Dude, Tassi apparently has a head injury, because I had this exact conversation with her last year, and she reacts to Edrick like, “WUT, I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF YOU!” Then again, she seems to live in haunted ruins, so who knows what horrors she’s seen over the last year.
The part that I found the most funny about that instance – both last year and this – is that supposedly the Mad King erased Thorn from history and yet Tassi says something like “what was it that Thorn is sensitive to?” Big continuity break there.
But yea, I don’t understand why the devs have the same exact holiday instance again this year. They were so adamant against the SAB because it doesn’t fit with the LS…
Literally repeating history doesn’t make any more sense.
Thorn is a family name. Mad King Thorn is Edrick Thorn’s father.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Actually only something like 1/10th or less of the skins are in the gemstore…I’ve read the exact number somewhere…but i can’t find it right now.
Yeah, and as far as medium armor goes 90% of the desirable skins for females are from the gem store… unless you love trench coats.
Strider, krytan and aetherblade are 90% of the desirable skins? Huh. What about cultural armor? Sneakthief? The three orders? Spend some time in your wardrobe, maybe.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
meanwhile players that missed the last years haloween and a bunch of new players that never even heard of it fully enjoy todays content and are not making posts like this one about how “LS” and non permanent content is unfair
I have to guess this is the biggest reason for the repeat. With China now playing, if we include them in the equation. Still, if that’s the case, why didn’t they repeat the first year instead? Too hard to solo?
Maybe it’s just the developers are busy with Living Story.
Hope so.
Maybe you answered your own question. With so many new people they don’t want to continue the story this year. Next year will continue it after people see the beginning.
Yeah, I begin all my books, movies and TV shows in the second chapter/season. Great logic.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Dude, Tassi apparently has a head injury, because I had this exact conversation with her last year, and she reacts to Edrick like, “WUT, I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF YOU!” Then again, she seems to live in haunted ruins, so who knows what horrors she’s seen over the last year.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
I do appreciate that it isn’t the greatest news for players who have already completed their festival storyline. Only because I have an alt account that I didn’t play the story on is the opportunity available for me.
Positive outcomes of the farm:
1) since it’s a solo instance, there is no toxic zerg mob yelling at people for trying to complete events.
2) people buying thousands of bags will benefit from the increased supply.
On that note, I’ve created a second video, showing how to farm with 2 balms per run instead of one. Note: I am only doing this farm, and posting the videos, because a red post officially stated that this isn’t an exploit.
Don’t worry about it. I’d be doing the farm endlessly, too. Not your fault you’re not locked out, or that ANET has given you their blessing. Take advantage of a good situation. It sucks to be locked out, but being mad at people who aren’t locked out won’t accomplish anything.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Keep this thread alive, I want to know if Anet actually cares about activities at all. :/
I usually give them the benefit of the doubt, but it really just seems like they ignored all of the feedback from last year.
They’re not going to fix Lunatic Inquisition, because it’s only going to be around for two weeks. They already fixed the bug that had people not transforming from their regular skills.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
How unprofessional is this? How much effort could it possibly take to just say A or B? It doesn’t even cost them time or money! It’s just being polite to your customers.
They’ve never even bothered saying this about the Super Adventure Box, for which they sold the infinite continue coin in the gem store over a year ago which was the last time it was seen. This is small potatoes by comparison.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Good luck getting an answer on this! It’s been gone nearly two months now and there’s been no word. My guess is that since it doesn’t effect their bottom line and no review sites have picked up on the missing segment, it’s unlikely to get a fix anytime soon. Fingers crossed that I’m wrong.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
The last of my October gaming money went to Steam. There’s plenty of Halloween stuff I’d like to get in GW2, but at the rate my time in-game is decreasing, it’s probably better that I find my entertainment elsewhere.
I really wish the April patch had removed traits from the game entirely. Alternately, I wish they hadn’t grandfathered anyone in. If everyone had to obtain their traits this way, I suspect this would’ve been handled about six months ago.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
The drops are MUCH improved over last year’s event, and that makes me really happy. The one thing I miss about last year’s version? My server. I know I could taxi into a more populated instance of the labyrinth, but that wasn’t an issue last year. I can’t tell you how often I go into the lab and see 6 or more doors on the map and get no responses in map chat.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Man it stinks that ambient creatures only spawn in the story instance and not anywhere else in the world. Also its such a shame that there isn’t a recipe for the maize balm that is made from the ingrediants that drop from the tot bags that would allow you to do this ambient thing all year even after the story is gone. Oh wait there is
IKR? It DOES suck that so many people are ‘locked’ out of this though. Remember that one time when you used to be able to roll new characters and play through the personal story again?
