Guild Wars 2

Double check that you have trained the elite spec — all the points were reset when they changed the elite from requiring 400 to 250 hero points.

Try to -repair your client:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments#-repair

Everyone I know who was locked out last night is back in, asleep, or got back in after repairing.

Rare stuff drops, um, rarely from harvesting. 2 from 600 tries seems low compared to Passiflora from Passion Fruit nodes, but then again, that’s why they added blooming passiflora nodes to Southsun.

You could use buffs to increase your chance of bonus, but I don’t think you’ll see a big difference.

Servanin.5021:

Guess i’m waiting for a price drop then.

I can’t remember the last time character slots were on sale. They weren’t in the last 2-3 special offer weeks (anniversary of the game, anniversary of GW1, etc).

In other words, I wouldn’t wait for a sale — by the time it happens, the gold:gem ratio will have increased (probably) by as much as you might have saved. Or, at the very least, don’t wait too long to convert gold to gems — you know that everyone and their sister will be trying to get in on the sale, too.

ImpishX.8702:

I’m currently playing a Thief and am unsure if I should even worry about crafting yet. I assume if it’s important late game I should start now (I just reached the hub in the human starter zone with all the crafting vendors).

I assume I need weapon smithing for making Legendary weapons.

Also is cooking any good or can you just get by buying food from the Auction House? If it’s not good, what would be a good secondary next to Weapon Smithing?

You don’t need crafting to progress your character. Due to the efficiency of the trading system, there are only a few times when crafting is significantly cheaper than buying (using custom offers) on the TP. Those times are when new items are introduced (such as this week) or something changes in people’s favorite builds (thus spiking or nerfing demand) (and this also happened this week).

Take your time with the game. As you get comfortable with your character(s), you will begin to see that there are opportunities to do stuff with crafting that might interest you.

There was (is) a bug that is affecting how many people appear on the same map in the new zones. As that gets fixed/adjusted properly, there will be plenty of people (even last night, it was a lot better than at launch).

You don’t need favor to begin gaining favor; you just need to do the same missions that used to cost upgrades + influence. That allows you to earn favor to apply towards whatever upgrades that interest you.

The only thing that’s changed is that you don’t get favor passively (the way we got influence); you always have to focus on gaining it (whereas influence accrued from logins and from doing dungeons, events, etc together). Admittedly, that’s a big philosophical change in how guilds gain currency and it might take some time to get used to.

There’s no question that the new maps are more difficult than the old maps. But that was what people said about Southsun, Dry Top, Silverwastes, and even Orr (when they first got there). Later, the community (overall) figured out how to survive and then thrive with the new maps/content. This typically takes weeks or even months, since it takes us a while to realize our original builds + playstyles aren’t suited for the new content and some more time to adapt.

tl;dr it’s too soon to state whether the game is “too hard” or “just right” or “too easy” now.

He’s spawned every instance that I’ve stayed in, so it might be just one bugged instance. If it happens again, type /ip and post the number here.

Chris Cleary (anet dev) posted on reddit that the team was aware and is working on a fix. As I type this, some people are in without issue, some are in without being able to change maps easily, and most are seemingly unable to get in.

Personally, I’m taking a break for an hour and crossing my fingers that all will be well when I return.

Doctor.5068:

Time stand still for no one. The quest chains go faster with more people, but they aren’t supposed to always succeed. It realistically acts like it should. If you don’t gather enough resources b4 nightfall, you won’t be well prepared.

I agree. This is similar to other pre-HoT zones and events. Over time, the community will get more organized and you’ll see more successes and fewer failures.

This is a huge game with a lot of moving parts trying to appeal to a lot of different people. It’s to be expected that some of us prefer a long journey and others want to get to our destination quickly, so we can do fun things there.

What confuses me is when people claim to enjoy the journey and then rush to finish. That strikes me as the worst of both extremes, whereas I think that ANet is really trying to strike a balance with the best of both worlds.

