of the trinkets, the armor and weapons would offer better stats than their exotic counter part plus orb/crest, and would allow for the same infusion upgrade as the trinkets. This would certainly put ascended more on par if you couldn’t use runes and sigils with them.

Legendary weapons would then continue to have stats matching exotic since they too use sigils.

Jski.6180:

Deamhan.9538:

Jski.6180:

MandJ.8965:

Jski.6180:

MandJ.8965:

Jski.6180:

MandJ.8965:

Aphix.9846:

Anet does a great job, ascended tier is a good thing and kinda needed, but not a must for wvw etc like some people are saying, thats nonsense. Take your time and craft it if you can/want if not then dont, and if you play 67 alts well thats your problem.
They are releasing them bit by bit as well, I now have like 4 sets of ascended trinkets, at 1st I thought I could barely get a set before they release new types of ascended, Im guessing ill have several weapon sets before they release the the ascended armor. And never have I felt a difference when playing on an alt which doesnt have any ascended trinkets, the stat boost is barely, if at all noticable.
Get to playing stop moaning so much, its in the game already theyre gonna add armor as well thats a fact. Get over it.

You dont get it.
Now you only have trinkets! But what is if you have Weapons, Gear and trinkets? Against someone who has fulk exotic? You see, ascended is really bad idea.
The other fact you are ignoring, is that they said they will never make a grind game. Lie. Never make a itemspiral. Lie! Thats a fact, no one can ignore this. And thats, my friend not our problem! We will find another game, but hope ANet will do something against this, because GW2 is a great game.

Are you talking about wvw or spvp because in truth gear not going to win you fights its going to be more about your team comp or what land your holding. If your talking about pve GW2 has no means of looking at ppl gear nor are there any means or reading your true dps in a fight simply put GW2 is not made to be a max min game and if your going to try to play it that way your going to never have fun (in a way your never going to have fun in any game you play by playing that way because it becomes a very dry foumla that you must hold to or you will feel as if you failed but you will never feel rewarded for doing it).

Do you read the Topic of this thread? WvW.. and 10 % more damage in full Ascended Gear is high.
@defenders to ascended gear.
Lets make a fight if anyone meets Riverside realm in WvW. I will play full exotic and you the the full yellow gear. Lets say… 500 gold gets the winner?
Ascended Gear destroys Guild Wars 2 because Guys like me ave not the time to farm it for one, two or three characters. If I have it then, the next gear, maybe legendary Gear comes out and then? Grind grind grind. Hm

And you can get +20% dmg on walls with a cata or +25% more dmg over all on that cata i am not sure how you see an ascended wepon or item helping some one on that cata take down a wall.
You can say the same for an AC treb soon the ram Oil pot (lol) etc.. You can even use supplies faster and more effectively your gear dose NOTHING to help you when it comes to playing the real World vs World part of wvw.

1vs1. It makes a big different! Full exotic vs full ascended played by high level pvpers, 10% more damage make the different. Small Scale fights 2-15 players = ascended guys makes the difference.

Why are you 1v1ing in an called WORLD VS WORLD? Are you a one man world? (Like the song World man world man from the song Particle Man by They Might Be Giants made an error wrong name but still fits what i am saying i think also its a good song) Small scale fights are the most uneven fights that you can find in WvW there always going to be something far more defining to the out come of that fight then gear.

Given the gear already in the game, if you have a 1 on 1 with one person in full exotics and 1 in full rare, the person in exotics has a very distinct advantage.

Double up the people
Triple, quadruple, etc.

You get a 30 man in full exotic up against a 30 man in full rares and the 30 man group in full exotic will absolutely roll over the 30 man in full rares. Hands down.

Once you have an imbalance, if you put all those with the advantage on one team and put all of those without on the other team, this will absolutely amplify the imbalance.

And the 30 man group that full of rialy bots (up levels) should lost hands down too i think your missing the…..

No you are missing the point.

People don’t want gear to play any more of an advantage than it already does. What ANet is doing will do the opposite of what people want.

You’d be a fool to think that throwing fuel on a fire won’t make it any worse.