It’s not the PERSONAL story instance, it’s the halloween story instance. At least get your sarcasm right.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
As of today, Friday, the developers have been actively working on creation of the Custom option. They then will put it through a testing pass after which it will be rolled out into the game. We think you’ll like the option, and I believe you’ll be pleased with the timeframe for this implementation, as well.
Once again, “We think you’ll like the option,” and “you’ll be pleased with the timeframe for implementation” are not communication. They’re pedantic instances of informing the playerbase what they should feel, and how ANet expects them to respond. This implies that, if the playerbase does NOT like the option, or is NOT pleased with the timeframe of implementation, it’s the players’, not ANet’s, fault.
Secondly, this response in no way communicates that ANet is truly listening to its playerbase. Why? I’m glad you asked.
The posts on October 22 saying that the change was en route came only after two prominent gaming critics, and Dulfy herself expressed extreme displeasure with the change. What’s this communicate? It communicates ANet cares only about its PR, not about its players.
It took two days for the developers to actually start working on a change. That the option was never even considered in the design phase says that the Devs were content to let things slide the way they were until enough outrage (read, bad PR) couldn’t let them continue. Now that the Devs are working on a change, it’s two full days after the acknowledgement was posted. Maybe this is a fast turnaround for ANet. But either way, it certainly doesn’t communicate that the player’s opinions are valuable—especially with how fast hotfixes have come down for other content.
(THIS IS FOR THE PLAYERS)Stop congratulating ANet for listening! The reversion of this change does not in any way prove that ANet has changed its stance or practice on listening to and communicating with the playerbase. All it proves is that, when ANet’s bottom line is threatened by external bad PR, it’ll get its rear in gear.
Once again, in the interest of communication, here’s what Gaile’s post could have been to solve many of the above issues:
Sorry for the slow start, but we finally have a team working on a fix for the gem converter. The proposed solution looks like <blank>. Despite starting on it today, we anticipate rolling out the change <specific release date>. If experience any setbacks, we will notify you ASAP with an update.
Would that be so hard?
This seriously makes me want to cry. They get results after forty-eight hours, and it’s not good enough.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Two days? Are you kidding me? It’s ‘too little, too late’ after TWO DAYS? Traits have been wrecked for six months. You should be on your knees, praising treesus that this was addressed at all. Two friggin’ days.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.
As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.
Can’t say I’m surprised at that response. Most players did the dungeon like normal but a very small percentage got lucky and found out about this before they did it. Now they get to reap the rewards while everyone else is out of luck. In Anet’s eyes it must be deemed okay since its not everyone using it but just a few players. Ignore the fact they get to make massive bank on it while everyone else is basically out of luck.
Anet has already shown they don’t really like to give everyone a even playing field, be it this patch or past ones. Either remove the critters the first time you enter or give us a option to re-play it. If you deem this as a non exploit then we all should have the chance to do it.
You have the freedom to make a new character, level it up and get to that story instance.
Just because a farming method is based on dumb, unrepeatable luck – it’s not exploitative.
The instance is account wide, last time I checked. So we have the freedom to buy a new account and then farm it. Yeah, no thanks.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
This is simply false, and very easy to test for yourself:
1) Get some Maize Balm
2) Find a spot to kill the elementals you spawn
3) In the beginning, each elemental has a 100% drop chance of a trick or treat bag. Not a single one will fail to yield a bag.
4) Keep killing them. Your mileage may vary, but after a certain amount of time, say 1 hour, the drop rate of trick or treat bags will fall to 0%. Not a single bag will drop no matter how many more elementals you kill.
This is far, far too extreme of a result to be cognitive bias.
I’m just telling you what the economist says.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Linen farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.
Ambient farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.
Linen farm: some players don’t want want to farm linen. Farmers do this for them and sell on TP. People pay market price.
Ambient farm: some players don’t want/can no longer farm ambients. Farmers do this for them, and sell results on TP. People pay market price.
Linen farm: mass bans.
Ambient farm: Dev-approved.
???
This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the situation. Nice to see the game is flexible with their rules.
ETA: Diminishing Returns: Here’s what John Smith has to say about DR.
I’ve not read this whole thread so forgive me if this is answered elsewhere. I want to ask a few questions.
1. Is the loot system currently set up so people who play less are more likely to get an awesome RNG drop? There have been numerous posts like, “my friend logged on after 5 months and got X, Y, Z drop while I’ve been playing every day and got nothing!” I want to know if the way it works currently is that those who play lots get decreasing loot in proportion to playtime. Why would ANET do this? To keep people chasing the carrot.