Lots of people are willing to help folks get their guild hall. After that, you can still do missions to progress the guild — easier if you get help, but some bounties (for example) can be soloed or duoed.

I haven’t heard of anyone else having that happen (not in /guild or /map etc). The symptoms sound as if you are having a browser issue (since the TP is just a front-end for a webpage).

Double check your default browser — WinX users have reported TP problems when using IE (and there are two places you need to adjust it: via internet options and via the control panel). Chrome and Firefox seem reliable for this. (A quick test to see if this is the issue: try using the /wiki command in-game; if that causes a similar issue, you know that you need to adjust your default browser).

It can be also helpful to clear out the TP cache. However, that happens automatically now with each new update so that’s less likely to be an issue. The cache is located in your roaming app folder.

If none of the above fixes the issue, I’d contact support. They are really good at troubleshooting this sort of thing.

GL.

For future reference, you can also try contacting support. Depending on the circumstances, they might be able to help.

ANet’s aware of the issue with fractal skins in the wardrobe not unlocking the collection properly. They are working on a fix; there’s no ETA yet, so hang tight.

(Source: my own support ticket on the topic.)

ANet is aware of this (according to my friend’s service ticket); no ETA for a fix.

In the meantime, leave out one vista or POI from each zone (if you have core world completion). If you already completed the zone(s), hang tight for the fix — in the past (for similar situations), ANet has done the right thing to make the rewards retroactive.

There are a couple of sites that do the math for you. Generally speaking, opening ToT bags has been an efficient way of getting luck if you don’t count the time it takes managing all the other drops.

When I did the calculations pre-HoT, including pre-Halloween, post-Halloween, and during Halloween, the price of luck via ToT was decent compared to other sources. The big advantage: just buy the one item (ToTs). The big disadvantage: to keep costs low, you have to sell off (or make use) of everything else in the bags.

That’s why it might be cheaper to sell the bags, buy ecto, salvage and hold on to the crystalline dust until forced to sell (or the price goes back up). You’ll spend more upfront (and until you sell the dust), but you also won’t have as many things to manage along the way. (Remember to use silver-fed or mystic to salvage: same amount of luck, but more dust than basic/copper-fed.)

Of course, if you like opening the bags in the hope of getting something shiny, continue to do that. For me, that’s its own reward, since I love the anticipation. I got a lot of luck that way.

This is an “eye of the beholder” situation.

• Your choice of monitor and your monitor/game settings will affect how much detail you see (with any color and especially any of the blacks or shadow dyes).
• Some people assume that Shadow Abyss is meant to be too dark to see details.
• Some people assume that if you don’t like the look of a dye, you would choose another with similar attributes, especially since there are 50 shades of black now. (well, a lot, maybe not quite 50).

For me, all of the shadow colors are too dark for most dye channels, so I use them sparingly and with dyes that show off details better.

Kill.3458:

I hope there isn’t so all these 100% rep guilds get phased out lol

There will continue to be reasons for 100% rep guilds as long as guilds exist in the game; it was never just about chat or influence.

However, on the topic: I can’t see any value to the guild for me to rep; the value to me is whether the guild is offering bonuses or not (and how much chat is going on — easier to rep the guild that chats the most so I have to type the least).

Thanks for the post, which covers more than just Giant Eyes — very informative.

Rule of thumb for the next month:

• If a generic crafting material or crafted item has jumped in price, someone has discovered that it’s used for guild halls or collections.

This isn’t the first such item and it won’t be the last.

It happened last year, too. I think for [reasons], ANet doesn’t want to revisit this.

Personally, I think that low-drop rate items should always have an alternative value, ideally trading on the TP, but at least salvageable, exchangeable, or forgeable — nothing in this game should ever be worth more after deleting (in this case, deleting restores an inventory slot that would otherwise be lost).

