Guild Wars 2

Alright, let’s do some math. Based on https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4nq4u3/opening_100_t4_fractal_chests/ let’s assume that you have a 4% chance of getting an ascended box from Master and Expert boxes. Let’s also assume you have a 1% chance from Adept. These are rough estimates, but the exact drop rate isn’t important.

This means that from doing all 3 T4s, the probability of not getting any ascended drops is (.96*.96*.99)^3 = (.9124)^3 = 0.7595 or about a 76% chance.

Thus the probability of not getting any ascended boxes for n days is (0.7595)^n.

One week: (0.7595)^7 = 0.1458 = 14.45%
One month: (0.7595)^30 = 0.0002605 = 0.026%

Chance of your entire party not getting anything on one day is (0.7595)^5 = 0.2527 = 25.27%

Like I said, these numbers aren’t exact because of the assumptions about drop rates, but you should still expect that about a quarter of days none of your party members will get an ascended box. About one in every 7 weeks you won’t get a box for the entire week.

Having no boxes for an entire month is very unlikely, but in a sample of 4000 people who do fractals every day, we would expect about 1 of them to encounter that.

If I did any of the math wrong please correct me; it has been a while since I took probability. Hopefully this gives some perspective on when people should actually start worrying about the drop rate being different.

This is pretty close to the current meta build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JNiQzNY1Ng3NAHOYpYwiCADgEg0HIE0Bi7hFxkIA-TBSAQBYT5BAeCABU/AD3fIiq/cTlghUJGFOJAkCYRlVA-e

You also have to account for the loss of thorn runes, so that’s a considerable amount of condi damage in ideal circumstances. With a standard rotation you should be keeping a good amount of poison up. It’s usually 15-25% of my dps.

Having 40% poison duration instead of 100% is a big loss.

That said however, using rampager’s is probably good enough damage for general play. Open world and even some fractals you can play with whatever stats you want. I just wouldn’t bring it into raids.

Are we talking PvE or PvP? I read the original post as PvE until I saw the bit about ranger rapid fire, but I think a lot of the responses are PvP focused.

I feel like in PvP, shield is fine. I don’t play much though, so I don’t have much of an opinion.

In PvE, warrior hardly ever uses anything but GS. Changing shield would make it more interesting when doing weird builds in open world. In difficult content it probably would remain in its current position of only being used for breakbars.

Ele in T4 fractals: Lots of dps which is nice, but it can be very difficult to stay alive. Many times eles just end up dying all the time, but when there is a skilled player they are very nice because the encounters go faster.

Ele in raids: Very useful. It is the highest dps class on large hitboxes, so many groups like to have a few of them. Survivability is not as much of an issue because you have a dedicated healer, but you do have to be a little more aware not to get hit by avoidable attacks than other classes.

Mesmer in T4 fractals: The alacrity from mesmers is very nice in helping fractals. It is also more survivable than ele do to blocks/evades/distortion. The focus pull is very nice when clearing trash. It doesn’t do all that much damage though, and I wouldn’t want two in a group.

Mesmer in raids: Required for every encounter, but you’ll probably be asked to tank. If you are just starting raids or haven’t tanked before I wouldn’t recommend this.

Open world: I like ele more than mesmer because of mesmer’s low dps. Also, when killing small enemies it is hard to stack illusions which is pretty important for mesmers.

That’s just my quick overview. GLHF

Well, you don’t want to swap attunements after meteorshower, you want to swap during meteorshower. Eles can swap attunements while channeling skills. If you swap to air as soon as you start to channel meteorshower and then do glyph of storms after the channel, your overload will be up after only 1 autoattack.

I think that casting glyph in air, using overload air, the lightning strike from swapping to air, and the damage + fire shield from swapping to fire makes up for the loss of damage on the meteorshower.

Between flame burst, burning retreat, meteorshower, overload fire, glyph of storms, icebow, and overload air, there isn’t a need to autoattack very often. It’s really not that clunky when you get used to it.

A lot of people are still complaining about the lava font nerf and I’d like to talk about why I think it isn’t that bad. The main thing I see people saying is that the new rotation is clunky, and that a nerf could have been done by keeping cooldowns the same and just reducing the damage.

