Guild Wars 2

Xarog.3172:

Drake Brimstone.3706:

dirtyklingon.2918:

i hear ya OP, especially when it comes to my exalted set. it took me a lot of tries to find somethign that would appear dark on certain dye slots(collar in particular). i mean even midnight dyes show up as very pale shades.

Solution, dont use the Midnight dyes, use an actual Black or Abyss dye if you want black. Midnight Fire for example is a very very dark Red dye, not black, so on some pieces of armor the Red will be more apparent then others.

How is that a solution? If he bought midnight fire it stands to reason that he wanted an “almost-but-not-quite-black” hue of red. If the same dye comes out on the next piece of armour looking like a tomato red, then obviously something is off, and I think any reasonable person would be a bit irked over this.

This is what happened with my Midnight Red. Not quite “tomato red,” but on the butt-cape for my necro’s newest set of gear, it’s more rose-red than midnight-red, which is moderately annoying.

I’d say the visual style is probably “one of the reasons” for not allowing cross-class armor customization, but I’d be willing to bet that the ease of class balance is the most prominent reason.

Lt Latency.7415:

Greyfeld.7104:

Xarog.3172:

I don’t think its quite as simple as you make it out to be. For example, you have some dyes that are “metallic” others that are “natural leather” and yet more that are in the “vibrant” category.

I think the game’s rendering engine renders things differently based on the kind of material it is supposed to be rendering, and that in turn changes the way it renders a particular colour as well.

In other words, the same yellow is going to be brighter on a shiny surface compared to a dull surface.

While you have a point, this doesn’t explain why one color can look like various shades on different pieces of armor from the same set.

Also, some colors just blatantly don’t look like the colors that they’re previewed to be, which can be a huge pain in the butt when you’re shopping for them on the TP. The Midnight Red that I recently got for my necromancer looked reddish black on her last set of gear as it’s supposed to, but on her new set it’s a lot brighter than the preview would indicate.

It also doesn’t explain why the developers thought it was a good idea to grant a “gradient” effect to some armor, making the colors you come up with a total crapshoot.

There are more textures then just the one that applies the color. those textures effect different colors in different ways.

It is a pain when only piece of your Armour clearly comes out a different color then everything else you are wearing using the same color dye though.

I guess it is a mistake in matching the dye to the color the Armour gets

Maybe this is just somebody who has no experience in programming talking, but it seems to me that making the color different across different armor types would take just as much coding as making it the same across different armors. Afterall, they have to code in all the colors a line at a time, don’t they?

And even if this isn’t the case (as I said, no programming experience, so I’m just assuming), it’s something that I feel Anet should consider looking at in the future, when they start looking into quality-of-life adjustments.

Considering the main theme of this game is “aesthetics over power,” it seems to me that it be important to make it as easy as possible for players to get the look they want.

Xarog.3172:

I don’t think its quite as simple as you make it out to be. For example, you have some dyes that are “metallic” others that are “natural leather” and yet more that are in the “vibrant” category.

I think the game’s rendering engine renders things differently based on the kind of material it is supposed to be rendering, and that in turn changes the way it renders a particular colour as well.

In other words, the same yellow is going to be brighter on a shiny surface compared to a dull surface.

While you have a point, this doesn’t explain why one color can look like various shades on different pieces of armor from the same set.

Also, some colors just blatantly don’t look like the colors that they’re previewed to be, which can be a huge pain in the butt when you’re shopping for them on the TP. The Midnight Red that I recently got for my necromancer looked reddish black on her last set of gear as it’s supposed to, but on her new set it’s a lot brighter than the preview would indicate.

It also doesn’t explain why the developers thought it was a good idea to grant a “gradient” effect to some armor, making the colors you come up with a total crapshoot.

Here’s my question: With an excess of 400 dyes to be found in the game, why did Arenanet decide to make most dyes appear as different shades, not only on different types and styles of armor, but on different slots of the same armor set?

You see, sometimes I just want my armor to be red. Or black. Or neon pink (don’t judge me!). But when I dye my character’s skirt with Autumn and it shows up as a gradient that fades into some muddy yellow, or when I want to use some shade of black that turns my heavy armor into a dark olive green, I have to wonder what the point is of having specific shades of dyes integrated into the game to begin with.

Afterall, if I wanted my armor to look piss-yellow, wouldn’t I just buy a dye in that shade?

I’d really like to know what the developers’ thoughts behind this idea were. It seems to me like having a player get the same shade as the preview shown for the dye would be preferable to forcing him to waste money buying up several different shades of the same color, and hoping he gets the shade he wants on his specific set of gear.

Also, if you want to add gradient color scales to pieces of armor, that would be fantastic, but please let us choose both colors in the scale, so we have some sort of control over how our character looks.

Blackout.5384:

Supposedly though this will be changing in the next few patches to make champ mobs drop better than average loot, perhaps even have special loot tables for certain champs, as anet specifically said they would like to bring back “boss hunting”.

How awesome would it be if they made boss-specific armor sets? Like, champion spiders have a chance to drop pieces to a Rare light armor set with a spider-web design… champion trolls/ettins/grawls/etc have a chance of dropping pieces of a Rare medium armor set with a barbarian/hunter design… etc etc.

I know that Anet is working on a lot of other things at the moment, but since this game is focused more on aesthetics than power creep, it would be nice if they started working on more permanent armor set skins. And I think it would give the players a great reason to hunt down champion and boss mobs, without screwing the economy by sticking exotics on everything.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Arenanet made a point of making GW2 anti-grind. A higher drop rate of lodestones would encourage people to “grind farm” them as drops. How can you say that the problem is that they assume people like to farm, and the solution is to make people farm more?

