Guild Wars 2

I find it incredibly tedious to craft ascended gear and wish it were a more interesting activity. But it’s not difficult, plus I can play anything in the game without it.

The OP presumes that it’s required; it’s not. The OP presumes that you have to suffer the time gate; also not true (you can pay extra to acquire the necessary mats, except charged quartz, which is a different matter).

tl;dr gearing with ascended might be boring and crazy expensive; fortunately, it’s not required for 99% of the community.

Toxicity.5392:

Blocking trolls does not keep them out of my party.

…

…That’s not how kitten is supposed to work.

That is how it was designed to work. There are various reasons why it might be okay to have someone on your block list join a party. (For example, during a recent Tequatl fight, I was on a defense team with someone I had blocked for trolling /map; I unblocked them, fight went well, they were a worthy ally; I reblocked them afterward.)

On the other hand, as you say, there are also good reasons to prevent those on the block list from joining a party. I’d be in favor of changing the LFG + block mechanics to enable this as an option, although I would say that this is way down on my priority list.

Reptar.4908:

This is my first day in the game, me and a friend bought it together. A world showed as very high to both of us, I select the world and make it my home. Now my friend can’t enter it because it is full. We planned on playing the game together but now one of us will have to pay for moving to another server. On day one I think this is very unfair that we would need to pay money just to play together, is there any way to fix this?

Welcome to GW2. As Krall said, you don’t have to pay anything to play together as long as you chose the same region (NA or EU), unless you want to play WvW.

Retailers had dates for GW2 long before the betas started. The only date that will matter is the one that ANet gives.

The amount and type of mats will be the same no matter who opens the bags. Named exotics drop at the same rate. The only thing that changes is the level of the gear that drops; that is dependent on the level of the toon you use when clicking.

By my calculations, each masterwork weapon and non-torso armor is worth about 1-2s more, when opening with L5x vs L80, with the notable except that cloth armor is worth about 10+ silver more, due to the difference in the price of linen from silk. This presumes you salvage everything green.

L80 rares are worth significantly more than L50 rares (10s to 40s per), but there aren’t that many that drop, so it probably doesn’t influence the outcome much. Also, I haven’t found anyone that keeps good track of the coin that drops from L50 vs L80 (it might be different). However, since the value of cloth salvaged from masterwork armor is so substantial, I doubt that it matters much even if you lose 50% of the direct coin.

tl;dr L51-59 will normally generate more value if you salvage all masterwork, sell rares, and sell trinkets of any kind. There are variations, depending on whether you have other interests.

The game environment is flexible enough for a lot of different play styles, including those obsessively chasing not-quite-arbitrary goals, such as specific skins. If you just want to play to have fun, you can skip ascended (and never mind legendary) gear. The choice is yours.

doomfodder.2906:

ZilentNight.5089:

It has a pretty low drop rate, the price will drop quite significantly in another month or so.

oh if only that were entirely true… I’ve done this event 4-5 times per week in the 7 months since this was originally posted = no drop = still very rare + TP price increased 20%.

I think the “diminishing returns” code has fully engaged.

Diminishing returns doesn’t apply to this situation. Unless 100% of the people who do the event do so with the same character and never move far from one spot. What’s more likely is that it has a super low drop rate… so low that most of us will never see one except by purchasing it through the TP.

I suspect (without any specific additional evidence) that this was intended behavior by ANet. Thus, rich players will spend “too much” coin to buy it on the TP, lucky players will get 85% of that value, and 15% will be sunk away from the economy.

I’m okay with that — there are a number of achievements that I don’t consider to be worth the effort (or gold, in that it takes effort to make that gold). At the same time, I can see why those who want to “earn” it themselves would be frustrated.

Captain Prinny.6492:

I for one, welcome our new crabgrabbing overlords.

LoL.

(That is a great line, even though I don’t personally like crab toss nor keg brawl.)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You are aware the OP wrote this over 2 years ago, yes?

