Guild Wars 2

Veteran tier rewards describe themselves as containing Obsidian Shards, but they do not contain Obsidian shards. Not sure if text bug or loot bug, but it’s very annoying >.>

Courtyard is being removed from queues on the 16th.

I know it’s very early, but is there any chance of getting some preliminary stats on the rates at which people are voting for maps in each queue? Thanks.

vincecontix.1264:

If players decide to party then que they can stack what ever they want.

Party queue was broken at the time this screen was taken….only solo queue was working (and the kids in this group were far too awful to have queued together)

See title. Thought A fix for this got pushed last night?

ranked has a leaderboard and unranked doesn’t. That’s the only difference by my understanding. Matchmaking and rewards are the same for both afaik.

Justin ODell.9517:

Oops. My bad.

hangs head in shame

No worries, hasn’t happened since and it was kinda funny

Queued up for rank. Queue pops with only two checkmarks. Get funneled into a 1v1. Super weird.

Edit: This was the first match after the hotpatch if that helps

Ayrilana.1396:

Xenon.4537:

CureForLiving.5360:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

The carapace armor appears to be tied more to the Silverwastes zone than to Living Story season 2.

Who knows, perhaps the season will continue with a new zone after Silverwastes is completed (and a two-week Wintersday break).

After all, Season 2 did not end with Dry Top.

Also remember mawdrey? Still I do kinda feel that we’re getting close to the end of Season 2.

Dude I was expecting Season 2 to focus a lot more on Mordremoth and making actual progress towards engaging him. Instead all we have is a makeshift Pact base, and a bunch of characters running around on tangent side stories with Glint’s egg and stuff. I get that the egg is important, but its a tangential direction for the story to go. How deep does this rabbit hole go? They could have easily just had us catch up with Caithe in THIS release, but no. Instead we have to wait for a SECOND cliffhanger, and who the hell knows if we will even find Caithe next episode? What if they decide to stretch it even further? What if this crap never ends for 7 seasons? Like I’ve said before, this story is quickly becoming like Lost.

In the personal story, how long was it until they actually engaged Zhaitan and the risen directly?

Most people thought the personal story was terribly paced too…

Is there any chance of adding the capability to spectate on recent (in the last few hours?) macthes that have already played similar to the old GW1 observer mode?

Cheezy.2039:

RIP

Let’s go to the sylvari subforum, no sane person I know plays a sylvari

Race subforums are gone too.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Healix.5819:

Merging tech support (PC and Mac) is going to create a mess. A lot of the problems that show up have generic fixes across Windows and although the same concept works for Mac, the process is different. Most people don’t identify their OS at the start. Windows will still be assumed but by merging them, even the most simple of fixes will begin with “PC or Mac?”

Then I go back to the suggestion just above: Start the thread with “MAC: [subject line]” or “PC: [subject line]” and our technical support people can answer appropriately.

I agree with you, not specifying OS is going to be an issue, so doing so in the subject line seems a quick and easy solution.

Would it be possible to implement a tagging system with this forum software? Dunno, seems like issues like the lack of a tagging system sort of defeat the point of merging forums.

I.e. Why delete the dungeon sub-forum? It’s going to make a Dev looking for dungeon-specific information have to sift through a lot of un-related posts in the General Discussion.

Dungeon sub-forum will be removed in new forum re-organisation

Dungeon-related posts will be posted in the general “Guild Wars 2 Discussion” forum in the future. Yikes.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m fine with it. It gives me something new to do, and about an hour or two of new content each week, same as a TV show.

If the serialization really frustrates you, there’s a simple solution, binge-play. Just log in each fortnight to unlock the story but do not play it. Chill out for several months until the season ends, then go in and play all the story chapters back to back, problem solved.

Season 2 has been in progress since April. Should I simply not play the game for 8 months in order to complete a weekend’s worth of content at the end of the season? I think Anet’s marketing team would not appreciate that kind of attitude considering the whole purpose of the LW is to get people in game and constantly exposed to the gem store.

Thanks for copy-pasting my thread at the top of reddit

I guess plagiarism means they appreciate your writing?

Justin ODell.9517:

Found a missing ‘+ 1’ (literally) in the matchmaking code. Will get this fixed soon.

In the mean time, it doesn’t factor in 2 of the same profession, only 3+.

