Guild Wars 2

Thanks for cross-posting, Wanze.

(Hint to ANet: ask Gnashblade to start doing this across the usual ANet communication channels: twitter, facebook, forums, reddit, etc.)

At level 10, you get a smaller selection of dailies. It’s a system set up to reward veterans.

I haven’t seen reports of crashes like this, which suggests there might be things you can do on your end to prevent it. If they work, that would give ANet additional information that would make it easier to troubleshoot the issue.

Have you tried any of the following?

• Turning the sound off via the options [f11] panel?
• Turning the sound off via windows (or mac) OS?
• Tuning down graphics settings to minimum?
• Being somewhere other than Sparkfly Fen at 12:15 pm your time?

Regardless, it’s worth creating a support ticket (follow the 3rd link at the upper left) and getting Customer Service involved.

Good luck and please let us know what you find out.

If people want to pay someone to help them finish map completion, I don’t see an issue. Sure, a lot of us don’t need help and even more of us don’t mind asking for help in /map. Still, there are plenty of people who would prefer someone to walk them through it all.

@OP in case there’s an issue with the mods, you could modify your original post to avoid mentioning “set” prices, using language like “tips strongly encouraged” or “when we meet, I’ll review with you the effort and time involved, and suggest a reasonable donation.” (ANet has been clear that they don’t want the forums to be used as a grey market for goods or services.)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I think he means after you click on it, and it appears in a window. In the window, it used to show the rarity, but after a recent patch, it ceased to do so.

ah, ok, I misunderstood then.

It doesn’t hurt to ask ANet for a post-purchase discount. They haven’t offered it in the past and I don’t think they will in the future.

Sure, some businesses do this regularly; then again, plenty never do. There are so many reasons why it might (or might not) make sense for any particular business that it’s really hard to insist that it ought to be a rule for commerce.

As others have noted, one of the problems ANet runs into is: if they offer a retroactive discount if someone misses the deadline by 12 hours, then why not by 24 hours? (after all, that’s only 12 hrs more than the first 12). If it’s after 1 day, then why not after 2? They have to draw the line somewhere.

One of us might draw it at 7 days, someone else at 1 day. So far, ANet has drawn it at 0 hours after the sale ends (although I’m sure exceptions get made behind the scenes).

If you don’t want to pay full price, then wait it out, subscribe to their newsletter and RSS feed, and keep an eye on the guildwars2 subreddit. Then, just wait it out.

There are a bunch of things I like in the gem shop right now, but not for the prices currently charged. So I’m waiting for them to be offered in some sort of pre-expac or 3-year anniversary sale.

Reminder: some folks here love to start threads with controversial ideas and see what happens (in other words, they make the popcorn right after pressing ‘Post Reply’)

#things-to-do-when-dead-in-denver-or-waiting-for-xpac

I believe that’s working as intended, although I would like a visual cue that let’s us know what type of bonus chest it is. At the moment, there’s no difference between those that have rewards for dailies, achievements, world bosses, or silverwaste|dry top events.

In other words, this is more of a suggestion than a bug report.

Every few days, someone posts a note about a “bug” in the LFG tool. It’s possible that the tool is bugged; it’s also possible it works as intended. Regardless, maybe we’d be better off discussing, in CDI tradition, what we’d like version 2.0 of the LFG tool to do for us.

In other words, instead of complaining about how it fails to serve our needs, let’s tell ANet how we’d like it to work instead. Ideally, keep in mind that lots of folks use the tool, for different purposes and different reasons. Plus, ANet has some requirements, too: they don’t want it used for gold selling or spamming.

In the interests of keeping the discussion alive, let’s try to focus on building on each other’s ideas. For example, let’s try to avoid arguing (especially over terminology) and let’s leave room for those who rarely post (i.e. try to post just once or twice). (Yes, I know this should go without saying.)

I recommend stopping sometime before reaching 300%, perhaps at 200 or 250.

• The amount of time spent increases exponentially: research, put in an offer, collect, salvage, reset offers, ….
• The benefits increase linearly (probably): 251% offers the same benefit over 250% as 51% offers over 50%, except that it requires a lot more luck to achieve.
• People who have 300% luck don’t seem very happy about it. They don’t see huge huge gains in loot (which is to be expected). They keep accumulating luck and feel wasteful deleting it.

