Showing Posts For Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Giver's Armor and Patch on June 23rd

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

  • Attribute points on equipment have been increased by ~30%*

Have they actually stated by how much boon duration will change? What if most stats change by 28% and boon duration increases by more? Until we know the specifics, I think it’s premature to ask for specific new prefixes or sigils or runes.

I guess now’s the time we should be asking about this since Giver’s armor is still 1% ingame…

Fair enough. It seems almost deliberate that they have drastically reduced the number of ways (and amounts) to extend boon duration. If that was intended, I’d like them to say so explicitly. If it wasn’t, then I’d be interested to find out how they intended to un-nerf the current state of boon duration buffs.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Why no PvE/PvP separation?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

As I recall it, ANet also found it easier to balance professions if they didn’t have to keep track of two versions of every skill.

I wonder if there is a happy medium in removing some skills from PvP and replacing them with something appropriate to PvP or vice-versa. There are just some skills/mechanics that are always going to be too weak in PvE (because the AI is so artificial) and too OP’d in PvP.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Magic Find Affecting Chests?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

There was a 6 week period where, by happenstance, I was increasing the account-wide MF from Luck about twice a week. For the 4 hours after that happened, I got exceptional drops compared to what I was used to (e.g. an exotic in 3 of 4 fractal chests, versus my usual of not even a rare).

Eventually, I got to feeling that it was status quo, so I started salvaging a few ecto, whenever I was close to a +1% increase. I started joking about it to friends.

Then, of course, RNG being RNG, I stopped getting great drops after a MF increase and just got the usual blues from dungeons, greens from fractals, rarely a rare, and never an exotic. Just like everyone else.

tl;dr We human beings are exceptionally good at spotting patterns that aren’t there.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Orr should be remade

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Rather than revamping Orr, I’d prefer to see entirely new maps. Orr is its own kind of fun, even if it’s 3 years old now.

Imagine 4 years from now: would you still want a revamped Orr if it meant 3 (or more) fewer new maps (of equivalent complexity/size) ?

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Raven Mail Carrier glitch on Trading post?

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

There are a couple of mechanics going on that could cause this to happen. Right now, I recommend proceeding extremely carefully or at least looking at the total cost amount (the biggest set of numbers in the middle of the screen) before confirming a sale or purchase.

Part of it is a result of the TP deciding for us how to make it more convenient to purchase large quantities and part of it might be one or more unrelated UI quirks and/or glitches. Frequent TP users (such as myself) have learned to deal with both “issues,” which might be why the support person hasn’t heard much about them.

The non-glitch part is that if you want to buy a stack of items and some are already offered at your desired price, the TP will assume you want to buy the entire stack instantly. More likely, you want to buy the currently available items at that price and put in an offer for a partial stack at the same price.

So for example, you want to buy 250 Raven Mail carriers at 50 silver and 10 are available at that price and 600 are available at 51 silver, more than you want to spend. The TP will first assume you want to buy 10 at 50s and 240 (of the 600) at 51s and that’s what would happen if you press the OK button. To make the purchase the way you want, you’d have adjust your initial purchase to just 10 items, by typing in the “count” field, moving the slider, or unchecking the boxes next to the higher prices. Then you’d have to remember how many you bought, subtract the number you just got, and put in a new custom offer for 240 at the 50s price you want.

But, I hear you say, you had no intention of purchasing a stack!

Well, there are a couple of UI glitches that could have causes that. The first is that, unlike every other website built since 1992, the TP automatically adjusts the focus when your cursor moves over a field, instead of when you click in the field. That means if you start to type in “25” in the copper field as you move the mouse towards the quantity field, you’d end up typing “25” as the amount to purchase. Near as I can tell, this was the intended design, but I can’t even guess as to what UI designer would intend to do this nor why.

The second glitch is that the graphical overlay on the TP UI don’t match the location of the fields and buttons right now. Further, when the focus is on one of the four fields, the UI tries to highlight by emboldening and italicizing the fonts a little, moving them “behind” the overlay sometimes or worse, to where you don’t expect them. This means that you can sometimes click on an arrow to try to increase the number and you’ll end up decreasing it instead. You can also end up increasing amounts that you meant to decrease (although that’s less common).

That’s an extremely long story to say that:

tl;dr you’re not crazy, it is easily possible (at the moment) for you to have accidentally put in an order for 250 units of an item, at higher prices that you meant to spend on the single unit you wanted.

