Guild Wars 2

furryangel.4623:

I just wasted my time leveling when I could have made a bunch of level ones with the same stats as my level 80. You may as well play a Facebook game, at least then you’ll feel like you’ve accomplished something.

Hardly. The more levels your characters have, the more the world (and its content) opens up to them, regardless of getting scaled down to the area or not. Your level 1 characters wouldn’t be going very far from a city before becoming utterly useless and likely dead. Leveling in GW2 allows you to see what’s beyond that next hill and challenge it. “Challenge” being the key word there.

Thomassassinate.9370:

I reccomend tarnished coast. Its a popular server and anything i want to do i commonly see people. Only downside is there is alot of rpers so expect to see people pretending some magic ancient dragon named garjrufakenameugr is attacking the city and they need to stop it.

Um, the reason there are many role-players on Tarnished Coast is because the role-playing community decided (well before the launch of the game) to use Tarnished Coast as the unofficial role-play server for North America.

While it is by no means an official designation, the fact remains that many, many servers acquired unofficial designations of one sort or another in the months/weeks/days approaching launch. It a phenomenon that tends to happen whenever developers choose to be generic with their server list.

Point is, that the role-players were planning to make Tarnished Coast their home was no secret. And a lot of its popularity (which you seem to enjoy) is because of the very group you’re labeling as a “downside”.

Devata.6589:

@Edge.4180
“unless we’re in daylight savings time, at which point it shifts an hour” well that is a strange surprise.
Does not really make any sense does it? I did figure lets at least be there before 2am because thats when the daily resets so I logged in at exactly 1am.

When the time shifts, it shifts and it should also shift on ArenaNet’s servers.

On the Pacific coast, the daily resets at 4 P.M. in the afternoon. During daylight savings time it reset at 5 P.M. in the afternoon. It’s not a huge deal (it’s not like it’s bouncing all over the place, the change only occurs twice a year), and I recognized the shift immediately when it happened.

In reality its time is consistent all year around. We’re the ones changing the clocks twice a year because it suits us.

I would like to be able to disable more of those elements as well. If I have no interest in completing the monthly achievement, I should not have to have screen space taken up by a notification of my non-progress all the time.

It was a bad decision to add these new elements to the UI without providing players with a way to completely remove them.

Daily/Monthy always reset at the same time of the day (unless you’re in daylight savings time, at which point it shifts an hour). There should be no surprises here.

The preview window used to show armor with some fairly dull lighting. Since the patch that’s changed. There’s nothing unusual about it, however, as the intensity of the specularity differs from zone to zone. Lion’s Arch, for example, (despite being out in the open sun) is very mild compared to a zone like the Hall of Monuments.

Are we all participating in a race to see who can obtain the most laurels in X amount of days? Why am I always the last to hear about these things?

awesomesauce.5980:

Can you imagine 105% more gold from CoF or AC speed runs?

Yes, and it looks like this: everyone starts earning more gold more quickly, and so the prices of everything on the trade post end up rising.

I’m having this same problem, and have encountered this bug several times in the past two days. It started with the big 1/28 patch on Monday. I had not ever had this issue prior to that point, and yet now it happens often.

Goloith.6349:

I think that there needs to be a stat change on Rampager gear.

Instead of power/precision/condition dmg the stats should be precision/condition dmg/condition duration.

This will allow condition based builds to actually benefit a lot more to be on par with berserkers. Also the rounding done on condition DMG needs to go.

I strongly disagree with this. You can’t just change the stats associated with a specific prefix without seriously upsetting players (and rightfully so) who sunk time, effort, and money specifically obtaining said prefix on their equipment because of the stats it currently has.

DKNS.2135:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Why can’t you leave TC to the RPers? It already has an ‘unofficial’ purpose and has been swarmed by WvW bandwagons, pick something else.

TC has a very active PvE community that’s why. Also, TC has a very friendly community that always welcomes new people. Moreover, we will not be touching WvW neither will we be interrupting in their RP unless they want to do it at the Temple of Grenth. Also, people who want to RP or go visit TC will go regardless of the server. Here we are only limiting it to Orr so they wouldn’t be effected in any way imo.

There’s a flaw here in assuming that people who enjoy role-playing their character don’t go out in the world and adventure. In fact, I’d argue that out in the world adventuring is where the best kind of role-playing happens.

The majority of Tarnished Coast won’t remain very friendly if it’s flooded by just anyone looking for a crowded server. The majority will soon become the minority.

