Guild Wars 2

Rebound.3409:

So this thread is about your personal inability to finish solo an event in this game?

….it’s an mmo…u have issues..party up with someone

Umm. No. It was about a game bug causing the story not to progress at a point where it should have. I would have thought that the thread title at least would have made that clear, even if the body clearly didn’t in your case. Perhaps I should have used shorter words.

I’ve moved the body of the post to the bug forum, and replaced it with a link for anyone who finds this thread and wants to read what I actually said.

tl;dr:
“Learn to play” is seldom a useful response. Even less so when that’s not the problem.

After a longer fight than it should have been, having opted to take control of the leyline device (and died a couple of times along the way), I finally managed to take down the Mordrem Leyleecher and got an “event complete” star. However, the story objectives remained stuck at “Defeat the Mordrem Leyleecher” and woud not progress. After running around for some time talking to anyone that would interact with me and generally trying to find anything that would move things forward, I had to admit defeat and quit the mission.

I’ve done this mission twice successfully on other characters previously, but always opted to let Taimi handle the mini-waypoints.

Sorry, you’re right – wrong forum. My apologies.

Liston.9708:

Doghouse.1562:

Gator.5729:

Where in the LS do yo have to do Fractals to finish it? The parts and pieces for the backpiece are rewards for the LS. You can complete the LS and build the exotic backpiece without ever stepping foot in the Fractals. The Fractal relics are only for creating the ascended version of the backpiece. If you arent doing fractals you dont need ascended items. The stat gain for the ascended vs. exotic back piece is almost nothing.

The stats for the exotic back piece are set in stone. Those for the ascended one are selectable.

Part 2 exotic is selectable.

My apologies; you’re correct. I’d made it but not really looked at it.

Although, having done so, I’d have to disagree with the stat gain comment above. Stat gain from the Ascended back piece is more than twice that from the comparable Exotic. (Cleric’s, for example: Healing +55 vs +22; Power and Toughness both +35 vs +16. And, sure, we could argue about how much they’re worth in the grand scheme of things – but if those from the exotic are worth having at all, the step up to the ascended is worth having as well.)

Gator.5729:

Where in the LS do yo have to do Fractals to finish it? The parts and pieces for the backpiece are rewards for the LS. You can complete the LS and build the exotic backpiece without ever stepping foot in the Fractals. The Fractal relics are only for creating the ascended version of the backpiece. If you arent doing fractals you dont need ascended items. The stat gain for the ascended vs. exotic back piece is almost nothing.

The stats for the exotic back piece are set in stone. Those for the ascended one are selectable.

Edit: Moved to Bug forum here

StinVec.3621:

I love that word. Bork. Illconceived Was Na, your comments are frequently quite logic-filled, witty and humorous, well thought out and helpful, as well as your opinions/observations resonating quite well with my own. You frequently get +1s from me. I enjoy reading your posts and thank you for your continued presence on these forums.
Just wanted to take this opportunity to voice my appreciation.

Glad all is sorted and proper. Grats on the crafting accomplishments, Doghouse!

Indeed – always nice to get considered, constructive suggestions and replies. Especially when ultimately the error is a stupid one such as this.

(Now “all” I have to do is steel my nerve to try and run the fractals to get the pristine relics I need for the final iteration. Remains to be seen whether that will ever happen – I don’t know why, but I genuinely have something akin to a phobia of PuGging instances; I get less worked up about going to the dentist…)

Thanks for the thoughtful replies, guys. I’d rechecked about half my characters when I finally twigged.

I’d not only already made the pot, but also planted the seed in it (late Tuesday night after the patch hit, so half asleep). I’d then accumulated enough clay for another Clay Pot (for stage 3). Came in this morning (only half awake, again), remembered the clay, forgot what it was for completely, made a new Clay Pot and then wondered what had happened to the “missing” mats…

“Coffee anomaly error….”.

(Cultivated Vine completed. Ta!)

Tuesday evening, after the latest patch, I played through the latest Living Story episodes, then ran around and upgraded all the “special” items. In particular, I successfully upgraded the Chaos Orb to Resonating Chaos Orb at the Steam Ogre. I then placed all the items in my bank, and left them until I’d manufactured the foods needed. This morning, coming to finally pull everything together and make the next backpiece, the orb has vanished.

Now – it’s just possible this is was a player error, and I accidentally deleted the item at some point without meaning to. I don’t see how, but it’s obviously at least possible. But I know there have been problems with this item, and I’ve also since run through the LS with another character, and received another Chaos Orb as well – and I wonder whether that’s resulted in me losing the first?

Whatever – going to take the non-upgraded one I have and have another go at upgrading it – if I can get to the Steam Minotaur, and if the game will let me upgrade it again…

This morning I’m losing my connection every other time I attempt to transfer to another zone (and sometimes at other points as well – I’ve had mutliple ones attempting to swap characters, and had one just now when trying to access a crafting station as well – but overwhelmingly when I try to zone).