If you want to farm for them but don’t want to kill the enemies that drop them, then farm for gold and buy them on TP.

Arenanet wanted to discouraged grinding, so they created a system by which more grinding is required to acquire the highest tier of equipment?

Please tell me i what universe this makes any sense.

Brazensage.1328:

Greyfeld.7104:

Brazensage.1328:

Polle.6908:

Staves are already in the game. But I’m guessing 2 Hand Axes will eventually make it into the game. I’d also like to see Crossbows, Polearms and flails.

Sorry, I meant like a melee staff. One used for the thorough pumelling of another’s skull.

That would be a quarterstaff

I think it would be a great weapon for a guardian for some reason.

Or possibly a rogue. That way, I can play as Robin Hood xD

Sorry, I’ve always called it a Bo =P
I’m guessing they will implement these new weapons to compliment the introduction of new classes. I could def see the quarterstaff coming with some kind of sage, monk, or martial artist role.

A bo staff is basically just the Japanese version of a quarterstaff. I used to call it that when I was younger, when I only knew about the weapon from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles :P

Brazensage.1328:

Polle.6908:

Staves are already in the game. But I’m guessing 2 Hand Axes will eventually make it into the game. I’d also like to see Crossbows, Polearms and flails.

Sorry, I meant like a melee staff. One used for the thorough pumelling of another’s skull.

That would be a quarterstaff

I think it would be a great weapon for a guardian for some reason.

Or possibly a rogue. That way, I can play as Robin Hood xD

yurtshone.7325:

I have personally hated how games make single hubs. They should put the same things in each so people can go where they like. Personally I think LA is an awesome zone. I truly admire the work that went to create it. But DR is much nicer for me. I love how it looks and feels I only go to LA if I have to.

On my norn ranger, I constantly went back to Hoelbrak whenever I needed to TP, restock on supplies, and use my bank. However, around level 60 or so, I realized that everybody was in Lion’s Arch, so I just stopped going back to Hoelbrak.

A chat that spans all major cities would go a long way toward giving people a reason to spread out. I think most people congregate in LA because that’s where you need to go if you want to find anybody to group with and talk to.

As it is, I don’t really even like LA. I did the zone completion for it one time, and hated it ever since. But most of the other major cities are complete ghost towns.

penatbater.4710:

erm… isnt’t that exactly how it’s supposed to work? Yea you craft a bunch of worthless stuff, but in effect you’re making it easier for lower levels to have access to decent (blue) armor, which entices them to play longer. =/ And besides, that’s low level stuff. Wait till you get to mithril/ori level. There are hundreds of material sink for those items, hence those items will always be in high demand. (Despite mithirl ore prices, they’re still used for transmuting to ori ore)

The problem is that there’s already plenty of access to blue level gear, without crafting. Between heart vendors and the sheer volume of Fine loot drops, a non-crafter actually has more money to spend per-level than a crafter, and has the exact same level of gear.

Which will then become obsolete in another 2 hours of gameplay.

This is the exact same problem that SWTOR had: an overabundance of gear overshadowing crafting professions. Sure, it’s casual-friendly, but it also makes crafting the next thing to useless.

Balto.8092:

It gives a CHANCE at a rare from that spectrum (grey would honestly be the only one with a significant profit). Honestly ur better off just buying the dye itself you desire.

Which is exactly the problem.

Crafting is already worthless enough without screwing us over on the RNG. Dyes take a massive ingredient cost to craft. They don’t even sell well enough on the TP to craft for profit. When you open them, they should at least grant an automatic dye of the rarity that was crafted.

Siobhan.3582:

Why grind out low level pve?

Heck this game says boost to 80 in 2/3 of the areas you can play in.

And even in some pve (aka Mad King) you got boosted to 80.

You all have some rainbow bridge of dreams thinking the path to max level should be something special..

There is a solid reason you are not seeing tons of folks around to play with as you level alts..

Repeating the same stuff is not fun, no matter the game.

Exactly. Which is why Anet needs to work on giving level 80s an incentive to do more than farm Plinx all day.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Regardless of how much worse GW1 was in this regard, that doesn’t make Orr any more/less enjoyable. There are plenty of places in GW2 with a high mob density, but with a fraction of the CC effects (even the Mad King’s Labyrinth had high mob density and few CCs). Orr is just a pain to move about except for a few paths where mob density is relatively low… I realize the zone’s context in the story, but at the same time where are the thousands of Pact forces then?

This is the same reason I skipped “kill the foes coming out of the door!” events that had all skeles, and hate any area populated by ogres. In either of those situations, fighting more than one at a time means I’m going to be on my butt for at least half the fight.

One time, I made the mistake of charging into a door of skeles. I spent the next half minute trying to escape the chain of knockdowns. I say a half minute, because after about 30 seconds, I finally died, since I couldn’t stay on my feet long enough to get out of aggro range.

Polantaris.9513:

Zephaust Zenith.8376:

lunawisp.2378:

There’s a reason most MMO’s don’t give crowd control abilities to minions (or trash mobs). Those mobs nearly always come in groups and giving them all abilities like this makes the game more annoying than fun. This is one area I think they should learn from other MMO’s and tone it down a bit…

I think Anet did learn, with GW1 and still gave mobs abilities and gladly so…

Personally, these abilities spice PvE more and prevent rushing careless through maps or some farming methods – GW1 is a good example of this like souldonkey.9534 pointed out.