I’m glad they didn’t reduce the damage mainly because of orbs on gorseval. If damage was reduced then one lava font wouldn’t kill an orb, but that’s not my main point.

I disagree with the idea that the new ele rotation is clunky. I think instead it is just hard. When I focus on my rotation, I barely have to autoattack. Between overload fire, meteorshower, flame burst, burning retreat, glyph of storms, icebow, and overload air, there are plenty of things to do in the downtime between lava fonts.

From memory, not optimal:
lava font > flame burst > about face > burning retreat > meteorshower > lavafont > overload fire > flame burst > lavafont > icebow 3, 4 > about face > burning retreat > flame burst > lavafont > meteorshower > swap air > glyph > auto once > overload air > swap fire > lavafont…

The above rotation could be improved, it’s just meant to show how little you actually have to auto if you time your skills right. This doesn’t seem clunky to me, just has a relatively high difficulty. I actually like that there is more time between lava fonts to do those other skills.

I’d be interested to hear what people think. Let’s have a discussion.

Gimli.9461:

Also => no class has enough dodges for THAT level of madness.

When you stand in the green section by the wisp clefts, you get 100% increased endurance regeneration. This is just a part of the mechanics of the fight that many people aren’t aware of, but you have to position yourself properly in order to have enough dodges.

With a 4-4-2 comp, are the druids usually dps? If so are there difficulties with healing? What if you’re in a group that isn’t the most skilled and gets hit by mechanics a little more than they should?

My group usually runs 7-2-1 with a magi’s druid for heals, but I’d be interested in trying out comps that give more dps.

I doubt they put much thought into it. In a situation like this it’s more important to get a solution quickly than to get the best solution. Just throw something out there quick and dirty to patch it up while a real fix is being developed and tested.

Also, there have been multiple times in gw2 history where characters have loaded into LA instead of wherever they were left. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the default place to put characters if the game can’t figure out their location.

Swamp works like so: First you run the wisps. During this time Mossman will attack random players, but he cannot be killed. Once the wisps are done, a hallway will open up. In this hallway you will fight the Mossman and kill him. Then you can move on in the fractal.

Like Astral said, your problem is most likely trying to kill him during the wisp section. If you are past the wisps and fighting him in the hallway and he does that, then it would be a bug, but I haven’t seen that personally.

UnbentMars.9126:

Good tip list, especially about the 25% bug (happened to my group) and I was wondering!

I am fairly sure that is what caused it, but not positive. A couple people in my group grabbed early and it was those people who couldn’t deposit it.

So a lot of people have been having trouble with the new bloomhunger and I wanted to give a little advice that my group figured out when we did it last night.

• First of all, there is currently a bug where you can pick up the wisps early around 25%, and if you pick them up before he actually phases then you will not be able to deliver it. Be sure to wait until he actually phases before picking up a wisp.

• The key to this fight is well-timed dodges. He has a lot of attacks that need to be dodged or you’ll really be hurting. This can be hard in T4 because of the reduced endurance, but if you are in the green circle, you get a buff that increases your endurance regeneration by 100%. Make sure you spend as much time in the circle as possible so you have enough dodges. Also, it is possible to sidestep his charge when he does it from far away. Learning what attacks need dodges and which don’t can be very helpful.

• If you can, bring ranged breaks. Most of his attacks have a breakbar that will make the attack end early. This is especially useful for the endless pounding thing, as ending that early can save a downed ally from going defeated. Don’t try to use melee breaks as it is not worth it to risk death. Basilisk venom on thief would be very useful, or flesh golem or various ranger pets.

• If someone goes down, don’t kill yourself trying to res them. If you can pull them to you that’s great, frequently it’s better to let them fully die and then send one person without aggro to res them slowly. Don’t phase him unless everyone is up and healthy.

• Bring some sort of low cooldown stunbreak. Inevitably you’re going to miss a dodge and get knocked down. When this happens you need to be able to get out of there before his next attack.

• Kill all adds and poison blooms before focusing on bloomhunger. You want to reduce the amount of pressure for each phase. If the champ oakheart is up when you’re running wisps, you’re going to have a bad time.