I’ve been farming the statue of Melandru in Malchor’s Leap for Foxfire clusters, swapping characters in and out as required, and using Borderlands whenever I need to access my bank. As a result I’m logging new characters or zoning every couple of minutes or so – and every other zone attempt/character swap (perhaps even a higher percentage) today ends in a disconnection message (e.g. 7:11:3:191:101). I’ve been doing the same thing for a few days without problems; this morning (annoyingly, when I’m finally ready to craft my second-level LS back piece and need to get all the pieces together), the game is effectively unplayable for what I’m trying to do.

Edit: I’m also seeing cases where I seem to get into the zone, and can hear the sounds of other players doing things, but the loading screen never clears.

Edit: This is the precise sequence I’ve seen since posting the above. All characters in Malchor’s Leap unless otherwise stated:
Login. Character Select (“CS”). To Borderlands. CS. CS. CS(connection fail)
Login (can’t access login server).
Ditto.Ditto.
Login. CS. CS. CS(connfail)
Login (can’t access server)
Login. CS(connfail)
Login. CS. CS. To Borderlands. Leave Mists (load screen hangs)
Login. CS. To Metrica. CS(connfail)
Login. CS(connfail)

Edit: Looks like the problem, whatever it was (login server problem?) has cleared – I’ve now notched up 2 dozen successful character swaps, logins and zones since the most recent failure, with no further discernible problems.

Maku Slaneesh.8730:

I have the Attuned Grow Lamp and the Cultivated Sprout.
But when I click on the lamp it tells me “Item not found in your inventory”

any ideas??

Sequence is important. You need to feed it a package of Ley Line Dusted Plant Food and a package of Oasis Soaked Plant Food (in that order) before you use the lamp, I believe. The fact that you’re still apparently seeing it as a “Cultivated Sprout” suggests you haven’t done that.

fishball.7204:

There is a second cluster of trees is at Waywarde Waypoint in straits

Yes, found it – Statue of Melandru, somewhat to the west of the waypoint. The problem with that one is that the WP is usually contested, so (in my case at least) it’s undoubtedly far more efficient just to ignore it and switch alts than to spend time running to it.

Although I have to admit the run is at least less boring than continual axe-thumping… …and if you’re bounced to another WP, you’re likely to pass a few more trees on the way there anyway. Undoubtedly worth including in your farming, if you’re running on a single character.

Vol.7601:

8 alts with 10% gathering banner + 33% gathering boost
+
Park at Malchor’s Leap statue
+
Redo every hour while playing other games/netflixing
= massive golds for 0 effort

I started doing this today (minus the gathering boost, but with the banner assists as they’ve been available – which, so far has been all the time). Today there were 8 trees at or close to the Statue of Melandru, and I managed 40 clusters at a rate of slightly better than one drop per alt run. That’s a 3-4% drop rate, if my maths is reasonable. Oh, and with very little running between nodes, it’s taking me an average of about 2 and a half minutes of actual farming per drop (YMMV, obviously).

Having lots of level 80 alts helps.

Domino.1359:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2 tree cluster, 5 trees a cluster, 4 logs a tree, 5 alts

= 200 chances an hour

Got 10 foxfire in about 5 minutes of chopping, not a bad investment or very difficult.

I give it 3 days until they remove the spot, so go do it now and don’t come back here and complain when they nerf the spot.

Inevitably maybe will get nerfed so where’s this spot?

One such cluster is at the statue of Melandru, west of Pagga’s Waypoint in Malchor’s Leap. If there’s a second one as well, as the OP suggests, I haven’t personally tripped over it yet.

In the story “To The Core” I had just reached the core, taking out all nearby mobs to the best of my knowledge in the process, and had reached the point at which the cut-scene of the fire elemental spawning had triggered. On completion of the cut-scene, I was faced with the “you have been defeated” message. My combat log showed nothing, I saw nothing to indicate that I was in danger or taking damage ahead of the scene, and got no indication afterwards as to why I died during a time when I had no control. Piken Square server.

In all honesty, having played a few MMOs over time, I don’t find this one any worse than others in that respect. Probably you just haven’t got the hang of the way things tend to work in this sort of game yet.

If you don’t know what to do next, there’s the web in general. There are these forums. For achievements and the like there are guides such as the near-indespensable Dulfy.net. Or just try asking in chat (a bit hit and miss, but quite often productive if you hang in there, ask politely and don’t spam). Or if you think it’s broken, most of those equally apply – or in GW2 at least, you can try guesting to another server and see whether that makes a difference.

(For my money the word you were looking for was “intuition”, by the way. Although the longer, more clunky (but more regular) back-formation of “intuitiveness” does seem to be developing a life of its own, so that may well not last. Language is endlessly interesting like that.)

I’m reserving my opinion on this one. I’m liking the story a lot, and I think it’s got a refreshing depth to it that is nice to see. But I’m not so convinced by the implementation.

Irrespective of what it’s like right now, a few days after it’s released, I have a couple of concerns – both related to ANet’s stated aim of making the content permanently available. On the one hand I’m not honestly sure how good the various new open world events are still going to look/feel in, say, a couple of years time, when things have moved on and they’re trying to shoe-horn in LS4 – I suspect most people wil have grown heartily sick of trying to work around them. And, linked to that, I’m not honestly sure either how easy it’s going to be to do some of those events solo, or near solo, once there are no longer hordes of other players trying to do the same thing.

