Guild Wars 2

I see another problem with OP’s suggestion as well. Even if you can manage to properly detect the culprit IP regions and shuffle them into their own servers, you would also have to maintain segregated Trading Post servers as well, since currently the TP is a global system shared by all servers.

TravisTrout.6803:

" disagree with the OP’s suggestion. The main issue with pricing on the Trading Post is an issue of supply and demand. "

LOL! That didn’t take long.

To be clear, increasing the supply of a big ticket item by one unit is not a legitimate S&D based reason to drive the value down by leaps and bounds. The price should not go from 30 to 20 just because you added one to the supply pile.

Adding one more unit of supply may not be justification for a lower price in itself, that is true, but if supply was lower and demand was higher, the price would naturally be higher, even with undercutting. Additionally, keep in mind that true demand prices are the lowball prices you see from “orders”, and there is nothing that requires people to list prices at the lowest price, or even the 10th lowest price. I’ve a made a fair amount of profit on the TP by buying items at an “order” price and reselling at an “instant purchase” price. I never pay the highest order price, but people always sell to me anyway, and I never list at the lowest price, but my items always end up being purchased within a few days.

The reason prices tend to drop is because people want to sell their items fast. When order prices and seller prices are nearly identical, as they are for a large number of items, especially crafting materials, you will stop seeing prices dropping. Unfortunately, because the in-game supply for items is so high right now, that almost always means that both order prices and list prices will generally drop down to NPC merchant value, and then stabilize.

I agree that it is not only an issue of supply and demand, as it is also an issue of instant gratification and generalized impatience. Nevertheless, you cannot ignore the supply and demand aspect, as it is fundamental to free market economics, including in-game economics. There are other factors that make things more complex, but supply and demand are major and significant factors that you cannot simply throw out the window.

I disagree with the OP’s suggestion. The main issue with pricing on the Trading Post is an issue of supply and demand. While the TP mechanics do encourage listing for low prices to get fast sales, the reason the prices are so drastically low is because there is huge supply, and very little demand.

By making it so that listing an item for the minimum allowable price would result in a loss to the seller compared to selling to an NPC merchant, the system encourages selling to merchants instead of selling on the TP. This effectively reduces the supply on the TP and can potentially allow the item’s TP price to stabilize. If a player chooses to sell on the TP anyway, and take that loss, it effectively acts as a money sink because of the loss in both low price, plus list price, plus TP commission.

Personally, I find it refreshing to see TP pricing so relatively low. This allows new players to still be able to get decent gear. While this is of little concern at the present, as the game ages and inflation takes hold (as it naturally will), the TP system as it currently is will help to ensure that new players 5 years down the line can still afford decent gear, and will be able to financially compete for gear successfully even against established players with lots of in-game coin. This will help reduce the pressure that new players will feel to try and buy in-game coin, and thus reduce the instances of players buying from gold brokers in violation of the EULA.

In my opinion, the TP system should not be changed at all, but drop rates should be adjusted to help address over-supply.

OK, now that I have read more of the previous posts and have a clearer idea of how the filtering system is working, it is quite clear that the filter system is grossly simplistic and inherently flawed because of it’s simplicity. The system clearly is not set up to distinguish words, and is simply triggering on any and all combinations which (ignoring whitespace, and some but not all punctuation) match the filter database. This is far too simplistic… and lazy for that matter. It is time-consuming, but not particularly difficult to program a string filter that can track better than that…

1. Find sub-string which matches filter trigger from database.
2. Find characters immediately before and after the sub-string.
3. If character immediately before sub-string is an alpha character, do not filter.
4. If the character immediately following the sub-string is an alpha character, do not filter.

Checking full words that make a legitimate phrase but would be offensive if the space was removed would be more complex, because you would have to also set up a database of whitelisted phrases. But once such a databse is established, it would be easy to add into the filter system…

6. If sub-string contains a space, check phrase against phrase whitelist, and if present, do not filter.

7. Otherwise, ignore whitespace and filter normally.

This would make for a much more effective system that would still catch the vast majority of profanity and successfully filter it out, while at the same time significantly reducing the number of false positives that are incorrectly filtered out.

Mr eX’s Wikipedia link is extremely relevant. Dead on, in fact.

kitanas.3596:

um, I think you forgot the space between who and really. now if we remove the “ally” which it didn’t censor, we are left with “who” and “re”. do you see now why it was censored?

No, if I click on the edit button and re-check the original text, it does have a space between “who” and “really”, I did not forget it. Now that you point out the possible word that is being filtered, it does make sense, but it also shows that the filtering system is too aggressive. If the system is going to filter based on adjacent words (or at least segments of letters separated by a space) rather than single words only, then it should only do so if those adjacent words do not make up an actual phrase, and it should take into account the full words, not just partials.