I would recommend escalating the ticket (i.e. asking for a supervisor to review it). I don’t know that they can do anything for you, but at the very least, the Customer Service team should be aware that this can happen and offer an apology for misunderstanding the situation. (My hope is that with enough of these reports, the UI team will prioritize reverting the TP to how it was a couple of months ago — it had some issues, but nothing like this.)

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Wrong Lionguard Voices - Fort Marriner

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Thanks for the post — I’ll try to find them (since I am easily amused by this sort of thing, too).

It would, I believe, also help ANet if you used the in-game /bug report tool — that gives the QA a time/location stamp, to make it easier for them to track down specific NPCs in specific locations.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Items not showing under selling tab

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

The trading post history doesn’t show all listings. To allow it to display results quickly, it only shows the most recent. There is a “load more” button that you can press to load older data.

I can’t tell if you are saying that you never found ghost peppers from any other source, since some will drop from certain types of bags and they can be farmed directly, too.

I follow a lot of posts on the forums and help people in game with TP issues — I have yet to see a documented case of something going missing from the TP. The worst case has been when the TP was unable to display certain listings; the item itself (and/or the coin) has always been ‘found’ somewhere (usually on an alt, e.g. the one time the person had a different character do the pick up from the TP and forgot to move the items to the bank).

It’s still, of course, possible that something has gone wrong. My point is only that history suggests it is much more likely we aren’t seeing the whole picture.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Harassment in game, what can we do ?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

If, after /reporting and /blocking, the player still chases you around the map, then take screenshots and submit a ticket about it.

ANet takes harassment very seriously, as seen in their replies to various posts. However (and of course), they need evidence. So document as many examples as you can and include them in your ticket. If they are able to verify the allegations, they will take action, with a severity depending on the specific behavior, the record of that player, and whether you responded in kind.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

How do you reset Hero Points?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

We can’t reset specializations because it’s part of the vertical progression, i.e. a part of leveling. I’m okay with that.

The devs set specializations for us (via software) on the basis that some players would be better off not having to decide right after a massive change to the system & that those who prefer deciding on their own could & would figure out how to adapt. I’m also ok with that logic.

The problem is it doesn’t allow room for some poor choices made by their algorithm. A guardian with 3 shouts equipped lost some of the shouts and doesn’t have access to the trait reducing their cool down. (Strictly a gathering toon, it needed faceroll options, not optimal ones.)

So I wish ANet had gone one step further: equip every existing sub-L80 character with a token that allows them to reset their specializations once. That preserves all of ANet’s philosophical points and also allows people to choose to avoid the paternalism that properly protected some players from the post-update confusion of too many changes.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

How to get more laurels?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Occasionally, there will be achievements that reward a laurel. If I recall correctly, the festival daily during Lunar New Year did that.

However, those are a tiny number of laurels relative to what we get from logging in.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Charged Lodestone Price balancing

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

The OP hasn’t established that there is an issue. The supply of lodestones always seems to be enough to satisfy the demand of consumers wealthy enough to build some of the (literally) shiniest skins in the game. It’s not enough to drive the prices down close to the prices of other lodes; then again, those lodes aren’t much used.

The OP hasn’t established that the prices for charged lodes need to match that for crystal lodes. If anything, I would argue that ANet should add more recipes that (ahem) spark the demand for other other lodes, rather than increasing the supply for charged ones.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Teq, Triple Trouble, and Dungeons

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Does no one remember the threads complaining about Teq’s difficulty after the initial change? Over and over and over again people said it couldn’t be done and when that was proven wrong, they said it could only be done by dedicated guilds. And when that proved wrong, they said it couldn’t be done unless enough players had the right builds. And when that was proven wrong they said it can’t be done by the casual or average player. And finally, that was proven wrong and were succeeding on nearly every map.

And when Fire Elemental consumables were nerfed, people said, “yeah, that’s the end of casual Teq.” When FGS was nerfed, people said, “nope, can’t be done now.”

The lessons we should have learned from all of this are:

  • Changes to the game’s mechanics make fights more difficult; they rarely make them extremely difficult, let alone impossible.
  • It takes time for the community to adapt. We need to try things out and get a feel for the new mechanics before making any specific claims about difficulty.

tl;dr we don’t know if double health makes things too hard; we need to take time to absorb the new mechanics.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Stat Conversion Mechanics Not Functional

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

How did it work before the patch? How sure are you that it’s a bug? I always thought it was meant to apply to base stats+gear.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Blade Shards Vendor

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I made a couple of ascended backs with them, because they are cheaper than any of the others (except for Mawdrey) if you have enough shards. Otherwise, I recommend deleting them.