I can’t imagine anyone wanting their server to become the unofficial Orr server. I chose my server for very specific reasons. What good was that decision if every time I travel into Orr I end up on an overflow server because guests have flooded the real zone?

This is not what guesting should be used for. And if ArenaNet is going to allow this then they need to give zone priority to players that chose the server in question as their home. “Guests” can have whatever space is left.

Syktek.7912:

Edge.4180:

Syktek.7912:

I complete my dailies over time across the day as I play in Orr, WvW and other places. By the end of a play session, it’s done or nearly done. This hasn’t changed.

I see no issue.

And I could say exactly the same thing pre-patch. But now, for me, that’s changed.

Hence the issue I have with it.

That’s too bad isn’t it? Can’t see why it’s so hard for you to play WvW for an hour and get the thing done. Literally all you had to do yesterday was commit an hour to WvW.

Your suggestion is that I take an hour out of the limited time I have in the evening to game, and spend it in WvW – an area of the game I currently have zero interest in participating in? That is seriously your solution?

(sigh)

Caelib.2497:

I agree that this is a philosophy-breaking change. While I do enjoy the diversity, I feel like this change stems from a desire to create more of a grind/treadmill to keep players occupied more than anything else.

Ding!

Syktek.7912:

I complete my dailies over time across the day as I play in Orr, WvW and other places. By the end of a play session, it’s done or nearly done. This hasn’t changed.

I see no issue.

And I could say exactly the same thing pre-patch. But now, for me, that’s changed.

Hence the issue I have with it.

Felicela.2810:

I had Daily Dodger, Revive 10 Allies, Complete 5 events, Kill 60 monsters, and Kill 15 types. I finished this in under 30 minutes with no issues, in the same normal area in Queensdale. The Revive Ally between Troll and going over to Bettletun where the Heart is at just to the West, the Skale kill the NPCs all the time.

Yes, I know of a few zones where packs of NPCs are dead and waiting for a revive as part of the reknown (heart) tasks. And, yes, you can go there and easily complete that portion of the daily. However, I disagree that players should have to essentially waste their gaming time, going out of their way to do something like this in order to complete the daily. Prior to the patch, I was completing the daily just fine without taking time away from what I consider normal play.

And to everyone saying the new dailies “work for them”. That’s great. And I don’t think that should be changed. But one of the big selling points of this change was supposed to be the ability to customize (within limits) the daily achievements you pursued. But that functionality isn’t in yet, and may not be for a month or two.. which is a long time when you’re talking about a daily task that is worked on by players every day. Changes like this should not be implemented until ALL the pieces are in place, and I find it difficult to understand why anyone would disagree with that. Rushing something out before it is completed is bound to present it in a state that leaves many players annoyed instead of happy.

Blueshield.6291:

Daily dodger was especially troublesome for me as well, which was quite a surprise as I usually compete my dailies on my thief for purposes of expediency. Dodging has always been innate to my gameplay, given the class-specific bonuses thieves get for dodging.

Oddly, though, the daily illustrated that while I am commonly dodging, and the result of this is that I’m rarely being hit, I’m actually not often evading, which is what the achievement actually required. There’s a big difference between dodging too early but still not getting hit because you’re no longer in melee range, and dodging at exactly the right time and while staying in range so as to get an evade. Much of the difference is that specifically trying to get an evade puts your character at a lot more risk than typical dodging.

So yes, the astoundingly specific nature of Daily Dodger meant that even classes who do dodge as part of their typical gameplay had to go out of our way and do something extraordinary – and I only completed Daily Dodger by rounding up some hammer-wielding mobs and farming evades against them.

This does not seem to be consistent with the spirit of daily achievements.

I completely agree with this. I often dodge and avoid an attack through distance, not necessarily “evading” at the precise moment that will count for an achievement. Sometimes I simply dodge towards my opponent in order to quickly close the distance. Now, last night, I found myself changing the way I normally fight just to satisfy the needs of the achievement because the energy pool is a limited resource and I needed to make sure I had 10 dodges on the ready. In the end I just settled on tanking a deer for two minutes.

Very frustrating. Not in a “this is hard” way. But in a “this is stupid and I’m gaming the game instead of playing the game” way.

MHE Tiger.4875:

…….So now youre saying that the way you play the game is by doing the same thing everyday and not experiencing other parts of the game?