As it is, would the system also filter out the contraction of “who” and “are”? That would be even closer to the filter word than what I had actually used, but would use a punctuation instead of a space, and still would be a complete, correct, and unoffensive word that should not be filtered. I understand the desire to keep the language on the forums clean, but that is going too far. It seems to me that the code that checks for language to be filtered is too simplistic and does not take the flow of language properly into consideration. The code should be much more sophisticated than “ignore all whitespace and filter any combination of letters that matches the filter database”.

So I didn’t notice this when I first posted the message, so I don’t know if it was changed after the original posting or not, but I found an odd place where language that could not possibly be regarded as profanity was replaced by the forum profanity filter.

In my post at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/I-too-dislike-Trahearne-Spoilers/324467 in the first paragraph (after the quoted section) the filter system replaced the words “who”, “really”, and “cares” (in proper order) with “kittenally cares”.

Now unlike some people who find the filter system annoying, I really don’t mind it so much on most occasions. But in this particular case, I can’t see how that particular three word phrase could possibly be construed as even remotely offensive and deserving of replacement. As such, I cannot help but consider this a bug in the filter database.

Strictly speaking, the rotation speed option changes the speed of camera rotation. It does not affect the mouse sensitivity. Changing it will make turning with the mouse more sensitive and responsive, but it will also change the rotation speed when using keyboard commands as well. It will not, however, increase the speed that the mouse cursor travels across the interface when you are using it for something other than turning.

I personally wouldn’t mind having a separate mouse sensitivity slider in options. I also would like to see mouse smoothing so that when I use the mouse to turn and my hand shakes (because my hands tend to shake), the jittery motion get’s smoothed out in the game (disabling camera shake helps smooth things out a little, but not enough).

I do think that bugs and balance issues are more pressing however.

Oddoad.5478:

Rather then uprooting him, and changing the personal storyline dramatically, add another part where we learn a lot more about him, we make him our friend and confidant and him us, and allow us to like him a lot more then people obviously do. Make him personable and a leader that was truely thrust into the position and does an outstanding job with it.. don’t just add a character we barely know to be the leader of the free races, without a background and have us blindly follow the guy through thick or thin.. make us love him, make us respect him. Thats what should be done, that way when we see him take up the mantle of responsibility we see exactly the internal choices he makes and respect him all the more for making it and being thrust into it.

I really like this solution. While it would do nothing to improve the poor dialog writing, and the less-than-inspiring voice acting, it would at least give every character, regardless of back story and race, a chance to get to know this character that becomes so all-important to the plot. No more of this BS crap of “Oh hi! So even though I only just met you, and know nothing about you, and despite the fact that you really aren’t that inspiring or interesting, I’m going to follow you everywhere and do whatever it takes to help you achieve your goals. And sod my own goals, and sod my friends that I had before you too, and while we’re at it, who. really care’s about those Destiny’s Edge has-beens, let them run themselves ragged in the depths of the world if they want, we don’t need them”!

By adding in new personal story content that allows us to get to know Trahearne, and ideally that also gives some in-game reason for the absence of our friends in all of this (maybe they are off on some other highly important support mission that enables Trahearne and us to do what we do together), we could at least feel like the story is still a little more our own, and we could feel like we have reason to follow Trahearne around.

Basically, we need a reason why we are so vested in Trahearne’s success, something above and beyond the mere fact that the content writers wanted it to be that way. We need some practical reason why Trahearne is the right person for the job of Marshall of the Pact. We need some plot reason why Trahearne is the one who must wield Caladbolg (as opposed to anyone else), and for Sylvari characters, a solid reason why the Pale Tree gave it to him instead of us. We need some reason why Trahearne is the chosen one who must defeat Zhaitan, and some reason why he alone can accomplish it.

I’m ok with playing second fiddle to a lore NPC, IF there is reason why it must be so. But the way the personal story plot line goes right now, the character that becomes the “main” hero of the story is entirely superfluous and expendable. Remove Trahearne entirely from the story and you get a story that is virtually unchanged. Replace him with any other character, and the story would see no great difference. That, I think, is the fundamental problem with him.

As gamers, most of us are used to hearing/seeing poorly written dialog, and we are used to having voice acting that just doesn’t quite work. We also generally allow such things to slide in favor of a good story. The problem with Trahearne is that there isn’t a good story to distract us from the flaws in the dialog and voice acting. The story itself is disconnected. There is no flow for players, no immersion, no engagement, no emotional investment. There is just no reason for us to care about the new hero that is foisted upon us. And the result is that many of us secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) harbor ambitions to assassinate the guy after the dragon is defeated. And while I agree that seeing this supposedly great and powerful hero that is the hope of the world die CONSTANTLY is a serious disconnect that must be addressed, at least we can use it to fulfill our fantasies of watching the annoying sot die horribly, even though it must be vicariously and not at our own hands.