Still, since you can convert sprockets to shards, why not have a Mystic Forge recipe that converts shard to sprockets? Even if it’s not very efficient, it would still help eat up the shards and appeal to that part of our player mindset that hates to delete anything, just in case it has value some day.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Ecto Gambling - Dangers and chances [merged]

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

it seems like you make money the first time or two but after that you steadily make less and less or lose money.

It’s random, not deterministic. So the fact that you made a profit early was due to chance, not design. Others will lose first and win later and still others won’t win at all. If you buy enough of them, all the data suggests you’ll eventually lose money.

So it’s just like playing roulette: if you’re on a hot streak, you’ll end up ahead as long as you stop. If you keep on playing, the house’s edge will eventually cancel out any streak.

So, just like gambling, if you don’t like the thrill of spinning the wheel (regardless of the results), don’t play the game.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

New Forge Can't Promote Items?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I made one of the new account bound mystic forge conduits since I figured it’d be convenient to forge green weapons and sigils/runes without having to go back to town.

I always thought the promotion rate was ~20%. However after forging 120 green weapons and ~40 sigils I have yet to get a single rare out of this portable forge.

Is the rate much lower/0 on the portable forge as opposed to the one in LA? I don’t want to keep wasting my greens/sigils if there is no chance of getting better ones back out.

Just looking for more data at this point, please post your results from using the new portable forge if you have them.

120 weapons means 30 attempts (if I understood your data correctly). If that is true, it would be very unlikely: 0.123% chance (meaning it happens just over 1 time in 1,000 tries of forging 30 in a row).

However, I forge daily and I’ve been seeing the same results as always, ~20% upgrade rate, regardless of whether it’s greens→rare, rare→exotic, gear or sigils, etc.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Lost wardrobe opportunities?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Wow, it’s has been a LONG time since I’ve seen Wardrobe QQing. Everyone who was around before that change lost something. You are no more or less important for it and you will get exactly the same thing as everyone else. Nothing and no sympathy.

I lost my SAB blue backpack, because I misunderstood how Wardrobe would interpret skins. That’s my bad, and it’s too bad for me.

Maybe we shouldn’t assume that just because someone is posting now that it’s an old complaint or any less reasonable.

Some people haven’t returned to the game until now and not every complaint counts as QQing. It might be the case that everyone lost something, however some some individuals lost a lot more than others. I didn’t have a lot of valuable skins and the ones I did have were still on display. Other folks had full sets of cultural and order skins that they didn’t want anymore; there’s a considerable difference between my “loss” and theirs.

For the OP: the only thing you can do is to contact support, point out that you paid gems for a tool that didn’t work as you expected, because you weren’t around after the wardrobe was announced in time to act. They might be able to offer you some sort of help, even if they can’t unlock all or even some of the skins for your account.

Good luck.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Rata Sum - LA Asura Portal Malfunction

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Do you mean the LA→ Rata portal? That one dumps you at the ‘wrong’ location.

(The Rata → LA port takes you to the expected spot in LA.)

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Build tab.

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I thought I read that we would be able to save up to three builds on a individual character. For the life of me, I cannot find this tab.

Does it exist yet?

Sort of: you can have a PvP build, one of WvW, and a different one for PvE. (Just traits at the moment; doesn’t appear to remember gear or utilities.)

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Teq, Triple Trouble, and Dungeons

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I say I speak for the silent majority of the games because of what I saw going on in world chat this past few weeks.

Um, at best that means you speak for the vocal minority that happened to post something in /map. Since /map chat includes trolls who try to provoke responses as well as reasonable and thoughtful players (who might or might not agree with each other), you can’t use “I saw what was going on in world chat” to justify a claim that you speak for a majority.

I am sure that you echo the thoughts of an important subset of players and that makes the concerns worth addressing. The problem is that you damage your own cause by making any claims about how many people share your views.

You further reduce the effectiveness of your advocacy by stating the cause of the issue, when not everyone is agreed about if there even is a problem, never mind what exactly that problem might be.


You can reasonably claim that there is a core group that is frustrated by the state of the game after the patch. Unfortunately, there are always people who preferred the old status quo, so it’s hard to separate out what is actually at issue.