I play the game by advancing my personal story and adventuring through zones in a natural order. Note that I said “adventuring through” and not “running around and hitting every key point as quickly as possible to score a map completion”. In other words, I try to have an adventure rather than trying to beat the game like its an adversary to be conquered. What is so wrong with that?

And in the process of that I will stumble across and participate in many events, kill many monsters of many different variety, and harvest resource nodes I come across. That allowed me to very easily, very naturally, and with practically no thought, complete the original daily tasks. That is how I play. And that’s exactly how the daily achievement was originally designed to work.

But now, I’m scouring the mini-map for downed-PC/NPC icons, or standing like a vulture near PC/NPCs who are in trouble just waiting for them to fall. I’m wasting time traveling away from where I want to adventure and heading to a city/crafting area to refine materials I had no intention of refining. I’m no longer playing the game and subsequently completing the daily achievement naturally in the process.. instead I’m now specifically working on completing a daily chore and not playing the actual game anymore.

It’s a lame change targeting something that wasn’t even broken to begin with. You want to add in more options and allow players to pick and choose which tasks make up their personalized achievement list? Awesome! But, uh.. have that functionality included when you introduce the change.. not a month or two later when we’re talking about something that is worked on daily.

Rhysati.4932:

The crafting one is a joke. Make 10 wood planks or copper ingots. Done.

The ressurection one? Joke. Find a heart quest that has downed NPCs as part of it and pick them up.

Underwater? Yeah, I hate it too…but only took me a couple moments to get those kills.

Dodger? I went to queensdale and aggroed a moa. When it did it’s little breath attack or whatever it was, I rolled backwards and forwards to get 4 dodges. Then I killed it and repeated on two more.

And that is exactly the problem. You’re going out of your way to do things you wouldn’t normally do. I’m pretty sure the developers didn’t intend for you and me to sit there specifically dodging a moa and deer for a few minutes just to check off a daily task.

And in the zone I was naturally playing in last night, I saw exactly two NPCs in need of resurrection for the few hours I played. You shouldn’t have to go hunting for dead players/NPCs.

The old daily achievements just happened. That was why they worked well. You can finish the event completion, kill variety, kill number, and resource gathering just by playing in a zone without even focusing on the daily achievement.

But now you actually have to focus on it. You have to search for dead players/NPCs (or stand there and purposely let one die so you can revive it). You have to leave your zone and head to a crafting area just to make some items you didn’t intend on making. That’s not letting me play naturally, that’s assigning busy work – and that’s not what the daily achievements were originally designed to be.

emikochan.8504:

This is just part one, As was said repeatedly on the forums.

To be fair, it was also said in my own post (I guess you didn’t read that before commenting). And I expressed my opinion on delivering changes like these “in parts”.

DarcShriek.5829:

The system described by the Op didn’t exist as of 7:00 PM PST last night. It took me the same amount of time to do my dailies yesterday that it always has, about 1 – 1.5 hours.

No offense, but the fact that it used to take you up to an hour and a half to complete the old daily achievements is more than a little shocking.

MHE Tiger.4875:

If you really think that selling 20 copper ore is gonna bring you a whole lot more cash than 10 copper ingots (which will count towards your daily), then you are mistaken my friend.

The mistake here is in assuming I run to a low level area to crank out my daily achievement (something you apparently do). I don’t. I complete it in whatever area my character is naturally progressing through on any given evening. And so, no, I’m not referring to copper ore.

MHE Tiger.4875:

In all honesty, the dailies make you play the game now.

Play the game your way, maybe. But not mine. And that’s the problem. This new system just expanded on the previous list, so it’s not like you can claim the old daily achievement system prevented you from “playing the game” your way. You’re still going to have to complete the same tasks you did prior to the patch.

AcFiBu.9624:

It clearly states that there are “hints of things to come”. So I don’t understand the confusion. I mean I haven’t checked if the heralds are there to give you hints or not, but I didn’t feel the need to because the statement clearly said that the event is to come, and not right now.

No, it clearly states exactly what I said: “There are hints of things to come already in the game.”. Which, is a very different statement from “There are hints of things to come”. What part of “already in the game” needs more explaining?

So, please, point out the the “hints of things to come already in the game”, i.e. things that are in “right now”.

Now, if someone from Arenanet mispoke, that’s fine. But that’s why there was some confusion.

According to Arenanet’s own philosophy, the point of the original daily achievements was to have a mechanic that awarded players even if they didn’t have much time to play on a particular day. Quick, achievable, rewardable goals that could be completed just through normal play.