• Assign wisps beforehand. In my group we all put our personal waypoints by the wisp we were going to take (I think it’s alt-click on the map). Then at 26% we spread out and let conditions and our 5th tick him over. Like I said earlier, don’t pick up the wisp early.

• After you get past 25% just don’t take any risks. The entire middle section is green, but his attacks are just as dangerous.

• It might be a good idea to put thought into your party comp. Having a druid for heals and search and rescue can be invaluable. Necros can pull downed out of aoe and are very tanky. Thieves have basilisk venom for ranged breaks. Mesmers can distort teammates through dangerous attacks. I plan on gearing out my chrono and testing out which attacks can be distorted through. Maybe we can distort the 25% blast when we miss wisps.

• Lastly, just try to be patient and practice. You can do it. Remember a year ago when we were constantly complaining about the lack of ‘challenging group content’. This is it.

GLHF

Am I correct in my understanding that using 5 +16s was so that you can stat cap? In other words people with those infusions would have had +5 power +5 agony infusions or the like already, or were planning on making some? Because if that is the case then those infusions would get upgraded to +5 power +9 agony if I understand it right, which would offset the loss of the +16 in the amulet.

I can see how it would be frustrating if you just wanted to have one set of trinkets with all your AR, but with the changes you can now put things greater than +7 in your accessories, so shouldn’t it still be easier?

If you have to spend gold to correct your 143 AR you’re doing it wrong. First remove all your infusions. Then deconstruct your +11s and +10s into +9s and +8s. You have 18 slots to fill. You can do that with 6 +9s and 12 +8s.

You only need 6 +10s to get that amount. Or 2 +11s and 2 +10s. If you deconstruct your higher infusions, you’ll probably have some left over that you can sell or use on other characters.

In other words you should be making money.

Also, if you are someone who is looking to get to max stats and want to use infusions that give you +power or the like, you can do the following:
6 x +7s for 42 AR
12 x +9s for 108 AR

If you want to stat cap and minimize how much you put in weapons you can do the following:
14 x +9s for 126 AR
2 x +7s for 14 AR
2 x +5s for 10 AR (in each weapon set)

This is still very expensive, but some people will want to get that extra edge. You’d total +90 power or whatever stat you choose.

GLHF out there.

I personally am planning on going with the following so I don’t have to put AR in every weapon set:
10 x +9s for 90 AR
6 x +10s for 60 AR

This ends up being a little more expensive than the above examples, but I play warrior and like to be able to play all my weapons, so this beats butting AR in all of gs, mace, shield, axe, sword, longbow, etc.

I agree that it can be a little annoying with how out of the way it is, but you can jump down from that tower. It requires swiftness or a well placed jump-dodge though

Boon Thieves is just a mechanic that people need to play around. It is possible to form your party composition so that you don’t get killed by boons. In a good comp, someone will be boon stripping, so retal wouldn’t matter much (maybe a couple of seconds before a boon strip procs).

If you aren’t trying to get a specific comp, maybe just joining a general lfg or something, then everyone needs to be ready to change to something not as meta if the group is struggling. I normally run PS warrior, which can get in a similar situation where the mobs kill us with 25 stacks of might. If my group is struggling with that, then I’ll switch so some other build with much lower damage to keep us alive.

Necro has to switch out of minions sometimes to avoid bad aggro. Same with mesmer clones. Revs sometimes might not want to run glint. Every class needs to be aware of the boons they are putting out and sacrifice a little if their group is struggling.

Also, you can tell your party that you will be dropping light fields, so they should be careful with their blasts. If a daredevil blasts your symbols a bunch and then dies to the retal, that’s his/her fault, not yours.

Tl;dr With good comp, retal is fine. With pugs, all classes might need to sacrifice. Guard isn’t in a special situation.

While it is currently possible to solo many paths, I’m guessing what you’re asking is if Arenanet will add a solo mode that is scaled for solo play. To this I’m guessing no. They have said that they prefer making new content over revisiting the old, and overall this is a good move in terms of where they put their developer resources. Also, having solo modes encourages people to play by themselves, which is contrary to the mmo model. Depending on how they do the rewards, it could have bad ramifications for the game.