This update had a massive impact on builds and mechanics, so I don’t think any of us (myself included) can say whether the changes were good or bad for the game or the community. What we need to do is accept that the system is going to be around for a while and adapt accordingly. If after doing so, there is still a key constituency that remains troubled, then we can look at what the issues are and try to work out how best to resolve them.


tl;dr it’s too soon to make any claims about whether the update made things better or worse for any particular group.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Revert Burning

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

The simplest way to fix the _ problem, is to revert

If the simplest solution to problems was to revert, then ANet should just return the game to how it was at launch.

Hmmn, except there were other problems, which led ANet to make changes to fundamental mechanics and so reverting would bring back those. So maybe “revert” is never the best solution — even if it sounds simple, it rarely is that simple to implement.

I think it’s important when trying to come up with a solution to make sure we understand the issue first. It might be one condition, it might be the synergy of conditions & traits, it might be something else. It probably isn’t as simple as any of us think it is.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Inspired Character Names!

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

No clever names for me.

Says the player whose account name evokes Monty Python, bad cop/buddy movies, and video games since time immemorial (or whenever computers were invented).

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

LA JP issues

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I experince serious pathing issues in LA especially in the JP.

Pathing errors seem to accumulate the longer I stay in the JP and general performance drops, this leads to occurences of the “instant death phenomenon” if I log out and restart the client inside the JP I enter LA at random spots and not where I was when I logged out at times I end up in the water under the map.

The issue seems to get worse the longer I stay logged in.

The JP is unplayabe for me now.

From other reports on the forum, this doesn’t seem to be directly related to the JP, although, of course (and alas), it affects the JP more than other things.

Some instances of LA show symptoms of client:server latency, so your screen shows you in location X, while the server thinks you are way over yonder at Y. Thus, you might hear bats while in the crow’s nest or jump on to a table only to find yourself dead from falling damage.

If that’s the case, then it might fix itself by getting into another instance (often just log the character out and back in) or restarting the game.

If that doesn’t do the trick for you (or if it happens again), I recommend creating a support ticket and working with Customer Service — they should be able to troubleshoot quickly, unless it’s something more fundamental.

Good luck.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Double HP not compatible with Inquest GMII?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I don’t understand why people think this change was made as part of some plan to make the content more challenging.

  • The changes to condition mechanics made a lot of bosses trivial. Adding health made up for some of that.
  • People have wanted world bosses to allow critical hits, so that part of their builds wasn’t wasted.
  • Critical hits on world bosses probably shouldn’t be as easy to achieve as they are on standard foes or even standard bosses.
  • Lot of folks have requested that world bosses be less trivial generally, in particular that they shouldn’t die to autoattacks from “safe” spots, as they did two weeks ago.

People obviously need some time to adjust to the changes, so it’s far, far too soon to say that anything needs to change again. It might be that double health is too much or that the critical hit locations are too narrow — let’s try to adapt first, before we assume that ANet ought to act.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

why is there only 9 dungeons?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

7 dungeons with 4 paths, 1 dungeon with 5 paths, fractals with 50 levels.

That’s effectively 83 dungeon paths for you to experience.

I don’t think gw2 really needs any more dungeons at this time – and I don’t think any more will be released for the base game itself.

Some of us have done the 33 paths countless times (at least some of them) and even 50 levels of fractals can get stale after a while. So, yeah, I’d like to see more challenging, instanced content.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

[Deleting Characters] Things to do?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Here’s the list I use when I’m re-rolling a character (basically same as above):

  • Move unbound and hard-to-replace gear to bank, e.g. exotics for veterans (maybe rares for new players).
  • Salvage all soul-bound gear. If it can’t be salvaged, vendor. If it can’t be vendored, delete (or combine in the mystic forge, if you have the inclination).
  • Unequip any outfits, so you aren’t confused later by whether the character is wearing any gear.
  • Remove all gear, including trinkets, tools, back items, underwater gear.
  • Repeat the store/salvage/vendor routine above.
  • You should now have a naked toon with nothing in any inventory slot.
  • Move all your bags into the default backpack. If there’s room in the bank, save for your re-rolled characters. If not, save the biggest ones; 8- or 10-slot bags are easily replaced for relatively little.
  • Repeat all the steps above, even though you shouldn’t have to — I can’t tell you how many times I missed one thing. Most of the time, it wasn’t anything important — it only has to be valuable the one time, though, to make it worth taking this extra step.

Good luck!

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Double HP not compatible with Inquest GMII?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

It died within 8 minutes on the random instance I was in. I don’t think the health of the boss is the issue; the zerg just hasn’t adapted to the new mechanic(s) yet.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Fix Temples - Do not Reward Failure

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I think that taking a Temple should have a reward. Defending a temple successfully should have a greater reward, to stop people claiming ownership of an event over other players.