It’s okay to account-bind a limited amount of things that are crafted or otherwise ‘built’, so that there’s a reason for removing them from the economy. I don’t agree with ANet that things like the mini gwyn are both rare and valueless.

A couple of people reported it yesterday (alas, those posts have been superseded by various repeat/duplicate posts about other topics).

I just got an email from support: they are aware this is bugged, they are working on a fix (that will retroactively update our collection/achievement), and there is no ETA.

A part of the intended design (weird though it might be) is that the TP prioritizes “how soon” over “how many”. I think that ‘feature’ alone explains your experience (see below).

The only way I’ve found to handle it: buy up current stock (at whatever price I’m willing to pay) and then make a buy order for the remaining (doing the math in my head or via calc.exe). It’s annoying, although I have met people who prefer it this way (since it minimizes the time they spend on the TP — go figure).

Say you want to buy 250 of an item at 1 silver:

• If there are 200 at 1 silver and 50 at 1.5 silver, you’ll get those 250. Immediate result.
• If there are 200 at 1 silver at 50 at 1.99 silver, you’ll get all of those. Again, an immediate result.
• If there are none available at one silver, you can place an order for 250. No immediate result possible.

These results would also change if someone else is asking for the same item at the same price.

Hope that helps.

Short story: if you can afford the gems and you plan to play “a lot”, these are great deals and I would recommend spending the gems (rather than converting to gold) on at least one of these packages. If you can only afford one package, I’d recommend the more-expensive character boost over the account version: best overall deal and has the extremely useful salvage-o-matic (same utility as any basic kit), the everlasting gathering tools, and some bonus items.

Account jump-start:
Recommendation: buy, if you plan to play “a lot” (details below).

• 30 Account-Bound Unidentified Dyes — worth about
• 15 Transmutation Charges — not worth anything in my opinion, since these eventually pile up
• 2 Bag Slot Expansions — 800 gems at retail price (400 each)
• 2 Bank Tab Expansions — 1,200 gems retail (600 each)
• 10 Black Lion Chest Keys — not worth anything unless you love opening stuff to see what happens (these are like lotto tickets: no monetary value, except if you are lucky)
• 2000 gems (worth 290g if you convert the gems to gold instead?)

The two pairs of inventory/storage expansions alone are worth 2,000 gems, so this package is worth getting for new players who feel they are likely to play “a lot” for more than a month or two — everyone ends up wanting more space.

Character Bump
Recommendation: buy if you expect to do some farming

• 3 Bag slots — 1,200 gems retail
• Copper Fed Salvage -o- matic — 800 gems retail
• 3 unlimited use tools — 3,000 gems retail
• 10 Transmutation charges — no value imo
• 10 Experience Scrolls — handy, but not worth spending gems for
• 3500 gems (worth 500g if you convert the gems to gold instead?)

5,000 gem value for 3,500? That is a mighty tempting discount. It’s absolutely worth it for people who do any sort of farming: it’s annoying to have to restock gathering tools, salvage kits, and (as above) everyone ends up wanting more storage.

Congrats!

Market prices are going to change, but it’s impossible to say if they are going to spike up, crash down, go topsy-turvy, or…what. We won’t know until tonight.

Here are my speculative recommendations:

• Hold off on spending karma or badges — you might find better uses for them.
• Spend half the gold (you set aside or expected to spend for exotics) on custom buy offers and save the other half — this way, you’ll get a few pieces and have some gold left over to look after the patch hits.
• Sometime “tomorrow,” post an update here and I’m sure some of us reading the forums will be able to offer advice or help.

Good luck.

Use any consumable influence you have now; there’s no guarantee it will work tonight.

The theory is that the bulk of the core game (and probably even HoT) works for small guilds and so there should be some things for guilds that require more than a handful of members.

That said, as His Eminence suggests: there are ways around some of the requirements, including asking others for help. I’m sure people will be offering this as a service (i.e. ask for payment) and I’m equally sure those that are a little bit patient will be able to find volunteers in-game, via LFG, the forums, Reddit, etc.

