Guild Wars 2

Hyrai.8720:

Colin’s post is definitely phrased in a way that suggests the item not coming back, but – as I said – stating that anyone promised, or “explicitly told”, the players the Jetpack won’t come back is a false statement.

And since we are not at court here and players’ feelings have an impact on the game (some vote with their feet), what the former Game Director suggested matters more than how a lawyer would interprete it. Nobody is going to sue Anet about this statement, but people might decide to keep their pocket money in their pockets more than before, or maybe it was the last drop for some players. Constant dropping wears away a stone.

If a player leaves because of it or if it adds to dissatisfaction and is just part of why he reconsiders his commitment, he will not be convinced by your argument that the Game Director never explicitly told players that those items will not come back. It’s just semantics.

btw, I only started playing this game 6 months ago, don’t have a Jetpack, find it ugly and don’t want one for free. I just think that those people have a right to be disappointed.

Best I could do was Silver in that mini-game, after maybe 6 attempts. I don’t need Gold so I never tried again.

What do you need Gold for? If randomness plays a deciding role, you can just grind it and be lucky at some point.

There seems to be a current change in fractal groups, maybe caused by returning players. All of a sudden, Achievement Points are required in many LFG groups. A new member of our guild tried to get into T1 groups and told us about his experience. Apparently, there are some people now who require more than 200 or 500 APs for low level fractals.

Honestly, this is stupid. I’ve been told that before HoT, there wasn’t much else people could rely on when making guesses about your skill or experience, so APs was the measurement. That probably led a lot of people to inflate their AP-score with collecting skins or doing other things that give you APs, like killing 1000 bats, or doing story achievements.

But that doesn’t show how capable you are in T1 fractals. I really would like to know what these people are thinking. If you do T1 fractals, you are a beginner yourself, unless you are doing the recommended daily one or do it for fun. If you do it for fun though, why care about stupid things like APs? If you do high level fractals, and then jump into T1, it’s so easy it doesn’t really matter what 2 or 3 other team members do. If you have to ask for experience or AP, maybe you shouldn’t be in T1 fractals. I never expect anyone to know the mechanics when I do T1 with a pug. I ask at the beginning if anyone is new to this fractal, and then play accordingly.

One time we had a guy who carried a rock in Molten Furnace right to the steam curtain and dropped it there. Took us a while to realize why the curtain didn’t vanish, then explained it to him and had a good laugh. In the higher tiers, I would have asked that person to leave.

These groups don’t even announce that they require X APs, they just kick when you join and they see it. You don’t even get the opportunity to play with them. We told our new member that fractals is a good way to get gold and to learn general game mechanics, even when you just started. Now we have to introduce him to T1 fractals.

Specifically, from that post Valediction linked:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

I think interpreting this comment to mean “regarding them dropping from fractals” is quite a stretch. No matter how it entered the game again, it is content and very specifically contradicts what the Game Director at that time said.

The value of the items has been undercut suddenly and entirely.

To be clear, I disagree with him. I think if you get items hoping that their value increases is a gamble, like anywhere else. If I buy that axe skin today for 50 gold and keep it (without using it), I’m betting on it to become more valuable in one or two years, maybe 1000 gold or more. If Anet makes that skin available again in 2 years, I lost the bet.

It’s unfortunate that the Game Director at that time made this statement, but I understand why the current person in charge thinks and acts differently. Maybe they aim to make as many people happy as possible.

Even without the random drop form those boxes, the value might have decreased now, since many players return to the game due to the expansion. They haven’t logged in for 2 years or longer, check their bank and inventories and notice the prices of the skins they have. At least that’s what I would do immediately. Some of those people probably sold them for 4k asap, and with 6 times more supply than before, the price has dropped to 400 gold.

But yes, the big impact came on the day the Season 1 memory box was released ^^
Imagine, there were people offering to purchase it for 3k half a year ago and didn’t log in that day (holiday season). They were sold that item for 3k and an hour later it was worth 400. Andf those who put them on the TP for 5k lost the 5% fee because they would never sell it for 5k anymore. But that’s the risk when you play the market.

Yes, the Revenant profession should be included in Path of Fire. I don’t see why not, it never even crossed my mind that someone could be offended by that. They could have included HoT in the package and I would have benn happy with it.

The more the merrier. My suggestion for you is to spend more time appreciating what you get and less with bothering what other people get. Some say it’s one way to become a happy person.

keenedge.9675:

I’d only like the ability to reset the stats of a piece I built. New stats would be great, but it’s unfair to people who’ve finished more recent collections. Resetting the stats would allow me to re-use the piece on a fresh alt and put my newer stat-choice pieces on my mains.

As people here said already, you can easily get a new ascended backpack with selectable stats. Anet added several new ways to get ascended backpacks, there should be one that is affordable for you. You can even buy some with karma and 200 orrian pearls. The one from Bloodstone Fen is even a bit overkill in my opinion because it only costs 100 Unbound Magic to reset it (and removal of Infusions if you added any). That’s basically a characteristic of Legendary items.