Jski.6180:

MandJ.8965:

Jski.6180:

MandJ.8965:

Jski.6180:

MandJ.8965:

Aphix.9846:

Anet does a great job, ascended tier is a good thing and kinda needed, but not a must for wvw etc like some people are saying, thats nonsense. Take your time and craft it if you can/want if not then dont, and if you play 67 alts well thats your problem.
They are releasing them bit by bit as well, I now have like 4 sets of ascended trinkets, at 1st I thought I could barely get a set before they release new types of ascended, Im guessing ill have several weapon sets before they release the the ascended armor. And never have I felt a difference when playing on an alt which doesnt have any ascended trinkets, the stat boost is barely, if at all noticable.
Get to playing stop moaning so much, its in the game already theyre gonna add armor as well thats a fact. Get over it.

You dont get it.
Now you only have trinkets! But what is if you have Weapons, Gear and trinkets? Against someone who has fulk exotic? You see, ascended is really bad idea.
The other fact you are ignoring, is that they said they will never make a grind game. Lie. Never make a itemspiral. Lie! Thats a fact, no one can ignore this. And thats, my friend not our problem! We will find another game, but hope ANet will do something against this, because GW2 is a great game.

Are you talking about wvw or spvp because in truth gear not going to win you fights its going to be more about your team comp or what land your holding. If your talking about pve GW2 has no means of looking at ppl gear nor are there any means or reading your true dps in a fight simply put GW2 is not made to be a max min game and if your going to try to play it that way your going to never have fun (in a way your never going to have fun in any game you play by playing that way because it becomes a very dry foumla that you must hold to or you will feel as if you failed but you will never feel rewarded for doing it).

Do you read the Topic of this thread? WvW.. and 10 % more damage in full Ascended Gear is high.
@defenders to ascended gear.
Lets make a fight if anyone meets Riverside realm in WvW. I will play full exotic and you the the full yellow gear. Lets say… 500 gold gets the winner?
Ascended Gear destroys Guild Wars 2 because Guys like me ave not the time to farm it for one, two or three characters. If I have it then, the next gear, maybe legendary Gear comes out and then? Grind grind grind. Hm

And you can get +20% dmg on walls with a cata or +25% more dmg over all on that cata i am not sure how you see an ascended wepon or item helping some one on that cata take down a wall.
You can say the same for an AC treb soon the ram Oil pot (lol) etc.. You can even use supplies faster and more effectively your gear dose NOTHING to help you when it comes to playing the real World vs World part of wvw.

1vs1. It makes a big different! Full exotic vs full ascended played by high level pvpers, 10% more damage make the different. Small Scale fights 2-15 players = ascended guys makes the difference.

Why are you 1v1ing in an called WORLD VS WORLD? Are you a one man world? (Like the song World man world man from the song Particle Man by They Might Be Giants made an error wrong name but still fits what i am saying i think also its a good song) Small scale fights are the most uneven fights that you can find in WvW there always going to be something far more defining to the out come of that fight then gear.

Given the gear already in the game, if you have a 1 on 1 with one person in full exotics and 1 in full rare, the person in exotics has a very distinct advantage.

Double up the people
Triple, quadruple, etc.

You get a 30 man in full exotic up against a 30 man in full rares and the 30 man group in full exotic will absolutely roll over the 30 man in full rares. Hands down.

Once you have an imbalance, if you put all those with the advantage on one team and put all of those without on the other team, this will absolutely amplify the imbalance.

Acerola.6407:

Deamhan.9538:

Sorry Acerola, but your posts don’t hold any water.

I don’t get why by what you’re saying.

Then I’d suggest you read it over and over until you “get” what I had said. I’m not about to spell it out for you.

Having to re-word or otherwise spell things out for people is something that’s needed far too often on these forums.

When comparing an ascended ring to that of an exotic with a jewel covering the exact same three stats, the ascended actually provides a greater benefit than the exotic and jewel combined. That’s not including the use of the upgrade slot and it doesn’t include being able to make it “(infused)”.

That’s per trinket.

Add all the trinkets
Now add the differences between the exotic armor/weapons to the up coming ascended versions.

The fact is that it will render existing BiS gear obsolete (aka No longer BiS) and the difference between someone with and without will actually be rather significant.

Here’s a little food for thought.

To your average runner who simply does it to stay in reasonably good shape. Shaving a second off your 10km run is not all that much.

To a professional athlete, it’s an eternity.