Guardian of Angels.9867:

What would be pro’s and cons on this system.

Does this mean the end of the 100% rep rule guilds, or are there reasons to not change away from it?

There will never be an end to 100%-rep guilds, because there are still going to be reasons to ask people put their focus on a single guild.

• A guild with 400+ members needs to be sure there will be room for active members.
• A guild with a specific focus (WvW, RP, etc) will want people to ‘belong’, which requires participation.
• A guild with a egotist GL will want its members to bow down to praise Caesar. (OK, that’s actually a bad reason, even though there will be such guilds and people will join anyhow.)

There will also never be an end to people asking questions like this, even though the only people affected by 100%-rep-policy guilds are the members.

Or tl;dr:

• If you hate the idea of 100%-rep, don’t join a guild that asks it of you.

Xbon.9086:

JediYoda.1275:

I don’t think they have ever reset the TP as it would disrupt the economy, I know they have cleaned up the buy/sell orders before.

i THINK (I could be wrong…) when they moved from the old TP system to the new one in the first feature/content pack, that all trading post orders were reset, I can’t entirely remember right now though

No, they never reset orders, let alone all. (That would be a nightmare for them as well as for us.)

Plus, there’s no reason to reset orders. Most of the top traders have probably already taken down various orders and put up new ones, cleverly investing and finger-crossingly speculating. The rest of us are going to be in for some big surprises when we find out we have bought a ton of stuff we forgot we had on order or sold another ton of stuff for well below market rates.

Ranatoa.4869:

No, the gem store only offers cosmetics and convenience items. Changing that would change the game and not in a good way.

I consider not having to ‘level’ another specialization to be a convenience; this would not fundamental affect the type of products available in the gem shop.

That said, a lot of similar convenience items weren’t added to the game until later. I imagine the same will be true for hero points: on launch day, everyone starts on an equal footing; in a year, I’m sure 4th birthday will include items that assist with gaining hero points.

reapex.8546:

The boss was only alive for six seconds, Foulbear was not buffed like the other world bosses during the updates earlier this year. It is hard to receive credit on this boss.

It depends on the group. I’ve seen him last over a minute and keel over within 10 seconds. I’m sure it’s difficult to balance: too much and we have The Butcher (a fight that lasts forever, without being that interesting or fun).

Donari.5237:

/face palm

You’re right. I did have my bank open at the time but I had my Preview and Inventory open on top of it so nothing I did should have sent it there.

Phew!

/goes to close ticket

It’s not you — there’s a bug from a recent patch that causes any salvage kit that you are re-using to spontaneously move to the bank (and interestingly: it will move back again if you continue to use the kit).

With luck it gets solved with today’s “minor” update.

Daharahj.1325:

“We want to remove liquid gold from dungeons because it destroys the economy”"

Welp, guess I’m gonna dump 100 bucks for 1k gold instead of doing dungeons to prevent damaging the economy further.

It’s a little more complicated than that, of course:

• They are moving those liquid rewards to other content.
• They are rebalancing rewards so that more challenging content offers more substantive rewards than less challenging content. (I think at this point lots of us agree that dungeons are not very much of a challenge.)

Nightshade.5924:

Hi. Could you guys at ANet Please add a toggle for “Permanently Ignore” or something similar in regards to the SMS Ad that keeps popping up every couple of days when I launch the game?

I never intend to use SMS, so it’s quite frankly starting to annoy me that I can’t get rid of the prompt. Unless of course ANet is going to give me say 100 gems a month for doing the SMS signup…..

Nah. Not going to happen. So please provide us dinosaurs with the capability to permanently banish the SMS prompt.

Thanks.

They don’t want anyone to have that option. The number of “dinosaurs” who understand how to protect their account security is dwarfed by the number that don’t. Providing an easier opt-out would defeat the entire purpose of the current system.