That was, by the way, why the daily achievement goals were broken down into tiers. You would get rewarded for (example) participating in 5 events, but you would also get rewarded for participating in just 1 event, or 3 events. However, now tiers have been removed, and the whole philosophy of dailies seems to have shifted to this fairly time consuming undertaking players need to commit to in order to obtain any rewards at all.

My typical evening in GW2 is spent doing open world PvE activities. Prior to the patch, at the end of each play session I had (without trying) completed or nearly completed the daily achievement simply by playing normally. Kill different monsters? Check. Kill lots of monsters? Check. Participate in some events? Check. Gather resources? Check. This is all stuff I’m doing whether there’s an achievement involved or not – and that was supposed to be the point.

Instead, last night, I spent most of my time “playing” actively working on completing the daily. Revive 10 allies? Sorry, outside of a dungeon I rarely come across more than 2-3 allies (player or NPC) who need reviving. Maybe the players on my server are just better at staying alive or keeping NPCs alive. Usually if I see an NPC in trouble, I jump in to save them from dying. Now I find that I stand there waiting for them to die so I can get one of these 10 revivals done. Was that your intention? (And, by the way, this achievement seems to be bugged as many times I completed a revival by myself and didn’t receive credit for it.)

25 aquatic kills? You’re assuming I had any plans on going into the water. Remember, daily achievements are supposed to be something the player can complete just by playing normally. I don’t normally go hunting underwater unless there is a specific non-achievement purpose. I doubt most players differ.

10 items crafted? Seriously? So now I have to travel to a city/crafting area to complete my daily? And even though refining counts, does it not occur to you that I prefer to sell resources I gather on the trading post unrefined because they’re more in demand than their refined counterparts?

And “daily dodger”. You know, it sounds like something that will just happen naturally, but outside of dungeons or champion attacks.. I just rarely dodge. There is simply no need.. my character isn’t a glass cannon and he can take a few hits from normal mobs just fine. And so, I ended up attacking a deer and then sheathed my weapon while I allowed it to hit me for a few minutes so I could throw out a dodge whenever I had enough energy. I also scolded another player who ran up and “rescued me” from the deer halfway through this process, forcing me to run off and aggro another deer. Ridiculous on multiple levels.

Finally, you seem to have developed this really frustrating habit where you come up with an idea that sounds like it will work well once all the pieces are in place, but then you deliver the pieces in stages, usually presenting the really annoying parts first and then holding back the mechanics that will make said parts less annoying for later. Such is the case with your plan to allow players to pick which daily tasks to participate in. I think introducing your changes in daily achievements before that functionality was ready was a mistake. Give players the whole idea (as it was presented) at the same time, not in pieces that are just going to leave them frustrated.

All I know is that the daily achievements went from something I used to complete without really even trying (and as bad as that may sound, that was by design and the whole point of the dailies), to feeling like I have to waste the majority of my evening online if I want to complete one. That’s not an improvement, and it flies in the face of the original philosophy.

Please fix this.

Oh, and one final thing: can we please get an option to not display the daily/monthly tracker on my screen? I don’t want the extra clutter. I have no intention of completing the monthly and don’t need it sitting on my screen all month. And I had no problems hitting “H” and quickly glancing at my daily achievement tab in the past. It was certainly much more elegant than the new UI element that collapses (GAH) every single time I come in range of an event or heart task.

Iruwen.3164:

It’s not a one-time event, who cares about when it starts. People need to grow up and stop moaning like little children about everything. It was all in the patchnotes and you’ll be informed via ingame mail when something happens. Jesus.

Look, part of the confusion is that yesterday evening an ArenaNet employee posted “Check in with the heralds for updates. There are hints of things to come already in the game.”

When you say “there are hints of things to come already in the game”, that implies things can be found now rather than later. Because if it’s not in now, it’s not “already in the game”.

It would help if everyone was on the same page, employees included.

Gill Halendt.2038:

As far as I know, it’s always been like that: for the sake of transmutation, the item prefix is integral to the item name, which in turn is integral to the item skin. As a result, the prefix is carried over and not updated to reflect the actual stats of the item.

I believe it’s some sort of a workaround for Named items, so that they don’t get a prefix once transmuted.

That doesn’t always seem to be the case. For example, if you do a transmutation and a Legendary item is involved as the skin, the item obtains the exotic label instead of legendary.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Check in with the heralds for updates. There are hints of things to come already in the game.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

The playable Living Story content will start appearing tomorrow (January 29) at around noon Pacific Time in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. When the events start in Diessa Plateau, you’ll be sent an in-game mail letting you know about it. However, if you’re already logged in when that happens, you need to change maps to receive it.