There is also the option to infuse a backpack to reset its stats, which costs a stack of ectoplasm though and can only be done once. I wouldn’t really be bothered by the whole thing, but rather spend 2 hours with four characters farming Siren’s Landing for Orrian Pearls and buy a backpack. It’s a more efficient and effective solution to the problem than asking for a feature that is usually for legendary items.

Feanor.2358:

Forget the bosses. What about all those trash mobs? Scores upon scores of (mostly, excluding the Orr campaign) living creatures. Many of them sentient. Have you considered, even for a second, while you were tearing mercilessly through their ranks that they might have had families?

I’ve had similar thoughts when I was helping that Sylvari today rescuing dogs from Ogre in Fields of Ruin, and people killed the sheep and rams. They would probably have killed the dogs as well if it were possible, was almost like playing with PETA members.

Hey people,

I am finally playing through Living World Season 3 with my other characters. There is one problem, though, which has plagued many missions in Guild Wars 2.

Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too easy to solo or unfair for enemy bosses. It sucks that you can destroy a lot of bosses so fast. I think that some of them would be okay if you fought them naked but in normal gear they just hit their heads against you. I don’t even need to watch mechanics most of the time, the mobs just melt away. I would like to invite a few guild mates to do the story chapters with me, but that would make it even more boring, since the bosses are already too weak for one player.

I think some mobs could be scaled up and a lot of bosses could do more damage – maybe even as far as 40-50% more damage.

Thanks!

Dawdler.8521:

Its called random for a reason. Thats why no sane person is even using the MF for clovers any more, you get tons from reward tracks anyway, for free.

I feel quite sane and used the mystic toilet to get about 66 Mystic clovers. It works just fine, although the last 7 were quite painful. I noted the success rates, for example I got only 5 out of the first 30 attempts. Next day, I got 15 out of 30 attempts. 20/60 was about the expected average. I also tried the recipes with 10 coins, and got lucky. When I got 3 × 10 clovers from 10 attempts, I stopped and switched back to the single coin recipe.

In my single coin attempts, I got a streak of 7 clovers once, and other losing streaks of 10 without any.

It’s just random, and you would need to forge more than 77 clovers to get close to the expected result. It sucks because we don’t craft 1000 mystic clovers. It’s even possible to not get a clover 20 times in a row, at a chance of 0.06% (if the wiki is right and the drop rate is 30-32%). If 1800 people craft 20 times, it is extremely likely that one of them has such a losing streak.

I know it won’t help easing your pain, but that day, you were that one guy. But maybe it makes you happy that while you were losing, someone else won more than the average, so the total probability in the game stays at 31%.

Shirlias.8104:

Definitely unlucky.
As Ragnarox said, 1x is way better ( but, most of the times, i got the opposite issue… so i started to make and sell leggies ).

It’s only better if your goal is to be average ^^

If you play your luck, you can get more than average by using the 10x recipe. If you craft 100 times, you will have less variance when using 1 coin, but that goes in both directions. You will have little chance to get more than average. If you craft 10 times using 10 coins, you could be lucky and get 40 or 50 clovers. You could also be very unlucky and get 10 or even nothing. It’s a fair gamble, unlike roulette, where high variance is better for you.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Sif’s Guide for Casual GW2 Gamers to Grind Gold without Grinding So Hard You’ll Burnout:

• Original Reddit Post
• Direct link to guide

This it he most comprehensive guide I’ve seen to making gold.

No chapter for fractals? They beat every other source for earning gold and the only one mentioned in this “no burnout” guide is the fractal will will certainly burn you out, L40.

@Samnang: Jumping Puzzles are part of the PvE environment, basically stumble over them while exploring and then wonder “oh, is this a jumping puzzle?”.

We are talking about a completely different game mode here. You have to leave your environment and join another one. An environment where other people can kill your character on sight. Many people are not comfortable with that and never play person versus person modes because of it.

I don’t think it makes sense to compare WvW with JPs.

Offair.2563:

Hi i want a legendary but i need a gift of battle which requires a battle. Unfair!

Which in fact it doesn’t. You don’t need to join a single battle in WvW to do the reward track. You can kill pack bulls and other mobs/NPCs all the time and eventually get the Gift of Battle. You can also roam, which is not really a battle.

Anyone else with a one-liner that doesn’t make sense in this context?

In my opinion, it’s smarter to use the boost right away. You get gear with Soldier’s stats, all skills and traits and 4 × 15-slot bags. Those things are big for a new account. They are rather meh for a not so new account. When I purchased PoF and got another boost, I used it for a Guardian and within the same day, I destroyed all weapons (except underwater ones) and trinkets and the 15-slot bags and replaced them with gear that has Berserker stats and got 20-slot bags.