John answered that question in a different thread, there arent any account modifiers.
what he is speaking of wouldnt be an account modifier, and it probably does exist, mildy. There is Diminishing returns on drops and it decays pretty slowly. You will in fact see more drops in your first few hours after not having played for awhile.
They will never tell us exactly what is happening, but your friend who plays rarely will basically have no DR for almost all of their playtime.
Still catching up, but I wanted to stop to be clear. No to this. This doesn’t happen, it’s a cognitive bias. There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.
No DR active on any given day, folks.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.
…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.
sad now.
Don’t give them any ideas. :P
Sadly it might be only way to get “the right” people outraged by the trait system since all of us talking about it now for 7 months don’t seem to hold as much weight as those people over on the gem exchange post.
It wasn’t the people in the gem exchange thread that got them to start working on a fix. It was the review sites that blasted the game and the people that chimed in on those sites. You are correct in saying that the correct people need to be outraged for change to happen though. We need more review sites to get in on this.
Well, I’ve contacted the owner of the review site that convinced me to get GW2. I’ll let you know how that goes.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
I don’t think you have the right understanding of what a “reasonable” sample size is for these bags. For example, I opened 11k of them in the last hour, and got 3 unlimited tonics and on the 4th last bag or so i got the green poly-amulet. Still it’s not enough to know if i was lucky or not. With these super-low drop chances, you would need hundreds of thousands of bags to get a somewhat reliable picture of drop rates.
Yeah, and the way to do that is to pool data from many sources.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
I won’t be adding to this thread any longer as I don’t feel like ANET intends to address this issue, given the timely responses to many other issues in the six+ months since this happened. Best of luck, all.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
After all the critique which quite often involves people that have outright claimed that they haven’t played for months or even have the game installed I was thinking about the question in the title.
Would it be possible to only allow active accounts (such as having been logged on the last x days/week) to write on the forums? Everyone would still be able to read of course, but I have a feeling it might create a better environment for everyone here if you actually had to actively play the game in order to join in on the discussions.
As seen with the NPE change there were massive amounts of hatred posted, quite much of it from people that didn’t even try it before (either due to not wanting to start over or due to not actually playing anymore).
Any thoughts about this?
(Oh I know people will hate this thread, if only on principle because I created it, but thought it was worth a shot to see what people thought about it.)
Or maybe they can effectively moderate their forum using the appropriate channels that are currently set up. If someone is posting on the forum and you don’t want them posting here, there’s a simple solution, ANET: Banhammer ahoy! Using such a broad criteria as “hasn’t logged in since X date” is senseless and unnecessary.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
As much as I love seeing a new set come around, I’d love to see the return of the Halloween weapons. It’d be great to have a full set of spooky or silly themed weapons this time, with the four (or five?) from last year included, at the 1 ticket price again. I’ve been hoping to be able to get the silly scimitar this year.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
I’ve updated the pros/cons with these things. Thanks for the feedback. I’ve also outlined my ideal solution. I’d appreciate any feedback about that, too.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Here’s my ideal solution, which is an aggregate of many great ideas in the traits megathread.
Undo the nerf to low-level mobs from the April feature patch.
The first trait point is awarded at level 15 and every 5 levels thereafter. All adept major traits are unlocked at level 20.
Master traits become available at level 40.
One in each line is unlocked automatically.
There are a series of trait challenges around the world in level-appropriate areas.
They function like skill challenges and can be started upon arrival.
They award a trait point to be spent as the user desires- tier specific to Master or Grandmaster levels.
The new traits are still tied to their events and cannot be unlocked with the trait points, but they can be unlocked with gold, karma, or laurels.
Any other newly added traits will follow this pattern.
The Grandmaster tier opens up at level 60, or 70 at the latest.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Weakening the PvE enemies created a steep power curve
Push back to level 30 is tedious, especially on trait-reliant professions
Pattern of obtaining trait points (every 6 levels, etc)
Cost increase from 2g70s to 43g and 360 skillpoints
Bugged unlock events
So much waiting around
Map complete for a single trait
Level inappropriate tasks
Dungeon and group content unlocks
Prohibitive to alt creation
Actively discourages build diversity
Flattens the experience into a single roadmap to character progression
Does not allow for choice of game mode- PvE, PvP, WvW
Obsidian Sanctum for the fall damage trait? Really?
Is repetitive and generally not fun for the average player
Makes the entire trait system daunting and less accessible to new players
Renders the leveling experience (which was previously lauded as being one of the best) a race to reach level 80, just in order to be able to unlock many of the traits.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Remember that one time when you used to be able to roll new characters and play through the personal story again?