[/quote]

Erm, no, I was responding to one of the new posts — I didn’t see the date on the original (nor someone questioning why someone was resurrecting an ancient post). Sorry about that.

• MF is always useful for people that kill a lot of foes (outside of personal or living story instances).
• Karma is trivial for some people to obtain, but if you have less than 1,000,000, you might find yourself wanting more at some point. (This is especially helpful if you do fractals below your personal level.)
• Gold Find appears to be too little to matter
• Experience is probably useless: tons of boosters, all food/utilities grant +exp, and there are tons of scrolls etc.

Accordingly, I have karma for most of my toons and one amulet with +MF for farming.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

If the waypoint doesn’t give it to you (it should) then run up to the door and it will unlock.

This is how I unlocked that very spot.

Baleroc Rageflame.5173:

Hi, I had over 100 Mystic Coins in my bank collection storage, and when I check to find them, there is only 27? Has this happened to anyone else? I haven’t used them at all before now, I was going to use 50 to make the Eternal Sands focus. They have disappeared.

I have never heard of anything just vanishing from your account vault. It always turns out (when we hear back from the person reporting a potential issue) that the items were moved or used, sometimes to the main bank tabs, sometimes to storage toons, sometimes sold, sometimes sent to a friend, and so on.

I can’t say what happened in your case — it could be a new bug, but then why did it affect only that one item?

Your best bet is, as the first poster suggested, creating a support ticket, via the link in the upper left.

Except, that the situation isn’t as simple as you describe:

• In some cases, there is plenty of time to rez the dead.
• Friends often would like to rez their friends.
• During some events, you want to rez certain people, e.g. for tequatl: defense teams rez each other and turret operators.

In addition, I remember someone posting during the Pavillion events that they had tested upscaling and it turned out that when people died, the event took that into account. Specifically, the bosses had less health as soon as there were fewer live/downed characters within their aggro bubble; as soon as people walked or died, the health dropped. (Even if this point isn’t true, the other points stand.)

tl;dr it’s not necessarily as big an issue as people in /map chat would have us believe.

RoseofGilead.8907:

For trinket items and such, you have to right click and choose “Unlock in collection” to unlock them in their collection categories. As was suggested above, you have to contact support (with one ticket) to see if they can help you out.

I’ve seen other reports about this and (I believe) that Customer Support has been able to help people.

I do wish they would make the mechanic more consistent. The problem is that there are no “skins” in the wardrobe associated with trinkets, so they don’t unlock automatically via salvage or use in the forge.

I don’t think ANet considers it a bug. Instead, I think they designed it so people couldn’t enter water, swap utilities, and escape the cooldown for the terrestrial skills. There are work-arounds, e.g. I make sure my mantras are slotted to the same skill slots for underwater.

This doesn’t make it any less annoying.

However, it does mean that we probably would have more luck offering suggestions for improving the mechanic, while still preventing people from working around cooldowns. Underwater mechanics have other issues that might also be handled at the same time, such as not being able to set them (or traits) while on land and that we can’t set separate traits for underwater (since a lot of skills don’t work off-land, a lot of traits become useless).

tl;dr this is probably going to be addressed when underwater combat gets overhauled, if ever.

Nice work, guys.

20% is a good rule of thumb for “break even”. Any less and it isn’t worth your time.

In your example of 7.0s for two ori ore, aim for significantly more than 8.4s to sell the ingots. (Ideally, try to buy when the price is dipping, as shown the graphs available from the links above and try to sell when the price is peaking.)

edit: for the mathematically inclined, the actual “break even” is closer to 18%, but for the mathematically challenged, 20% is easier — and takes into account ‘effort’

Belzebu.3912:

Bank slots are really nice.
Character slot if you like to make alts.
Infinite gathering tools is very popular.
Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic is also a really good item to buy.

I agree with these recommendations.

Plus, get a few ‘fun’ things: skins, minis, outfits, etc. (I don’t recommend getting anything that involves a lottery, such as BL Keys or dye packs.)