Anyway, I’ve sort of gone all over the place with this one, so allow me to summarize. Essentially, we need some better reason (especially for non-Sylvari characters) to be invested in Trahearne’s success. And I think that Oddoad’s suggestion of new intermediate personal story content, where we get to know Trahearne and have reason to follow him, is a great way to accomplish that. And such content could also be used to give worthy explanation for the absence of our prior story companions (the one’s we actually have an investment with). Such a solution would require quite a lot of content development, and would also require new cut scenes to be voiced. And that process would certainly take a great deal of time (and no small amount of money I imagine), but it could be so very worthwhile and could potentially salvage a story that at the moment is strongly disliked by the player community.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

This is just a bad idea. It’s a basic part of Engineer and Elementalist classes to not have weapon sets. For some reason, the Engineers aren’t complaining though…

Engineers have less cause to complain, because their skills are designed in such a way that they have tactical flexibility with all weapon choices, especially when utilizing tool kits properly, and even more so if they choose to equip utility skills that replace their weapon skills. Elementalists, however, have no such tactical flexibility during combat. And allow me to point out again the main issue you seem to be missing: this is a matter of convenience, not power! Why are you so dead-set against the idea of letting other players have a touch of convenience that everyone else gets? Allowing elementalists to swap weapons with a single keystroke while out of combat changes nothing in terms of class balance or class power! It seems to me that you are consistently making comments that are irrelevant to the original suggestion, and I can only assume that either you are deliberately attempting to cloud the issue or you are simply too unintelligent to see the distinction. In either case, your comments are woefully pointless, and border on trolling.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

No. Elementalists get a total of 20 skills to change with the dynamic flow of combat. They don’t need more.

Have you even played an ele? Each weapon set is geared for particular scenarios, and there is very little ability to tactically manage changed combat situations based on attunements alone. Yes, you have 20 skills to choose from through attunements, but all 20 are geared around a single and specific play style and scenario archetype. As a result, even with our 20 skills vs. any other class’s 10, we generally are at a tactical disadvantage in combat if the tactical scenario changes. Switching weapons out of combat allows us to change our play style to reflect the scenarios we anticipate coming up against. Every other class can switch relatively freely between 10 skills, and can do so during combat, and this gives them a tactical advantage during combat because they can change to a weapon set more geared to a changed scenario. Elementalists do not have that option, but at least we can try to anticipate the most likely scenario and pre-emtively choose a weapon set based on that anticipation. The issue here is one of convenience. We shouldn’t have to spend several seconds changing weapons out of combat when anyone else can do it in a fraction of a second with a single keystroke.

I would even go so far as to say that we should be allowed to swap weapons during combat to adapt to changed tactical scenarios, but with a LONG cooldown timer to prevent abuse. That would change things from the current state of eles being at a tactical disadvantage, to a more even playing field, as we could at least respond to a single change in tactical situation. The issue of maintaining balance and fairness in both PvE and PvP would be one of setting up the cooldown timer effectively.

I have played elementalist a bit too, and I also find the lack of ability to swap weapons easily out of combat annoying. The fact is, different weapon sets for elementalists are geared for different situations. The staff, for example, is heavily geared to AoE and ally support and is great for dynamic and group events with lots of targets. The scepter and dagger on the other hand are largely geared to single-target and few-target scenarios and offer virtually no ally support. As a result, when I’m playing my elementalist, I find myself fairly regularly switching from staff to scepter/dagger depending on the situation that I am anticipating.

Yes, I can switch my weapons out through the hero screen, but that takes several seconds, and is an annoying hassle. I see no reason why we shouldn’t be allowed to define two weapon sets and swap them with a single keystroke out of combat. As The Mexican Cookie pointed out, this is an issue of convenience.

I also agree with the OP. I see no reason why a character should have to buy two identical sets of weapons just to effectively switch which hand is which weapon. The system is already set up to allow switching of off-hand item only and keep main-hand item unchanged, why not make it so that weapon sets are defined rather than equipped when choosing weapons in the hero screen, and are actually equipped through the weapon swapping system in the game map?

@Nurvus, yandere is correct, your argument is not logical. The issue here is that characters can already achieve the same number of skills with a simple weapon swap either way. The only difference is if they have to have 2 weapons to do it, or 4. While it is true that in the case of legendary weapons, a character could fully gear up sooner if they only have to get 2 legendary weapons instead of 4, it is also true that an elementalist that has no weapon swapping can get access to 20 different skills with only one legendary weapon. Presently, pretty much any character with any choice of weapon sets can achieve full gear with 1 to 4 weapons depending on class and weapon choices made, and almost never have to buy duplicate items to achieve it. But a warrior or thief who wants to use a set that is essentially just a change of which weapon is in which hand is effectively forced to buy duplicates under the current system. There is no balance issue here with respect to the power or number of skills a character could unleash if they were able to swap weapon hands instead of having to swap full weapons.

It has been my experience that many of the Elite skills are not that great anyway. Yes, they are powerful, but they have such long cooldown times that they often have very limited and situational usefulness. I think that having the option of using a fourth Utility Skill in that skill slot, instead of an Elite skill, would be a nice option to have, and I think you would find more than a few players choosing that option. I also think that it should not be restricted to sPvP only, but should be allowed in PvE as well.