If you’re having trouble finding a group, the lfg tool is usually pretty good. If there aren’t any groups for the particular path you want already posted, making your own post will usually work. I’ve had to wait up to 10 minutes for some less popular paths like HotW p2, but usually not more than that.

Good luck

I’d like to weigh in on the importance of meta and if other builds can be run in raids. In short, other build can be run, but this sort of experimentation is best done in static groups that already have mechanics down. Experimentation is how the meta is formed. For example, one build that has recently become more popular is the warrior PS/condi build. If nobody experimented, then nobody would have tried to run a PS build without greatsword. (It has a different role since it doesn’t get to 25 might on its own, but it still has a place in some groups)

Also, blindly following build on metabattle or similar sites is usually a bad idea. Although some builds like the typical PS warrior don’t change much between encounters, necro changes greatly, sometimes not even running reaper. I would argue that they are still doing ‘meta’ even though they might only have 1/3 traitlines the same as metabattle because they are doing what is generally accepted by the community as ‘optimal’.

In general, you do not need to use exactly what the ‘meta’ is according to sites like metabattle. Instead you should figure out what role you are trying to fill and then use the meta builds as a starting point, fine-tuning for each encounter. However it is important to min/max that role to the best of your ability. Many experienced raiders have had wipes with the boss within .1% of death, which is why they are so unreceptive to things that might decrease dps or change things in some other way.

I also recommend talking to people about your build decisions. If people want you to switch to weapon X, ask why and what it brings to the team. People have a habit of not explaining the why, but there usually is a good reason. If you are really not having fun playing what people want on that profession (maybe you hate warrior gs or something), it might be fun to try out some other professions. If you can find a profession where the meta build is fun to play for you, that might be a good way to get into a group that will later be ok with you experimenting.

I hope you find your niche.

The other thing to keep in mind is that on levels with that instability the mobs hit a lot harder, so you will also be taking a lot more regular damage.

Otherwise I just recommend making sure you have AR on all weapons you’re using.

I’d guess that in a week opening 12 chests each day, there is one day where I get nothing of value and one or two days where I get a weapon or armor chest or multiple. Most days I’ll get a ring or two or a salvage kit. I’m going from memory though.

I asked this question because for a long time I didn’t experience this, but many of my teammates complained about it. It’s only happened to me a couple times, but we’ve made sure that none of our team is using any hard cc effects that can be reflected. I melee frequently, but when it has happened to me and my teammates it has been at range. I have also done some last second shenanigans off platforms, but the few times I remember being knocked down have been on the edge of platforms. It is very rare and I’m guessing requires you to be positioned in precisely the wrong place.

I think the effect from the disappearing platform is what I was experiencing. The knockdown very rarely happens, but when it does it has been when I’m right on the edge of a platform. Thanks for your responses.

What causes the knockdown on the Thaumanova fractal and how can it be avoided?

Here are my thoughts on the usefulness of each profession in raids. You didn’t say if you have all the elite specializations so I put if those are required as well. That’s not to say you need it, just that pug groups might not like if you don’t have it since that is part of the meta.

• Elementalist – Tempest required. Highest dps in the game, so many groups run multiple. However due to the low health pool and armor it can be hard for people new to raids.
• Mesmer – Chrono required. Most pug groups run exactly 1, and it’s usually the tank. It’s very important to know the fights as tank, so I don’t recommend this as your first raid class.
• Necromancer – Reaper required? Pug groups usually accept up to 2 reapers. I don’t know this very well, but it is very useful on VG and Gors at least. A bit easier to play because of the large health pool. Good option, but you will sometimes be put on more difficult roles (VG – green circles; Gors – spirits).
• Engineer – Scrapper not required. I usually only see this on VG. I wouldn’t recommend since you’ll want something else on other bosses and it can be hard to do the skill rotation while paying attention to mechanics.
• Ranger – Druid required. Most groups run exactly 1. You would be healer, so you would be playing one of the most important roles. I don’t recommend this for starting out because of that.
• Thief – Daredevil required. Not super useful. It has good damage, but doesn’t provide much utility. I don’t recommend.
• Warrior – Berserker required. Most groups run 1, sometimes 2. You usually don’t have to do particularly difficult tasks, so this can be good for someone new to raids, but this slot is frequently already filled in groups.
• Guardian – Dragonhunter required. Similar to daredevil in that it isn’t necessary in a raid.
• Revenant – Herald required. Many groups run with 1 or 2 (I more frequently see 2 revs than 2 warriors). You don’t need to do particularly difficult tasks and provide a lot of utility with very easy rotations. I recommend this.