Regardless, interesting and useful post by the OP for anyone wishing to increase their MF by great or modest amounts.

Ask for your ticket to be escalated. Sometimes, the person responding first doesn’t have all the information they should about special cases.

edit: kitten filter doesn’t like “who” followed by words beginning with “re”

More value from opening on an L55 than L80.

Character level only affects the gear that drops from the bags. Mats are the same; named exotics are the same.

• At L55, rares cannot be be sal’d to ecto, but they remain worth 15-30s, depending. These drop in small numbers, so tiny impact when opening a stack of champ bags.
• At L55, masterwork gear salvages into T4 basic mats, which are worth 2-3x the value of the T5-6 mats you get from salvaging rares. Since you get mostly greens, this has a huge impact on the total value.

The current trait system was introduced a long time before the NPE (so no fair blaming NPE) and is getting changed soon™.

Steinpilz.5078:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The Queen Bee functions as a jewel, not a trinket. That is, it fits in the upgrade slot of any L80 trinket, with rarity of exotic or less (no ascended trinks).

Argh, I wanted to put it on an ascended trinket…. :-((

Me, too

I have no idea why they make something this fun and then don’t let people use it in the harder-to-acquire gear.

Akrib.4297:

I finally did it, it was Malchor’s Leap that didn’t register the previous times I did it. This time when I was falling I kept on holding the forward button and I believe that landed me in the exact location I needed to be to register the final jump. If anyone in the future has trouble with some locations keep this in mind.

Great! Glad to hear it. (Thanks for letting us know how you got it, too.)

It’s a lottery, so of course the house wins. The value to the purchaser is in the anticipation of opening the BL chest, not in the likely contents.

Eh, even suspending disbelief for “heroic fantasy,” the story still falls short. If Logan is feeling guilty (as most people commenting think he should), then maybe Anise could have said, “right, you probably should have done more; let that be a lesson for next time” — which, by the way, sounds more in character for her personality in the PS and especially during the LS.

I haven’t had any trouble adding/withdrawing coin from any of several. How much coin are you trying to transfer?

laokoko.7403:

I cant’ believe running around pressing f on chest is the most interesting and fun way to play the game.

I think I’m getting too old for mmorpg.

“Fun” is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t like “farming” generally, but I do like trying to figure out how to get super efficient at it. For example, I enjoyed getting faster at keyfarming, even though I stopped doing it once I got as fast as I thought I could.

Other people love getting a lot of loot so they can deck themselves out in their favorite colors, skins, and gear, so being able to do little more than press [f] is fun for them.

Also, “fun” is relative. Farming karma can be dull, if the goal is to build up karma fast. Waiting for temple of balthazar to be cleared (or trying to herd the cats required to clear it) and then clicking repeatedly to buy obsidian is also dull for many. Thus, silverwastes, with all its myriad of sources is, yes, more fun (and feels faster) to many, especially long-time veterans of the game.

Further, RPGs have always had this aspect, where players could be torn between just playing to have fun and acquiring to be able to enjoy other aspects of the game.

In short, you aren’t “too old” for MMOs/RPGs; you just like the things you like, while others have different preferences.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am just wondering what March 2015 has to do with farming for shards…

As for ways to obtain them, I’m sure the previous posters have that covered.

March? Maybe OP meant May.

Bandit Crests have plenty of uses already. You can essentially trade them in for gold if you don’t care for any of them (via the various gear or supply bags).

I wouldn’t mind being able to trade geodes for crests and vice-versa, though. Or at least, use them in both zones.

I don’t see ANet adding any content that can only be started by some characters. I also can’t see them adding new instanced content outside the context of the living story (including that added during an expansion).

I’m all for adding more things to the game, especially for those of us who have been around since launch. I just expect it to fit into the current pattern(s) rather than introducing new ones.

The Queen Bee functions as a jewel, not a trinket. That is, it fits in the upgrade slot of any L80 trinket, with rarity of exotic or less (no ascended trinks).