I think that the ability to change race would be too problematic to be feasible, and the programming of it would be incredibly time-consuming. However, I really love the idea of being able to change basic character appearance. This could be as simple as allowing an in-game interface that retruns to the basic options that were present during character creation after race/gender choice and before personality/background choices. All of the primary appearance options were in one page of the character creation interface, and I think it would be fairly easy to develop an in-game interface that duplicates that functionality by returning back to that original code.

GW1 eventually had such a system with the makeover packs available from the game store, and GW2 could similarly make it available through a gem shop item of some kind.

I too fully despise gold spammers. The other day I started a brand new character to try out a Sylvari and see how I like it. Within 2 minutes of finishing the tutorial instance I had received NINE mail messages from gold spammers! This is not acceptable.

However, as much as I want to see those sorts of annoying messages go away entirely, so I never have to see them, restricting mail and chat isn’t the answer. No matter what restrictions you choose to enforce, the gold spammers will simply deal with the restrictions. So say you restrict them from sending messages until they are level 10. Well it doesn’t take very long to get a character to level 10 if you know what you’re doing, so they’ll just level to level 10, spam as much as they can before they get banned, then repeat. You may slow them down very slightly, but it would be an insignificant impact. In the end, their messages will still get through to annoy the rest of us. On top of that, you would also be restricting perfectly innocent players.

What we need is a system that automatically detects spam messages in both mail and chat, automatically blocks them so they never get delivered to mail or chat channels, and automatically reports the spammers for investigation. This would mean that their messages would be prevented from ever reaching regular players, rendering the “advertising” completely null and useless (an advertisement can only be effective if it is seen by the target audience). Not only would that make the advertising ineffective, but it would also save regular players from the annoyance of ever seeing the messages, and would further simplify things by making it so that we regular players never even have to take the time to report the spammers, because they will have already been reported.

Such a system is possible through message filters/triggers. Basically, you create a database of filters. Every message is checked against that database for typical spam content. If a message contains spam content, then the filters trigger the blocking and reporting mechanisms. As spammers come up with new ways to try and circumvent the filters, you update the filter database.

Such a filtering system has been used successfully in other games, such as WoW and Runes of Magic. This is often accomplished through addons, but could be implemented on the system level in the core server code. With such a system, if a spam message successfully gets through, we could still report it, and that would provide information that could then be used to update the filter database. False positives could be possible (though a good filter database would minimize them), so investigation of spam reports would still be necessary, and I do not advocate automatic suspensions or bans, however, if a character sends more than 2 such messages within a certain time frame, say 15 minutes, then they should have chat and mail access suspended for a time (maybe 30 minutes) and their investigation for possible banning should be prioritized.

Basically, what I’m saying in short is that as long as the spammers can still successfully get their “advertisement” messages through, they will continue to do so. We need the system to prevent those messages from reaching us, thus preventing them from being effective, and saving regular players from the annoyance of it.

The pet AI in general is not very impressive, but the lack of ability for them to deal with AoE is especially problematic. They also do not make any attempt to dodge or otherwise avoid enemy power attacks, such as Whirling Defense (which can be quite devastating to meleers like pets), and in group events they are generally dead before they even have the chance to use their F2 skill.

Granting pets increased resistance vs. AoE damage would certainly help, but improving their AI so that they try to avoid heavy damage would also be a step in the right direction (albeit a potentially challenging one from an AI programmer’s stand point).

And yes, we can make use of F3 and F1 for improved management. Unfortunately, that solution is not very effective, especially when you are dealing with multiple simultaneous AoEs, which happens rather frequently I’ve noticed. Additionally, managing pets in that way forces ranger players to be much more skilled at multitasking than other classes have to be to make effective use of their own class mechanics, and that is unfair and unbalanced in my opinion. Swapping pets can also be helpful, but there is such a long cooldown on pet swapping during combat, that you can only use that once for most battles, occasionally two or three times against Champion level boss targets in group events. On top of that, because you cannot then swap back again right away, it is generally better in my experience to let the pet die before swapping to the next one; that way you at least get the most out of the pet before switching it out for the next one.

However, despite the fact that I feel pets do need improvement, I do not find them to be entirely useless. A lot if it is learning to manage them properly, which as mentioned takes more interactive involvement than in most other MMOs (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but takes practice and is difficult for people without high multitasking ability). Even in group events, you can improve pet survivability somewhat by holding them back until someone has established clear aggro from the enemy. This will save most pets from most non-AoE damage at least, but AoE attacks are still a major problem, and often will kill a pet before the master can even react and try to pull them back.

In short, I think the system has it’s good points, and there are ways to improve its usefulness through effective management of the mechanics involved. But it is not balanced, and it can be quite frustrating. As such, some improvements to pet AI and/or AoE damage reduction for pets is certainly appropriate.