I like this idea. It works for lore, it works for the community, and it also removes the source of conflict.

It is curious that retaking is more valuable to the player, when theoretically most heads of state and military leaders would prefer not to lose strategic targets.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Don't buy from the Consortium Florist

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

The purchase from the Consortium Florist in Deverol Gardens (Lion’s Arch) is a complete rip-off. I paid 50 silver for a temporary flower bouquet that allows you to sprinkle petals in the air. There is no permanent item.

Created this thread only because I tried searching first to find out what the purchase was and wasn’t able to find anything. If I’d known I definitely wouldn’t have wasted my coin.

I’m not sure why you expected a permanent item for that price. There are a lot of consumables in the game that create special effects. As far as I know, none of the ones sold for coin alone are permanent; all are single-use with effects that last — at best — until you zone.

You might want to change the thread’s title to “Reminder: Consortium Florist Sells Single-Use Items” — it’s then up to each of us to decide if 50s is worth the price.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Easy Wool Scrap & Cotton Scrap Farming

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

And you couldn’t write these up to share because you won’t get money that way.

Oh ANet, got another thread for Community Creations here.

It’s not a community creation though, it’s a tutorial helpful video. And most people like to watch videos rather than read, like me. If someone tell me go to this map, to this location and do this event, it’ll be much easier for me to see it through a video.

It is a “community creation” by ANet’s definition. The right place to submit them is in that forum, where everyone is supposed to go to find such things.

What you probably missed is that the same poster has submitted several threads to this forum, largely to drive traffic to their video channel. This is the first time they have included a detailed description of what’s in the videos and that’s a good thing; it makes the posts worth taking the time to look at.

Still, it doesn’t mean the posts belong in this forum, regardless of the utility.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Hero points on the map

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I like the new icon and I agree it should be updated. Incomplete challenges should be much easier to spot on the map than completed one, and completed ones need to be easy enough to spot, in case you want to compare your map with the wiki to figure out which you are missing.

Alternatively, maybe ANet could make challenges and vistas linkable, just like WP and POI are (even those that are incomplete).

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Double HP not compatible with Inquest GMII?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

For the first time, the event to destroy the Inquest’s Golem Mark II has just failed with about 5% HP after 15 minutes.

I always melee DPS on the boss but like 95% of the zerg do not. So…. either adjust the health on Golem Mark II compensate for the poor DPS from the ranging zerg, or maybe the zerg need to rethink their DPS and strategy? I don’t know.

Thoughts?

Then, the zerg is going to have to adapt. Why should the game adjust to people who want to stand in one spot complaining about how boring it is to press <1>? Shouldn’t the developers continue to challenge us?

I’m not going to worry about world boss events failing until the community takes time to sort out new strategies, given the changes. If, after adapting, we still aren’t able to kill them within less than half the allotted time, then we can bring out the pitchforks.

edit: the ‘kitten’ filter doesn’t like to see “will not” or “won’t” followed by “it”.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

(edited by Illconceived Was Na.9781)

Why limit us to 3 trait-lines?

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

It reduces the number of possible builds.
Why not allow us some more choices & individuality?

The number of “possible” builds isn’t a useful comparison. While you could create a build that has all the traits that affect signets, why would you if the build doesn’t include signets?

By limiting the number of trait lines, it’s far easier for ANet to balance traits and skills holistically instead of piece-by-piece. It’s also easier for them to see and/or correct potential interaction issues, since there are fewer permutations.

I can’t promise that ANet is doing a better job now of balancing, since largely that is a matter of opinion. I can just guarantee that “easier to balance” increases their ability to stay on top of things as the game evolves.

I, too, miss the subtle changes I could get out of putting 1 or 2 points into a fourth or fifth line. However, I’m enjoying working with the more interesting build synergies of the current system to worry much about losing some theoretically possible builds that have little value in actual game play.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Swiftness stacking bug (Mesmer)

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

It’s still a bug, it was a kneejerk reaction to the fact that the curtain could be used as a swiftness source multiple times.

It’s still by design. The fact that a lot of us hate this doesn’t turn something intended by the developers into a bug. Guardian staff-3 used to work the same way, only offering swiftness to those without the boon and they adjusted it so that you’d get a lot of swiftness for those without any and a minor increase if you had even 0.5s remaining. They could make the same change to the curtain, so that you couldn’t stack tons of swiftness from a single field and yet still get some benefit from repeated applications.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Items not showing under selling tab

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I was selling food buffs and today after logging in, I had removed a full stack as I felt that it was not selling and received this stack then re-listed them straight away for a cheaper price but the items are now not showing under the selling tab or history sold tap.