When you are talking competitive and skilled players fighting each other in WvW, that extra bonuses to stats makes all the difference.

Now you can ignore the fact that they are introducing new BiS gear to replace the existing BiS gear for the armor and weapon slots. You can argue that it’s not a new tier and say that they are just finishing off an existing set. But you can’t ignore that by making such an argument, and following that logic, that they are simply finishing the spiral they had already created with the introduction of the ascended trinkets.

Sorry Acerola, but your posts don’t hold any water.

The only conspiracy here is yours Timi, especially since after looking up “skill Lag” youtube videos for GW2, they occur during zerg on zerg engagements.

What’s happening is what Pseudo mentions…

The other side of that is your CPU spiking from trying to find the best way to present that data to you. And no, this isn’t strictly drawing the graphics. It’s knowing what to draw and where that slows things down. Once that’s figured out, graphics are rendered. That’s why super duper GPU system still get stutter and lag.

If the spike was server side, all areas of the game that rely on that server would suffer from it. I’m simply not seeing that at all.

This was actually an issue in EVE. It uses a single shard structure where each server box (node) is responsible for what happens in multiple systems. Or in other words, the number of star systems is divided amongst the servers.

A large scale battle in one solar system would cause major lag in a completely different system.

Their solution was a form of time dilation.

You can read more on that here…

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Time_Dilation

Kjeldoran.3849:

Deamhan.9538:

Forzani.2584:

Entire thread overloaded with speculative theory craft

Yup. I particularly like the part I read.

When fighting a thief, start with barrage…

Even if the thief comes up behind you and hits you with a backstab, you may not be able to swoop away if they used basilisk venom. Even if they don’t use the venom, you are still in combat so you switch from LB to GS and swoop away and then what? You think you’ll just be able to swap back to LB at the end of the swoop and using rapid fire? Your weapon swap will still be on CD.

So you have the fight starting with you losing 1/3 or more of your health from the BS, the thief removing the cripple and regening the little damage that skill does by re-entering stealth.

man you are incredible ahaha
in this thread there isn’t “theorycraft” all that is what i tested… presonally…
and when i said to “start with barrage” you forget “agaisnt a full zerker thief” and “if he uses invisibility”…
now i suppose you don’t have a full zerker thief so you can’t understand what i’m talking about but if you full zerker you have few ways to get invisiblity and barrage with our great damage and thief’s low resistance may be enough to kill them while crippling and letting us laugh at them simply using SoS… i suggest you to read with more attention. Try those tactic in a real pvp match… then you will agree with me ^^

if a thief uses balisk on you the most important thing is to use your pet ability (fear will be the best or also immobilize. The swap to gs and swoop away was a defensive tactic never heard “attack and run”? Just look at some good wvw pvp on youtube and you see that everyone with a minimum of skill uses this tactic because allow us to get rid of our cd while get max benefits from passive regen and… i never said you need to swap again to LB; if you run away with swopp the most important thing in to press your enemy with counterattack then hilt bash and maul… this will reverse the match. But… am i talking about tactics? read better.

and cmon guys please stop with those statements… the problem here isn’t the “effectivenes of the build” because i tested very much… really there aren’t problems (unless those i said in specific pvp) so if you want to comment ask for “help”, “suggestions”, “tips” or at least “important (and real) improvements i can make” (because nothing is perfect) but please don’t try to attack my build with those statements because there is no reason and they are false

My first 80 was a Ranger. I’ve had it at 80 for longer than any other profession. All I do is WvW.

A thief has plenty of ways to enter stealth, even as full zerker.

Dagger off hand skill 5
Dagger/pistol and use the combo skill 5
Healing skill
Shadow Refuge
There is another utility as well that I can’t think of. I could look it up but I really don’t care enough about the topic to do so.

Oh, did you know that barrage can be negated by pistol off hand skill 5? Since the blind is applied every second, once you are channeling, you get miss after miss after miss.

The field applies blind, first wave of barrage missing and removes blind, field re-applies, rinse and repeat until both skills expire.

Also

Venom -> C&D -> Steal/mug (while C&D is in mid cast)

The thief ports to the ranger, uses C&D w/ Venom, barrage stops (thief might get hit by just one wave of barrage), thief is in stealth (cripple is now gone) and follows it up with a BS which he gets off faster than you can break the stun.