Personally, while I can understand what the appeal might have been to do it the way they have (frankly, it was probably simply quicker), I think it may prove a long-term error not to have instanced more of the content. But time will tell.

Well – I made my (strongly negative) initial reactions known earlier in the thread, when the changes first came out, and again whilst levelling a pre-patch, low-level character. So here’s an update now I’ve had a bit more time to try things out from scratch.

I’ve now got a level 42, entirely post-patch Thief in progress. I’ve been progressing as I normally would (and as it’s reasonable to assume a fair number of new players will), following her personal story when it’s been available, and when it’s not been, working on map completion for the ones that’s taken her to. So far she’s run no dungeons, nor am I in a hurry that she should. Being of that level, so far she’s only got earned the right to one major (adept) trait. And in the natural course of things, she’s unlocked? Precisely one trait. And even that didn’t happen until around level 39 (the slot I wanted it for unlocked at level 36, of course).

Sadly, even once she actually unlocked something, the trait in question bore little relationship to the way I’m looking to play her (D/D condition damage – not high DPS, but she’s been quite fun to play so far). What I wanted was Trickery III (Caltrops); what I got was in the Critical Strikes line (Precision and Ferocity. Just what a condition build needs!). And unlocking the trait I actually wanted was not even merely implausible at her level , but literally impossible – the unlock requirement is completion of her level 59 personal story!

(Edit: OK, that’s not quite technically correct – I suppose that, in theory, I could have put together a group of friends to help me rush her through all the personal stories between her then-current story and the one that unlocks the trait I was after – 12 of them, by my count. Clearly it was never going to happen. And to say that it would have distorted – i.e. ruined – the levelling experience, if I had, would be something of an understatement!)

Inevitably, I ended up dipping into my funds to get her the actual trait I wanted, to let me play her the way I want to. And as far as I can see, that’s likely to be what happens all the way through to 80.

Basically, I haven’t really changed my initial opinions. Either ANet have decided that levelling, and the levelling experience, isn’t an important part of the game (and that players can go without meaningful builds until they’re high-enough level to go grab all those skills up near level 80 – probably to some extent true, but hardly what you want out of a quality game). Or they actively want people to spend gold (hence, for a small but financially significant number of players, gems and therefore real money) on buying those traits as they progress. Or possibly both. Because it’s clear that the current system isn’t remotely designed to be a working (let alone fun and rewarding) system for lower-level characters.

Levelling so far hasn’t been too bad; my character is at least holding her own. Oh, and I’m watching her gear much more closely than I might have in the past, to make sure she’s got the attributes she needs to drive the way I want to play her – and that, I would say, is goodness. But apart from that, the new system is almost entirely divorced from my progress; for all the positive impact it’s had on me, it might as well not have been there.

tl;dr
Levelling an entirely new character confirms that the new system is truly flawed for levelling purposes, ANet. Please either rework it to something that reconnects us with our character progress, or have the courtesy to tell us honestly what it’s actually for, and why you’re not going to fix it.

Charrbeque.8729:

I’m starting to get tired of the issues with this event. Every time I go to enter the race event from Labrynthine Cliffs I wind up at the very start of the race with everybody else at the finish line with 1 minute or less to go which isn’t enough time to finish it.

You’re just having a run of bad luck on how far through the race you enter. But if it happens, just stay in the event once it’s over and the timer runs to zero, and after a few seconds you’ll be put back at the start for the next race with full time left to run.

Another thing I noticed today that seems to happen every time I actually do complete the race is after I reach the finish line and use the chest to get my festival tokens, I stand around waiting for the event to finish and reset so I can run another race. During this time I keep getting a game message that says “Unless you resume active play you will be kicked in 50 seconds.”. It seems to stop if I start moving and jumping around until the timer runs out. Sometimes I finish the race with 2 or 3 minutes left on the timer.

Yes, it’s always done that. Several of the activities have something similar. I presume it’s intended to stop you zoning in and just going AFK to leech credit – but it’s really annoying that you can finish the race, then still have to keep paying attention once you’ve genuinely got nothing to do but wait for the timer to run out. I’ve missed out on credit for several runs, even when it’s not been bugged, because I forgot about that and walked off to make a coffee or similar.

Completed this four times now; still only showing one of five. I can’t think of anything obvious or out-of-the ordinary that happened every missing time.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

An other thread where math is attempting to restrain randomization, omg lol

I appreciate your effort to suggest a profitable way to use Mystic Forge. Sadly, all your maths and theory falls when you truly attempt to play with it. 80 20 is a pure senseless theory, absolutely not realistic. IF you truly are a gambler, you would know play casinos leads yourself to nothing, and that magic 23 is not coming back, as much you can attempt to type how many times that kitten ed number is back, so you can put money when is coming

Chance can be constrained. Constrained chance is called “statistics”, and whole industries and technologies – including the microchips in the devices we’re all using to read this – are built upon the fact that it behaves itself.