Using the boost now spares you the grind it takes to get gold for bigger bags and you will not suck because you have mixed gear and don’t understand how runes work yet, simply because the developers made a good enough choice on that on the boost gear. I levelled my first character (a thief) and it was really hard because I used dropped gear with whatever stats it came with. I probably had a mix of healer, condi and power stuff, and vitality mixed in. I had 6 different runes on 6 armor pieces because I didn’t get how they work. I did the whole story including HoT like that, and I died a lot. Then I got myself proper gear and understood how runes work, and it’s much more fun that way.

You can boost your thief and just play it like a new, low level character. You can do the story quests, you can explore, you get more hero points on the way. Your level will be adjusted to the zone you arer playing in, so you cannot one-shoot mobs. It’s still a challenge to play for a new player.

I don’t agree with the arguments that say it’s better to “learn the game” through levelling manually. You might even find yourself sticking with Heart quests and get bored. As Level 80, you can do what you want because you don’t need the xp from those. Also, in your case with thief, you will not even play the game in the first 80 levels as you’ll do afterwards because the main weapon you’ll use, staff, is not available until you are level 80 and have the elite unlocked. You will probably end up learning dagger/dagger + shortbow, which sucks in PvE. And you will not even use the same skill set as before but add elite ones. What you learned about your class on the way to 80 will be mostly useless.

As level 80, you can participate in all boss events right away and learn the mechanics. Game play after level 80 is much different compared to how combat mechanics work before. You can spend the first two weeks levelling manually and then learn the game, or you boost and start learning right away. Levelling is not meant to teach you the game, for that it’s way too short. My first character took me 2 weeks and I only started learning afterwards.

I really don’t know why some WvW players are against the idea of another aquisition method of that item outside WvW. If you insist it was always WvW, maybe replace it as requirement for legendary weapons with something else.

Thing is, you get PvE-noobs, scrubs, vanilla-players and whatever else you call non-WvW players because of that Gift of Battle. Do you really like those PvE-noobs to spoil your zerg?

When I needed that Gift I just entered WvW with my full berserker double pistol/staff thief. I didn’t bother changing any stats, skills or traits because the only reason I was in WvW was that Gift of Battle. People will not get proper gear and learn how to PvP for 10 to 12 hours of WvW. The only reason I got lots of kills and didn’t die all the time was probably because many of the other players were there for the very same reason and had no clue what they are doing. I basically only used Unload and everybody who knows half of what he’s doing could have reflected that. It felt like the Crab Toss Activity when it’s a daily. Nobody really cares but we want the reward.

I don’t think that enriches your precious WvW environment. According to what I could read in map chat, the more vocal folks in WvW despise PvE players and feel superior.

I believe adding another aquisition method for the Gift of Battle would benefit both WvW and PvE players. The next time I need that Gift I’ll bring a Deadeye rifle and shoot other PvE players from walls.

Also, it’s not a single use item. Once unlocked you can use it everywhere and with all characters.

You have to kill the dragon at the end to get the collection item. If you leave the event after killing the tower bosses, you will not get it. And I think you can tag the commanders and get the kills for the collections, and it’s not tied to event participation.

@starlinvf: OP needs the collection items for the legendary pistol HOPE, it’s not about the DS achievements.

I thought about tagging the commanders when I did that quest, it’s certainly possible in the time, you just jump over to the other lanes and deal some damage. Then I noticed that I need 250 Crystalline Ore for the Crystalline Ingots anyway, and I only had 20. 250 ore is three events, so I just did each line in three different events and opened the pods afterwards.

So, I haven’t tried tagging, but I don’t see why that shouldn’t work. If you have enough crystalline ore already, just go ahead and try. You will certainly get credit for at least one commander and then mordremoth. If you get the other collection items, fine. If not, you have to do the events again anyway.

It happened to me several times in the last months. Right at the end of the dialogue. Last time was about 4 weeks ago with the last part of the Bitterfrost Frontier quest, where you have to fight all those spiders and wolves on the way to that charging beast to recover some scroll. I wrote to support but they just told me to suck it up and hinted at my client as source of the issue.

I haven’t started that part of the quest again yet. Just don’t feel like doing it with the risk to get disconnected again.

Leo G.4501:

Also, don’t be shy about trying out the different weapons to get familiar with them and to pick the combo you enjoy playing the most.

NO! You get the meta weapons, sword/axe + longbow!

You are not to touch anything else ^^

Yeah, don’t pay anyone right away, just try Escort with a pug. If you are lucky, there are two or three people who know what to do and you can unlock the Mastery line. Only if that fails a few times, consider paying gold, because if you spend days failing, you could better spend days farming for gold instead and just get a guaranteed kill.

Not any pug can do escort, you need people who do the towers and if you don’t have anyone in the group with ley line gliding, that won’t happen. If you only have one member with that mastery, he better brings a mesmer. To get there, at least one member needs Forsaken Thicket Waters mastery from the raid line.