Be sure to check if the intended trinket is salvageable before you apply the Queen Bee, otherwise you might be stuck with a soulbound, unsalvageable trinket (i.e. just that one toon can use it). If you do want to recover it, use a Black Lion Salvage Kit.

I’d like to see more options to customize the UI generally. This one would be a great start.

In your shoes, I’d submit a new ticket (referencing the old one) and ask for it to be escalated to a higher-level Customer Service member. Regardless of why it didn’t unlock for you, you do have the item and the collection system should acknowledge that. I believe that CS has managed to adjust that for others who hit various bugs.

Good luck and please let us know how it turns out (so we can help the next person with a similar issue).

I can’t imagine that ANet would deliberately code to cause a game to crash, for any reason. All the other anti-bot, anti-cheating systems are seamless: time gates, diminishing returns, chat/mail spam throttling, TP transaction throttling, etc.

GW1 also had a problem with crashing when salvaging too quickly. I don’t remember if it got resolved, but (as I recall it) one of the devs described why it was slow to fix:

• Narrow impact: it only affects a tiny fraction of players.
• Narrow scope: it doesn’t affect all salvaging, only a particular method.
• Difficult to reproduce: it doesn’t always happen and seems to depend on the installation and technical features of the relevant computer system (e.g. I’ve never had it happen on my computer, only on my laptop).

I agree with the OP that it should be addressed. Still, I agree with ANet that it doesn’t need to be prioritized over other fixes or addition of features. At least, not unless it starts affecting more people more often.

Eh, even if there’s “no reason” to open packages, people will. I know a lot of folks that love the potential for getting a fun drop, even if makes little/no financial sense.

That said, why does everything have to have a vendor value? Can’t some stuff just be junk that gets deleted? Plus, ANet wouldn’t just add value to these items without making a corresponding reduction in the value of drops from the gifts — I don’t see John Smith et al suddenly pumping up a gold faucet (ok, technically a wealth faucet). Put another way, I doubt very much if we’d end up with more coin from the Wintersday gifts.

That said, I do wish they would be more consistent:

• Unless something drops as account- or soul-bound, it should have a vendor value.
• Things should only be untradeable if there’s a clear and present danger to the economy. I’m looking at you, mini ghost dog, recipes, etc.

You also need more room than the current installation size, since it will vary somewhat during updates and I’m sure it will get bigger for Heart of Thorns, even for people that don’t purchase the expansion.

Thunderhammer.5243:

Thanks guys. I thought that a download of that size was kind of unreasonable. thanks for the replies.

Welcome (eventually!) to Guild Wars 2. See you in game.

Although the topic of the post is about /blocking, it’s really about being able to hide your in-game presence.

• People you blocked can tell if you’re off/online and where you are.
• Invisible status doesn’t hide you from friends, guildies, or blocked accounts. Guildies can see location and a last logged-on, which will update as you log on/off. Anyone who has you on one of those lists can see your location change.

On DSL, my initial install took 12 hours. I upgraded service and now it’s 20-30 minutes for a full install. I strongly recommend the “streaming client” so you can start playing sooner.

This has happened before and I’m sure ANet will respond the same way:

• They have no issue with people succeeding at an event, nor deliberately failing it.
• They do get involved when those failing it force everyone to fail it, so that they can farm.
• They act more quickly if there is actual griefing and/or verbal abuse involved.

Generally, they change things so that failing is not longer much much more lucrative than success, which almost always means reducing the rewards, reducing the spawns (that produce the rewards), and/or increasing the timer between reset.

Generally, the original farmers don’t care enough to slow down — they figure, they better rush to get as many runs in as possible, before (what they will call) the Nerf happens. Of course, if they were just slightly less “greedy,” ANet would be unlikely to take action.

tl;dr ANet will act after “enough” reports and it will resolve the immediate symptoms.

some stuff won’t show up in the discovery panel until you progress (not sure why some unusable stuff shows, but not other things)

It’s usually not useful to compare hourly earnings to in-game earning.

• If you have disposable income, you can afford to buy gems (and convert to gold or not).
• If you don’t, even overtime earnings can’t be spent on games.