To clarify, the “Prequel” starts on the 29th? Or the prequel has started now, and concludes tomorrow when the actual event begins?

KyoHanakaze.8145:

Are they going to get laurels for it? I’m not one to complain in a video game, but this definitely seems like something that is at least worth my ire.

Just curious.. but why would this bother/matter to you? Whether you complete the requirements for the monthly before or after the patch, you’re still completing it. You’re still doing the required amount of work. Thus, I would naturally assume you’d be rewarded in either case. However, obviously the prize is going to be whatever rewards are being offered at the time you finish the monthly.

Put another way, if the only change to monthly rewards was a warning that (with the patch) those rewards would be nerfed in half, I wouldn’t see the point in complaining if you completed the monthly post-patch and received the advertised nerfed rewards.

The release date of the patch has been public for a while now. It’s not like there were any surprises here.

I think you’re misunderstanding, although likely because I wasn’t being clear enough.

I’m not talking about weapons with unique names. The weapons I’m talking about have a prefix specifically because they have the stats associated with that prefix. Using your example, it would be like saying there’s a weapon called “Berserker’s Awesome Sword of Zhaitan” and “Cleric’s Awesome Sword of Zhaitan”, and “Knight’s Awesome Sword of Zhaitan”. In other words, the sword isn’t unique, it comes in many flavors, and the prefix is determined by the stats of that particular version.

In these cases, I believe the prefix should be modified to match the true post-transmutation stats. It makes zero sense to link a sword called “Cleric’s Iron Mace” if (post-transmutation) it has Carrion stats and not Cleric’s.

I’m not even sure I agree with protecting the names of unique weapons. If you have a sword called “Awesome Sword of Zhaitan” and it only comes in one flavor, and you change the stats, it’s no longer the “Awesome Sword of Zhaitan”. It’s just a weapon with completely different stats you made in the image of a uniquely named sword.

That said, I understand the name of the weapon is associated with its skin. But if both weapons involved in the transmutation have a prefix, then the prefix should be updated to reflect its final stats. Using the wrong prefix.. just looks wrong. Not only that, but if you’re a Guardian and you link your greatsword in chat and it incorrectly has the prefix “Apothecary” (which means Healing Power+Condition+Toughness) despite secretly having Berserker stats, I’m going to think you don’t know how to properly spec your swords.

Using made up examples, let’s say I have a weapon skin I like, and it’s on a weapon with the condition+power+vitality modifier. Thus, the weapon is given the “carrion” prefix and is called “Carrion Sword of Smackdown”.

I also have a sword with stats that I happen to like: toughness+power+precision, also known as the “knight’s” prefix. However, although I prefer the stats the weapon skin is lame. The name of the blade is “Knight’s Pitted Sword”.

So, I use a transmutation stone to obtain the skin of the Carrion Sword of Smackdown, and the stats of the Knight’s Pitted Sword. However, the resulting weapon (which has the Knight’s stats of toughness+power+precision) ends up being labeled “Carrion Sword of Smackdown”. Shouldn’t it be “Knight’s Sword of Smackdown” instead? Because when I look at the stats on the sword I’m seeing stats from the knight modifier, not from the carrion modifier.

If this is a bug, and if you fix it, please make sure it’s fixed so that the PREFIX changes to match the stats of the weapon, instead of changing the stats of the weapon to match the prefix. Because, I’m pretty sure the latter result would make everyone rage.

Treadstone.2564:

Unfortunately, people like you and me who enjoy reading all the well-written dialogue and lore in this game are out of luck. You’re always going to miss a ton of stuff no matter what you do. I used to try and avoid doing events near renown hearts so that I could experience the quest fully, but then I started missing events that never showed up again.

Hah. I totally thought only I and my friends bothered doing this. We totally avoid events if they’re linked to a heart task until we’ve had a chance to talk to the NPC in charge. We just want to make sure we get to read the extra story! It just fleshes out the zone better.

What’s equally frustrating for us is completing all the heart tasks linked to a scout before coming across the scout.. because the scout doesn’t give you the breakdown-tour of that region once you’ve finished the heart tasks he wants to point out. He’ll just say something like “Good work!”. Meanwhile, we’re like " But.. our map tour..!"