You swap to GS, putting swap on CD so after you swap you what? Well according to what you originally put, the ranger was suppose to successfully pull of the channel. So the Thief was suppose to what? Stand there and wait?

Because only by the ranger not hitting the thief and only if the thief doesn’t hit the ranger could the ranger possibly do what you said. And that is….

Barrage -> swap to GS -> Swoop away -> swap to LB -> Rapid Shot

Because if the ranger was in combat in any way..

Barrage -> swap to GW -> Swoop away -> Do something else while you wait for the CD -> Swap to LB -> Rapid Shot.

However, against any good thief with any range ability, your barrage will be cut short in one way or another.

But you go ahead and keep dreaming that a power build (aka physical damage build), which depends on you having a target (especially if you involve range weapons) will be strong against a class whose primary mechanic causes you to lose them as a target.

Oh and your best move is to save Barrage to use in on their shadow refuge since the odds are they will use it when their hp is half or lower and their heal is still on CD.

So please do tell..

How is it when, after waiting in queue, do I get in and begin to stack bloodlust, and even though there is a massive ZvZ going on, I don’t experience any lag at all where I’m at?

Am I in a different server than the zerg, despite being on the same map?

Why is it that this lag only happens when I get close enough to the zerg for it to get loaded at which point the computer’s responsiveness bogs down in general? Not only is there a drop in FPS and not only is there a lag in skill use, but even alt-tabbing to desktop is delayed a bit.

timidobserver.7925:

It is a hardware problem. The hardware starts to get pegged out when a bunch of people are using a bunch of skills on each other at the same time in the same place. Assuming that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading their hardware isn’t a viable solution at the moment, making a new map and creating more capture points is probably next best bet.

Upgrading the hardware isn’t really the answer. Thier servers handle it just fine, it’s the clients computers that can’t.

I’ve never had my fps drop below 10. I’ve talked to people in the exact same fight have their fps drop down to 1.

When you load into a map, you don’t load the entire map. This is why, when you enter into a map that has a massive zerg war going on, you don’t automatically bog down even when facing the direction the zerg battle is at.

Only when you get within a certain range do you begin to lag and this is because only at a certain distance is the zergfest finally loaded on your end.

The tricks they were using before with culling and now particle effects culling is to reduce the amount of information being processed client side.

What I think they should do is to kind of create a local overflow. Think of it like culling on steriods. Instead of both ally and enemy players not rendering, after the zerg gets to a certain size, a local overflow occurs and players from all three sides in the immediate area would enter the overflow.

As seen by the client side, it would appear to be culling, but unlike culling, it’s more than just a lack of rendering.

Durzlla.6295:

So, me and a friend were dueling and I was just kittening around using my Moa pet (the point was to help them learn Mesmer and me stomping him with wolves wouldn’t do that) and he made the mistake of Moa Morphing my pet in a few of the duels.

However, the pet while Moa Morphed (yet used the same kittening skills he normally does with the addition of a leap skill and an evade instead of his heal), landed literally every, single, skill, and my friend may not be the best Mesmer but he was still moving, which kittened my pet over normally.

The worst part is, the reason my Moa was magically landing everything was because Moa morph utilizes a LUNGE mechanic for each skill IE your attacks make you dart forward.

So if my pet can hit players under the effects of an enemy elite skill WHY THE kitten hasn’t Anet made ALL NPC attacks like this? My god PvE would be so much interesting (and our pets so much less useless) if they actually could land kitten!

Congrats, you got to experience a more balanced ranger. The devs stated that the class was balanced around 100% pet uptime which includes the pet actually landing hits.

Which is why rangers are completely broken. Pets are only up half the time and for the half they are up, they only land hits half the time.

Forzani.2584:

Entire thread overloaded with speculative theory craft

Yup. I particularly like the part I read.

When fighting a thief, start with barrage…

Even if the thief comes up behind you and hits you with a backstab, you may not be able to swoop away if they used basilisk venom. Even if they don’t use the venom, you are still in combat so you switch from LB to GS and swoop away and then what? You think you’ll just be able to swap back to LB at the end of the swoop and using rapid fire? Your weapon swap will still be on CD.