I personally would recommend rev>necro>warrior>ele for a beginner because difficulty of play and ease of finding groups. Once you gear out your first character and play a bit, I highly recommend gearing another that does very different roles. Flexibility in what you play really helps getting into pug groups.

Welcome to Raids

With the help of the support staff, I got my game to work. Here are the instructions given to me that ended up fixing it:

Please try using the instructions below to prevent background applications from automatically starting with Windows as this can often causes issues like the one you reported. Please note, this process will not uninstall any applications from your computer (just prevent these applications from automatically starting when Windows boots up).

First, open the Windows 8 menu and type in “MSCONFIG.” This will start a search for any “Apps” called “MSCONFIG.”
The first and only result should be “System Configuration.” Left click on this. A new window will appear called “System Configuration.”
Click the “Services” tab.
Click “Hide all Microsoft Services” at the bottom and once done, click “Disable All” (you MUST click “Hide all Microsoft Services” to avoid deactivating essential programs). 5.Click the “Startup” tab.
Click “Open Task Manager.”
A list will be generated of all the applications you have set to start when Windows first boots up. Right-click on these applications one by one and select “Disable.” Once completed, click “Ok” to save your changes. This will prompt you to reboot your computer. Please do so.
Once you return to Windows, try connecting again.
Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any additional issues, questions, or concerns.

Over the next few days I plan on re-enabling services one by one to identify which ones in particular caused the issue, and I will post the results here. Hope this helps.

I have been having the same issue. I was able to play Sunday night, but there was a small patch Monday, after which I have crashed every time I logged in.

Things I have tried but have not worked:
1. Rebuilding the DAT
2. Reinstalling my GPU driver (note that it hasn’t installed an update recently)
3. Completely removing and reinstalling GW2
4. Running GW2 in compatibility mode with Win7
5. Running GW2 in windowed both windowed and fullscreen modes.

I am confident that nothing changed in my local environment except for downloading that small patch Monday.

Also note: I sometimes manage to see char select before it crashes. When it does this, it says my character has 0% map completion and doesn’t show my guild tag. Maybe unrelated, but interesting.

This is only happening on my desktop (Win10), not my laptop (Win7).

I have opened a support ticket and have been conversing with them, so this will be resolved soon.

So it seems like the map reward does show up in a bouncy chest when completing world bosses. With both Melandru and Ulgoth I’ve gotten the reward in the same chest as the guaranteed rare.

I was playing my revenant when I remembered that the map reward system for Central Tyria was in this beta, so I went to Cursed Shore to farm some (pretend) giant eyes. It seems that not many people are leaving feedback on this system so I wanted to give my thoughts.

First of all, I like how it is formatted on the world map. Being able to see what possible rewards I can get and which one I will get next is really nice. It would be great if this “what I’ll get next” feature could get some sort of UI on the minimap or somewhere else I can easily see while in the midst of fighting stuff, so that I don’t have to keep opening the map to see what’s next.

Also, while I was doing events I wasn’t sure if it was working or not. I was under the impression that this system would work like Silverwastes and Dry Top where upon completing an event I would get a bouncy chest with my rewards in it. I have yet to get a bouncy chest from Cursed Shore which makes me wonder if it is bugged or working by design?

Also, it seems like I am only getting the specified rewards 1/3-1/2 of the time. I complete an event with a gold rating and then just gold is put into my inventory. This is frustrating when I think I’m going to get a giant eye the next event. My perception of how often I get a reward might be skewed by there being no indication of receiving that reward though.