Submitted a ticket on this but thought I should also mentioned it could be a bug if items are de listed then re-listed too quickly.

The TP doesn’t work that way. De-listed items aren’t part of the TP queue any longer and when you “re-list”, it’s a new entry; it doesn’t matter how quickly you do it.

There are a couple of other explanations:

  • You had two listings at two different prices. You removed the more recent, pricier offer and re-offered at the same price as the second (original) offer. e.g. 25 plasma at 10c and 50 plasma @20c, remove the 50 plasma and relist at 10c. You’d then have 75 plasma at 10c…and that offer might be hidden farther back in the queue.
  • You can’t see recent changes to your TP queue, either because your TP cache got borked or your computer just hasn’t refreshed it. Restarting your game might fix that, although it might be as simple as closing the TP and reopening.
  • The items sold, you reflexively picked up your coin (as many of us do) without noticing, and your TP queue hadn’t updated.

Regardless of what happened, by the time you read this response, the cache should be up-to-date and you should see the changes. If that’s not the case, try closing the game and resetting the cache (instructions in one of the stickies for resolving TP issues, in the Account & Tech support forum).

Alternatively, you can expose your TP queue outside the game via one of the websites that are setup to use the game’s (relatively new) API for it. It might be easier to look via your default browser than the one the game uses.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Transmutation Disaster

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Skins don’t have stats, so there’s nothing for them to overwrite. They also don’t have a rarity. You can have a common- (white-)rarity weapon using an antique (i.e. ascended) skin and an ascended-rarity weapon with a common skin. In both cases, the item will state the rarity, so a screenshot of the existing item would help.

Regardless, the best response you can get on the forums is “hmmn, that might be a bug if it happened the way you describe” — we would actually be able to help you resolve the issue. For that, you need to create a support ticket, as Rose suggested.

Be sure to provide them with a screenshot of the item, the estimated time you did the transmutation, and the name of the character you were on.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

lvl 60 weapon turned into lvl 80

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Used an exotic (L60) sigil on my L60 sword.

My L60 sword turned into L80.

This doesn’t seem normal.

It also seems unlikely, as adding sigils doesn’t delete an existing item and replace it. What level character were you on when you applied the upgrade? If you still have it, are you able to take a screenshot to share with us?

Another way to investigate would be to submit the details of who and when (approximately) it happened to Customer Service via a support ticket. There isn’t enough information in the original post for them to follow up.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Any update on letting us replay Season 1?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I don’t agree with the analysis above. It’s overly naive in reviewing content as either open world or instanced. The actual core experience of Season 1 meant that nearly every story involved changes to the open world that people explored together. In contrast, Season 2 was designed to be primarily experienced within instances. That fundamental difference requires a complete redesign of the way in which the story plays out.

I don’t mean to suggest it’s impossible or even that it’s horribly complicated to pull off. I do mean to point out that it would be a large undertaking, in terms of staff and it probably would require bringing back the voice actors for new dialogue.

All that effort would go towards recreating a story from the past. It would be old content, when players have been clamoring for new content for ages.

tl;dr It doesn’t matter how much of the content actually took place in the open world; it matters that the story was designed to be experienced as a community, not in small groups. It’s a massive undertaking to rewrite that and it’s hard to imagine ANet devoting that effort to “old” content while veterans are clamoring for new content.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Tequatl Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

When Tequatl was first revamped, lots of players said it was impossible, that it was too hard, and that ANet needed to nerf it or even change it back to the way it was. These players included so-called hardcore and casuals, those who thought themselves good at the game, those who were actually good at the game, and those that did not.

Well, it turned out that all those people were wrong. For quite some time, Tequatl’s demise is all-but-guaranteed on any map, whether formally organized or not.

I can’t promise that Tequatl with double health is going to end up being just as easy. I can however guarantee that we don’t yet know if it’s too hard. We haven’t adjusted our tactics given the recent update and so it’s much too soon to determine that it’s too hard.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

How Much Money Have You Invested Into GW2?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

A lot of people lately have been saying, “We don’t have to pay a monthly fee so what do you expect?”

The actual argument is, “this game doesn’t have a subscription and so some things are done differently from what some gamers might expect after playing games like WoW.” Some times, this turns out to be better or more convenient for GW2 players, sometimes not.