So you have the fight starting with you losing 1/3 or more of your health from the BS, the thief removing the cripple and regening the little damage that skill does by re-entering stealth.

An ESO beta invite…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There are two downsides to stacking sigils that don’t apply to others:

1. Stacking sigils require 25 kills before reaching their full potential; other sigils are always at full strength.
2. Stacking sigils lose all benefits after being downed; other sigils are unaffected.

Currently, there are two benefits to stacking sigils that don’t exist for other upgrades:

1. You maintain the bonus even after swapping.
2. You maintain the bonus even after unequipping the weapon with the stacking sigil.

While it might be the case that the two trade-offs are too strong relative to the first benefit, the second benefit seems unbalanced on its face: where else in the game to you maintain a benefit without the thing granting the benefit being in use? Why should one type of sigil work after returning the weapon to your inventory, but none of the others do?

I admit I enjoy the benefits of the current setup, but I also have to admit that it seems unbalanced. Is it important enough to prioritize over other issues? How much developer time is worth investing in the solution? Eh, if I were in charge, it would be far down the list, but without knowing more details, I can’t fault ANet for addressing this.

Sorry but no.

The benefit is that, when at full stack, it offers a benefit that is stronger than any other sigil. The cost is that in the attempt to reach max stack, you can lose your progress if downed.

The problems with it are;

You lose it on map change.
You lose it when logging off the character.
You keep it even after unequipping.

The first two of those three points are comparable to food buffs. You don’t lose food buffs when switching maps. You don’t even lose the buffs when you log out (in fact the remaining time is paused).

The third isn’t comparable but it’s already been addressed by a dev in this thread.

Lol what???

The Living World and our commitment of a two week cadence is a difficult thing to live up to, so we have been gearing up to be able to do that. I think if you see some of the recent releases we have done, look at clockwork chaos as an example, players are banding together.

No you have the farmers who simply want to obtain rewards as quickly as possible. It’s basically watching addicts getting their fix. Sickening really.

I think you really do get a sense that the world is changing all the time.

No, you really don’t.

I wrote in my blog post that for me where it really comes together is where we have dynamic events that we shipped the game with

You mean those repeatable quests which you can get a gold medal based on participation and not level of success? Those repeatable quests which spawn every 10 or 20 min? Where you are doing the exact same thing over and over. The village doesn’t stay saved, that ‘story’ doesn’t progress any further (in fact it resets to be repeated), the npc’s don’t recognize you or even acknowledge your existence until you click on them. Those DE’s?

and then we have living world events going on. I think where it really feels right is when you are just fighting for the world and you don’t even think about the fact of whether this was always in the game or if this was an event that was added in recently.

You don’t have to think about it. It’s blatantly obvious what’s LS and what’s DE as they really have no connection between them. Not only do they not relate in any way, but they don’t even seem to have any impact on each other at all.

You don’t think about the mechanics of how all this is happening; there is just something going on in the world and I’m going to fight for my world.

Droves of people purposely not completing a DE just to farm the spawning mobs says otherwise.

So it’s great to see players really coming together to fight for their world.

The fact that you think it’s great to see hordes of farmers coming together and exploiting poor game mechanics to amass loot as quickly as possible is rather sad.

We really want to make their actions have a persistent mark on the world, let players leave their mark on the world and let them direct where the world goes through the living story.

Through the LS but not the DE’s? Interesting. I assume that the election was the first of such? After all, everything else was all scripted and predetermined regardless of player actions.

You saw that with our Cutthroat Politics release and we are really excited to deliver content this rapidly and keep the world alive.

We did?

The LS doesn’t not even remotely give the illusion of a living world. It’s nothing more than you guys replacing the previous chapter with the next chapter of an on going story. Comprised of shallow content which is an absolute grind for shinies and AP (farmers wet dream).

There is no mission for which the player(s)’ actions have a direct and/or immediate impact on the game world. Only that the player is involved as more of a bystander within the story as it progresses along it’s linear path.

It’s nothing more than a few weeks of static content that is replaced with a few more weeks of static content which is simply the next chapter to a one dimensional story.

You still have cave mobs re-spawning before you even finish clearing the mobs within the cave. You have the DE’s which are simply repeatable quests that have no lasting impact at all. Guard NPC’s stand post 24/7. Vendors stand there 24/7. Stand next to a NPC that talk and they will repeat the exact same thing every 5 minutes.