I’ve only ever done it to unlock the mastery line. It was fun and easy and didn’t take much time.

Ray Koopa.2354:

Okay buddies, here’s something fun: That’s exactly what I did, especially yesterday and today
- and they don’t drop for me anymore at all.

Just a long shot: maybe the game checks if you already have it somewhere. I think I never got one when I already had it in the inventory. It’s an account bound item, so it could be on another character or in the bank. For some items, the game keeps track of what happened to them.

I suggest checking your bank again and your other characters. Might be easier with gw2efficiency or gw2timer.

Vinceman.4572:

You got exactly what a “L40 relaxed farm” is – and yes, it definitely works!

But how do you explain that people started leaving after 12 runs? It definitely didn’t work, otherwise we would have kept going.

Wintermute.5408:

It doesn’t work that way exactly. Base dodge removes some stacks of acid, but not all of them IIRC. So, if you barely touch it, you are golden. Mastery is for when you get kittened in the kitten by 10 acid stacks or so.

I cannot test it because I cannot deactivate the mastery, but I think the Unhindered Combatant “immobilized/crippled/chilled cures” have an effect on the goo. So it isn’t like normal dodging.

Before you start a new character and level manually (if you want to do that), start the Heart of Thornes story to get gliding. You will be able to use a glider with the new character, since it’s an account-wide mastery, and gliding is so much fun when you explore.

What I would do though is keep playing your level 80 Ranger and just do what you would do with a new character. Play the personal story, do events in the starter zone, explore, craft whatever a new player does. Your level 80 character will be downscaled to an appropriate level for the zone, so you cannot just one-shoot every mob.

You will be stronger than a new character though because you already got all skills and traits unlocked, and you get exotic weapons. That’s not a bad thing in my opinion though. While you explore with your Ranger, you’ll get Hero Points and unlock the Druid trait line step by step. Sounds like more fun to me than starting a completely new character.

Since no mod closed this necroed thread yet despite the reports, I guess I can add my opinion on this topic.

I joined a group in LFG that was “L40 relaxed farm” a week ago just because I was curious how it works out. In my opinion, a “farm” is by definition not a relaxed activity.

- nobody except me used fractal potions or the Scarlett’s Armies pot
- not everybody used food/nourishment
- we had trouble keeping the defiance bar down
- people were not dodging or jumping over Berserker’s shock waves
- people didn’t stack
- there was no run without someone dying
- each run took much longer than it takes with my guild mates when L40 is a rec daily

After about a dozen runs, the group disbanded because people left. In the last 3 runs I had to take down Molten Firestorm alone at 10% health because everybody else died. Three times in a row! That was probably the reason why the group disbanded afterwards.

I play power daredevil, so staying alive isn’t a big deal, and it wasn’t my responsibility to keep the team alive. I don’t have skills like that guy who soloed the Molten Bosses at L90 with thief, but any fractal below T4 is easy for me.

My point is: there is no chill farm, it just doesn’t work. If you commit to farming, it’s work. People don’t do L40 over and over again because it’s fun or because they enjoy the cutscene (it’s really well made, but gets old after the first 200 times or so). The only reason these farm groups exist is profit. Characters are just the tools for generating that profit, and for everything there are good and bad tools. In this case, there are classes better suited as tools than others. If you want to get a share of the profit, get a decent tool. You are in a team, and the others are coming with sledgehammers. Don’t show up with a chisel and expect to be allowed in and get the same share.

I never really understood what this mastery does either, now I got it. I mostly play thief and trait Unhindered Combatant. Even before I got the mastery, the goo effect just went away when I doged because of the cleansing effect of the trait. So of course I didn’t notice a difference after getting the mastery!

I think this policy needs an update. When I use my credit card to purchase the game, then PoF, and regularly purchase gems with that credit card, always from the same network, logged in with 2-factor authentification, and then buy a second account using the same means, probably with the same email-address…well, then I should be able to use all features the service I payed for provides, from day 1.

They even get my mobile phone number, which I use for both accounts, so they could actually get a confirmation that I really intended to make that purchase.

In the case where a hacker gets all these information and physical access to your devices at home, there’s a good chance he can wait 4 days to proceed with his scam anyway.

For new players, I don’t think it’s a big deal. When I started, I didn’t use the TP anyway, I had nothing of value to trade. I just played the story and explored. But there should be a way to remove the restrictions from people who pay their bills for years and buy another account.

Corwin.6397:

Those who only care for max possible DPS and don’t want fun will not play Deadeye, of course.

What if maxing my dps is fun for me! Mind blown ^^

Seriously, rifle cannot replace staff. People use staff against several targets, if you use Deadeye, you cannot use staff. Therefore, the best you can do is sword/dagger. This combination deals less damage than staff against 5+ opponents. I just think about swarms of veterans in fractals. Staff targets 5 of them with each blow, the best sword/dagger can do is 3 targets. D/D only 2.