If anything, i wouldn’t want PvE to be more dumbed down.. like other MMO’s

Why do Hammer Risen get a 5 second knockdown on me when mine lasts a second if that? Why can they spam said ability every 10 seconds when mine is about a minute cooldown? Why can I get pulled every 15 seconds when my own pulling ability doesn’t have remotely that low recharge?

Probably for the same reason that Trahearne couldn’t kill a skrit with that oversized butterknife he keeps strapped to his back, but can pull a half dozen flesh golems out of his jolly green butt when the plot calls for it.

The answer is: Anet doesn’t know how to create a sense of consistency.

This is a problem with all the major cities, really. I noticed the same thing in LA, where there’s this fighting ring or whatever, but there’s no way to interact with it (even though it’s a POI, for some reason). Then a number of NPCs in the Black Citadel that are looking for a book and a ghost at a dig site, but there’s no way to find either of them yourself, nor is there any sort of quest or event for it.

It kinda feels like Anet just sort of put out the barebones game to get it out the door, with the intention of adding actual interactive features to the cities a year or two down the road.

Siobhan.3582:

Tip..

Hit the newbie zones..

Do some person quests..

Powerlevel alt via JC, Cooking and Artificing.

Be around 50 and then you can play pvp, catch up on personal story, or rack in xp in zones with more folks..

Everyone is doing it.. Zero reason to do 1-40 anymore if you don’t want to..

If you do, cool. Enjoy and have fun.. But don’t complain if you pass up ways to level up quickly..

Speaking of alts only, of course. New players (which is sad as game is not old) will have issues if they don’t buy gold..

The fact that anybody even has this mindset is just proof that Anet failed in their design goals, and should be re-evaluated.

Minos.5168:

Kular, so tell me… If they’re not killing the game, then why does everyone in Cursed Shore tend to stay with the quest chains in the north rather than attempt the more difficult quest chains in the south (with Melandru and Grenth)?

People run Grenth for profit all the time. Massive adds there, and plenty of chance to net a lodestone or two, if you’re good at tagging the elementals.

But to tackle your actual question, people don’t run the “harder content” because it requires a hell of a lot more time and effort to net less profit. This has, literally, nothing to do with repair costs. If I can pick up 1g per hour running Plinx, why would I go run events that I’ve already seen (and I don’t find enjoyment in doing) for less reward?

I would gladly run some of the other events if I got equal reward for my effort. To shake it up and do something different, if nothing else. Hell, I’m still working on my world completion, so I often find myself in far-flung corners of the map when I’m not farming. But when I’m trying to make some cash, I’m going to do it in the most efficient way possible. And currently, that’s farming central CS.

For the record, I waypoint around Cursed Shore like a half dozen times per day, just because I don’t feel like taking the extra two minutes to walk somewhere, and I still manage to keep a healthy bankroll.

The best choice would be to actually give max level characters a reason to go back to lower level zones.

1. Nix the RNG on high-demand chef ingredients, like Vanilla Beans, and lay out a grove of them in a couple different low level zones.

2. Change loot tables and DE rewards so that drops/money/karma are attuned to the level of the player, instead of the level of the mobs; this way, players can farm in any zone they want, instead of being forced to stick to Orr.

3. Expand DE chains to create multi-zone META events. If a slew of DE chains were added to lower level areas that all had to be completed to unlock a major META event (and all the DEs, and the ultimate META actually had some semblance of difficulty and rewared the players appropriately), you’d see a lot more max level characters in the low level areas.

The problem, as it currently stands, is that there’s just no reason for level 80s to come out of Orr, Lion’s Arch and PvP. Loot, karma and coin are all better in Cursed Shore, and none of the lower level zones have events that effect what happen in other zones. “To see content you haven’t seen before” only works until the player becomes bored.

Once you give them a semblance of reward or progression, the incentive returns.

This is a problem with all events, not just with ones in cursed shore. We won’t be seeing any changes until Anet decides it’s time to go through their entire game and change how every event scales.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Ectos are pretty easy to come by. Just use a blacklion salvage kit on any high level yellow item. As for the Grenth event, that place is loot heaven. I don’t really care if people succeed or lose that event, as long as I get lots of loot.

And this is why Orr is a complete failure.

Actually, this is why dynamic events are a complete failure, but let’s save that discussion for another time.

The fact is, players get better loot from forming groups with 4 other strangers that they won’t talk to, and farming the same events over and over again, than from actually completing the events. This results in half the events in Orr being completely ignored, while the other half get oversaturated with players (and bots) to the point of ridiculousness.

I won’t lie, when I need to farm, i grab a group and run the Plinx chain (and a couple other events around it) until I feel like I’m going to cry from boredom. Sure, I would like to see the rest of the events, but if you ask for help, people rarely show up. And if I’m just looking for X amount of gold per hour, there’s no reason to go playing anywhere else, because all the best loot is found by farming the crap out of the center of Cursed Shore.

Yeah, I fought this guy three times (once as melee, twice as ranged), and while melee is actually far more exciting (I get to actually DODGE something! I can set my ranger’s auto-attack on this fight and go make a sandwich.), the lack of reward after such a long and boring fight is a total buzzkill.

Personally, I would rather do an event because it’s a blast to play; but if you’re going to create boring and monotonous fights that put me to sleep, at least tack on a reward at the end so that I don’t actively avoid the event when it pops.