Lastly, it would be nice to get an explanation of how the next reward is determined. If I am one giant eye away from making some weapon and it’s 2am, I would like to know if it’ll take 3 more events or 30 more events or at least an estimate.

So what would I like to see with this feature?

• A bouncy chest to deliver the reward
• Rewards from every event
• An explanation of how the next reward is determined
• An indicator of what one’s next reward is outside of the world map

If anyone else has ideas of how to improve this feature please post them. Thank you for your time!

- Fluffy

I really enjoy watching a lot of community content like BogOtter, AuroraPeachy, WoodenPotatoes, MattVisual, etc. When prepurchase was announced I went and bought the ultimate edition through the in-game store, however I would have liked to use a referral link to support one of these content creators. Is there a way I can maybe refund and buy again through a referral link or even better, have my purchase associated with one of those links after the fact?

There are some interesting armors at low levels, mainly from karma vendors. There is definitely a curve of armors where they get more and more interesting as you level up, every 20 levels or so. I don’t know how hard it is to get the karma needed, but you don’t need karma for very much so I wouldn’t worry about spending it.

Also, I would recommend saving up some coins and buying some dyes on the trading post. You probably won’t be able to afford the best ones, but having a few besides the originals can work wonders for making your character look good.

I think we all should be less upset at ArenaNet for this. The reason for them not doing something about this yet is that they are focused on content that is deemed more important. I would prefer for them to focus on HoT instead of this, but wanted to offer some constructive advice in case some of the devs have some spare time.

We all should acknowledge that the NPE was effective at solving the problem they were trying to solve: that leveling up wasn’t rewarding. It now is rewarding, but the solution to the old problem brought about a new problem: too much content is locked out by level.

Whatever the solution to the new problem is, it shouldn’t revert us back to the old problem. We still want leveling up to be rewarding. One solution to this is to use items as rewards instead of mechanics, but to keep the overall structure of the level up system.

Getting angry at ArenaNet is not going to solve anything. Giving constructive criticism and comments can make a difference if the devs don’t have to wade through negative comments to find them.

If you want the devs to read this, make this something the devs want to read.

In preparation for Heart of Thorns, I’ve been leveling alts. Today I was running around Queensdale and every few minutes had to explain to a low level player why they couldn’t see Vistas and/or Skill Points on their map. They seemed to think it was a bug instead of by design and got frustrated when they were unable to obtain a Skill Point until a later level.

Personally, when I log into a new game for the first time, I want to see a bunch of things that I will have the opportunity to learn about. I spend the first 10 minutes or so of a new game looking through the menus at skill trees and looking at the map to see what sorts of things there are to do. Being unable to use my skills and unable to see things on the map would be an overall frustrating experience that I would have to wade through to get to more interesting content.

Another thing to note is that when I was first leveling up I was amazed at how helpful people were. If there was anything that confused me I asked about it and got a great answer. I’m worried that new players will be asking questions about why they can’t do certain content instead of how to use their abilities effectively and won’t realize how great of a community we have.

The Problem: Too much of the game’s content is locked out to new players.

Since the changes in the September 2014 Feature Pack there has been content locked out to new players that shouldn’t be locked out. This confuses players who want to jump into the content right away and makes there appear to be less content than there actually is. Much of what is unlocked in the first 15 levels or so feels arbitrary and unnecessary.

The Solution: Have much of the content currently unlocked in the first 15 levels be available from the beginning.

• Specifically, I think that everything necessary for map completion should be unlocked right away. This means Vistas, Skill Points, and Points of Interest.
• I also feel that traits should be accessible earlier so that players can get that feeling of progression earlier. Level 20 might be a better place to unlock traits.
• Overall, all content that gets locked out with the leveling system should be reconsidered. Every level does not need to bring some mechanical change to the game. Getting purely item rewards and stat gains succeeds in making players feel rewarded for leveling up.

If anyone has any other ideas for how the leveling system can be improved, I would be very interested. I just feel that it would be better to have skill points unlocked from the beginning and to get a cool new hat when I reach level 13. Then I would be giving new players advice on how to play the game well instead of why things aren’t showing up on their map.

Thanks for reading and stay amazing.

I have a few things I wish to say about this topic.