So you would basically have two weapon sets that are most effective against single targets or max 2. That works well in WvW like shortbow + D/D, but sucks in PvE. I use Staff + P/P because one is great for groups and the other great for single targets. I might use staff + rifle, but that’s not possible.

Also, I’m almost done with HOPE, so I’ll definitely keep using my pistols, and P/P + Rifle would just be stupid.

Since I never play WvW, the new elite will have no impact on me at all. It’s like it never happened.

Agreed with Astralporing, this waiting can happen no matter which lane I’m in. If a static group made a test and played all three lanes at different meta events, they might even need exactly the same time to do them.

And after the first part is done, it’s not over, because one group might not have the best composition to beat the master and the others have to wait.

The players need to organise the group composition. If one group lacks dps classes, a few from the other groups need to join. If I’m in a squad that lacks chronos, I ask in map chat if a chrono could join us. It’s not a unique challenge either, same happens with TT and Octovines. When gw2community does TT, they make sure there are enough condis and egg blockers and if there aren’t they don’t even start the event. They distribute the classes among squads so they are equally strong.

Without such organisation, you’ll have idle time like in DS, but even there people use an easy solution. We just move over to the slowest squad and help. You only need a handful of people to keep the mob waves at bay, the rest can help on other lanes. Chak Gerent, same story.

I really don’t see a problem here from a design point of view that ArenaNet needs to fix.

So before you got 5 slots for 2800 gems, right? And the sale states 25% off. But it shows 25% reduction of 3500 gems? So 5 slots cost 2625 gems now?

Looks odd indeed, but at the end of the day, you decide if the price is right for you. Then the reduction is not 25% but only 6.25%

Fractals below T4 can be done by anyone, no need to play meta. The few dungeon runs I’ve done gave me the impression that dungeons are on the same difficulty level as T2 or T3 fractals, so they can be done by anyone too.

If anyone asks you for meta or gear ping or mentions dps, just leave the group. Exception are dungeons where the LFG clearly state those requirements (for speedruns) and you shouldn’t join them if you cannot deliver. I’ve yet to see Fractals T3 LFGs with such specific requirements though.

I’ve personally never seen anyone being kicked from any fractal for low dps and I’m doing T4 dailies and recommended ones in the other tiers almost daily. Sometimes I pug.

“every time I join a group now i’m told i’m not doing ‘max dps’ and then I get kicked.”

Can you elaborate that? How many Fractal groups have you joined, at which tier? Was the LFG stating that meta builds are required? I find it very odd that this happens to you every time you join a group. Even in T4 pugs I’ve never seen anyone being kicked for low dps, and I know for a fact that I regularly was in groups with people who deal 30% of the potential dps of their class.

If you see someone in T3 or lower caring about dps and meta, you can be sure you are dealing with a noob that tries to look like a decent player. If he was that good, he would not be in T3 but in T4, and if he decided to play T3, he would not care about these things because they don’t matter. These people think they are good, but they cannot make it to T4 or into a static group, so they seek to empower themselves by harrassing casuals.

It is possible though that you are dealing so little damage that even the most patient members are fed up and decide to not carry you. Which class are you playing? If I have a thief in the group who does 30% of my thief’s damage, I can tolerate that. But if I’m doing 10k dps and that thief is only pulling 1k, I would wonder if he even clicks the autoattack button or is using a level 60 masterwork weapon he got from the personal story. I would at least try to find out what he’s doing though before kicking.

Getting asscended armor from fractals requires enough ascended items to actually play them at T4 (the other tiers don’t drop ascended armor) because of the Agony Resistance you need. You can get trinkets and backpack without crafting, but weapons and armor are much more difficult to get without raids or T4 fractals. If you do the Tequatl and Triple Trouble event daily, you might get a drop after a few weeks.

Even if you get into T4 Fractals drops somehow, it’s unlikely that you get all 6 armor pieces in a row. I’m fitting out my new Guardian and have 3 chests with coats and 2 with boots in them but no gloves or helmet. It’s my first heavy armor character and I haven’t bothered levelling armor smithing so far. I’ll probably just level the craft and build a helmet and gloves instead of waiting for the right drops.

Maxing a craft takes not much time (I do it in under 2 hours with a booster) and costs maybe 30 to 50 gold, depending on the mats you already have. It gives me the flexibility I want. My first full ascended set is crafted, that gave me access to ascended chests from fractals. After that, I only craft what I didn’t get from drops. Not going to wait weeks for the right drop.

Now you got me with the title, I first read it as “Thank you for letting us get rid of coats” and got excited that Anet may have changed course about coats for medium armor classes.

I’m happy for you that you got rid of the cub though.

Zenith.7301:

Who cares about instant 80 boost when most people are sitting on 200+ tomes of knowledge by now?