Trying to kill this champion ogre, and every 30 seconds or so, he drops a banner and full heals himself. Or at least, I think it’s a full heal. I don’t know, me and the guy I was trying to kill it with would get it down to about 80% health every time, then watch him go back up to full, with nothing we could do about it.

So… how do you keep him from healing himself over and over again?

On Tarnished Coast, the lower level areas have quite a lower population than they did just a month ago. That’s expected, of course, but I think it should be noted that Anet’s plan for “end game” was to give everybody a reason to go play in low level zones; this obviously isn’t happening, which means their plan has failed, and should be re-evaluated.

That said, some of the major cities are ghost towns. Rata Sum, Hoelbrak, and The Grove are all completely overshadowed by Lion’s Arch as the gathering place of choice for most players. I’m not sure about the Citadel since I rarely play my Charr, but Divinity’s Reach gets a lot of roleplayers, so that city isn’t quite so barren.

Around 16 years ago, I used to play on MUDs. My family didn’t really have a computer that could play any high-graphics video game, much less an MMO, and MUDs were free to play as long as you had access to a Telnet server.

One particular MUD was called End of the Line (EOTL). The game was rough, between unforgiving monsters, ruthless player-killers, and a punishing death system that penalized experience and forced you to leave a corpse that anybody could loot, forcing you to lose all your items if you were unlucky or too slow to run back to your body.

Amidst all that, there was a weapon that was a total game-changer if you got your hands on it. It was called the Luck Blade. You didn’t farm for it, loot it off a special mob, or buy it from anywhere. The server’s RNG system just randomly picked a person who was logged in from time to time, and dumped this item into their inventory. For the next 10-ish minutes, this ridiculously powerful magic weapon was yours to use to hack through waves of enemies. It scaled with your stats, and completely decimated equal-level mobs with very little effort.

But once your ten minutes was up? Poof It was gone, until the next time you got lucky.

The point is, stats and items that increase your farming ability should be rare, difficult to acquire, and/or very short-lived. Adding them as an easy-to-acquire permanent item for every character is essentially telling the playerbase to farm in order to raise the drop rate to the level it’s actually supposed to be. It feels necessary, rather than a bonus, and creates an extra arbitrary grind.

Calsifer.6079:

People use it when they kill bosses and stuff to increase the chance of getting rares.

I think the question isn’t “what is it used for?”, but rather, “why does it exist in the first place?”

Since Magic Find is pretty much a “must-have” for farming purposes, it seems like it would make more sense to just increase drop rates across the board and cut out the middle-man. Especially since the current setup essentially encourages more farming/grinding (grinding for gold to buy/craft your MF gear, so you can increase your chance to loot while farming to make money…). It’s all very circular and needlessly complicated.

If Magic Find was a rare buff or was difficult to find, or extremely strong but limited in duration, it would make more sense. It would be a sort of be a “bonus” during your farming time that you normally wouldn’t get, and you have to use your time wisely to make as much use out of it as possible.

But as it stands right now, it’s pretty easy to come by, and just encourages extra farming.

Tagging mobs as a ranger has more to do with memorizing spawn points than actual skill. Sure, you can drop a trap to tag a bunch of mobs, but if you’re not right on top of the spawn point when they spawn, you’re probably going to be too late. Between the elementalists, guardians and warriors spamming all their AOE abilities, most group spawns don’t live more than 2 seconds. And traps have a half second cast time.

And no, getting a single hit does not tag mobs. I don’t know what the actual rules are for getting a “tag” on a mob, but from experience I can tell you that getting a single hit does not do it.

I used to run Axe/Torch for event farming, but I found out that it doesn’t do any good. Putting aside the 3-target limit, I only ever got a tag after 3-4 hits. Always had to burn my Quickness to make sure I got any loot.

GreyWraith.8394:

These sad people have not yet discovered the awesomeness of Asura.

my female asura engineer is super cute!! Unfortunately, I figured out a little late that I didn’t really like the engineer, so she’s just collecting dust >.<

It’s not “strange” at all, if you took two seconds to think about it. There may be a handful of guys that quote that “stare at a chick’s backside instead of a dude’s” garbage, and actually believe it, but the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper than that for most people. So, here are the top three reasons male players create female characters:

1. The male character models suck. Most MMO/RPG male character models look somewhere between atrocious and awkward. The character is too buff or anemic, the walking/running animation looks odd, the face templates are ugly, or the male avatars just look so feminine that you may as well make a female and have done with it. Usually it’s some combination of the above.

2. Female-only content. Sometimes, dialogue (or even entire cutscenes or missions) changes because the character is female. Ultimately, this means seeing it requires creating at least one female character.

3. Roleplaying. Some people don’t create an avatar, they create a character. They decide on a personality, affix a gender, determine a look, mold a character model. For whatever reason, the character they’ve created feels more like a female character, rather than a male character, and so the character ends up being female.

4. (Here’s an extra one for you, because I thought of it while I was typing) Chicks that kick kitten There’s something incredibly hot about a woman who can kick kitten and take names. A featherweight of a chick that can heft a sledge hammer and smash you in the face just as good as any of the boys is hilarious, and sexy as hell.

So, there you go. The [four] major reasons guys play female characters. Believe it, don’t believe it, I don’t really care.

teviko.6049:

mulch.2586:

I think a big difference between open-world zergable targets and instanced encounters which can be tuned to 5-member groups.

The open-world bosses tend to be especially simplistic, and I can give ANet a pass on that, because if they required skill, timing, or strategy, the player base would complain.