At no point do you hear NPC’s (other than the ones involved in the LS) talk about what is currently happening or has happened within the game world.

Where is the npc talking about how much money they won/lost on the chocobo…er…I mean Moa races in LA during the dragon bash?

Sorry but you fail at a living world. It’s just as static as all the other MMOs.

You are pretty much spot on.

ANet rotates the balance to rotate the meta forcing people who like to min/max to grind out a whole new set of gear. If they simply achieved a balanced state, people wouldn’t feel like they need to swap gear, and they falsely believe that the game would get stale for the players if this were to happen.

Instead people get very annoyed and fustrated when, after spending the time grinding out the new gear, they find out it was pretty much for nothing as the meta has been changed again.

So you grind out gear for all possibilities? Sure and use up your bank space or create mule alts. Quickly getting to the point of needed to buy gems to expand your space.

Hooks and ploys to keep people interested in and/or spending money on a game where the content intself lacks anything interesting.

OP starts off by stating that it’s not a L2p issue and that people who say as such are just people who use the crutch mechanic. Op then states in their next post that when it comes to countering thieves, it’s a L2p issue.

Considering the hypocricy between the two posts, I have come to the conclusion that the OP is a thief who has trouble only against condition builds.

For which I will simply say. Too bad. L2p.

urieldhynne.2743:

I see a lot of bug exploiters crying, amazing.

The full charge sigil do nothing? 250 power! what else you want? infinite stacks?

The problem is not weapon swap, the problem is unequip that weapon, retain the sigil effect you are NOT using, and GAIN another sigil effect in that place.

Used to balance your build? guess what, player who dont exploit that bug balance their build without that 250 free stats points.

Anyone can do this? Yes. Anyone can hack too, right? The sigil is bugged, some players exploit it. That is the point, is not how the sigil must work, or balanced for.

That sigil is not underpower, you can chose between less but secured damage (5% fixed), or more damage but with the risk you can lose it. Is fair. But who exploit that bug use “250 from stack + 5% fixed + another if offhand” to burst down enemies.

This. What’s funny is that despite it having been brought up before, and despite people like myself and the person I quoted here trying to explain that the stacks should drop when you unequip the weapon and NOT when you simply swap between equipped weapon sets, people still post saying that they should be able to keep it if they are fighting someone and frequently swap between equipped sets.

Seriously L2R.

2H weapons should have a secondary sigil slot and to be honest, after having played an Ele for a while, they should be allowed to have two weapon sets to work with. Simply put a swap timer on the attunements after swapping weapon sets while in combat. Alternatively, swapping attunement while in combat should put weapon swapping on CD.

The only thing I’d like to see is an option to prevent my characters from putting their weapon(s) away automatically.

If I remember correctly you can get exotic lvl 60, 70 and 80 in WvW.

Also you can get lvl 25 rare quality gear in WvW for Karma but the earliest you can buy rare gear off the TP for gold is 35.

I agree with the OP. 250 point increase is pretty big. That’s basically a 25 trait point investment in a particular trait line. If you have, for example, 2500 attack power. A 250 point increase is a 10% increase. There’s a reason why it’s as big as it is. It takes time build the stack up and you can lose it under certain conditions (downed, map change, etc.).

As it stands now, not only do you keep the benefit when swapping between weapon sets, but you also keep it after removing the weapon from your character and doing whatever with it (vendor it, bank it, put it in your back pack, etc.). That is the issue with them.

If you can program the stacks to go when downed, and if you can program the stacks to go when switching maps, then you can absolutely program the stacks to drop if the weapon is unequipped. Switching to your other weapon set doesn’t unequipe it. Swapping it out for another weapon in your backpack does. Get the difference?

I very much agree with you.

Outside the living story you have an enemy faction for each of the races.

Humans – Centaurs
Charr – Flamelegion
Asura – Inquest
Sylvari – Nightmare Court
Norn – Sons of Svanir

There is also the Quaggans and Krait. You also have the Tengu, Kodan and Ascalonian Ghosts.

There are DE’s throughout the game involving all these races which can fall within separate stories. Eg. All the DE’s between the humans and centaur is all one big story.

With that in mind, this is how I think it should’ve been.