Exactly, and even the stuff you get with it is useless for people who are not new to the game. I used the boost for my Guardian and at the same day threw away the 15 slot bags, the weapons and the trinkets and replaced them with proper ascended gear. The only reason I haven’t done it with the armor yet is because I need berserker insignias to change the stats on chest armor and I need the gold to finish HOPE first ^^

So what? 100 gold is 4 or 5 T4 daily runs, with an additional chance to get the ascended armor. You get both, gold and ascended items. If you didn’t get any chest in 21 days, you still got more than 400 gold in that time you can use to craft it.

polarbear wrote that every night, one player of the team sees a chest, not that he gets one every day. And that’s about the rate I experience too, maybe a chest per week. Sometimes two weeks without one, but I also got two chests in a single run.

You just have bad luck these days I guess. Maybe his week you’ll get 3 chests.

Levelling a craft like Leatherworker, Tailor or Huntsman from 0 to 500 takes only 90 to 120 minutes total, just the amount of time the crafting booster lasts. And it only costs like 30 to 50 gold, depending on the prices of materials and on how many you already own.

Sure, you have to craft stuff to learn crafting, but at least you can salvage the training items and get luck out of them or materials that you can reuse or sell. You also get about 12 levels for your character for each discipline if you are below 80.

What’s more boring and tedious, crafting for 2 hours to get 12 levels or doing hearts for many hours?

People in this game don’t spend much time levelling a craft, just like they don’t spend much time levelling characters to 80. You’ll spend much more time at the crafting station after you reached 500, but honestly, if the way to get to 500 requires too many materials and time for you, then you won’t enjoy crafting ascended stuff or legendary weapons either. And you really don’t need to max a craft unless you are going for that.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Looking at the packages the way you do makes the deal seem great. Half off on gems! However, it’s only half off on gems if you would be buying the Deluxe edition anyway. Since value and cost are not the same, the true value of the deal is determined by what value one assigns to the addons.

Fully agreed. I got PoF for 30 Euros. The Ultimate version would have cost 5o Euros more. I don’ care about the other stuff and wouldn’t buy it. So, for me, the 4k gems cost 50 Euros, exactly what they cost any time I want to buy gems.

For someone who values the extras higher, it might be a good deal. There really is not one answer.

First off, it is never ok to harrass people or make them look like fools or humiliate them in any other way.

But since there will always be people who do that (or situations where the troll in you is stronger than the carebear), I think it’s important to know what you can do to avoid such situations.

ksclesky.9507:

Now I am not saying I know everything but do you really have to know any thing at all to “train”.

I answer that with a firm yes! You really need to know the stuff you are teaching very well. It’s one of the essentials really. The people you teach/train need to respect you for your knowledge and skill in the area. I’ve taught and trained a lot of people, and there will always be situations where you get questions that test your knowledge, even from genuine students. And sometimes you will be tested by a troll. And there will be questions you cannot answer, so you need to prepare for these situations. The best way to make these trolls shut up is to give a correct or good answer. If you survive the first days, it is settled. When you are new, few people will give you the benefit of doubt,you need to have the knowledge to provide good answers to the Spanish Inquisition when it shows up. And you won’t expect it ^^

What you can do is to get the knowledge required to train people for raids. This takes time and effort, and people respect these things. They need to trust that you know your business. That doesn’t mean that you always have the right answer, because there could be better ways of doing things. It means that you need to know the basics to get toa good solution and encourage people to think for themselves. Its’ a complicated business and impossible to cover here, but one thing is certain: You need to know the things you teach/train very well. That makes trolls just give up and move on.

I got a 2 weeks pass for the palace terrace from the S1 box, and I find it quite annoying that I get kicked out of the area when logging off and back in. It is not an instanced area, I don’t see why it’s necessary to use the pass again. Is it the same with the othre passes?

It’s really like with stuff in real life. If you keep getting more of it without throwing something else out, you will eventually run out of space. You have basically four options then.

1. stop getting more stuff
2. throw other things out
3. get more space
4. do nothing and drown in stuff

1. is a really good option for me, because most of the stuff we hoard, we don’t really need and things usually cost money to get. Even if you get stuff for free, it costs real estate. This doesn’t matter much if you live in the country side, but for me, every square meter is very valuable, since real estate is really expensive where I live. If I have 5 boxes with stuff that I haven’t touched for a year, I know exactly how much I’m paying for the space it takes up per month.

2. If I really think a new thing will add value to my life, I try to get rid of something else that doesn’t anymore. That reminds me to get rid of old books I will never touch in my whole life anymore. To not fill up my available space, I need to decide what I throw out. Get a new set of clothes? Check which ones you didn’t wear in the last year and are unlikely to wear in the near future, get rid of it.