Keirion.9105:

There is a vet spider event in the ruins in the SW of timberline falls that spawns on top of the commune skill point there that does not scale down correctly.

There is a vet spider that spawns outside of the event in the same location that does spawn correctly.

Veterans are always going to be quite a bit harder than normal mobs, though. They may scale down for one player but don’t expect a cakewalk.

Something to keep in mind is that players in the vicinity of an event will cause the difficulty of the event to scale upwards – even if those players aren’t participating. It can be frustrating to struggle through an event that’s more difficult than it should be because a few players decided to go AFK at the location (but are, unfortunately, being ignored by the mobs).

Even if you’re in an event that occurs in stages or waves, if an additonal player happens to run past the area the event is taking place in right before a wave spawns, you’re going to end up facing extra mobs during that wave as a result of that player’s momentary presence. If you didn’t notice the player running past you’re left with the impression that the event isn’t scaling properly. In reality it is; the game doesn’t know a player passing by doesn’t intend to join in. I do wish that was handled better, however.

Anyone who participated in the Lost Shores finale should be all too familiar with how annoyingly devastating culling issues can impact PvE. Nothing like an event-full of players advancing quickly through the Karka nest thinking the ramp is empty, only for everyone to start dying as the non-rendered Karka army starts to finally appear all around them.

I saw many complete wipes happen this way. And it impacts everyone because it’s an issue on ArenaNet’s side, and not at all based on how snazzy your machine/internet connection is.

Not to be a downer, but at this point it would almost be easier to create a list of events that are still working on Tarnished Coast. This is what happens when the server goes without a reset for more than just a couple of days, much less more than a week. Event after event breaks down. Most of the temples in Orr, for example, have been broken for over a week.

This game gets really difficult to enjoy when so many events break down, and if the upcoming patches in January and February don’t solve this issue before adding new events to the game then those will likely break down too.

This game launched 5 months ago. Why is this still a problem?

In Lord of the Rings Online there’s an option to enable/disable any musical sounds coming from other players (this game also allows players to play musical instruments). I don’t see why the same option can’t be available here. I also don’t see why anyone would oppose such a suggestion. Telling people to move away or disable their game sound is about as unhelpful as telling people not to use their bells in the first place.

Invoker.5462:

Hello, checking in once again, i know its only been 18 days but if its been fixed i would like to know, if a mod sees this and knows about any ETA it would be great.

It’s still not fixed. Not even a little.

I’m glad to hear they’re adding more events as I really enjoy those. However.. honestly, the game zones already have a ton of events.. the problem is most of them break down and cease functioning after running for a day or so. Unfortunately, then we don’t see them again until the server is reset. And the end result is that the zones appear to have almost no active events.

Without fixing that core problem (which has plagued this game since launch), what is the point of adding more events that will be doomed to the same fate? I really hope they commit to fixing that bug before adding any more event content to the game.

ColinJohanson.2394:

On our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

I really could not be more disappointed with world-boss encounters. Take, for example, the event to defeat Tequatl the Sunless.

Tequatl has a few tools at his disposal: an AOE fear, the environmental “fingers” which are supposed to throw melee characters away from Tequatl, summoned bone walls to defend Tequatl from ranged attacks, and dangerous bloated creeper minions that advance on the player’s position.

On a player’s side, there’s the option of attacking Tequatl or its various defenses (the bone walls, the “fingers”, and the minions), and we’re charged with manning and protecting turrets as well as the Asura “mega laser” (which must spend several minutes recharging between shots), in addition to defending turret repair crews.

All in all, it sounds like the stage is set for one epic battle where players are scrambling to tackle the crisis of the moment, making use of a variety of tools to overcome a variety of obstacles in a tricky battle.

In reality, it’s five minutes of a zerg of players attacking Tequatl’s big toe and nothing else.

I look at World of Warcraft’s “Onyxia” dragon encounter, which at this point is ridiculously old from an MMO technology perspective, and I find myself wondering how content so dated and simple can be executed so brilliantly when compared to the boss fights in GW2. Content-wise, ArenaNet kicks so much tail in so many areas, and so I know the effort and desire is there. But when it comes to these boss fights.. I just don’t get it. It’s like you made the mistake of believing players would take the required steps to make these encounters interesting themselves as long as you left the tools laying around to do so, rather than realizing players will always stick with whatever method works easiest. In this case, it’s beating on a dragon’s toe with the weapon they already have in their hands.