People play to have fun or to get away from work. If you like opening chests, key farming is the most efficient method in the game to get them. If you want the items inside the chests, then the TP is the most efficient way.

The way in which you get the gold to afford stuff on the TP is something that can be completely separated from the question of spending gold or gems. And, again, if you can afford to buy gems, then sure, it’s very efficient to convert them to gold. Or if you can’t, then there are dozens of guides out there for earning gold in game.

tl;dr only farm keys if you really enjoy the anticipation of opening the chests; otherwise get the stuff you want from the TP directly.

In no particular order, these are all effective methods of earning gold:

• Silverwastes: chest trains, especially with a good commander (who knows where to pause and when to taxi).
• Silverwastes: jumping maps for breach/vine.
• Silverwastes: tagging events.
• Running the “usual” dungeons, at 1g or more per path.
• Chasing world bosses.
• Frostgorge Champ Train
• Using gw2shinies.com to boost wealth using the TP (in combination with salvaging or forging).
• Karka farming, for shells and T6
• Other T6 farms (several good ones can be found via google).
• Node farming. Some recently posted a map showing efficient routes for any combination of high-value or easily-farmed ones, e.g. rich platinum.

Some of those are more “efficient” in terms of gold/hour, but some people also find them stupefyingly dull, which is why I listed so many — you might find one that earns 40% less and yet is 200% “more fun” (however you might measure that), which means you can do it for much, much longer, and therefore earn more, before passing out from boredom.

Your mileage will vary. Past performance is not a predictor of future earnings. Void where prohibited.

I don’t watch videos unless the poster takes the time to post of description of what might be in them, e.g. “karma to gold via conversion to linen, using the crab-grabbin’ glove method.” That way, I can decide whether I want to invest the time to watch them.

(I find most gaming vlogs/vblogs are 2-3x as long as they need to be for the content, with the longest almost always being from those who don’t see the usefulness of posting a useful description.)

Zahld.4956:

that merchant doesn’t exchange all past tradeable items. and by all i mean all (that’s not currently available), or at least for a few months or a year after they’ve dropped or become available.

ANet told us that some stuff wouldn’t be usable after a certain date, so a lot of players dumped those items/currencies. It wouldn’t be “fair™” to exchange something for them now. Other currencies have been gone so long that it would also be annoying to those that tossed them.

What ANet could do, that would be fair, is to go through the list of all festival tokens/currencies/items that only had value as an exchange item and post a list that explicitly said which would never be used again in-game. That would allow everyone to delete them without worrying that they might some day have a use.

They could decide to not comment about things that might (or might not) return, like Queen’s Gauntlet Tokens and especially like SAB Continue Coins.

The big advantages of silverwastes for obsidian are:

• You do get a lot of obsidian.
• You also earn coin and a lot of T6 mats, which you usually want when you need obsidian.
• If you do events, you also earn karma, which can buy still more obsidian.

So even if it’s not absolutely the “fastest” method, it feels a lot faster because it’s a lot more interesting and more fun (for just about everyone) than any other method.

Your mileage will vary. Past performance is not a true predictor of future earnings. Void where prohibited.

Try to separate the issue from the solution: this isn’t about nodes, it’s about the high demand and low supply of a tiny number of cooking ingredients. Some ingredients were always meant to be difficult to obtain, e.g. omnoms or orrian truffles.

As it turns out, due to the relatively low variety of foods that are used in WvW and PvE, certain foods are extremely popular, spiking demand for all of their ingredients. Those ingredients represent only a small fraction of chef’s supplies and a small fraction of nodes.

Then, there’s also the question of what constitutes “absurdly expensive.” Technically, there’s no reason folks have to buy those ingredients — I’m not sure the game needs to support those who think it’s important to spend more than a few silver for food, which only modestly reduces instance-clearing speeds or survivability. There are plenty of nearly-as-effective foods that are far cheaper. So is it really a problem if chili peppers cost 20s or 30s or even 1 gold?