The biggest reason people don’t rez in group events is because doing so tends to get them killed before they finish rezing even one person, combined with the amount of time it takes to rez in combat, it is simply more efficient to continue to focus fire on the target(s). The only exception to that is if you are so far below the target(s) level that you personally cannot deal much damage, in which case rezing a higher level damage dealer can be helpful to the group overall. The only way to really be a combat rezer is to take a class with a decent rez skill and load that skill (I know rangers have one or two skills that can rez, and I’m sure there are others).

However, I do agree that rezing should grant rewards beyond XP and an achievement. While that guy that said “time is money” was perhaps a little inconsiderate, his point is valid. Any time taken to rez a character is time not spent killing and questing. Since killing and questing reward not only XP and achievements, but also coin and items, it is generally in most characters’ best financial interest to not take the time. If rez achievements, and especially a daily rez achievement, rewarded decent coin and/or items, then it would be more worthwhile, and I think that the reward system should perhaps be reevaluated to encourage more rezing in general. However, since rezing yourself at a waypoint is part of the game’s gold sink strategy, I wouldn’t count on a change being implemented.

Additionally, unless you are involved in a group event, it is often in your own best interest to rez at a waypoint as well. Despite the fact that it costs some coin for the rez, you should be able to make back that coin, and more, by hunting and questing the time you would otherwise have spent waiting for a kind soul to rez you. You should perhaps reconsider that choice the next time you are defeated.

Definitely have to agree with OP.

I’d also like to suggest that personal story quest instances should scale based on the character(s) that are present, particularly with regards to the armor type of the characters. I’ve found that characters that wear light armor tend to have a more difficult time, even when actively kiting, dodging, healing, and using knockdowns, stuns, pushback, etc. This is especially the case when there are enemies with ranged attacks, as they nullify most defensive methods. Combine that with the fact that companion NPCs generally do not attack until after you do, and you often find yourself dead before your companions have fully engaged in combat. Wearing medium armor makes this a little better, and wearing heavy armor, better still, but in the end I think that the damage output and armor and HP levels of enemies need to be adjusted dynamically based on the actual character(s) present in the instance. If a character is in their personal story by themselves, then the targets should be accordingly adjusted somewhat. If the PC is wearing light armor, then decrease target damage output, and perhaps increase armor and HP to compensate for the PC’s higher damage output. Thus, allowing us to survive long enough to try and actually wear them down. On the other hand, if a character wears heavy armor, then increase target damage output, but decrease their armor and HP. The idea here being that any character, whether a Guardian or an Elementalist, would have no better or worse chance than any other character of the same level and equivalent level of gear and tactical skill.

The short of it is that while the quests should be challenging, and should require active tactics, they should also be possible for an average player regardless of class, skill sets, or weapon choices. We shouldn’t have to be hard-core tacticians and strategists, forced to choose specific character set ups for each quest just to have half a chance to survive. And that is in reference to the harder ones, not the easy ones. With respect to the easy ones, they aren’t challenging enough and need o be adjusted as well.

On the whole, I have been most unimpressed with the general difficulty of personal story quests in the game. Many are far too easy, while others are far too difficult. And while some variation is desirable, there still needs to be challenge, and we still need to be able to overcome those challenges without being forced to spec full toughness and vitality, and/or gain levels and gear far above the “recommended” level for the quest. And similarly, we should be able to get through with whatever weapon and skills loadouts we choose to bring, rather than being forced to take certain limited sets simply because that’s what works.

It seems that the majority of personal story quests need to be revamped, and unless the dev team gets on the ball with it, I think ArenaNet will find a large number of people telling their friends that they should consider not buying this game until fixes are put in place or some other campaign/expansion is put in place. That is a sad state for the game to be in considering how much spectacular potential it has at this point.

Elric of Grans.7684:

Norn Elementalist, lvl15, Minotaur Rampant. After dozens of deaths, two complete restarts, I gave up. I came back with a friend whose Necromancer face-rolled the whole quest by himself. My first issue was the balista. It one-shotted me, and hides behind a corner. The first attempt, I was killed before I even knew what hit me. The entire strategy became `dodge the balista, ignoring the ice worms, dogs and Norns’. I could get past this by myself, but the balista definitely needs a damage reduction. When I got to the boss battle, I would be butchered every time. The Dragon constantly would go Invulnerable and heal to full, even if I did not kite it at all. By design, you cannot kill the archer until the dragon dies, but he does absurd damage to an Elementalist. My damage against the two of them was pitiful.

I have to agree that Minotaur Rampant needs some re-work. I’ve tried to complete that quest with my warrior since she was level 10 (the recommended level for the quest), and I have now died more times than I can remember. I have reached level 14 and done nothing since level 10 except attempt that one quest and a few of the dynamic events in the same area… that’s 4 level gains from repeated attempts at one level 10 quest and some dynamic events. I have maxed out armor and weapons, the best I could buy from the trading post for my level, I’ve tried numerous different utility skills setups, and numerous different weapon set combinations, and I still cannot beat that quest!