If you don’t want encounters like Tequatl the Sunless to boil down to a zerg of players attacking a dragon’s toe for five minutes, you need to flat out prevent them from doing so. If you want them to use the other toys in the playground, you have to force them to do so. Players are never going to make the encounter difficult or epic for you. You have to design it in a way that it can only be epic and nothing else.

I doubt I’m telling you anything you don’t already know. But, ugh, these world encounters need serious help quickly.

Astralporing.1957:

Wasn’t that just Judge’s Intervention?

Hah. You’re talking about a skill with a 45 second cooldown in a ~50 second video. How many times do you think you saw it used?

I honestly believe that if they tried to fix this situation again, everyone would end up with an additional 200 cogs (thus leaving the problem completely intact).

There were 100 cogs per city event, giving you a total of 500 if you completed each city.

The chest in Lion’s Arch with Tixx provided players with 200 cogs. This was to help players who had not received a total of 500 cogs from the prior city events due to problems with diminishing returns.

Since players were having problems with the chest functionality, it was removed and mails were sent out to everyone with 250 cogs (again, to help players who had not received a total of 500 cogs from the prior city events due to problems with diminishing returns, and who had also not had the opportunity to access the chest in Lion’s Arch.

Yes, this means some players ended up with as many as 950 cogs, while others only received 750 cogs, depending on whether or not you were around to access the chest during the brief period it was available.

kissofthehell.3720:

I read about that bug. Lvl 80 unique weapons for ~35 karma or something like that

Yes. And since they didn’t have the ability to remove them from players inventories, they made them promise to delete them or risk further non-action.

If I remember correctly, in ArenaNet’s defense they did ban the abusers for 3 whole days, or something.

I think you’re safe here. I’m sure they were well aware that some people were going to end up with additional Wintersday gifts, but accepted that this was likely the easiest way to deal with the problem they were originally having.

Happy holidays!

This is part of the problem with RNG. I’ve opened enough boxes to obtain around 500+ units of ugly clothing and have received zero glue or stuffing through them. I’m surprised/disappointed that they didn’t put glue and stuffing for exchange on the trade-in vendor.

kissofthehell.3720:

I wonder if its possible if moderator can respond so i can be sure its safe to open it and have 2 rewards

No, it’s not safe. Unlike the situation with the players who dishonestly obtained thousands of karma weapons for virtually nothing in the weeks following the launch of the game, they’re going to come down on you like a sack of hammers.

I kid.

A scene showcasing the native forest life of Wynchona Woods in the Harathi Hinterlands (Tarnished Coast server, Guild Wars 2). Giant spiders and other woodland creatures have been making their home in this forest for countless years, but sadly now run the risk of becoming extinct at the hands of an invading species.

See video summary for more details on this threat to the wildlife of Tyria.

http://youtu.be/Md9--pXUHt4

It is a flop. I’m sorry, I had a lot of fun with the city events leading up to this. However, for my friends and I this finale was a huge disappointment.

First of all, as everyone is aware, friends couldn’t play together. This is really disappointing to groups of friends that were tackling the holiday city events together all week and anticipating an exciting finale. I understand that technical limitations made this impossible in the time the team had to put the event together, but I feel this is one of those situations where it’s best to not do something if you can’t do it right. What had been a mostly positive experience this week has been completely soured for us by this one bad decision.

Beyond the obvious disappointments of not being able to play with friends, it creates many frustrating problems:

- being placed in a map with strangers who have no interest in working together.

- being placed in a map that is nearly complete on your first visit to the event.

- being placed in a map by yourself.

- being placed in a map doomed to fail because your group is constantly understaffed. Why? Because a dolyak is dead and players only interested in the achievement leave, only to be replaced by new players who are also only interested in the achievement and leave, rinse repeat.

- being placed in a map with players who just want to stand around AFK.

- being placed in a map with players who insist on spending all their time building ice walls right up against the dolyaks, even though it’s ridiculously obvious to anyone with eyeballs that the attacking toys are able to strike the dolyaks through said ice walls when they’re that close.

And I could go on. This is the problem with playing with complete strangers.. there are a lot of people out there that I have zero interest in playing with and chances are high that I’ll end up in a group with them. And the solution of bringing friends doesn’t work here.

If you are creating an event and your thinking is “this will work well and be fun as long as everyone plays reasonably”, you are well on your way to creating a disaster that is doomed to frustrate players. If technical limitations are preventing you from doing it right, don’t do it. Do something else instead. I would have rather just had a sixth rehash of the previous five city events than what we ended up with.