Yeah, you did earn the black widow and it’s a shame that everyone has to wait. But eventually, this will get fixed.

Regardless of whether celestial is ‘good’ or not, it does take a long time to craft, due to the time gating. I just get in the habit of parking a toon near a commune-type skill point (the one in the home instance is great, if you have it) and charge up one /day. Then, periodically, I check to see if I have enough to craft. If I do, great; if not, then I wait until later.

I don’t get my celestial quickly, but then I also don’t worry about how long it takes. I realize this method won’t work for everyone; it’s just good for some of us.

Hiding parts of some outfits would require more design time (and more testing time, too). The advantage of outfits, from ANet’s perspective, is that it’s all or nothing; they don’t have to deal with variations.

I imagine that it would be easier to have options on some outfits than others, but then they’d have to explain why all outfits aren’t treated equally.

To be clear, I’m not against the idea. Instead, I’m guessing that it isn’t likely to happen, since it runs counter to the inherent simplicity of outfits.

ShotgunDiplomat.7239:

So I’m breaking the rules when I have to jump up from play time to assist my heavily pregnant wife with our toddler?
Nice to know we risk punishment for having lives.

No you aren’t breaking the rules. Someone misquoted and misunderstood.

There are people who look for any wording in policy that allows them to gain rewards without truly playing, so various ANet staff have tried to clarify what will result in an infraction. They have used the phrase “if you can keep playing after walking away from your keyboard” to indicate the transition from acceptable to unacceptable.

People have tried to take this literally as in: “it’s ok to alt-tab (since I’m not ‘away’ from the keyboard)” or “so I get punished for going to the bathroom” — neither of which is true. The point is: if you are actively playing, there’s no problem. If you are trying to keep getting rewards without controlling your character, there is.

So people should feel comfortable dealing with life and especially with emergencies without fear of ANet doing anything to their account.

The OP’s example is something of a gray area: on the one hand, they aren’t actively playing the character every second of every minute. On the other hand, they intend to whenever there’s combat. I don’t think we can be sure how ANet would handle that, but my bet is that it’s ok, within the context of the original post.

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

Ignavia.7420:

Jenilya.2108:

You can use Artificer to convert it into higher tier essence, which results in less clicking. It’s a level 0 Artificer craft, and you do not lose any of the luck by doing it. It was done like that for the reason to help reduce clicking.

Even this way you need to click through 21478 essences to maximize your magic find.

And you lose a ton more time changing characters and banking across them all…

I don’t lose any time. I through stuff into the bank and wait until there’s barely any room, then “process” it all. Takes me less time than having every toon deal with just a few things to salvage or forge or refine.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Malediktus.9250:

I voted for Ellen Kiel.

Which is why LA looks like this

Actually, it turns out that if Evon had won, then Scarlet would have completely destroyed LA and all the surrounding areas, so it would have been worse.

gbull.6715:

Please fix this. It’s getting to the point where I just don’t care if people who didn’t earn it get it. It’s been over a month. Turn them back on…I worked a long time for these rewards and want to access them.

Some people care, some don’t. In ANet’s shoes, would you just let it go? Or would try to make sure that everything related got fixed first? (I’m not sure how I’d handle it myself, especially after this much time, but if the team was “close” to resolving things, I’d be inclined to wait a bit longer.)

Ark.2741:

Still waiting, is there any info on when we will get our gems?

If you haven’t received something you purchased by now, I recommend creating a support ticket, so that Customer Service can find out what’s going on specifically with your account.

What “tower” did you take? the game is particular about its definition of that term.

There’s no “official” RP server, so I can’t see ANet stepping in to “fix” a problem that they didn’t create. Besides, outside of WvW or the EU/NA divide, choice of server has no impact, not for PvE and not for PvP. Unless [HOPE] is substantially an RPing WvW guild, I’m not sure why it matters to the OP that they end up on TC.

That said, I see room for improvement.