It’s not that they aren’t sympathetic to you per se, it’s that you aren’t the only one who would choose the option and most of the others wouldn’t be aware of the trade-off they are making.

In the end, poor account security affects the entire community and so the game is better off with a one-size-fits-all policy, even though, as we all know, one size usually fits no one.

One thing I found that helps for repeating content with different characters is to go all out in making the skill set unique. For day-to-day PvE stuff, I tend to run face-roll builds that allow me to type messages and participate even while stuff dies quickly and there’s little risk of death-by-chat.

However, for leveling, I try to set up each prof to take advantage of class mechanics. This way, the approach is fresh, even if I’ve done the content 8x already. Minionmancer for necro maybe (since my typical PvE has no minions — but reverse that if you did MM before).

Of course, the other suggestions above are also good: crafting, EotM, PvP (on any toon, then transfer the level up items), and XP-boosting buffs. It’s more a matter of if you want to find a new approach or just get it over with — I’m sympathetic to both approaches.

Aggro mechanics in GW2 are similar to every other game except that it’s not consistent across foes and the weighting is different. As in other games, these are the types of things that the AI considers:

• Closest foe
• Currently-attacking foe
• Most damaging foe.
• Lowest-health foe
• Lowest-armor foe.
• Clustered foes
• In-range
• Underleveled-foes (e.g. L60 in an L80 zone)

However, not all foes consider each of these to be equally important. Lower-level and less-than-veteran foes tend to focus on closest targets; bosses (especially Mai Trin) tend to consider weakest targets and (for some attacks) the farthest.

Consequently, a lot of people are left with the impression there’s no aggro or that it’s random or entirely unpredictable. It’s none of that; it’s just that most of us can’t be bothered to run enough controlled experiments on the same foe/foe types to figure out the priorities for each situation.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Did you BUY the tier one helm, or did you get it from the level 20 Personal Story Reward? Most likely, you got it from the Personal Story reward. Go buy the helm from the vendor, and you should then have 13/18.

It’s a really annoying quirk of the system. The “specialty” armor requirement says, “soulbind 18 unique pieces of ____ cultural armor;” the game, however, requires you to purchase each.

Decrypter.1785:

The place where im buying HOT has changed its release date to 25th ? anyone heard anything ?

Unless you see a changed date on an official ANet site, that is just the retailer being confused. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last.

Gav.1425:

Anyone else feel rather shafted about our accumulated guild influence turning worthless on launch day?

I think the main issue is that we have no way to even spend it all before the change. I’m losing just under 350k influence which can translate to quite a lot of gold, if I could only convert it in time..

No, I don’t feel shafted:

• They alerted us ahead of time.
• They are providing a way to use the influence after Launch.

In any case, ANet didn’t design the influence system as a way to earn gold — just because some of us have figured some ways to monetize guild currency doesn’t mean ANet needs to make it easy for us.

(And why weren’t you able to convert 350k over the last 4 months? Or are you saying that even after converting as much as you could that you ended up with 350k left? If that’s the case, then I’d say, great for you — you’ll have a leg up with some of the new currencies.)

SamTheGuardian.2938:

And neither of you are considering the players who don’t have world competition on any character…. World complementation is optional sub system in the game. The assumption that everyone has it on at least one character is ridiculous. Some players went on to PvP or WvW after finishing the last dungeon and completing their personal story line and that was an acceptable thing to do and a very rational thing for a player without a lot of time in game to choose to do.

Had we known it’s importance months ago we might have chosen to spend some time on it, but they purposely waited until the week of release to drop this information.

In other shreds I said it’s horrible design. Actually it’s worse, it’s intentionally grind inducing, greed-driven design.

You absolutely do not need world completion to max out an elite spec. I deliberately chose not to worry about it and I feel vindicated (in that decision) by the most recent information: I need ‘only’ 40 challenges in the new zones to max it out and I have enough on nearly every L80 to start an elite character.