My friends all logged last night with zero interest in doing anything else in the game after a few rounds of Toypocalypse. Not exactly the best results.

Gaile Gray.6028:

Hi there,

Thanks for your patience as we looked into this issue. The good news is the team is looking at this but they need just a bit more time to finish up the review.

If you rolled a Male Asuran before November 16 and chose what we call “Ear Option No. 5” (you can see examples in the screenshots above), and if you have an issue with the appearance, please submit a ticket to the Support Team through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page.

We’ll get back with you about this soon. Hopefully we’ll soon be able to say “Ear today and gone tomorrow,” or “Ears to you” or… well, maybe not.

So, to be clear, this bug only impacts players who chose “ear option no. 5”?

Jelloz.8493:

Wow, to make bots for the jump puzzle would be impressive, I mean mapping them seems tricky.

You’re giving them too much credit. The bots don’t actually do the jumping puzzle. They just use a hack to teleport from the starting area directly to the chest reward.

She’s working fine. It’s just that her stock of inventory has been removed and will return in some form at a later date (not during Wintersday). This is intentional and explained in the patch notes and posts from developers on the forum.

You can continue to donate unwanted items in exchange for tokens in the meanwhile, and then use them as currency once she’s accepting tokens again.

As far back as the early days of MMOs when companies were all still new at this, and even later with the release of WoW, it was possible to page a GM, discuss a problem with them, and see a resolution within a matter of hours if not minutes.

For three days now I have seen (and reported in-game) the same teleport-bot farming the same patch of land on my server. She’s doing it in a very public area and I know for a fact that I am not the only person who has reported her. Worse, she is clearly using a legitimate character in a real guild, and thus likely has stolen the account of some poor player.

And yet, for three days now she has been at it non-stop in the Harathi Hinterlands, Wynchona Woods region on the Tarnished Coast server. Catching her in the act is an simple as going to her location and using the eyeballs we were all born with. Every time I pass by that area I spot her, within seconds, teleporting to and fro between mobs (and vendors) – for three days now.

Meanwhile, when I first posted about her on the forum I received an infraction for my thread within hours of creating it. I didn’t use her name, or screenshots showing her, or any personal information that we are often warned about.. I just posted her whereabouts in the game in the hopes that something would be done about it. I feel like there is a failing in priorities when I am being dealt with infinitely more quickly than the bot-account-thief who is actually doing harm to this game and the players in it.

In a follow-up PM I was even advised to submit evidence of her botting in a screenshot, which seemed like ridiculous advice.. because what exactly am I going to show in that screenshot? Do I provide a screenshot of a character fighting mobs at one location and then another screenshot of that same character fighting mobs at a different location? Useless, as that pretty much describes every character in the game. I get a recommendation like this and I feel like the help is on auto-pilot here.

Why is it taking days/weeks to remove these individual hackers and exploiters from the game when other MMOs can get it done so much more quickly? I read the recent War on Bots article and honestly couldn’t disagree more with the proud claims of progress being made. Removing scores of bots well after they have had all the time in the world to do their damage is not a victory. I would define progress as a massive reduction in ArenaNet’s response time to bot reports. 3+ days is too long. Really, 1 day is too long.

I will probably get in trouble for making this thread, while the real problem continues to bot-away in the game for days to come. I just don’t get it.

And, for the record, I wanted to post this in the existing bot-feedback-sticky-thread (as we have been repeatedly instructed to do) but it’s locked down.

penatbater.4710:

the brilliant thing here is that no one gets punished! :O

I’m not sure “brilliant” is the term I would have used.

Robbyx.1284:

LOL@Gamespot….every single experienced PC gamer knows gamespot are terrible, did you see the other nominees, and the lack of some seriously good PC games ?

I see this same argument used against every single reviewer who puts forward an opinion that someone else disagrees with.

- an experienced PC gamer.

Ariannaid.5201:

It just seems odd that only one new event would have been added on the third day, when the second day was almost all new events. The only one I remember carrying over from the first day to the second was destroying turrets, with all the others being new.

Contrasting that against the changes from the second day to the third—only one new event, several from the second day, and several more carried forward all the way from the first day—makes me wonder if something went wrong in the scripting.

Same. I had the same experience as the original poster despite doing the instance after the patch was introduced yesterday evening. I was very disappointed in the third event as only one stage was new, which was a stark contrast to the pleasant surprise of the second event where almost every stage was new.