The Ballistae can kill me in one shot despite my fully upgraded Heavy Armor, full health, and Banner of Defense, so the only way to work that is to stay clear around the corner and draw other enemies to me, then take out the gunner. That at least works, but only once you know that it is necessary. This, in comparison to the same type of Ballistae elsewhere in the normal zone that barely deal any damage at all.

Then there is the fight against Vidkun and his pet dragon beast. You cannot kill him until you kill the pet, because he will reach downed state, become completely invulnerable, and the beast will come and tough-heal him back to full health. You cannot get Eir or Garm to target the beast, and their AI is apparently too stupid to change to the beast as a target even after it is obvious that they cannot kill Vidkun until the beast is dead.

The Minotaur Spirit dies in no time flat, and you can’t rez him because of the burst damage from Vidkun and his beast. You cannot avoid most of Vidkuun’s damage, because he has a bow and it is almost impossible to dodge fast enough except by accident, so the only thing you can do is try to get the beast far enough away that you are out of Vidkun’s range.

Even with all of that, at level 14 I can get the beast down to about 5%-10% health before I finally hit downed state. If I choose to use Vengeance, I can get him down a little more, but cannot manage to kill him before I become defeated. If I do not use Vengeance, I can do barely any additional damage at all. And Eir and Garm are so busy trying to waste time attacking Vidkun that they never try to revive me. On top of that, if I choose to restart from checkpoint, by the time I get back to the dragon beast, it has healed back to full again, so I can’t even death-zerg him.

All-in-all, this situation is totally unacceptable! The ballistae needs to have drastic damage reduction, so it at least takes 2 shots instead of 1 to kill a character, even a level 10 squishy. Eir and Garm should target the dragon beast until it’s dead, and never waste their time on Vidkun (or we should be able to kill Vidkun even if the beast is still alive). And I think the overall damage output of Vidkun should perhaps be slightly reduced as well, because he can kill me in about 10-20 direct hits even when I’m trying to kite him and the beast (and actively evade the beast’s charge attacks), and I don’t want to even think about how fast he could kill a squishy cloth-clad caster (yes, I am using my heal skill as often as I can).

In short, the quest should be achievable by any level 10 character wearing cloth or better, if they have decent tactics. Otherwise, the recommended level for the quest is WAY wrong!

[EDIT/UPDATE] I was finally able to beat this quest with my warrior, after reaching level 15 and upgrading all equipment to level 15 gear, and I only died once (downed 3 times), but I still came very close to dying a second time as well. A warrior, with heavy armor and Banner of Defense, actively dodging high damage attacks, and kiting, with full sets of upgraded level 15 crafted gear, and I was barely able to complete this quest that is “recommended” for level 10. Sorry ArenaNet, but you need to try again.

The stones can be used to merge the appearance and stats of two items, giving you the appearance of one and the stats of the other. However, they are restricted to “items of the same type”. My understanding is that this means that you can merge a light armor head piece with another light armor head piece, but you could not merge a light armor head piece with a medium armor head piece. So in essence, I do not believe it is currently possible to do what you want.

As for the suggestion that such an ability be added… I wouldn’t expect that to happen, largely because in PvP situations, the ability to prioritize targets is at least partially based on recognition of armor types. If, all of a sudden, a player could wear heavy armor, but look like they are wearing squisy light armor, this could affect PvP play in unexpected ways. Otherwise, it would be purely cosmetic, and I would be all for more cosmetic appearance options.

I also would personally like to see more options for town clothes.

While I personally am less concerned with pet evolution than others may be, I love the idea of improved pet AI, especially with respect to trying to dodge or otherwise avoid AoE attacks. I am also very much in favor of having a greater variety of pets available.

BobbyStein.2315:

UPDATE: The Audio and Programming teams have been investigating this issue since it was first reported over the weekend. They’re working on a fix.

Superb! Thank you for the update It’s great to hear when things are actually being addressed, rather than simply finding out about it from patch notes somewhere down the line (as is often typical with other games).

Bonzoso.7014:

I haven’t switched to fast targeting AoE yet, so I hadn’t even thought about that. Maybe a happy compromise for the fast-targeting mechanic of those AoE skills is to have it so that when you hold down the button the AoE target comes up, and the skill is fired off when you release the button. That should still be pretty fast execution and allow you to see the targeting area first.

That isn’t a half-bad idea, but I see a potential problem with it. Let’s say I start to cast such a spell. Then the targeting circle comes up and I notice that I’m out of range. Now I have the problem that if I let go, I still try to cast the spell but get the “out of range” message, otherwise I have to move into range while still holding down the skill button, and only release it once I’m in range. That would be a significant pain, and I’d much rather have an automatic visual indicator like other skills have, so that I can know I’m out of range before I even start trying to use the skill.

Asherdeil.3174:

If you want that sort of thing, may I suggest lotro or WoW? ArenaNet have gotten away from that sort of random “Come to me and i’ll tell you why you have to kill 10 bears, there now kill 10 bears and come back when you are done” sort of insanity. It takes VERY little time to level up your character between one story mission and another and if you are worried about it, just don’t do those sorts of things. You can get xp from exploration, crafting, pretty much ANYthing. If I have to go back to mindless fetch quests and killing 10 of an animal for some inane reason (that never had a quality “story” to it anyway!) I think I’d shoot myself.