From a strict economic sense, ANet has priced server moves too high for low-pop ones and too low for high pop. From a customer service perspective, I can’t see ANet getting away with charging 4,000 gems for some server moves and only 100 gems to others. Maybe ANet could offer incentives to folks for moving, to encourage non-WvWers to move.

Outside of ANet, there are things that the community could do. For example, why do RPers continue to insist on using TC as the only world? Would it make more sense for larger groups to encourage new members to start on a second world (and for some of the vets to move there, to help establish it)? There’s enough of an RP pop to spread out over two worlds and, due to megaserver, there’s no real problem getting together.

tl;dr full servers only affect people who WvW with their guild. ANet probably could do more to rebalance populations, but until they do, there are some things that the community could do without ANet’s help.

The OP isn’t asking for a place that allows them to get rewarded for being AFK. They are asking for a place that would allow them to pay little attention until something significant came up.

There are such places, but they all will get hit with Diminishing Returns quickly. For example, people park characters at Rhendak’s tomb for a boss that spawns every 10 minutes or so. You’ll get a champ bag for each kill, karma/xp for the event, a bouncy/bonus chest (1x/account/day), and a ground chest (1x/character/day). But after a few iterations, you’ll start to see the karma/xp drop to nothing and even the loot will start to diminish.

tl;dr there are places, but it won’t do you much good — you’ll still have to swap characters and/or move each character around every 15-45 minutes (depending on the situation).

RodOfDeath.5247:

That was it! Thank you Illconceived

I guess you forgot that thieves can stealth their inventory

(you’re quite welcome — glad it was that simple)

Gene Archer.8560:

Mireles Lore.5942:

Why would they create something, have a sizeable part of the player base invest in it, and then take it away?
.

That’s an excellent question. Let’s ask the newest trait changes, SAB, and LS Season 1 and see what they have to say.

Those aren’t comparable in the least.

• The newest trait changes are a standard type of reblancing that every game has to go through. There’s no particular investment, other than people got used to their current builds. This isn’t the first nor the last time an MMO has rebalanced (not even the first time it’s been done for GW2; it’s just the most substantial).
• The only possible “investment” for SAB is the infinite coin. Arguably ANet should offer refunds to people who bought that, if they aren’t going to make SAB available annually. But that’s hardly a “sizable” investment, similar to what is required for ascended gear.
• No one “took anything” away for LS1. It was never intended to exist beyond the time the events were taking place.

The problem with the OP’s suggestion is still that it doesn’t state a problem that everyone agrees exists. ANet designed ascended gear to be laborious to obtain; they also put it in a game that was calibrated for exotics, so there’s no particular need in PvE to have ascended unless you do lots of high-level fractals, speed clears for records, or guild-v-guild.

On that basis, there’s no “problem” with having a “gap” and therefore no need to close it.

On the other hand, I don’t think it would be fair to say it’s fun to go through the effort of crafting ascended gear. Not that it’s any worse than making a legendary or other shiny mystic forge weapon. So, I would welcome a thread that offers suggestions for how to make the process more enjoyable.

The OP’s complaint is equivalent to saying that people with 8 characters (which required paying for 3) have an advantage over those with only 5, since the former can play 3 classes that the latter cannot.

That could only be true if the classes were inherently unbalanced and ANet made no attempt to change that.

On the whole, that hasn’t been true for the existing 8 profs. I don’t see why it would change when they introduce 10 more profs (8 elite profs + revenant + its elite version).

The expansion is buy-to-play, the same as the original game was. If you don’t pay for the box, you don’t play; if you do purchase the account (or its upgrade), you play for as much or as little as you like without additional fees.

Regardless of whether spidy is up-to-date, the data from the API shows clearly that, at any given moment, there’s the equivalent of a 15% fee/tax in both directions. Start with 1,000 gold, convert to gems, and convert back. Unless the rate changes while you do that (which it will), you’ll end up with 722.5 gold.