And yet the player base IS complaining, because they are too easy, have too many Hps and are woefully boring.

It didn’t take long for people to figure the mechanics of the dragon fights, or for fighting any ‘certain’ type of challenging encounter out there. People will figure it out, EN MASSE and once figured out, at least it would be interesting, instead of a 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 fight.

I can think of teh champion risen abomination as a prime example, of where one person in a sea of dozens gets aggro and spends the next 15 minutes uselessly kiting in a circle, hopefully skillfully enough NOT to reset the mob while the other dozen or so wail on it for 15 minutes. No skill, no need to move, I don’t worry if someone else has aggro, BECAUSE HE GETS IT FOR THE WHILE FIGHT!!!!!!! I just stand there and hit it with 1 until its HPs finally swindle away and I claim my (oh goodie) gold medal and 2s15c reward. The excitement just sizzles through my body.

And were supposed to swallow this as ‘fun’???

lol I have my 1 set to auto-attack. One time, during that fight, I set my auto-attack, went to take a piss, got a sandwich, and came back when the mob had about 25% health left xD

SchizoidMetal.9357:

I think to solve all these problems mentioned above. A new dungeon design team should be hired. I do not see much in the terms of unique mechanics in the dungeons we currently have to run at the moment. I also have seen that as you progress through the dungeons from AC to Arah the story starts to get more and more BLAH. I remembered when I first ran AC, the cut scene was awesome, and the story behind what we all were doing here made good sense and was interesting, but as I progressed onward through CM, SE, TA, ect, ect. It really started to become less and less cut scenes, and more of 2 individuals standing in a blank background just chatting with each other, nothing to entice the eyeballs at all. I personally don’t care about how long it takes to kill a boss, but yes having tons of hp without any real challenge other than knowing when to dodge is a bit o’ stale game play. Having more hp does not make it more challenging, it only makes it more boring! Id rather have less hp and more kitten to worry about with the boss fight than tons of hp and just having to dodge, smack smack smack, dodge..

Not to dismiss your opinion, as I haven’t done any dungeons besides AC and Arah, but AC’s story was incredibly stupid as well.
Eir Stagalkan... was a god kitten idiot, and it showed. "I'm going to solve the enmity and years-long bickering between two ex-friends by getting them matching swords! Yay!!" Then she's surprised when it doesn't give Logan and Rytlocke the feelgoods, instantly re-cementing their friendship.

Complete dumbkitten.

Lightrayne.7829:

Sounds like you’re in Orr. It’s a pretty annoying place to be, and it seems hardcore solo farmers love that place more than others. I mainly go there on my alts to level them to 80.

It’s, unfortunately, the best place to farm for gold. With a bit of MF, running the Plinx-Tar Elementals-Gladiator-Broodmother-Pen/Shelter events over and over again is fairly profitable. Between the constant inflow of karma and the group spawn nature of most of those events, it’s easy to eventually start rolling in karma and gold for the least amount of effort.

Although, having a solid group of people that can AOE the hell out of them helps as well. I’m considering leveling up one of my alts, because it’s ridiculously difficult to tag groups of mobs as a Ranger when there are over a dozen other players farming the same events. Just haven’t decided between my Warrior, Guardian, or Elementalist. Considering the Warrior just based on the fact that he’s the highest level of the three characters.

I normally get 3-4 dyes at most in an hour and a half farming time in Cursed Shore. Today, I pulled 11 dyes. Of course, this is only the first time it’s happened, so until it happens multiple times, I’ll just assume it was luck.

That said, there were a lot of people noticing an increased drop rate on dyes today, so it might be legit.

Jezath.7395:

something to add to this, magic find is only applied on monster kill not loot.

Also, it doesent work on chests only on mobs.

Do you have a link for this information? Or is this just hearsay?

I like how Anet moved this to the game bug forum, even though it’s not actually a bug…

Yeah, this is why i decided not to use it. I’m actually thinking of just throwing it away.

I imagine it was done like that because it was the easier way of avoiding clipping, rather than going through each hair style and manually coding each of them for the hat. But it really looks incredibly stupid.

I’m wondering if the theory crafters have been hard at work disseminating Magic Find and how it affects drop rates. I ask, because I haven’t noticed any appreciable increase in drop rarity or drop rates while farming in Cursed Shore, whether I’m running around with no MF, or loaded up with tons of MF buffs.

And yes, I understand some people will have anecdotal stories about that one time when they put on a bunch of MF and had three exotics drop in five minutes, yadda yadda. But I’d really like to hear if there’s been any number-crunching going on; something more tangible to prove that MF does indeed work, and what exactly it does for drop rates as a whole.

GregT.4702:

A lot of things are fun. Your PvP activities compete with them.
Flicking rubber bands into a bowl can be fun. I’m probably not going to be doing a lot of it any time soon while I have triple A videogames on my PC. Likewise, I’m not going to play your casual PvP activities “for the heck of it” unless either (a) they are competitive with my other PvP options (such as League of Legends), or (b) I am invested in your brand.

Brand investment
I will play your PvP over its competitors if I am invested. I am invested if either (a) my friends are playing it, and I can play with them socially, or (b) it provides a reward which I value which you are uniquely able to deliver as the custodians of the Guild Wars 2 brand, which may be the satisfaction of seeing interesting Guild Wars content, or just some titles or loot for my GW2 character.