You have the maps filled with POI’s, Vistas, hearts, etc. As per normal. Hearts are one time “quests” which is basically you helping someone out. So no different.

DE’s is where the difference is. These separate stories should be getting worked on by a team. So each story has it’s own dedicated team. Each team could even be broken down into sub teams, one for each map since stories span across multiple maps.

The idea is that DE’s, instead of being repeatable and triggering ever 10min, would simply spawn once completed by the devs working on that story. So they would have to have a system to put the events in on the fly.

They would design the events to allow for more than one outcome depending on player choices and/or success or failure. Once the event is over, the changes are made and don’t revert back. A lasting impact. The devs then take that outcome and work off of it to develop the next event. These events don’t have to be any bigger than the DE’s that currently exist and, if possible, they could cause multiple events in the same map or different maps to trigger at once. All part of the same over all story.

So aside from multiple events within the same story, you can also have events of the different stories triggering at once. So you could have an event between the humans and centaur triggering at the same time as an event triggering between the charr and flamelegion.

The events would trigger as soon as finished and the separate teams wouldn’t coordinate release times. This is so that there is a certain level of randomness on when these events happen, how many, how often, which locations, etc. and they should pretty much occur without warning.

The player then calls them out in map chat, guild chat (and over TS/Vent) and players rally to do them.

With all these events telling a story and having them occur on low level maps and high level maps alike, and the change to the map itself over time as a result, this would make each play through more of unique experience each and every time. It would make leveling alts much more enjoyable.

Pair this with npc’s actually having at least a daily routine and you will have a world that would indeed feel much more alive.

Randomness does exist and thinking otherwise is mere ignorance.

What is randomness? It is the inability to predict the next outcome. That is all it is. There’s nothing more to it than that.

The reason computer generated randomness is considered pseudo, is because they can be predicted if you have the necessary info. If you have the equation, seed, and know how many cycles have already passed, then you can figure out what the next number will be with 100% accuracy.

Keep that information away and you can never know what the next number will be. You can guess and get lucky but you can never actually know.

There certainly are, both naturally occuring (radioactive decay, and man made (lotto draw from scrambled bouncing balls) situations for which the outcome can not be predicted. There is simply no way to calculate, and therefore no way to predict, what the outcome will be. That is what randomness is.

As for GW2, I have tried my luck at the mystic toilet enough times to know that the odds are not evenly spread. What I mean by this is after throwing in 5 to 6g worth of cheap lvl 80 rare GS per day for a month, I got more travelers pearl type than any other. More importantly to note is that I got more of the cheap, unwanted, kind (unwanted stats, skin, sigil) than I did the kind that are more desireable.

I once rez’ed someone that was dead and carried on. I came back and rez’ed again then moved on. After the third time rez’ing them I finally realized that I was rez’ing them in the exact same spot. Turned out they were afk and dying to a patrolling mob.

PvE auto pilot. You just react to the situation on the screen at the time while putting no thought as to the why of it.

http://www.siriusxm.ca/octane/

Blaine Tog.8304:

iFocus.3781:

Here is what we all MUST make a stand on:
1 Gemstore
2 Subscription

You can’t have neither.

GW1 did, and it was rather successful.

Fixed that for ya. Since GW2 has the gem store.

Between all the various models I’ve seen….

1 Game Store
2 Subscription
3 Initial purchase

You have to have at least one of these. Two is more likely but all three is just greedy.

sinzer.4018:

Deamhan.9538:

Wolfheart.1938:

Deamhan.9538:

I’m also beginning to see that in game cash shops in addition to the B2P model makes the content released even worse since, not only does the cash shop have to be managed, the content designed and released is done so with the shop in mind.

What about content released with subs in mind? As in, arbitrary time-gating and artificial extension of whatever you are trying to do? I think that’s as bad as content released with the shop in mind (which generally means less shinies for people).

Well, I believe that the best route to take for P2P is to make the content worth paying a sub for since the “well it’s free to play anyway” mentality doesn’t apply. As for time gating, we’re seeing that in GW2 now anyway.

wolfheart did say arbitrary time-gating. The time-gating of ascended, imo, is needed for its successful implimentation. If it weren’t time-gated you’d end up in situations where those with higher ingame wealth or far more free time will drastically overpower other players. Imagine when ascended weapons and armour are released what would happen if not time-gated? You’d have the farmers decked out in full ascended on the first day of its release and stomp everyone in wvw through the power of numerical values. Time-gating is a necessary tool in the fight against power creep.