Michael.9403:

Still some confusion here. Are skills being reworked? I thought I understood traits were being reworked, but saw nothing on skills. Therefore I don’t understand why I should not fill in the blank spots in the skill tree, even if I don’t really like them. I have far and away enough surplus of skill points not earned by skill challenges to purchase anything I might need for the forge. I’ve already made a couple of dozen ascended items, and don’t see so many more in the future that I can’t get augur stones.

Some skills appear to be getting reworked, some mechanics are changing, some traits are changing in ways that will alter how skills will get used.

But we were discussing the fact that currently there are two ways to unlock traits:

• You can perform a task in Tyria, anything from completing a puzzle to completing a zone to story mode.
• You can spend gold and skill points.

So in effect there are three questions that people have had:

• Should I consume my SP scrolls now?
• Should I unlock skills now?
• Should I spend SPs/Gold to unlock traits now? (Or do the tasks? or just wait for the new system.)

I agree there’s no reason to wait to unlock skills: anything unlocked today will, one way or another, be unlocked when the new system goes live. I also think there’s no reason to wait to consume SP scrolls (and only a small matter of deciding which toon should “eat” them).

The answer to the third question doesn’t have as strong a consensus. Some think there is no chance that ANet will refund any SP or gold spent to unlock traits; some are convinced they will. I’m agnostic: I have no idea if they will or not, so I’m reluctant to spend now. OTOH, it could be months before we get specializations/hero points; I don’t expect that everyone can afford to be without critical traits indefinitely either.

It’s trivial for them to get your display name (Kaozkrayken). It’s very difficult for them to get your credentials (email + password + reasonable IP address). That’s why they fish, because it takes almost no effort and has a > 0 chance to succeed.

Report them, block them, and forget about it — you don’t have to worry about the ones sending you spam like the one you referenced. (You can, however, remain paranoid about clicking on links you get in email, downloading unfamiliar software without investigating, or helping a Nigerian prince with his finances.)

Basandra Skye.4031:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr I can’t see any reason not to consume most of the scrolls now.

However, I am reluctant to spend skill points today on traits, because ANet hasn’t explained whether those points (or the required gold) will be refunded or otherwise made available in some other way.

You wont get refunded. You dont get refunded if you buy the trait and later on go complete it’s unlock requirement. You dont get refunded for the trait books you bought before THIS change took place. Why would you get refunded now?

As it stands now, skill points arent hard to come by, they never were, unless you were sub80 across all your characters.

I think I might have given you the wrong impression. I said I’m reluctant to spend on traits now because ANet hasn’t given their plans. If instead, they announced today that there will be no compensation, then I would change from being reluctant to being certain that I wouldn’t spend.

The reason I think they might offer some sort of refund is that they did so for dye unlocks (one might even have gotten a ‘replacement’ limited-edition color) and offered refunds for some skins that got converted into tonics.

In any case, this doesn’t change the fact that there isn’t any particular reason today to hoard skill point scrolls.

Could your items be in some sort of invisible bag?

Initially, I chose one character from each race just to see how it worked. Later, I made a couple of extra asura, because their movement appears speedy and made me laugh. Eventually, if I re-rolled or added to the roster, I considered the voices: I can’t stand some of the voice acting and don’t want to be stuck with Norn female or human male. Some of the stories are more fun than others, so that was a consideration too.

I don’t think it’s “boring” to go with only one race/gender, but I do think it prevents you from some of the other fun things in the game.

Cyninja.2954:

Mine Laces.7108:

… snip…

15 days ago i got spark from forge by just putting 4 random rare daggers i drop from world bosses into it.
It was a good feeling, after all the gold wasted i felt like the game was finally rewarding me.
Feeling lucky i decided to invest 400 golds in greatswords ( always wanted Twilight ) and magically i come back with a Dusk and a Dawn drop.

… snip…

So you basically got close to 2k gold thrown at you by rng. I’d keep very quiet around others, there are people having thrown in over 3k gold and not even getting 1 precursor.

You are right though, it is the games fault. You should have been a tad more unlucky and not gotten 3 precursors. Then your gold reserves would not have sufficed to build Eternity and you to become overly greedy.