Unique content
You can make casual PvP attractive by adding unique content – that is, by making it something you’ll want to see. WvW has a little bit of that flavour – watching a castle get sieged is pretty epic and is eye candy as well as fun. But on the whole this takes work and development time, so is probably not a great option. The Halloween PvP was, while not ugly, nevertheless visually bland and there were not a lot of memorable moments coming out of it.

Rewards
An achievement per se is not a strong reward. All it gives you are points. You can also get points from dailies; these are interchangeable. You can’t do anything with points and you can only show them off to guild members, as far as I know.

A title is slightly better. It at least allows you to demonstrate what you’ve done to others. However currently titles are underwhelming at best, printed in tiny text, without displaying how you got them, and only shown at all after someone has deliberately clicked on you.

Cosmetic armour, unlockable emotes, and unlockable miniatures are better still. They are push-advertising of your prowess, in that the choice of whether someone sees them is in your hands, not the viewer’s.

Rewards as Unique to the Activity
Trick or Treat bags were a terrible reward for PvP because you could get them from other places. That prompted the obvious question, what is the most efficient way to obtain these items? PvP was among the least efficient ways, as it turned out. Players wouldn’t be playing PvP for bags unless they were ignorant of the better way, so effectively there was no reward-related reason to play the Halloween PvP. Rewards for an activity need to be unique to that activity, or else it will be competing with the other way of getting that reward.

Rewards as Unlocks
Probably the most important thing is that rewards should be unlocks, not items. Items require you to store them in your bank. For an average reward, being forced to store it can turn it into a punishment. A much better system is to treat rewards as unlocks, accessible either from a menu (like titles) or from a special vendor (like Hall of Monuments stuff), allowing you to obtain an instance of the reward for free on any character at any time, without having to manage the storage of it.

Rewards as Conversation
The other key thing you need to work on for ANY reward is to make it part of a player’s conversation with other players. The easiest way to do this – and I can’t believe you haven’t already – is to announce achievements in either or both of guild chat and local chat. E.g., it shows up in Guild Chat, “John Smith completed the November Monthly Achievement!” It prompts chat about the achievement, promotes envy from those who don’t have it, and increases the desirability of achievements as a whole.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Best post I’ve read all week.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I can also tell that Araneyl hasn’t played many other MMos either, this was one of the worst implementations of a Halloween event I’ve personally seen. On ‘paper’ it sounds good, it just was executed and constructed poorly, and there can be easily 5 maybe more reasons why.

1. Crippling bugs and issues through-out the event
2. Gambling/Lottery system for skins
3. Significant issues with the dungeons (MK being one of them)
4. Clocktower was far harder than it really needed to be
5. Event was shorter than any other MMo
6. No support/care for people affected by Sandy
7. Required very excessive amounts of grinding (Master Carver Title for example)
8. Event was too hardcore, casual players and people who work etc..was overlooked

Putting aside that a couple of those things on your list are legitimate (it was obvious the content wasn’t properly play-tested, and I hope that Anet does so in the future), half your “list of problems” is either subjective, or downright manipulative.

2. Anet doesn’t get a monthly fee from its playerbase, so there needs to be a way to drum up gem sales. I’m sorry if you feel gipped because you didn’t get your special snowflake pants in a chest, but there are plenty on the trading post that you can buy if you didn’t win anything.

4. I completed the clock tower dozens of times (I lost track after the first 6-8 runs), between my Norn, Sylvari, and Asura. “Harder than it needed to be” is so subjective that listing it as an “issue” for the halloween event is laughable. It was intentionally created to be difficult, and even though there were some bugs to be worked out, you not being able to complete it doesn’t make the tower a bad event.

6. No MMO anywhere is going to bend over backward for people who are affected by a natural disaster. If they did it for people affected by Sandy, it would be a PR nightmare if they didn’t do it for every single future natural disaster where they have customers. Not only that, but you can’t force the entire playerbase to suffer through an event that is arbitrarily extended for the sake of a small fraction of players, especially when you’re trying to prepare the servers for a new event that’s going to show up less than two weeks later.

7. No part of the event was “required.” Between the labrynth, two pvp games, Ascent to Madness, and the costume brawl thing, there was plenty of content for those who didn’t want to do any grinding. The fact that there was a grind present for one part of the event does not diminish the rest of the event. You chose to do the grind, so suck it up.

8. See #7. The only “hardcore” part of this even was the tower. And maybe the scavenger hunt, depending on whether or not you caved and searched google.

neolith.4573:

Cyric.7485:

I kind of agree for the sake of simplicity and kind of disagree because I don’t think being lazy should be justified.

Because playing the game instead of reading the forums is laziness. Yeah, right.

If an announcement is that important, it should have been ingame. They have already been mailing every char about the different acts – why was that information excluded?

MMO developers have forums for several reasons; one of those is so they can keep the playerbase updated with news, patch notes, and upcoming events. No MMO anywhere ever spams players in-game with information like that.

Tearthy Flame.1463:

from a choice at Character Creation my Norn character had a mission where he had to help fix what he had done after getting terriblely drunk with a Charr and they did stupid things like driveing around a Charr Military Weapon of War. And a witness saw my Norn and the Charr and quoted what my character said (In my signature below my message i quote what my character said while Drunk) and the Charr commented on remembering the tree being stupid.

I love what my character said, they probly ran into a tree!

lol I totally loved that line. “I don’t take insults from a tree! Have at you, leafy!”