The OP has taken the same sort of actuarial approach that, say, an insurance company does: looking at the distribution of real data, making reasonable assumptions based on that, and calculating the financial impacts if future data broadly matches. Then he’s looked for cases where, on average, the yields are positive. He claims that he’s done the leg-work and that many such cases exist; I see no mathematical or game reason to doubt him. It could be valid to challenge his assumptions as inaccurate, if the data didn’t bear him out, but I see nothing obviously wrong with the way he’s using them.

As to the associated risk, though. He mentions it, but doesn’t dwell. An important question is what the distribution of profit and loss is. Ideally, you want lots of modest potential profits, rather than a few big ones – because the fewer results the potential profit is wrapped up in, the bigger the chance of a long run of losses, that will eat into your capital and could wipe you out. And chance doesn’t have a memory, so you can’t count on a few “extra” good results to come along and balance out the bad ones (in retrospect – the so-called “Gambler’s Fallacy”) – if you take big loses, you just have to suck up them up, and start again from wherever they leave you. I get the impression that the OP is relying quite a bit on high-return, low-probability gains, plus deep pockets to ride out the inevitable fallow patches – not a strategy for everyone. But to understand the real risk of this approach, frankly you need the data – and effectively that means spending the time and money throwing stuff yourself into the Mystic Toilet and recording the results (with no guarantee you’ll like the answer when you get it).

Will I be trying it? Probably not any time soon.

Female Human Elementalist (and, maybe, others – but that’s the one I’m struggling with).

Probably not easy to fix – but this annoys me every time I come to try to adjust the outfit on my character.

My preference is to hide my characters’ head gear, if it is in any way enveloping (I like to see my character, rather than some generic figure of the same race, class and sex with its head buried away). But, in the case of my elementalist, by dint of the character selection options I chose, I’ve ended up with a character with coloured ribbons in her hair. Red. Always red. And always visible. It doesn’t matter what else I do to her outfit – she’s always topped off by those red ribbons. Which sometimes work, but often clash violently. Which means I’m severely limited in the range of colour choices I can go for – if it doesn’t include, or at least go well with, red, it’s not usable. And I don’t want to do anything as extreme as change her hair style; apart from the ribbon colour, she’s just the way I want her, and a more extreme change wouldn’t be the same character.

Please, please can we have some way of tweaking the colour? Logically, at least, those ribbons are headgear – and it would make sense for them to follow, say, the main colour of the headgear slot.

Edit: OK, I finally it’s a Head Accessory, so the colour was set at character-create time, and in principle I can change that via the Self-Style Hair Kit and so on. At today’s prices, that’s a shade over 40g. Not exactly cheap to change the colour of one prominent item of dress every time I decide the character needs a change of wardrobe. I realise I’m probably flogging a dead horse here, but – PLEASE can we have a headgear colour slot that tweaks the accessory colour (or even a slot of its own)?

KOPPER.1458:

China literally just launched, we will not see an expansion for at least another year. LS in a few months. China’s launch is the focus right now, everything else is secondary.

A simple guess would be LS season 2 in about a month. Perhaps a smaller patch before then.

You may be right. My own feeling is that, like the original poster, I’d just like an update of SOME sort from Anet. What’s coming when would be top; the same in more vague terms would still be nice – but even a “We’re still working on it; we’ll get back to you around ((insert timescale here))” would be OK. I don’t even have a problem with being told they’re looking for the China release to bed in first, and there’s nothing coming down the line for some (approximate) time. I’d just like an idea as to where we all stand.

AerosAtar.3198:

See the April 15 patch notes. This is a ‘feature’ of the megaserver.

Oh… …joy

Waypoints in Plains of Ashford (at minimum) are being shown as contested on the world map when they plainly aren’t. (The problem may apply to other areas as well; PoA is the only place I’ve spotted it to date.)

Yesterday evening, and again this morning, I have had cause to want to move a character to a suitable waypoint in Plains of Ashford for the first time since logging on. On both occasions, according to the world map, all of the waypoints known to me (on the second occasion that was all of them) were shown as contested, with the exceptions of Feritas and Smokestead waypoints. On the first, I took a portal to Black Citadel and exited to Plains of Ashford, taking maybe a minute; on the second I ported directly to Feritas. On both occasions, on looking at the map again immediately after arrival, all or nearly all waypoints were now shown as available. On subsequent occasions when I looked at the map, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I’ve attached a screen capture from the first occurrence.

Nerelith.7360:

This having to do really hard to almost impossible things to acquire traits is not new to gw2.

So what? That’s not remotely a justification. Most games have learned from the bad decisions of the past and moved on.

And just because a lot of players want it when they want it, and do not want to have to do things later…put things off til later in the game….doesn’t make what gw2 did …a mistake.

Glossing over the unnecessary descent to the adhominem : most people commenting here seem to have been happy with the pace of the perfectly good, working system GW2 had before. There’s nothing inherently wrong with changing that, if the replacement is reasonable. In this case, in my opinion the change is massively flawed, in several ways that I and others have documented, and if left unrectified, could easily prove to be the nail in GW2’s coffin. Clearly you don’t agree. Fine, you’re entitled to your opinion as well. Time will tell what the community as a whole feels, and ultimately the market will vote with its feet.

Nerelith.7360:

I respectfully disagree, you state opinions… I used math.
and…

Math trumps opinion any day. And twice on Sunday.