No it’s not.

The developers would have to develop and release the next Tier gear at a rate that is faster for half or more of the player base to obtain. I’ve yet to play a game that does that.

The idea behind the concept of ‘power creep’ is if the developers release the next tier too quickly. People who can only put in an hour or two can’t completely obtain that next tier before the developers move on and release the Tier after. Meanwhile those that can poor in 4 or more hours a day get that next Tier shortly after release. So the people who can only play an hour or two fall behind.

Putting sufficient time between such content releases for everyone to not only obtain the gear but to also play with it for a little while is all that’s needed.

This really has nothing to do with time gating in GW2. The devs determine how much time is between releases by choosing when to release it. Period. This time gating in GW2 is nothing more than play on the psyche of players who otherwise probably wouldn’t log in feel compelled to in order to ensure they don’t miss out or fall behind by missing days. It’s a ploy to keep people logging each day since the more that log in each day, the greater the chance one of them will make a purchase in the gem shop.

It’s straight up pure BS marketing and it is such nonsense that causes the quality of the content to suffer.

“Time-gating is a necessary tool in the fight against power creep”

This is the OP from the thread titled “Left behind?”.

Budchgon.2108:

Come back after a break and I loved WvW, but sadly reading the forums it seems everyone is fully decked out in Ascended items.. putting me at a severe disadvantage unless I suck it up and roll with the zerg…

I thought by now ascended would have been made easier to get rather than a time-sink (laurels) or fractals, maybe log in do daily and in a few months time i’ll be able to play and actually compete :-)

Looks to me time gating is doing the opposite of what you believe it does. Those that miss time can’t catch up as quickly as they could without it.

Wolfheart.1938:

Deamhan.9538:

I’m also beginning to see that in game cash shops in addition to the B2P model makes the content released even worse since, not only does the cash shop have to be managed, the content designed and released is done so with the shop in mind.

What about content released with subs in mind? As in, arbitrary time-gating and artificial extension of whatever you are trying to do? I think that’s as bad as content released with the shop in mind (which generally means less shinies for people).

Well, I believe that the best route to take for P2P is to make the content worth paying a sub for since the “well it’s free to play anyway” mentality doesn’t apply. As for time gating, we’re seeing that in GW2 now anyway.

Dawdler.8521:

Deamhan.9538:

When I found out that ESO was going to be subscription based it brought a major smile to my face.

Lol they still havent changed their mind?

ESO was questionable from the start (being based on the mediocre SWTOR engine and all) but a subscription fee pretty much seal the deal – its going to fail just like every other game has unless its a really, really, really good game. Which I seriously doubt it is.

Bah! Subscription fees remain the largest money scam in gaming history. You dont pay to get “quality” content. You pay for the possibility to get “quality” content. And people think ingame RNG is bad…

In game RNG is very bad. I wonder how many people, the kind that would get addicted to gambling at a casino, are now addicted to those Black Lion Chests? They release new content and put it behind RNG then put items in the gem store for people to buy that is also RNG but just RNG with better odds.

It’s a lazy way at simulating difficulty. It doesn’t reward the skilled just the lucky. Then after getting lucky, they flaunt it as if to say ‘look how l33t I am’.

You may be able to just buy the game and then play it without spending a single cent more but someone else somewhere else in the world could be throwing $60 or more each month. ANet could very well be making more per month with the cash shop then they would if they went with a 15/month sub and no cash shop.

I’m willing to bet they are.

Oh and as for the argument of wanting to pay a sub if it means quality content. Of course there is no guarantee. Of course there are exceptions. That should go without saying but regardless you will get that one person that will hang on what’s said word for word and take it as if the person is saying that it does guarantee.

However, I have played GW1, GW2, and NWO, amongst others. I’ve also played WoW, Aion, and EVE, amonst others. I know P2P and B2P. I also know that P2P, in general, has more enjoyable and higher quality content. I’m also beginning to see that in game cash shops in addition to the B2P model makes the content released even worse since, not only does the cash shop have to be managed, the content designed and released is done so with the shop in mind.