Jrunyon.3012:

Why does the whole event have to be you getting some kind of rare item?
Theres the horns, theres the witches hat, theres the first and second books and there was tons and tons of fun to be had, but I suppose you missed out on that because you didnt have the crossing on your character right?

Come on man.. They added those items as EXTRAS, something people get lucky with or something people work towards. Not everything has to be a handout.

This event went WAY beyond what I was expecting and what Im used to with other events, and I think a lot of people agree with me. Maybe this isnt the game for you if you cant enjoy free extra content added into an already amazing game.

Unfortunately, the actual problem isn’t that the rewards were placed on an RNG. It’s that they weren’t soul/account-bound. Completely undermines the crafting skills when a 200-ish gold item is being sold on the trading post for 20-30 gold.

On-topic, I got some random exotic shield, the light and medium Mad King’s Mittens, and Arachnophobia. I also got a couple random 78+ rares from the top floor trash mobs, but I salved them for ectos.

ZenDad.4671:

I sympathize that you are frustrated you missed it. They tried to tell a story in 4 acts and in order for them to do that, it was necessary that they closed the portal and ended his threat so that during Act 4 he could be walking around LA. By doing this they put the story before the action. It’s an unusual choice for game devs.

I do think they could have handled it by giving access to it through the Mad King’s realm. Like a portal inside the labyrinth would have worked.

This was the first real major event of the game and to be sure between the broken achievement, the general frustration with the jump puzzle, and the tons of feedback about things like item drops, expense of crafting items, and yes, the removal of the dungeon before the event ended there were a lot of lessons for ANet to learn. Hopefully the next big event they have planned to launch later this month will benefit from this experience, and hopefully next year they will use this same event again so that people can get a chance to see/get what they missed.

People will always piss and moan when a developer doesn’t cater to exactly what they like/want. This isn’t a reason to completely change up their approach to design. The halloween event was fantastic, all 4 acts.

There are a few flaws that should be considered for next time (tower bugs and character sight issues, undermining crafters, breaking the economy… again), but “I didn’t get my achievement, because I couldn’t be buggered to log in for three days, and Anet should cater to my whims,” is not one of them.

Daboom.1987:

Thereon.3495:

First off there’s no issue with the chest in the dungeon. Saying its hard to get to is like saying its hard to sit on a chair because the cat is there.

As for the topic of jumping puzzles I really wish people would understand why they are in the game. It is content that is quick to make, imaginative and provides the vast majority with a challenge, some fun or both. Its free content and still people complain. If you dont like jumping puzzles dont do them! You get a silly achievement and (for all except Clocktower) a bunch of green loot so its not like those that can do them are somehow gaining a headstart. I get frustrated, I swear and curse at the screen and some are downright horrible to do…but overall im having a lot of fun. Took me 4 hours to do the Clocktower but I did it and the sense of achievement was awesome because I made up my mind that I was going to do it and wouldnt stop until I got through it. Its the same but on a smaller scale with the smaller puzzles.

In summary: why criticise free content? Personally I think the powers that be deserve a rather large pint of beer for their work up to and including the Halloween event. I have never seen this amount of detail and love put into free content in any game. Sure things havent been 100% perfect (IMO Clocktower should have an easy mode for example) but if this is the amount of effort put into every event…this game has very easily paid for itself and i’ll be happy to buy future expansions. Its pretty much at the “Shut up and take my money!” stage already….

1. They get 40k karma head start (cost of a exotic). 2. The content is not free. I payed 50 euro for my game.

1. Putting aside the fact that the item itself isn’t that great (power, condam, MF… all on a skin that’s already in the game for a hell of a lot less effort, not to mention it’s soulbound and can’t be salvaged), exotics are also easily found on the TP for as little as 1-2g a piece. You can’t just take the highest number you can come up with and apply it to your argument like it’s a binary decision (either you pay 40k karma, or you don’t get anything!). That’s disingenuous and misleading at best, and outright manipulative at worst.

2. The content is free. You paid 50 euro for the game, as it came in the box. Any additions made after the fact are free. You do not pay a monthly fee for this game, and any gems you buy are currency to purchase in-game items from the cash shop.

Account.9832:

Mario.6309:

A group of level 2’s may be able to complete the dungeon, but not with the same effectiveness and quickness as a group of 80’s.

The choice isn’t between “a group of level 2s” and “a group of level 80s”. If even the guy starting the group was level 2, I don’t think he’d have the nerve to say “only level 80s allowed”.

The choice is between a group where all characters must be level 80 and a group where some characters might be 79 or lower.

Since most players don’t even leave their starting zones until they’re level 15, chances are your average “non-80” player hanging around Lion’s Arch will be somewhere around level 47.

And a level 47 player will have a total damage output close to 75% of a level 80 with a similar build / stat balance (in fact, some stats scale better if you’re lower level, but let’s not get into the obscure mess that is GW2’s stat scaling). Which means his presence would “cost” the party, at most, one extra minute in a 10-15 minute dungeon run (25% of one fifth of the party).

On the other hand, have someone kill a scarecrow at a “bad” moment (or pull a ton of spiders and bring them to a player who is trying to rally, or some similarly dumb move), and you’ve just wasted more than that.

Of course, people playing level 47 characters can be just as dumb as people playing level 80 characters. My point isn’t that the level 47 character is better. My point is that it’s not going to be a determining (or even particularly relevant) factor, and people who think it will are displaying their own ignorance and “WoW-mindedness”.

It’s completely their right, of course. Just as it’s my right to not want to play with them.

However, you can’t determine the competence of a player without seeing them play. On the other hand, you can determine a player’s level quite easily.