Glad you found a fix, and from my own experience coding for grad school I know how easy it is for syntax errors to sneak into code. Just curious (and I hope I’m not being rude) how do those kind of syntax errors make it through multiple layers of QA?

zallis.2138:

When you are measuring the time it takes to complete content, it isn’t just the LS. you gotta factor in the LS, JP, and new rewards.

Most of the rewards are just time-filling achievements with no challenge or story progression. They’re easily the weakest content in game.

Devildoc.6721:

It doesn’t do dungeons well that’s for sure.

That seems to be more from lack of trying.

It’s narrative blue balls and it’s getting tiring. We’re not the generation that had to remember to set the VCR to watch this week’s episode of Friends, we’re the one that binge watches 8 seasons of Scrubs on Netflix in one weekend. Serialization isn’t fun anymore, it’s just frustrating. The pacing of this story isn’t working.

2 pieces of Carapce armor left. We released 2 this week. PArt 1 of S2 was four episodes. We’ve covered 3 now.

Are we getting the finale of S2 next week? The timing seems right with Wintersday about to start, but it feels like very little story progress has been achieved. It feels frustrating in much the same way that Season 1 was frustrating: there’s obvious mystery but no significant progress to understanding the mystery. The story writing still has very serious pacing issues, and while some instances have been absolutely spectacular, the plot development has not matched up.

We’re 7 episodes in to this story, and given the pace of carapace armor, we’re going to be done with this Living Story season in 2 weeks. It’s obvious we’re not going to get into the meat of the story this season, and I’m starting to get frustrated.

The storywriting is actually very good, but the pacing is off. It’s time to start getting into some plot progression, and another whole season of teasers without real movement is disappointing. And that’s not even getting into the length of the episodes, which make it very difficult to get properly immersed in the story.

What’s the answer? Should we just not bother starting a story until the whole season is complete? Our generation is the one that likes to binge-watch shows on Netflix, serialization isn’t fun it’s just frustrating.

Episode felt short. Every episode has been a cliffhanger and has been about bringing up more questions, not answering old ones. We’re past the opening act, you’re not supposed to be opening new plot holes at this point. It’s time to stop putting out bridge episodes and start getting to the meat of the plot.

@Evan, do you guys have plans to use the map selection feature to get some hard numbers on what maps players like and dislike for the first time? It’d be really cool if you guys could rank maps by how often they got voted for at the end of seasons.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I inquired about these concerns, and our narrative director shared the following:

Thank you so much for your comments. We realize that the changes that were made have impacted the personal story, and we are working to fix this. This requires a good deal of resources, so we do not have a set date for when these fixes will be implemented. We appreciate your patience and will update with more information as it becomes available.

Thank you Gaile, these are the sorts of specific, qualified progress reports on development activity that we should expect from every aspect of game development.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ah, but see what you did there? I think, basically, you said something should not have been discussed until its implementation was absolutely confirmed. And isn’t that what the current policy states? We do not engage in a lot of predictive chatter about things that may not come; we reveal something — a feature, a fix, something new — when it’s assured. Not “this may happen” but “this will happen.”

The issue isn’t that the information should never have been given out…it’s that there was no follow on information. You can’t mention an upcoming feature and then never mention it again. That’s what frustrates players.

If you had been able to give periodic updates and explain why that feature wasn’t going to make it to the next patch and where it was in the state of development, players would understand. The community doesn’t expect promises, it expects to be informed on the state of current projects.

Precursor crafting isn’t an example of giving out too much information, it’s an example of floating one idea and then never following up with status reports on where that feature is in the development cycle.

I’m a grad student and my research is funded by grants. The organizations who offer my funding expect regular status reports on what I’m working on and what progress I’ve made. If I told the steering committee for those grants, “I’m definitely working on things, and they’re going to be good things, but I can’t tell you any specific information about what I’m working on now or in the future because my plans might change,” do you think my funding would be renewed? Hell to the no. Arenanet owes its sources of funding the same regular reports on its progress that any other organization offers to its backers.

tl;dr If you keep players informed about what is currently in the development cycle, and regularly update the progress being made they will understand when ideas aren’t ready for patches or need to be scrapped The issue emerges when management either keeps the community completely in the dark (as it’s doing now) or floats an idea for a feature and then never follows up by explaining at regular timepoints where that project is in the development cycle (as management has done in the past).