I’m not talking about the mindless stupidity of fetch quests. I’m talking about real, story-based and in-game motivated reasons for doing quests. The fact that it doesn’t take long to grind a level or two between personal story quests is irrelevant. The point is that you still have to grind one way or another, and have no story-based reason for doing so. Whether you grind heart regions, grind kills, grind events, grind crafting, grind exploration, or grind some combination of any or all of the above, you are still grinding. No reason, no story, no plot, no engagement. Just grinding.

I’m not suggesting that the game should be filled with basic quests that have no depth, where people interact purely to start the quest. I’m talking about adding in actual story-based reasons for our actions. I’m also not suggesting that all content be made like this, but rather that there be at least some content options that are like this so that people like me can have something worth playing.

Your suggestion that I play WoW or LotRO clearly misses the point. Those games have virtually no story-based or story-driven content at all. GW2 is better than those games at providing story-driven content, but is still lacking, and this results in grinding with no purpose other than to level up, just like any other MMO (albeit slightly less so). GW2 was supposed to be different and innovative, and it is to an extent, but they need to go further. If we have to grind, then sure, it may be better to not have to skip through some inane NPC gibber before doing so, but what I’m asking for is for ways to make it so that we aren’t having to grind at all if we don’t want to. I’m talking about worthwhile, meaningful, engaging, and rewarding side-plots.

This is actually a new experience for me, only since the last patch on the 14th. I had VO working perfectly, then the patch came and half of VO was missing. I started a new character, same race, same gender, same class, same personal story line choices, different name (I wanted a new name), and played through… some VO that was perfectly present and complete before is now missing. Roughly speaking, every other VO line from any given NPC character is missing. So, for example, if a cut scene involves 2 NPC characters and myself, roughly every other line of NPC 1 will be missing, and roughly every other line of NPC 2 will also be missing, but you can occasionally get back to back VO lines that are complete if the character that is speaking changes. Unless VO files were somehow removed during the patch, I don’t see how it could be related to missing or incomplete files.

By the way, this if for Norn, using Defeat Ancient Foes and Lost an Heirloom story line choices from character creation.

Vyniea.2054:

Drake Phoenix.6158:

On the one hand, I see a point with limiting or reducing drop rates when someone is farming the same location or event, especially as a means to prevent botting.

Maybe have a popup asking a simple question whenever a player kills like 50 of the same monster in a short time frame (not counting DEs)?.

Like, what is yellow+blue : green.

Or a simple captcha, I don’t know.

The problem I have with that sort of an approach is that it causes a direct disconnect/disengagement from the game. Since I personally like to immerse as much as possible into the games I play, I really despise anything that distracts from that engagement. A system like you suggest would be purely distraction from game engagement. Yes, it could possibly work for a while (until botters learn to write bots that automatically answer simple intelligence questions), but the downside would be too high a price to pay in my opinion. It is not an easy problem to address, and most developers simply don’t try, but I’m hoping that ArenaNet can come up with some ideas that are as innovative as some of their game mechanics are.

I really like a lot of the aspects of the dynamic event system. I also really like the Personal Story aspect of the game that helps generate instanced and story-driven content specific to our own characters. However, I feel like there is not enough story-driven content at this point, and that we are pushed into hack-and-slash grinding for more of the game than I really like to see.

First, the dynamic events do not require characters to engage in the story before they participate. On the one hand, this is good, as it allows characters to participate in them even if they come late to the party. But the NPCs that sometimes show up to inform characters of such events are often present too late, or too far away to allow new characters to join in in a timely way. Take the event to rescue the kidnapped snow leopard cubs in Wayfarer Hills for example. Once the cubs are stolen, an NPC goes to the nearby trading post area and tries to inform other characters of the crisis and request help. Unfortunately, by the time a player from there gets to the event location itself, they are not able to contribute very much.

And the heart regions for helping out certain areas based on their particular needs also do not require engagement in the story itself. You simply have to read the conditions indicator in the upper right of the UI and do what needs to be done, without having to know why you are doing it.

Since the experience gained from ding the personal story alone isn’t enough to keep a character leveled and geared to be ready for the next phase of the personal story, characters are forced to level up and gain gear by participating in other aspects of the game. This is good, but there should be more story-driven content for players like myself who prefer story-driven content over basic hack-and-slash grinding.

With that in mind, I propose that progress against heart regions should not be possible until after speaking with the main heart NPC and discovering some of the story-based reason for the activities. I also propose additional story-based and event-based side quests and events to be put in place, where characters would have to engage in the story first, before being able to participate in the quest or event.

I suggest that such content be made available in addition to current content, rather than replacing it, with the exception of participating in regional activities for heart NPCs.

I realize that this would make heart NPCs a little more like standard quest NPCs from other MMOs, but I think that having story-driven content, even if it is more similar to other MMOs, is preferable to raw hack-and-slash with no story-based reason for it.