3. getting more space is an option, but expensive. I have to evaluate if the stuff I want to get gives me enough value so it’s worth expanding my space. Thing is, even if you get more space, it just delays the problem you face. Adding a new furniture to store more stuff very often leads to the same situation two months later. Space you have will be filled eventually. I remember when we had very little space on hard disks compared to today. You wanted to store your pictures and music, and you got more space, then you filled it up again, so you needed more space. Today you can easily fill a 4TB disk with pictures and music. The only viable solution was to stop saving stuff, and services exist now that allow you to listen to your favourite music without storing it on your hard disk. Same with videos and pictures. 3. is not a solution, it just postpones the problem.

4. is nothing we really want in our lives, I think we can agree here.

I think the main question that needs to be answered is: do you really need 7 slots filled with boosters? When was the last time you used one? Can those old quest items be destroyed savely? What about that dwarf thumb? ^^
Is is it smarter to sell the stacks of goods and buy them back in 3 months when you actually need them?

Here’s a screenshot of my current bank, need to clean it up too:

http://imgur.com/a/udJjU

Well, what would your friends be willing to pay for GW2 without HoT or PoF? Maybe 30 Euros? Because you get GW2 and HoT for that money. I cannot find a package that only contains GW2, but I guess they would sell it for the same amount as the HoT + GW2 package.

Not an official answer of course, but ArenaNet probably doesn’t sell GW2 as standalone version because they included it in HoT and PoF. If they sold GW2 for, let’s say, 15 Euros, and the expansions that include the base game for 30, people would feel cheated if they decide to upgrade later on. Then ArenaNet would have to offer the expansions without GW2 for maybe another 15 Euros for those who already bought GW2 as standalone. This looks like quite a mess, it’s just easier to sell packages.

Your friends need to buy an epxansion + GW2 and can then ignore the expansion.

Although I have a hard time understanding how you can play this game without gliding.

Apparently, with the expansion there will be 25 slot bags. I would like to see 25 slot bags being sold by BUY-4373 in the Mistlock Observatory. I would pay 1000 Relics for one.

Murdock.6547:

Honestly, too many GROUPS are clearing with little knowledge of the fight.

But in the end, it’s mostly up to the COMMUNITY to make the community better. At best the devs can only reward you for being nice.

So making raids harder makes the community better? Is that what you are saying with so many words? How the kitten could that work out? If you make them harder, the division between raiders and non-raiders would be just greater. People would whine even more about elitism, many people would fall through the net because they simply lack the arcade skills and reaction time, or hand-brain coordination.

I see your intentions are good, but most people probably feel that making raids more accessible for players would help the community, that’s the opposite of your proposal. And I still don’t give a kitten what people from other games say.

maddoctor.2738:

1) You advertise a training run let’s say for Vale Guardian…

2) You advertise for a daily fractal run…

3) In an anyone welcome group…

4) In the opposite situation that 3…

1) and 2) I would talk with people, usually that solves the problem. If none of them wants to or cannot switch, and nobody wants to leave, the last one gets kicked. I’ve never seen someone wanting to stay in the group fully knowing that he’s not welcome though.

2) and 3) Kick. Been there done that, not playing with toxic people. There are only two options, either the toxic person leaves or I leave.

Emmalouise.1763:

I brought ultimate as I saw the 4k gems as a future investment as I would be spending that somewhere in the next year on odds & sodds.

But will you wait?

I didn’t buy the ultimate version because I would probably just spend the 4k gems on character slots and storage within a day, instead of spending like 200 per week. I will probably spend 4k within the next half year, but that way it’s spread out. Spending 4k now would not keep me from spending another 4k in those months ^^

Murdock.6547:

But before I go too much further I’ll leave a quote from a good friend and raid leader in another raiding mmo after being asked how she felt about the GW2 raiding community.

“It’s a new raiding community with raids that are too accessible. There’s no work or discipline. The imbalance of the game creates a completely unnecessary elitism aspect and a vastly innacurate impression of how ‘good’ people are, since the game itself is laughably easy.
The raids aren’t well designed enough to curb this on their own (you laugh at kittenbabies in a game like FF14 because either someone is ACTUALLY good or they don’t clear), as there’s barely any research or effort needed to clear. Nobody knows what they’re doing, but they get results and their little carrot, and that’s what matters to them.
Because this is the state of raids, nobody wants to try and tame the kittenstorm that is the community, myself included.
I loathe the raids and the community around them[…]”

But isn’t that itself just another completely unnecessary form of elitism? She’s judging this raid community as an outsider, putting herself above everybody here who does raids. What’s next, someone from an even more hardcore raiding community comes to her game for a week and tells her how easy everything is and that there is no skill or knowledge involved? Do you think she would give a kitten? So guess what the GW2 community will not give.

Amaimon.7823:

The fee is a constant, 10% of your total value, and another 5% once sold.
That means every time you undercut someone, you pay that value again.

1 onion costs 1s50c
Fee is 15c
20 onions cost 30s0c
Fee is 3s
(That’s not the actual value of onions)

The listing fee is 5%. If you remove the items from the TP, you pay that fee. When you actually sell your items, the 10% exchange fee comes on top of that.