My maths degree says that using maths proves nothing (except possibly that you’re getting desperate). Like the man said, Nerelith – you’re trolling.

There are now basically two awful ways of doing things. The fact that within those there are lots of awful variants that can be stitched together in lots of awful combinations doesn’t somehow magically make the overall result palatable.

Liah.8324:

…when logging on today, was surprised by the fact that I needed to either spend a pile of money and skill points to get basic 80-level bits all over again, or make a HUGE investment of time to achieve the same thing.

The catch is, I’m the opposite of BAWW (though he makes some excellent points and suggestions!). I’ve played for a good while now, but only have ONE toon. That’s it. NO desire to play any others!

If you only plan to play your existing level 80, you’re pretty much in the clear; you already have all the major and minor traits unlocked (with the exception of 1 new GM trait per line, that you may or may not want anyway). All you have to do is go through and re-allocate the points. First and foremost it’s brand new characters that this is a disaster for (and especially the brand new characters of brand new players).

Nerelith.7360:

No one is forcing you to complete maps. You can pay go to any map you want, Hunt down the skill points, and save up the gold…anywhere…. and Not have to complete the map.

As I said, BOTH options are Playing the game. You get to decide which options you want, and then…play the game.

Are you saying you dislike Playing the game?

That’s specious.

The word for what you term “hunt(ing) down the skill points, and sav(ing) up the gold” is “grinding”. So called because it’s repetitious, often hard work and frequently not particularly enjoyable. And in this case, without those skills, the game you get to play while you’re doing it is harder, blander and generally less fun than it was before.

So, yes, a lot of people will, as you term it, “dislike Playing the game”. If merely “Playing the game” was sufficient reward on its own, independent of any considerations of game quality, no-one would be bothering to have this discussion.

Firebaall.5127:

Wow… Stupid decision to require events to unlock trait progression.

At first, I was impressed. It looked like the only skills requiring additional quests were the grandmaster traits. Suddenly, patch….and now everything requires an unlock or gold sink. Way to take one step forward Anet, and three backwards.

……this is not alt friendly.

It’s even less new-player friendly. And a lot will be put off. But some will pay real money to buy gems to unlock the traits they want – and, at the end of the day, those are the people that pay ANet to keep the game going (and what I strongly suspect this change is aimed at). Those of us that don’t spend real money from time to time (as in any “free to play” MMO, the vast proportion of us) provide a degree of vibrant community that makes the game more worth playing for the ones that do pay – but we ought to recognise that, other than that, after a while we’re effectively parasites. If it’s what they’re up to, though, it’s a risky gamble – if people start leaving en masse because of the changes, the game could easily get a reputation as not worth the money. Similarly if the “new” flavour puts off people who might have joined after the China launch. And it’s a lot easier to lose a good reputation than a bad one.

A personal reaction to levelling under the new system, now I’ve had a little time to try it.

I’ve made several comments in this thread so far about the mess that the pre-level 80 trait system now looks to be. But there’s nothing beats experience, and I’m well aware that my expectations and guesses as to how something will work out are not always correct. And I like to be fair. So, over the last few days (having a lot of spare time on my hands), I’ve been PvE levelling a level 27 elementalist that I had at the time of the patch. Note that, because she already existed, she has all but the new character traits already unlocked, so I’ve had none of the issues that a wholly-new character will face. She’s now level 40, so I reckon I’ve given the system at least the beginnings of a fair trial.

And I’d say that, in my opinion – and compared to what it felt like before – the feel of levelling can now be summed up in one word:

Soulless. (Sorry, ANet, but it is.)

Before, from quite early on, each new level had a reward. Granted, mostly it was a small reward – just one more tick toward the next major or minor trait, plus a slight improvement in your character stats. But it was still there. You got to open your trait panel and push the button to allocate it. Every level felt like progress. And every now and again, that progress would add up, and you’d get a bigger reward.

Now? Until level 30: nothing. A new level is just a number on the screen. At 30, you finally get that first trait – and the feeling is more of an exhausted, frustrated “Jeez, at last…” than a delighted “YES!”. And then, for another 6 levels, it’s a continuing search for the next places to go to get experience, and it’s back to the same old, dragging, unrewarded grind. And levelling up now isn’t so much something that gives you a sense of achievement, as an annoying reminder of just how far you’ve still got to go before you get anything back for the effort.

Basically, the new design has turned its back on something the industry has laboriously learned over decades, and that every game designer ought to understand without even thinking: Players thrive on regular, positive feedback and reward, even if it’s only small. The new trait system has gratuitously stripped out a core reward for the effort of levelling, and it’s the worse for it.

**One thing you still get at each level, of course, are Skill Points. Now – it’s possible that the new system could have been tuned to make me eagerly welcome the new point that each level brought, to let me get that new slot skill I wanted. And I can see how a player new to the game might still find that to be the case (at first, at least). In my case, knowing the build I was working towards, it simply didn’t come into the equation. By the time each new slot became available, I always had the points I needed to buy the skill I wanted to put into it – up to and including the Elite slot. And even if I’d been obliged to buy my first major trait (by virtue of being totally incapable of getting to the content to release it), I’d still have had the points I needed – even ignoring the option of buying it via another character. My Skill Point total simply didn’t matter.