Since there’s a clear, definable difference in damage output between the lower and higher level characters (and thus a clear, definable difference in the total clear speed of the instance), it’s understandable that players would prefer to control the known factor.

There’s just as likely to be good and bad players at level 47 as at level 80, but since there’s no metric by which other players can make that distinction before inviting them to the group, it’s easier (and makes more sense) to just assume that the person who has more play time and better gear is going to help the group more.

This isn’t some sort of philosophical debate about which sort of players are more likely to be “better” than other players. It’s a numbers game, and it should be understood that those who care about speed runs are going to go with the choice that is statistically more likely to increase their run speed.

Besides, if you pick a level 80, and they end up playing like complete idiots, there are plenty of other level 80s to pick from. It’s not like there’s a shortage of level cap players to run the instance, that a group has to resort to picking up a lower level player if somebody doesn’t work out.

Account.9832:

Greyfeld.7104:

But please, feel free to continue ranting. I know it can be therapeutic.

I’m not “ranting” at all. I’m telling you that my experience (of literally hundreds of dungeon runs, including dozens of AtM runs) is that bad level 80s can make a run a lot slower and more risky than lower-level characters played by someone with a clue.

And someone who thinks that having one character under level 80 (in a group of 5) is going to be the determining factor for their success are not the kind of people I would ever want to group with.

And I’m telling you that you’ve completely missed the entire point of my post, and I’m not going to get into an argument with you when you’ve already proven that you don’t understand what context means.

Bananasmile.4126:

After 2 days of trial and error, my twitch muscles finally got it. It’s definitely beatable, I’m finishing it 1 out of 3 tries at the moment…I’m currently farming it for ToTs.

The thing is, it’s like riding a bicycle, once you get it, you get it, you can do it again…and again. I’m not a special player, I’m not skilled or PRO or anything like that, I’m just persistent. That said, good luck, and don’t give up. The feeling of beating something like this is worth it, boosts your confidence a lot as a player.

If you have a level 20 elementalist laying around, you can pick up the chests on the way up to the top for an extra 9-13 bags per respawn

Account.9832:

Greyfeld.7104:

Actually, your actions and this post prove that you’re, in fact, the one that doesn’t understand how GW2 works.

I guess you think that applies to Arena Net too, since they labelled it as a “level 2 instance”. And I have no problem doing it with level 29 characters (or lower, for that matter), so it looks like I have at least some vague notion of how GW2 works…

Greyfeld.7104:

Sub-30 characters don’t have Elite skills unlocked.

And those 10 or 15 seconds that your elite skill lasts (after its 3-minute cooldown) make all the difference, right?

And gear doesn’t scale upward.

And your ability to dodge, make proper use of combo fields, clear any aggroed spiders quickly instead of having tunnel vision and letting them hit you while you spam the boss, or generally have a clue doesn’t scale up with your character level.

Oh how I wish it did…

I appreciate your counterargument that completely ignores the context and point of my entire post. But please, feel free to continue ranting. I know it can be therapeutic.

Account.9832:

Whenever I see someone asking for “level 80s only” (or asking for specific classes), I add them to my block list. And note that I have one character of each class, and most of them are level 80.

It’s not that I feel excluded, it’s just that anyone making that kind of demand clearly doesn’t understand how GW2 works, and by adding them to my block list I avoid making the mistake of inviting them for one of my groups later.

Actually, your actions and this post prove that you’re, in fact, the one that doesn’t understand how GW2 works.

No matter how much Anet touts their system that supposedly “makes all characters equal, no matter what their actual levels,” it’s a load of crap. Sub-30 characters don’t have Elite skills unlocked. Sub-20 characters don’t have all their Utility skills unlocked. And gear doesn’t scale upward.

My level 42 thief’s bleeds deal a little more than half the amount of damage my level 80 ranger’s bleeds deal, while in the labrynth. My level 20 elementalist can barely solo the level 80 mobs in the labrynth, with a health pool that’s literally half of my ranger’s, and damage output that looks like I’m tickling the enemies with a feather.

Yes, sub-80s can complete Ascent to Madness. Hell, people have proven that a sub-80 can solo the instance, given enough time and dedication. But some people are chain-running the instance for the chance of exotics that drop from the chest, and so they want max level characters, who can all pull maximum weight.

This is not a slight against lower level characters, but an attempt to maximize run speed, based on the reality of how the game’s mechanics actually work.

The problem with these weapons isn’t that they’re available from the chests. Afterall, they’re obviously still extremely rare drops.

The problem is that they’re not soul/account-bound.

Creating a set of unique skins that you can only get from a crafter? Genius. Allowing players to get the skins for free during a limited period of time if they’re exceptionally lucky? Acceptable. Allowing players to take those free skins and sell them to other players? Ridiculous.

The crafting system is already completely FUBAR because Anet didn’t take into account how making all content exceptionally easy and flooding the market with high quality gear would effect the crafting skills. Giving them unique skins that only they can make, to create an actual crafting economy, would be a perfect bandaid for the system (since a complete overhaul is unlikely).

But once again, Anet proves that they’re completely incapable of monitoring and adjusting their own systems.

I, for one, will by buying The Crossing for my necromancer before the event is over. I had every intention of doing the legwork and putting forth the effort to farm up the materials and gold necessary to craft it for myself; but it was pointed out to me yesterday that I can just pick up the staff for 25g off the trading post, so why the hell would I bother putting in that much effort for the same outcome?