Suppose it is, then there are plenty of ways to change the status quo:

• Introduce new recipes that offer similar or identical benefits to the most popular ones.
• Make it easier or cheaper to acquire primers, to boost the duration of such foods.
• Introduce ascended cooking that offers recipes with new benefits and/or new durations.
• Change the drop rates for existing nodes.
• Introduce new nodes.
• Introduce alternative methods of obtaining these ingredients.
• Introduce mystic forge recipes for ‘promoting’ ghost peppers to chili peppers etc.

In short, “cooking ingredients nodes do not require a change” necessarily. There are lots of other possibilities, including that the status quo is just fine.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

^

Indeed, an NPC such as Anatomical Engineer Lyle who has the option to let you make changes to your char as a preview would be great. They could even have the option to buy and use makeover changes from him. I used to take my chars to him all the time to try out new looks.

Yes, that was a great feature in GW1 — arguably, a good marketing tool for the service, in much the same way that the wardrobe has been for skins and that the locked dye option has been for dyes.

• EotM is popular, running with a good commander nets quite a few levels.
• With a group of friends, you can swap your L31 into any dungeon (after unlocking at least one WP on the same map) just before the last boss. Most good groups can finish the final boss with 4 people.
• Crafting. You can earn 7 levels with chef and jeweler, 10 with each of the others. Of course, that’s much too expensive in most cases. But maxing chef and the first few tiers of every discipline are still relatively cheap.
• Do PvP to earn more leveling tomes.
• Check which dailies offer leveling tools as a reward.

During Fields of Ruin event day, I wasn’t able to find a map that had Ogre Wars completing successfully. Each instance was either stalled or would stall. It seems as if there are a ton of potential points of failure. I wonder if, as a temporary work-around, ANet could set up something to reset the entire chain if its status has remained the same for say over 45 minutes. That wouldn’t prevent it from failing again, but at least it would offer a lot more opportunities for the community to attempt it (and take notes about what works and doesn’t work to keep it going).

I’d be willing to wait a bit longer on a proper fix if we could have something like this sooner rather than soon™.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

I thought so too, but foes tied to events are supposed to despawn once the event is over. The upscaled foes should have disappered when the event failed, but didn’t.

It’s inconsistent. Most newly-added events work that way, but there are some older ones that don’t. Also depends if the event succeeded or not.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Regardless, it’s an issue right now and an otherwise normal skill point is requiring a group of at several people (or a friendly thief who can spare a cup of Shadow Refuge) to stand a chance against the upleveled and numerous foes. The numerous thralls that are spawned deal their damage very quickly, and even if you manage to kill one they do not give XP, so they will not count for a rally.

I am not sure that Orr was designed to be done by a single person. Obviously, many people do solo map completion, so it’s possible. My impression is that it was designed to be very inhospitable and difficult to traverse alone. While that’s a pain in many cases, I do like how Orr feels more dangerous than the non-Zhaitan parts of Tyria.

I’m sure my preference for that sort of thing has influenced my belief that it’s intended behavior and my willingness to try to work-around or through the mechanics. I understand that might not be your preference and that, regardless of why or how it’s setup, it’s currently impeding your progress and isn’t fun, for you.

Still, if ANet thinks it’s intended design, you might have better luck separating the concepts raised in the original post:

• The persistent upscaled foes — if not a bug, it’s at least a clear inconsistency with other areas in the same zone and makes sense to be discussed in the bug forum.
• The difficulty of specific SP challenges might be better raised as a suggestion. (Even though I don’t agree that they are too difficult, it’s definitely a debate that ANet should see and ideally address.)

I would like an NPC that allows you to check out different looks, without having to have a makeover kit in inventory.

People keep confusing the solution for the problem. The OP states that there’s a problem with people being AFK, which begs a solution to limit how long someone can be AFK.

However, restating the issue as one of scaling and credit, and other solutions are possible, some that have other benefits as well:

• A new formula for determining “participation,” which then can affect:
• An updated algorithm for scaling (since that needs help in lowbie zones as well as DT/DW).
• An updated rubric for determining rewards, maybe one in which healing critical NPCs counts, too.