I love the way the current dye system works, both in terms of the number of dyes available, and the fact that you can dye any clothing or armor item at any time with any color that you have unlocked for your character. But one thing I don’t like about the system is that once you choose an Accessory Color during character creation, you cannot then change and dye that Accessory Color at a later time.

I really feel that we should be able to dye that as well, so that if we decide we want to change our entire color scheme, we don’t have to worry about a choice we made during character creation limiting our choices for color palettes later on just to avoid our armor clashing with our hair accessories.

I have to agree that filtering systems can work. As an example, please see the Ultimate Blacklist addon for Runes of Magic (http://www.curse.com/addons/rom/ultimate-blacklist). When I played that game, I always used that addon. I never once had a false positive, and very few “tricks” managed to fool the system. Plus, the filters for any such filter system can be updated as new methods of bypassing them are created by spammers.

You could also make the system slightly more advanced, by requiring that messages meet two filter items instead of just one, or by prioritizing filter results such that certain filters are considered automatic and high priority, while others that are more likely to produce false positives would have to include two or more filter triggers to be flagged and blocked.

You could even set it up so that messages that trigger the blocking system based on filters would also automatically submit a report to the reporting system.

The basic idea behind such a system is to not only combat gold spammers in a reactive way (i.e. they deliver spam, they get reported, an hour or two later they go away), but instead to also actively protect legitimate players from ever having to even see the spam in the first place. As long as the spam is seen, it can be effective advertising, and it is an annoyance. If it is never seen, it isn’t effective, it isn’t annoying, and we can actively combat the problem in a way that reactive reporting simply cannot achieve on its own.

I think improved AoE targeting options in general are a good idea. While I don’t think I personally would use an option to automatically cast on current target very often except against event bosses, I certainly can see that it could be useful to some. I also would like improved range indicators when we have it set to auto cast at cursor location.

I think something like the following would work very well for me personally… First, enable range indicators for AoE skills when the auto cast at mouse location is set enabled, since we don’t have the target circle to show if we are out of range or not. Second, the ability to temporarily use the full targeting mode, such as by holding Shift when activating the skill. Third, a settable option to auto target the current target if the current target is an event target. And last, some indicator of the current mouse cursor location even when you have mouse buttons held down, such as when right-click held during kiting (or maybe make targeted AoE skills automatically target the selected target when a mouse button is held unless Shift is also held, in which case use the targeting circle).

Such a system would grant improved control overall for targeted AoE skills and I think would definitely improve the smoothness and engagement of combat for AoE skill users.

When I first started playing, I also felt that a player-to-player trade system, and also the addition of a CoD option for the mail system would both be good ideas. But after playing for a while longer, and using the Trading Post more and more, I find that the Trading Post system is perfectly suited to support most trades, and the mail system can be used perfectly well for gifts.

There are very few things that could be accomplished through a player-to-player trading system that cannot already be accomplished. First, you could try and trade for higher-than-market prices in exchange for the convenience of immediacy rather than having to travel to a trading post. Second, for scamming by trying to convince people to pay higher than market price while convincing them that it is at or lower than market price, which we should want to prevent anyway. Third, for trading for less than vendor value (in which case why not just gift it through mail?). And last, for trading items for items instead of items for money. While that last options is certainly something to be considered, the others are simply not that important. And as far as trading items for items, the trading post system can achieve similar results, you simply sell your items you want to trade out, then use the cash to buy the items you actually want. While that does require a little more time, it also results in generally fairer value-for-value trades, as the prices are regulated by supply and demand principles.

At this point, I really don’t see that the game or the game economy would be improved in any significant way by implementing a player-to-player trade system. It would just be time and money spent developing a feature that simply isn’t that important. And as far as the argument of preventing scams goes, while it certainly could reduce scams based on mail trades, those sorts of scams can be avoided by using the trading post anyway.

I have to agree with this. The little red bar at the bottom of a skill to indicate that you are out of range is simply too difficult to see. Some improvement to visibility of the indicator is definitely desirable, even if it is only made as an option so that we can choose between the current indicator and something more noticeable.

I also find it annoying that targeted AoE skills do not have a range indicator on the skill bar at all. When you have target circles enabled and you do not have your options set to automatically cast at the location of the mouse pointer, then that isn’t as big a deal, but if you are like me and you do use the cast at mouse pointer location feature, then a range indicator based on the mouse pointer location would be highly desirable as well (or at the minimum based on the current target’s range).

On the one hand, I see a point with limiting or reducing drop rates when someone is farming the same location or event, especially as a means to prevent botting. I understand that keeping game economies in check can be quite difficult in an MMO, and that farming, especially botted farming, contributes fairly heavily to in-game inflation, and it is certainly desirable to keep such problems in check. Nevertheless, I have to agree with the above posters, that 20 minutes before reducing drops to virtually nothing is not acceptable, particularly when Magic Find boosters have a 30 minute duration.