Publishing the algorithm on wiki is going to be wonderful, I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it was to have MMR calculations completely hidden before (especially as as a GW1 player where ladder ranking was determined by a publicly known Elo algorithm)

Biggest issue on engi is the sustain turrets have. Thumper turret needs it’s health cut and turrets need to be changed so that they either can be crit or have all condis applied.

Please increase the timer on re-pops of arena announcement messages. I’ll often play hotjoin matches while waiting for queue and i like to finish a fight before entering my arena match when queue pops. It’s massively frustrating to have the message re-pop every 4 seconds in the middle of my screen when i’ve already told it to wait. Please increase the timer to at least 30 seconds.

The ladder has been broken since it launched. They insist on using Glicko2 to rank players which makes no sense in game like GW2. Just use straight-up ELO

Parmesan.

Because they’re salty cheese.

GET IT?LOLOLOLOL

Add an option buy gems in 100 gem increments instead of making 400 gems the smallest denomination possible. Problem solved.

BTW Gaile, you guys would have a lot fewer PR headaches with stuff like this if you would float the idea a week or two ahead of time instead of making it a surprise in the patch notes.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Shift.5793:

I know that Anet wont do anything about any account problems, but I needed to say that this is a horribly implemented system that seems like it wasn’t though through with the player in mind.

I’m offended! Submit a support ticket and we’ll take care of that for you.

For real? When I accidentally crafted a set of zerker ascended armor (in a drunken haze) when I meant to craft soldiers, support told me I was SOL =(

Play DPS med guard, gg hard counter to LB rangers + thief while packing brilliant cleave for team fights + training out casters.

Zoso.8279:

Lol play the build and then make up your own mind or copy/paste like theses people are saying. I wonder how people found out about “metas”. Easy to copy/paste.

http://metabattle.com <———- LMFAO

He asked for meta builds, not kittenty theorycrafts ^____^

Zoso.8279:

DPS
4/4/6/0/0
III-X/V-IX/V-VIII-XI
Dual Pistol/Dagger
Sigil of Force/Accuracy
Rune of the Eagle
Assassin Amulet
Hid in Shadow/Blinding Power/Signet of Agility/Shadow Refuge/Basilisk Venom

Thief build that I think I got to 100% hope it helps you on your quest of knowledge. Hope to see this guide posted all over so every Tyrian can benefit from it.

Notes on build: This is a very squishy but very power DPS build. I’d advice to take advantage of the stealth pistol skill 1 combo so you can burst and save on initiative. Dual pistol burst to lower health and once hp is 50% or lower D/D skill 2 to finish the fight.

Hope this helps!

@ OP this build is massively unconventional, and not part of the meta at all. If you’re looking for standard (and most effective) thief specs, please check out http://metabattle.com

Hardly anyone seems to know that the LFG tool has functionality built in for putting together Team Queue pugs.

The LFG tool has the potential to really expand opportunties for putting PUG teams together, and could really expand the pool of players + quality of matches in Team Queue.

Can we we get some help from the Community + PvP teams to expand awareness that this tool exists. Some dev support to expand on the functionality of the LFG tool in PvP would be awesome too.

Chris Cleary.8017:

I’ll go ahead and clarify since there has apparently been different information coming from different sources in the past. Customer Service is not able to support party politics unless they involve cases of targeted harassment in-game. This is because of the number of different reasons that certain party politics happen. Since CS only has access to actions that occur in-game, we are unable to verify specifics for incidents in a large number of incidents. Specifics are the most important part of these situations.

However, we do view player reports via CS tickets, and if a player can be verified as a habitual abuser of the LFG system or parties in general, we can take action against them.

What counts as targeted harassment? It seems like people who join parties specifically to destroy the instance of someone selling the run are targeting the seller for harassment.

Chris Cleary.8017:

This issue is being looked into actively. No ETA yet.

Thank you for the acknowledgement Chris. It’s majorly nice to you know guys are aware of the issue and are working on it.

Stooperdale.3560:

My guess is that customers service do not want to interfere since it will always boil down to one persons word against another. “It was a regular LFG and he demanded money”, “I gave him money and then he wanted more”, “He said we could take his spot as well for a friend of mine”, “We merged groups so why should we have to pay”, “I don’t speak his language”, and so on. These are the politics that customer services want to avoid.

Regular dungeon runs will have the same problems but without the toxic complications from gold transactions.

If I’m not mistaken, CSRs should be able to see a log of the LFG posting, who joined the party, and who initiated/voted for the kick.