Mind you, I think ANet went overboard in the requirements — I think they misunderstood how many people would want to max out right away and they should have balanced the idea of progression with that.

iceey.1607:

It’s really disappointing that support have firmly refused to refund this item. I’d just like to point out that it’s been over two YEARS since this item has had any use. Has any in game purchase item been useless for that long?

To be clear, I know the content is coming back ‘at some point.’ I think people deserve refunds for the interim time.

I know Gaile has responded officially to this before, but the policy is so wrong that I feel like I have to bring it up again.

I was just discussing this with a friend. He loves (just loves loves loves) SAB and bought the coin and every time he returns after an absence, his first question is, “did I miss the return of SAB?” He’s a reasonable guy and ‘gets’ why it’s not in the game.

Still, speaking as someone who never much cared for SAB, I agree with the OP: ANet should refund the gems. People bought with a reasonable expectation to play more than one ‘season’ and for various decent reasons, those expectations couldn’t be fulfilled. Consequently, it would be reasonable for ANet to do something nice for all the folks that spent the gems without being able to make use of it.

briggah.7910:

Speaking of stacks. Why can’t these stack? Taking up 2 bank tabs for same item.

:(

Because those aren’t the “same” item — they have the same name, but two different IDs. (Some of us have speculated that they intended originally to offer the second one with a different number of levels and then changed their mind.) Of course, it would be better if ANet converted all of the items into the same ID, but … well, that takes extra effort (and QA) and I’d just as soon see that effort put into some new items.

Purple Miku.7032:

If they’re gonna make excuses, then let them do it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

Fay.2357:

TexZero.7910:

Fay.2357:

TexZero.7910:

It’s because they use a regular expression filter.

Its the combination of “4” “5” and “S” in succession that trigger this. Apparently their world filter is set to ignore the status of 0×00(null) and 0×20(space).

The ‘why’ isn’t in question, because ultimately it’s not super important. It’s the fact that the implementation of the filter is shoddy at best, and careless and embarrassing at worst. I know I wouldn’t want to be associated with this train-wreck of a censor, that’s for sure.

The implementation is fine, as explained why earlier. The filter is working as it is supposed to.

Does that mean you have some inconveniences, sure. That is ultimately the price to pay for using a public forum. You have no rights to free speech here, so you either agree to the moderation and censorship within, find loop holes, or find another outlet.

The filter obviously isn’t working as it should. If it impedes usage of normal, non-offensive terms, then it’s faulty. It’s obviously faulty.

I agree that it’s faulty; I don’t agree that it’s important. Regardless of how good the filter is, there are always going to be loopholes and always going to be non-offensive terms that get censored — false positives (and false negatives) are almost mathematically inevitable.

There’s a cost, however, to buying or building a better filter and the question is: how much benefit is there? I know the website of the major newspaper I frequent also has a faulty filter. They use it to block the worst and most blatant profanity and have moderators who deal with the more subtle stuff. Apparently they, like ANet, don’t see that there’s enough value to to changing things to add a modest improvement.

tl;dr sure, it’s a clunky, old school filter. It gets the job done and we can work around its quirks.

Random.4691:

It amazes me that this question is asked everytime players play a beta and release hits. For future reference just assume the answer is yes you will lose all beta progress (not to mention it was on your screen the entire time you played beta that progress would not be saved).

Apparently, in some games beta characters (at least looks etc) are kept when the game launches. (I confess that I don’t understand why any developer would risk the sorts of errors that would be likely.)

I think the feedback on this topic has been clear (ever since it was introduced ages ago):

• It would be bad for the vast majority of people to change the wallet.
• No one would object to adding to the wallet a separate “savings account” — coin that does not show up in TP or vendor windows.

I’m not sure how easy this would be to implement or how much time it would cost customer service to support it (you know people will complain about “missing” money). So it’s possible that ANet has already weighed the pros and cons and decided that the costs overwhelm the benefits.