The first and most important thing is making us care about what is happening. When a player first starts, usually their introduction to the story and lore of Tyria is through the personal story. We spend 20 levels being introduced to our race and then 60 levels fighting dragons, starting with joining an order.

I’ve finished my personal story, and was left with someone saying something along the lines of “now we know elder dragons can be killed, let’s prepare for the next one.” Six months later, with no dragon activity, I’m at the Queen’s Jubilee and Scarlet shows up. Why should I care about her? The problem comes in the introduction. With Zhaitan, we spend 20 or 30 levels being introduced to his minions, and then LA get’s invaded and we have to fight back, losing someone we care about in the process. Right now, there are so many things in the game we care about, and the LS is trying to make us care about something new every few weeks. If you want to keep mystery in the game, answer a question we already have and make a few more related questions in the process.

Another issue is the pace of the LS. I like the two week releases, but the length of any given storyline is too short to provide good story structure. The following should be present in every LS installment:

• Start in a state of relative peace/safety
• Introduce a small problem that we care about
• Have us the player somehow discover a bigger problem
• Have the situation escalate over a few weeks
• Climatic encounter that somehow changes the world permanently
• Back to a state of relative peace/safety

Note that these in order to develop these well, the story should be over the course of multiple months. Use the two week installments to introduce one small step of the story, not half of the thing. Also, each update only add a couple achievements if any and have them all available for the entirety of the story. If the story lasts multiple months then people with less time can still do them.

One way to implement this would be to have one or two big stories that span between festivals. Or maybe one year a new lieutenant of Primordius attacks and it is still attacking during Dragon Bash. Essentially, having longer stories would fix the problem of it jumping around so much and allow people who don’t play as much to still participate.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!

One thing that I think would help would be to consider accounts that have been inactive for a long period of time. It is my understanding that someone who stops playing gw2 still counts towards that server’s population.

My solution is to boot inactives from the server. In this scenario, the account would still exist, but they would just have to re-select their home server if they hadn’t logged on in, let’s say somewhere between 2 and 6 months (Anet devs decide exactly when the cutoff should be). This would make server population information more accurate so we could make better decisions in the future on the population issue.

I don’t know what cutoffs for the server population indicators are, but I’ll make some up for argument’s sake:
Full: >10,000
Very High: >8,000
High: >6,000
Medium: >4,000
Low: >2,000
Very Low: >0

I’m in Gate of Madness, which is currently classified Very High, so let’s say we have 9,000 accounts on it. From looking at multiple guilds, and not accounting for inactives the guilds have kicked, I think it is safe to say at least half of the people don’t play anymore (probably more). If this was accounted for, that would bring our population to 4,500, or our indicator from Very High to Medium: a significant change. This would change world transfer fees, theoretically allowing more people to transfer over and balancing population as a whole (WvW and PvE combined).

I do realize that this would open up space in the more popular worlds as well, and the problem might not be fixed, however I think the key to solving any problem is collecting accurate data and the current system of indicating server population is not providing that.

The Shatterer has some good attacks, like waves and aoe, but they are all directed to the front of him. Also, that is where most of the mobs go during that fight. Therefore, everyone fights from the side. If people had to fight in front of him, they would have to pay attention and dodge attacks and kill mobs.

Solution: Put lots of aoe on the sides and back of him so people can’t stand on the sides. If there were to be a constant aoe like the Golem Mark II, people would be forced to fight in front, which is would make the fight interactive and interesting without any other changes.

When I right click and select “Sell at Trading Post” everything functions correctly, however on the right were you select the tabs, the “Trading Post” tab where you buy items is selected instead of the “Sell On Trading Post”. Not a high priority issue since everything functions fine, but you do have to click another tab and then click back in order to buy items.

My first character to level 80 was a norn ranger. When I first leveled him up, I did weaponsmithing. Now he has 500 weaponsmithing and I main a different character (a norn warrior). Although I don’t want to do it in the immediate future, I think someday I’ll want to re-roll him as a different race. I don’t mind needing to level up to 80 again all that much, but I do not want to have to pay 150 gold to get my weaponsmithing back up, especially since my main is relying on it.