(Edit: Corrected “minor trait” to “major trait” above)

Edit 2:
Oh. And, at level 40 – half way through the (numerical) levelling process – I have precisely ONE (Count it! One!) major trait allocated, to make her substantially different to every other elementalist out there. And she won’t get another for 8 levels yet. I cannot honestly express just how disheartening that feels.

Nerelith.7360:

Sounds Like they don’t want people to simply do the champion train In different zones from 1 til 80. I mean you’ll have the level….but not the traits. Have to wait and see How effective this is.

Personally (and assuming it’s deliberate, and not simply a disastrous blunder), I suspect it’s intended in part to be a gold sink. Even if you unlock absolutely nothing via content, you can buy everything on a single character for 43g (and 360 Skill Points, but the new trait guides are account bound, so anyone levelling an alt will be able to buy them using an existing character – I doubt it’s likely to be an inhibitor).

btw first time usuable is at 30, thats your first trait point.

But your first point goes on the first minor trait in a line. You can’t select a major trait until you get your second trait point. Hence 36.

Fenrina.2954:

Wishmaster.7693:

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten!

Which trait is this?

I agree that sounds, in general, way to high requirement for a trait. The new ones are simple “do x content” not a whole map’s worth.

Wrong. See http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide

According to that, the following traits require 100% completion of the given area (traits for each profession have identical requirements). Zone levels are as shown. Please note: these are so-called adept traits in every case, that even under the new system you could in principle use at level 36.

Line 1, trait V: Blazeridge Steppes (40-50)

Line 2, trait IV: Lornar’s Pass (30-40)
Line 2, trait V: Bloodtide Coast (45-55)
Line 2, trait VI: Fireheart Rise (60-70)

Line 3, trait V: Fields of Ruin (30-40)
Line 3, trait VI: Iron Marches (50-60)

Line 4, trait IV: Harathi Hinterlands (35-45)
Line 4, trait V: Timberline Falls (50-60)
Line 4, trait VI: Mount Maelstrom (60-70)

Line 5, trait IV: Dredgehaunt Cliffs (40-50)
Line 5, trait V: Sparkfly Fen (55-65)
Line 5, trait VI: Frostgorge Sound (70-80)

It’s fairly clear that most people aren’t going to be able to unlock many of those at any point close to when they supposedly become available.

Edit: OK, you said new traits. If you were referring only to the new Grandmaster traits, you’re right. The point is that, for new characters, the existing major traits now have access requirements as well – and some of those are ludicrously out of reach for the level of character they’re nominally for, even under the new point allocation.

mosselyn.5081:

I’m among those who likes the new trait unlock system. I enjoy leveling and I like the idea of having to work for my traits. Alts and those who don’t want to work for on trait acquisition have the purchase option.

I enjoy levelling too; it’s my main mode of play. And if this had been well-thought-out and well-implemented to support that, I’d cheer at it (or, at the very least, give it the benefit of the doubt until I’d had plenty of time to try it out). But it hasn’t been, and I think that when you look more closely at the detail, you’ll agree. And unless it’s significantly altered, when the traits you find that you want to use at level 42, say, can’t in practice be “unlocked” until you’re pushing level 80 – I think you’ll find you end up buying them. Just like everyone else.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that it must be ANet’s full expectation and intent that most people will buy rather than unlock. Otherwise, frankly, they’d have take a lot more care to make sure that the unlocking content was at a level proportionate to the traits it granted access to.

TheHoboJoe.2873:

I really don’t like this change. This takes away alot of the fun every time you level up. It’s cool to reach a new level and see “ooh, a new point to spend” making getting to the next level exciting. Now all that matters is every six levels. I’d rather have some modification to the skill point system, the trait system was fine. Not to mention it makes it feel like I have no control over how my character turns out early level, which is really important for people who just started playing.

Yes, that nicely hits two of the things I dislike about the compacted costs and the shuffle up to 30 as well. a) Gaining a level used to be an event; now it’s simply bookkeeping. b) And for the first half of the game or more, my character’s going to be essentially identical with every other one of the same profession using the same weapons.

To which I’d add: c) being able to start stacking a little power, or toughness, or whatever from level 11 made a big difference to the playability of just about every character I’ve had. Right now my only sub-80 (I have 13 level 80s, which tells you a lot about what parts of the game I play most) is a level 29 Ele. She hits hard, but truth to tell she’s a glass cannon when it comes to, say, skill-point fights. Prior to the patch, she had 100 point of toughness to offset that. Now? Just as well there’s no longer a cost for repairs – because she’s been talking to the repair guys one heck of a lot for the last couple of days. And, no, she’s undoubtedly not an “optimum” PvE levelling build. So what? She shouldn’t (and, previously, didn’t) need to be; she’s just a spec I was experimenting with, and having fun with – and wanted to carry on that way. Apparently, that doesn’t count.