The way you phrased it implies that it makes GW2 a less well-crafted or maintained game, which is not the case. Some folks might not like all the features and some might hate some; that’s got nothing to do with whether we should have high expectations for the content and the level of service.

Since launch, I have spent $1,375 in gems in Guild Wars 2. ….With the amount I have spent on GW2 I have paid for 7.6 years of a subscription to any other monthly paid MMO.

Certainly, US$1,375 over 3 years is more than 15/month. What, my fellow patron, did you choose to spend all that money on? Presumably you received cosmetic or convenience items that you wanted and presumably you got some enjoyment from them. That wasn’t just fourteen hundred bucks that ANet took from your bank account; it was cash you offered to them in exchange for something.

Further, if you have saved the 60% in cash on a traditional sub game, all you would have gotten is the core game. That wouldn’t have paid for any expansions or extras of any sort, including character slots or skins or whatever.

Thus we can’t really compare the figures you’ve proposed; they are apples-to-cucumbers.

Do I believe that the content we have gotten is worth 7.6 years worth of a sub to another MMO? No, unfortunately, which probably explains why I have really throttled down the gem purchases recently.

I’m glad for your sake that you have slowed your spending. I’m curious, however, why it is that you allowed yourself to spend so much without keeping track.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Reduce the Gold Cost of Cultural Armor

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

it’s too expensive in terms of gold.

What makes you so sure it is “too expensive?” The game’s economist doesn’t think so and he’s almost certainly the person you’d need to convince. You’ve persuaded me that they are too expensive for you at the present time; you haven’t made the case that they are too expensive for the game.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Value In Experience After L80?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Thanks for the answers, Dani & JaFW. I was mostly asking about whether to use consumables to accelerate experience gain, e.g. Guild XP Banner and especially utility potions. I’ve been in the habit of spamming 2 copper potions. 10% or 15% adds up and paid for a good portion of some of the spirit shards I have now.

Now and post-HoT in the futre, it seems that the XP buff won’t be useful after 80, which means there’s no value my holding onto the utilities.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some use for L80 experience points.

Thanks again.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Magic Find should be a choice.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I doubt they’ll do this. Karma and exp are already easy to come by, and increasing gold find by another 1% is pretty useless when it’s already <1silver most of the time.

Well, how useful is magic find relative to the other account bonuses, honestly? Magic Find doesn’t affect a lot of things.

MF has a profound impact on all drops from foes. Gold Find affects coin, but the amount of direct coin that drops is relatively small, so increasing Gold Find is never going to be that important. And karma is in oversupply for most people who play often; those who don’t play often can build it up fairly quickly through the liquid sources available via a variety of methods.

Further, the results of higher MF can be turned into gold and getting the occasional exotic or better is more exciting than seeing the occasional 5s turned into 6s or 7s.

tl;dr MF is a lot more useful to most people than the other types of account-wide bonuses.

The main problem with MF is that people don’t understand how MF affects drops. The affect isn’t noticeable in any particular short run or farm — it’s something that affects the overall quality of drops in the long run and players (being merely human) have trouble seeing the impact, since we tend to be focused on what’s right in front of us, not what we’ve accumulated over the last 4 weeks compared to a similar month last year.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Low droprates

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Been playing for about a year and very activly. So far only one ascendant item dropped for me. Also the amount of exotic drops is very slim, usually a spoon. Its very easy to get your character exotic geared. The game stales a bit after you got them.

I’m not sure I understand what you are asking. Do you want it to be more difficult to get exotic gear? I can’t imagine that would make the game more enjoyable for anyone. Do you want the drop rate for ascended to be increased substantially? I think that a lot of people would like that at first, but then ascended would become common and we’d be in the same situation we are now.

GW2 stands out as one of the few games without a gear treadmill, that is one in which the top tier of guild changes 2-3 times a year and players are forced to re-acquire gear to keep playing. That means that near-best gear is going to feel easy to acquire, because eventually veterans will have more than they need and the price (relative to the availability of coin) will be low.

tl;dr the drop rate for exotics and ascended is probably close to what makes sense for the current community/game.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Weyandt's Revenge entrance re-borked

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

It’s broken — when it was like this before, the devs admitted it was tougher than they meant it to be and they “fixed” it so there would be safe spots on the left and right sides. However, every single time that LA has had a major update, something else is affected and the Slide of Death returns.