Chris Cleary.8017:

Dungeon selling is not something that will be officially supported. Listing a group on the LFG tool is opening it up to a public realm and you do so at your own risk.

Customer Service will not be able to support any interactions that involves group formation politics.

Wait, so this means that customer support won’t be doing anything anymore if several people join my LFG posting and then proceed to kick me from the dungeon?

Guhracie.3419:

My level 32 engineer has access to her elite skill, which was equipped prior to the patch. It is still equipped and usable. I am not seeing any gathering nodes in metrica on this character.

I do see gathering nodes.

That might be a bug. My guildmate last night was able to make a new character, use a birthday scroll to get it to level 20, then unlock all of the utility + elite slots by equipping an ice bow.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

immediately after the patch, and for hours afterwards skills had a 1/2 second delay for me. It resolved for the most part for me… but for many others they continued to complain about it.

The Rez/stomp/interact issue is don’t hold down the mouse for camera turning. let go of the mouse buttons to interact… it’s silly and something they are working on already, saw it mentioned last night by a dev.

NA T1 EBG was experiencing 5+ second skill lag for the majority of Tuesday evening.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Do you have any specific issues to report? It’s difficult to escalate bug reports, without details on the bug(s) you are experiencing and how it’s affecting your gameplay.

Last night on NA T1 EBG there was significant skill lag (far more than there has been in recent months, even when the map is queue’d), and some players were experiencing significant delays (5-10+ seconds) before the option to stomp or res a downed opponent/ally would appear. Some players were unable to get the option to stomp/res to appear at all.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Errant Venture.9371:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also of note I am not going to be able to get involved in the CDI past 6pm pst tonight. Is that still ok? I will catch up in the morning?

Chris

Sounds good. Will the CDI still be covering guilds as planned? Or will the topic be switched to discuss the new changes to the leveling system?

It will be about guilds.

Chris

Thank you for the quick response. Could we get a dedicated thread to discuss the impact of the new leveling restrictions on experienced players with you, Colin, or Mike (or some combination thereof)? Perhaps Stephane would be interested in moderating/facilitating that discussion?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also of note I am not going to be able to get involved in the CDI past 6pm pst tonight. Is that still ok? I will catch up in the morning?

Chris

Sounds good. Will the CDI still be covering guilds as planned? Or will the topic be switched to discuss the new changes to the leveling system?

Skill challenges are also level-locked + do not appear on the map until reaching a certain level (though I do not know the level off the top of my head). Diving goggles are similarly level-locked.

If you’ve already gotten to level 40, you’ll be past 95% of the new level-gating mechanics and your leveling experience should be fairly similar to it’s pre-patch status (though you will not have all of your traits unlocked, unless you created the character before the beginning of the summer)

@Chris: could you comment on why things Salvage Kits, Gathering Tools, Skill Challenges, POIs, and Diving Goggles have been level-gated (in some cases as high as level 15)? These are core mechanics to the game and—unlike subtle mechanics like the downed state—should be very simple for any player to understand.

At the very least it should be very simple to explain to players in a simple text bubble what salvaging kits + gathering tools are for.

Forcing players to go back to skill challenges that are easily found on entry-level maps many levels later is not a simplification of the leveling system: it complicates the system and makes it much more frustrating. As a new player, I would be questioning why this skill challenge was in a level 3-4 zone if I couldn’t interact with it until level 10+

Azure The Heartless.3261:

dace.8019:

I remember the first time I saw Diving Goggles, conveniently placed on the precipice of a ledge above some water.

After the initial shock wore off, I stood staring down at them, my mind racing to comprehend their meaning, Literally a couple of possibilities swirled around my tiny brain but it was too much. Exhausted, I logged off.

I went for a walk just to clear my mind. The image of those goggles haunted me as I walked along the path, teasing me with their impenetrable puzzle. I saw the moon and the stars, and it dawned on me. Just like the endless mysteries of the universe, I was not meant to understand. In another life, in another time – maybe.

I had looked upon those goggles on that ledge like a mouse looks upon Michaelangelo’s David. They were simply too huge to comprehend, to hold their full meaning in my head would be like holding the sea in a teacup.

Sometimes I still dream about them, and the ledge. The water below rushes up to meet me, I understand a little bit more – but then I wake up, and the dream, like the answers, fade away.

9/10 part 2 pls

Eagerly awaiting the sequel.