If you see someone undercutting you with 2000 items while you only list 30, and your guess is that it takes 2 weeks before your offer is the one that gets the instant purchaser, it might be smarter to pay the 5% and relist (which costs another 5%), depends on how quickly you need the money.

For the same reason I would watch a Quentin Tarantino movie without having seen a trailer or knowing what it is about. I don’t need to do that to know that there is a low risk for me to not enjoy it. Or maybe compare it to a book series. Did I buy every volume of the Harry Potter series before I knew what’s in them and before I read any reviews? I sure did, and two volumes cost as much as this expansion. It’s not even a decision I have to contemplate about. The book series Wheel of Time has 14 volumes and each costs about 6 Euros, that’s 84 Euros total. The books are stored in a box somewhere and I’ll probably never touch them again. They gave me a couple of hours of fun each (and parts of them didn’t, just like GW2) and I consider them worth the money.

Even if I stopped playing the game two weeks after the expansion for some reason, I would still consider it money well spent. I’m looking forward to complete old maps with my characters using mounts because moving is just so slow, and when you start exploring, you don’t have the waypoints.

RedZebra.2345:

Could be easy however, Anet implements a key who want to show there dps ,and the tool makers act accordingly. OR BETTER Anet just implement this themselves in the UI, no fuss, no grey zone just a better interface and better control for Anet

LFG: exp, pots + food + activated dps key

ArcanistSeven.8720:

Ive been seeing alot of “t4 dailies Exp only pots/food” and im like the kitten its T4 its not that hard the CM stuff i understand but regular T4 im not wasting food on that. i just open up my own party allowing everyone so long as they have the AR and at least the defense potion. the ony thing i get mad about in T4 is in nightmare when one person doesnt know how to CC even when told that where i draw the line.

The rewards fror a T4 daily run are so good, it’s worth to “waste” a few silver on that. Plate of Truffle Steak costs 25 silver for 30 minutes, and by the time it runs out you are either already done or in the lowest T4 daily fractal. You get more than 20 gold cash for the run, ascended shinies and infusions and other stuff not included. You are saving at the wrong end.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m asking if there are any situations in which you (or others) agree that it’s okay to kick someone from a group. Are there? Or do you think that people who use LFG should have to stick with whoever shows up, regardless of compatibility?

There is almost never a need to kick someone because most people can communicate more or less well. When we put up an LFG because we need 2 more people, we might ask for Warrior PS and Healer Druid. It can happen that two Druids join, simply because both clicked on it at the same time. We ask both if they can switch to another character. If none of them wants or can, we ask the player who joined last to leave because two healers makes no sense. It never was a problem so far. If someone really refused to leave after the explanation, of course we would kick. If we get a bad apple, let’s say, a healer who doesn’t heal, we just carry and write it off as bad luck (happened yesterday). Everybody can adjust to a bad healer by switching traits/skills and food/consumables. It makes the run less smooth though. Once we had a case where we all wiped except the healer, and he didn’t /gg but kept kiting the boss. We asked him to reset and if he plans to heal the boss to death but we got no reaction. Boss was at 25% and it would have taken the healer probably 30 minutes to finish him. We watched this for about 3 minutes before we kicked him. Then he messaged each of us and called us noobs.

Yes, there are cases where kicking is ok, but it’s more about behaviour than skill. You only need 3 people to do a fractal anyway, but it’s a lot more fun without carrying.

I disagree with Illconceived when it comes to “a lot”. In normal game play, the Unbound Magic adds up quickly. Someone who considers buying infinite gathering tools probably makes the extra few steps to mine a node instead of running past. If you rarely gather, the consumable tools are just fine.

It always felt a bit stupid to farm something completely worthless before I got the UM tools, now I at least get something for it. An Obsidian Shard only costs 100 Unbound Magic, so you can save some Karma. When you go for ascended trinkets in the Season 3 maps, it’s not the berries, rubies etc that bottle neck your progress, it’s Unbound Magic.

I don’t want to sound like a GW2 advertiser, but I think the UM tools are the best deal in the gem store for almost every player that plans to get or has access to Season 3.

@Brigand: the level of torture really depends on the class you use. I did my only world completion with thief, so that was my benchmark. I only learned what a pleasure that was when I played necromancer and mesmer. Now I started a ranger and planned to boost him to 80, but it’s so much fine, I decided to actually level him. If I ever decide to do world completion again, it will be with this ranger.

With thief, nothing stops you. You can ignore mobs, slows, conditions and everything that gets into other classes way. My thief can just kill the mobs while berry farming and is still faster done with it than my chronomancer. Hero challenge protected by veterans? Just stealth and commune. Ranger is not as great as thief for getting maps done, but close. You can just have the pet get aggro and move on, or shoot arrow #3 for a short stealth. Damage is good enough so far, he’s level 33.

With other words, having a bad or fun experience roaming in PvE also depends on the class.