I, too, have been running the JP frequently since launch and have found myself forced to re-learn the reliable methods of substantially-safe sliding. The closest I’ve found in this inarnation of the SoD is to start on the left, aim for the thin rock sticking out about halfway down (as if it were big enough to serve as a stopping point); you should be able to miss all the main insta-death parts of the landscape.

Good luck.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Value In Experience After L80?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Is there any value now in boosting experience gain for L80 characters?


Prior to the update that added specializations and djinngots (aka spirit shards), there was some advantage in granting experience boosts to L80 characters, because you could convert extra skill points into gold via Mystic Forge promotion recipes. Also, since skill points had use in ascended & legendary crafting and you needed a lot of SPs on particular toons.

Things have changed since the update:

  • Djinngots (spirit shards) are obtained as drops, not from experience.
  • There’s still an experience accumulation bar for L80s, which doesn’t seem to be tied to anything else at the moment.
  • That only thing that I can remember related to experience is that ANet mentioned that the future Masteries system will be tied to experience gain while in the appropriate zone.

Is there any reason — prior to the release of HoT — in which any L80 character would care about boosting their experience?

Thanks.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Anyone know where exactly the Poyaqui is?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

The wiki doesn’t help at all.

The wiki is maintained by players, so it takes a while for it to catch up after ANet moves things around (or changes the entire trait & skill acquisition system).

<hint> so someone apparently needs to add the new information provided helpfully above to the wiki </hint>
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

need help with buying mini pets

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Minis are really expensive now for three reasons:

  1. The wardrobe means you pay once, you can use the minis at will on all characters, without having to store them. This convenience makes it more desirable to buy them. This also means you aren’t likely to find a lot of people with “spare” minis — those who still have them are likely investors waiting for the right moment to sell.
  2. The associated collections require unlocking the minis, which means they leave market circulation. When your GF played before, you could re-sell the minis after maxing the achievement.
  3. Until the last patch, ANet has been slowly removing all sources of the core minis.

Thus, the supply:demand ratio is a lot lower than it was back when and prices have adjusted accordingly.

Your best bet is to put in buy orders on the TP for as many as you can afford, at prices you think are “reasonable.” This is what I’ve always done, which sometimes has meant a wait of months to finally purchase some — I don’t mind waiting to save 30-80% on the price, compared to when I put in the offer. You can check historical prices at gw2tp.com or gw2spidy.com.

It’s a huge project you are undertaking (and bravo! for thinking of it and following through). So steel yourself for the long haul. I’d recommend picking a dozen to start out: your favorites (or hers) or whatever criteria you like (all the asura or all the jungle animals) and once that’s settled, picking another dozen.

If you choose to go this route, feel free to contact me here or in game, if you want some help getting started (picking prices or minis or with using tools to help manage that).

Good luck!

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

1-80 via Crafting...?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

You can’t actually get from 1-80 via crafting any more. Originally, when crafting went to 400 for each discipline, you could. When they added ascended crafting, they recalibrated so that, in theory, you could still get to 80 by raising each discipline to 500. However, two disciplines still only go to 400 (jewelery and chef).

Besides that, it is incredibly expensive to level via crafting now and I don’t recommend it. Instead, do some leveling via crafting and find other ways to level that suit your style:

  • Chef to 400 — always a bargain.
  • Jewelery to 100, 200, 300, or 400 —- not nearly as good a deal, but much better than everything else.
  • Artificer to 100, 200, 300, or 400 — there are nearly always some potion recipes that make leveling cheaper for this than the other weapon crafts.
  • Everything else to 75-150 or so (depending on market prices) — the lowest level mats are still relatively cheap.

edit: fixed typo — chef is the second prof that doesn’t go to 500, not artificer (although it still is more cost effective to stop leveling past 300/350 or so, unless you need an r500 artificer). Thanks to TechnoBill for pointing out the mistake.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

(edited by Illconceived Was Na.9781)

Fiery Dragon Sword....Bugged?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

That’s never been true for the Jormag’s Breath, and it still isn’t.

I have Jormag’s Breath and it had and has a light sorce build in.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jormag%27s_Breath

his weapon’s glow illuminates darkened areas around the wielder, but not for other players.

the other item that has it is Mad Memoires: Complete Edition
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mad_Memoires:_Complete_Edition

The burning effect produces a glow visible only to the wielder, providing illumination in dark areas, especially useful for certain jumping puzzles.

I phrased my response poorly. I was replying to someone who said that these weapons didn’t glow unless wielded — and they do glow when stowed and have always done so.

Sorry for the confusion.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”