Oh, and…: d) I’d point out that, far from giving us the freedom to explore new specs at will, the need to go farm traits is likely to mean that (for new characters, at least) people have to decide on specs early, work out what they need to do to get them, and stick to plan if they’re to get the traits they want when they want them. Change your mind about which Major trait you want to add next? Tough – you can’t until (say) you spend another totally pointless evening getting 100% completion on that zone you’ve never even been into. And that will be the case even at level 80 – can’t respec unless you go “earn” the traits you want**. Frankly, I can see a lot of people not bothering – and, far from a flexible, player-friendly system encouraging diversity, it sounds like a recipe for even more cookie-cutter level 80s to me.

**I’m ignoring the ability to pay for such things as a rather crass and blatant mechanism for tempting more people into spending real money – which I have little doubt, given the China launch and the presumable wave of new players, is partly behind these changes.

Edit

ANet, you have GOT to be joking!

Just checked out what my Ele needs to do to get the traits I was planning for her. Apparently, to get “Windborne Dagger” (Arcana trait VI), she needs to “Earn 100% completion in Frostgorge Sound”. So let’s be clear about what that means – to get an “Adept” trait, that she could in theory unlock at level 36 (and could previously have used at level 20!) – she has to fully complete a level 70-80 zone?!?. Either this is coldly calculated to make sure people buy the traits, or it’s downright malicious, or someone really hasn’t done their job and thought this through.

Well – mostly, as pretty much always with such things, I’m pretty neutral about the patch. Most of the things I currently “dislike” actually come down to “it’s different” – and I can live with that until I play a bit more and get used to the changes.

But.

One change I definitely do feel is definitely a change for the worse, is the way that traits have been shuffled up into the higher levels. In all honesty I simply don’t see the need for it, or the logic behind it. No problems for my various level 80s – but my poor old level 27 ele, who was finally beginning to stack a respectable amount of survivability after levels of being a rather squishy glass cannon, is suddenly not only right back where she started, but will take another 15 levels to even regain what she’s lost. Yes, I can gear a bit to allow for that, but only at the cost of other things. Intended or not, it’s penalising levelling, pure and simple. Probably no great shakes for people who are happy to rush a character up to 80 as fast as they can, by any route they can – but I like to take my time, and savour the journey, and it looks like it’s now going to be that little bit harder, less comfortable, and rather less enjoyable. Not, I’m sure, what the dev’s had in mind.

Just tested it. Yes, it stacks.

Tebbz.3298:

Skills & Rotation…
…Hunter’s Call – you can use this every 35 seconds – this gives you and your allies 5 seconds of fury, might and swiftness.

I think you mean Call of the Wild.

(Hunter’s Call summons hawks to mob your target.)

If this has been fixed in the most recent patch, I apologise; if it hasn’t, though, it’s even more relevant now that the buff is required to do damage to the Attack Knights.

As of last night, the coloured buff circles for the Attack Knight event were not always visible, making the buffs harder to spot and get. A friend I was speaking to on ventrilo had the problem in LA, and struggled to find the buffs to get the attunement to move on to the hologram fight. A few minutes later, during that fight, I had the problem myself.

When I saw it myself, there WERE a number of white rings on the ground that didn’t seem to be active spells, and I definitely picked up a buff at one point at about the time I entered one of those. Could have been sheer coincidence, mind.

My graphics card, if that’s relevant, is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (I have no idea about my friend’s)

OK – self-confessed PvE alt-aholic here (12 level 80s and counting).

I already have a level 80 ranger (0/20/20/0/30; sword+warhorn, SB). What I’m looking for now is a build for a second one – but one that feels sufficiently “different” in terms of PvE play style so that I don’t feel I’m just pulling the same character out of the box in different clothes. It doesn’t have to be absolutely top-of-the-range – just sensibly viable and fun to play. I’ve found it easy enough to do that with some professions – for example I’ve a pair of necro’s (one condition-based, one raw DPS) that are both great fun but as different as chalk and cheese – but with Ranger, for some reason, I’m struggling to work out where to begin.

Any ideas, anyone?

It’s coming to an end. But ANet are hardly about to can it in mid-denouement.

Advent Leader.1083:

Has anyone ever checked what kind of configuration this setup follows? Is vertically aligned, or is it horizontally aligned?

Well, it scrolls vertically, so if it were real language text I would argue that it pretty much would have to be written horizontally (otherwise there’d be no clue or obvious reason to move columns before text there had scrolled away and been lost). But that doesn’t work as an argument here; if we assume it actually does have meaning for us to find at all, the dev’s could have done just about anything.

Darn it, now I’m interested. That’s my afternoon gone.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Update 2: We have a fix in testing right now, once it’s confirmed we’ll get it to Live ASAP. Note that trying to implement a workaround (like switching your story step) would still require us to go through testing, bring down the servers, etc. and just isn’t viable. Thanks for your patience!

Thanks for the update, Jeffrey (and thanks to everyone for giving this one some love – I’ve been a software developer myself, and I know the competing pressures!)

Edit: I can confirm that this was fixed in the 25th January patch. No sign of Baroosh during the story, so either he shouldn’t have been there in the first place, or taking him out was the simplest fix. Either way – I was able to progress and finish the story. Thanks, guys.

Yes, same problem as everyone else. After the initial cut scene with Trahearne there’s a story star over Baroosh’s head, but when I try to interact with him (right mouse click or F key) all I get is a flash of information about my cash, etc.. See attached screen cap; the flash is fading but still just about visible near the top of the screen.