Personally, as others have stated, it’s very rare to see AFKers have any significant impact on the results in the current game. A few locations cause champs to spawn in icky spots during Tequatl, but I’ve never seen it when I arrived less than 20 minutes ahead of the hour (it’s much more common in maps that start organizing 30+ minutes ahead). Similarly, in s/w or d/t, it’s much more common for unfamiliarity with the mechanics to affect the outcome; AFKer haven’t for any fight I’ve participated in.

hix.8374:

I have noticed a drop in the ecto rate also with the silver fed salvagomatic. It is so abysmally low that I am having better drop rates using the copper fed.

How much is “abysmally low”? That is, how many rares (or exo) did you salvage with each? And how many ecto are you getting? It is easy enough to have a good streak with copper-fed that beats a bad streak from the silver-fed. It would be very unusual to have an extended streak where that was true. Are you getting less than 80 ectos per 100 rares from the silver-fed?

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

A mysterious “soon” appears.

10/10 would quote this post again. Well played.

There is no reason to farm keys for profit nor for the skins, which can be acquired via the TP for less effort. The only reason to farm keys is that you love the anticipation of getting something fun or valuable (and don’t mind if you get garbage), because it’s cheaper to farm the keys than to convert gold to gems and buy them directly.

We have only limited data available to determine drop rates. Market prices for the items vary considerable over time and because ANet changes the contents periodically. So all of the “monetization” estimates are really just educated guesses. They assume that you can get 80 to 100g from a BL ticket (not always true) and that each scrap is worth 10% of that (not true, since 9 scraps is worth nothing, while 10 scraps is the same as a ticket).

Then you have to factor in the time to level up to reach L10 and what else you could have been doing (e.g. CoF, AC, …). The actual run itself is usually under 20 minutes for anyone who does it more than a few times per year and closer to 12 for those who do it regularly.

Overall, you could be doing something else to earn more gold.

However, farming keys is often the cheapest in-game way to get keys. At 20g/100 gems, it costs nearly 17g to get one key (if bought at the bulk rate of 25 for 2,100 gems); not many farms offer 17g for spending 30-40 minutes with as little work as this farm.

Thus, if you really like opening chests (which many do), then the farm is the most efficient method to supply your fix of keys.

However, if you want anything that the chests might drop, it is far cheaper to buy those on the TP. Unless, of course, the RNG gods smile at you.

I have no idea why ANet doesn’t allow people to have a grace period to get back into an instance, whether open world or story or dungeon.

Unfortunately, they don’t and at this point, I’m sure it can’t be easy for them to add it to the game (whether they should or not).

So in the meantime, to prevent myself crashing at tequatl and karka queen, I turn my settings down, even though I only crash during the looting phase, when suddenly everyone shows up. Since the game can’t save settings, for Tequatl, I turn on minimum + medium character models. For KQ, max settings with medium models is sufficient.

It’s annoying, but it’s only for those two situations; otherwise the game runs fine for me.

Pure Heart.1456:

I don’t understand how this idea could not have come up during discussion on outfit implementation. The game designer knows that people love customization, love mix and match, love colours, yet what is implemented is an outfit system that does not allow mix and match, has no interchangeable head-piece, and has limited colour channels. Weapons can not be dyed either, even in part.

Well before GW2 was announced, the designers decided not to allow weapons to be dyed — apparently, it saved them a huge amount of coding and made it easier to modify existing skins. In essence, they are partly able to release new BL skins often because of this.

Similarly, the entire point of outfits is that they are not very customizable. Again, that’s a design decision that allows them to release a greater number of skins.

Some players feel that there is sufficient customization in being able to change outfits, while many feel as you do that mixing and matching (and dyeing) are ‘better’ options.

In the end, it’s one of those cost:benefit analyses that won’t make everyone happy.

• More options = fewer pieces, since each piece needs to be designed with that in mind.
• Fewer options = more pieces, since e.g. outfits can stand on their own.

I’m not suggesting that you have to agree that ANet mad a ‘good’ choice. I merely ask that you see the decision from their point of view, specifically that they had a good reason for non-dyeable weapons and have a good reason for releasing outfits through the gem shop.

I’m also not altogether sure how ANet can tell what the “best” mix of options would be for the community. There are clearly people passionate about more mix|match, while plenty like having more overall skins to choose from, with more frequent updates. For those who hate outfits, there is probably no good mix.