I should add that I’ve successfully completed this story on other characters, albeit with different allies, twice within the Wintersday story period.

(As others have indicated – it’s REALLY frustrating that there’s no option, when a story event is bugged, to swap to another story path when an alternative one existed. I got slightly out of step because of the new Living Story events, but I’ve been trying very hard to keep my story in step with my character progression; now I either have to resign myself to letting my character level ahead of the story, or put my character on hold and go do something else.)

Taku.6352:

The increase is because of the new years sales. unlimited Royal Pass and character slots were very desirable thus spiking the prices over the top. And today gathering tools and makeover kits will keep those prices high.

P.S. Do you by any chance happen to main a necromancer?

Ah, that would account for it. It may be hard to believe, given the splash on the BLTC front page, but I failed to notice the sales completely, somehow. Probably because I’ve usually clicked on the side tab before the front page loads. (It would have been nice to take advantage of them to pick up a few “cheap” character slots – but then again, with the parallel hike in gem prices, the overall cost would have been pretty much the same… guess I’ll wait for the sales to pass and see what prices do.)

I don’t really have a main. Level 80s of all professions – and my necro is one of my go-to characters, and the only one I have world completion on to date – but I’m mostly a boring, solo PvE-er.

zenleto.6179:

Nice use of the tin hat.

If you mean tin-foil hat – not really, it was just an observation that ANet have a good reason to have input to the prices from time to time, even if they haven’t come out and said so, and just may have chosen to use it. Even if that were the case, I wouldn’t have a problem with it (apart from the obvious gripe that that I missed out on a lower gem price, but that’s mere frustration).

(Frankly, I’d be amazed if the code wasn’t at least written to let them tweak prices if they needed to; that would have put the whole economy of the unreleased game, and ANet’s income, entirely at the mercy of future player behaviour.)

Heizero.9183:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trading_Post

^It is inflation. the more players that spend gold for gems, the more it rises. the more that buy gems with money, the more the exchange rate drops…simple.

You know what? I find it very hard to believe that that’s the full story. Minute-on-minute fluctuations may be down to player transactions, but I am convinced that ANet has a back-door input as well.

Why? Well (and I admit, this is a single specific observation, but I’ve seen similar before)… For the last week, the cost for 100 gems has been sliding, bouncing along at about 6g 50s on my server. Suddenly, at midnight on a Thursday, server time, the price shot up to 8g, and has been in that area ever since. That’s an increase of getting on for 25%.

Now – clearly someone could have cashed in a shed-load of cash for gems. Just possibly even a couple of players. But more than that? Highly improbable. And enough to change the price that much? All I can say is, if one or two player transactions can change prices that much, the gem price is way too sensitive to individual transactions. As for the timing of the price shift – very suspicious. No – far more likely, in my mind, that someone at the server end simply tweaked a setting.

I have to point out, too, that it’s in ANet’s interest to have that sort of control, and use it from time to time (and that, if I were designing a game such as this, I’d certainly build that control in). Because if they raise the price of gems, they make them harder to come by with in-game money alone. And gold-to-gem swaps are lost income to ANet; by contrast, and provided they don’t drive people away from the game in the process, hiking prices to make gems scarcer means more people spending real money to get them.

Seera.5916:

It seemed to bug out on me until I ran closer to the opening in the wall where it got destroyed during the battle. There’s a dragon there that you have to get close enough to in order to trigger the next part. Almost got me killed as it kept fearing me into a corner of a wall that was still close enough for him to fear me again as I tried to get out of it.

Yes, I had the same problem, and the same thing worked for me (and lots of people seem to be reporting the same). It’s an annoying bug, but once you know it exists, it doesn’t prevent you completing the story.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Remember to clear out any waiting items for TP pickup, as well as any in-game mail (even if it says you have less than 10/10 for mail). If the search function worked, I could look it up, but… some time ago, a Dev stated that a full mailbox can affect items from the TP (not meaning the gem store), and it can be a few hours before they arrive. I have no idea why, but it seems to two can be related. Regardless, it is worth a try.

Yes, that was it. I spotted what was happening when I went through clearing my purchase queue this morning, and came back here to post to that effect – thanks for getting there first! 8-)

This isn’t so much a bug per se, as an artifact of the way that TP profit has been implemented – the money hasn’t been lost, it simply isn’t being displayed yet.

Despite looking as though it’s a simple total, that clearly isn’t how trade profit works under the covers. Rather than being a simple, single total, income transactions seem to be queued up with everything else (which makes good sense from a design viewpoint), and delivered as and when they get high enough in the queue. The result is that, if you have a lot of items in your purchase queue, you may not see all (maybe even not even any) of the money you’ve earned until you work through everything you’ve purchased. The “Trade Profit” shown is simply whatever transactions have got high enough up the queue to be spotted (or something like that, anyway). At different points clearing my queue just now (maybe 1000 items in total), my trade profit figure was showing as non-zero on several occasions, and zero at other times. The non-zero amounts were added to my total money as I received things.

tl;dr:
Not a bug. Clear your TP transactions and your money will arrive.