Advice? Sell Eternity for 3-3.5k and walk away. You’ll be way more lucky than 95% of the player base and get to keep a nice gold pile for HoT. Also, don’t mention this story to all to many people, unless you want envy to be your new constant companion.

Again, if you read the original post, you can see that the OP wasn’t blaming the game — on the contrary, Mine Laces made it clear that they were frustrated about not being more careful reading the market. The OP was venting about being dispirited after making a mistake.

The OP made it clear they understood they were lucky to get precursors that easily, and that lucky feeling led them into being incautious about how to profit from that luck.

In fact, the OP stated plainly that they were venting: “Sorry if i felt the need to vent my frustration.” And offered their own advice to prevent others from suffering the same fate: “if you plan to sell an Eternity be very careful, this may be not the best moment to do it.”

We don’t need 1,000 bag slots. Most players just hoard stuff without thinking about why. I agree that there are too many currencies that aren’t in the wallet, but I don’t think there’s any necessity to offer free, additional storage to everyone. There are lots of cheap alternatives.

I don’t agree with Donari’s conclusions.

• All skill points are already a currency.
• What’s changing is that those acquired in excess of points via leveling or hero challenges are getting converted into a wallet-stored currency.
• ANet hasn’t hinted that anything else is changing.

The future currency of formerly skill points will be used for mystic forge items, which is exactly how skill points are used today. There might be a greater selection and the costs might change, but that can happen regardless of the currency moving to the wallet.

tl;dr I can’t see any reason not to consume most of the scrolls now.

However, I am reluctant to spend skill points today on traits, because ANet hasn’t explained whether those points (or the required gold) will be refunded or otherwise made available in some other way.

Instead, I’ve eaten most of the my scrolls and have been using up some of them at the mystic forge, not because I think there’s any rush, but because there’s little reason to hoard them now.

The drop rate is super low. There’s no particular reason to expect a mini puppy ever, no matter how many bags you open.

As I’ve said before, I think drop rates should either be high enough that anyone opening a stack (or even 50 stacks) should be likely to get an item or tradeable. The special amulets have a tiny drop rate, too, but those can be acquired on the TP; I don’t see any reason for the rarer item (mini ghost dog) to be account-bound.

Alternatively, they could include some sort of scrap system, so that people opening 1,000s of bags at least can feel that they are making progress, rather than have it be completely random.

Most people should delete the stacks after refining what they need for ascended gear, unless you have plenty of storage already. Lacking extraordinary luck, you’ll use 5-10 times as much coin for storage as you would gain from saving dragonite to convert to gifts later.

There are two big exceptions:

• You really really really love opening things (like a scratch-off lottery).
• You have tons and tons of storage

Otherwise, you’re spending time every day micromanaging your inventory to ensure you have room for more ascended mats, figuring out where you stored something you want, and unloading/salvaging before/during/after farming runs (whether silverwastes or other).

Some math for those who want to verify my conclusions:

• A stack of gifts is worth 15-20 gold, according to research from redditor barath56. Gift of Generosity data & Gift of Mawdrey data
• A stack of gifts requires 50 stacks of unrefined mats, so 50 slots of storage.
• 50 slots takes 100-140 gold depending on conversion rates and how you build up your storage (easiest is one new toon at 800 gems, ~144g today).

Other trivia:

• Each stack of mats will (eventually) convert to ~40s.
• It takes ~60 days of daily conversion to get a full stack of gifts.

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

tl;dr I will keep fighting the good fight on your behalf.

Thank you

Not every chest in maguuma drops the scraps. Also, chest drops aren’t affected by magic find.

I know two people who found each scrap on the first chest they tried (that could possibly drop them), while most others needed to open a few. I know a smaller number of folks who had to try a lot of chests before getting them.

tl;dr it’s random, with a low enough drop rate that you can go through a lot of chests without seeing them. (And there are a few chests in each zone that won’t ever drop them.)

Kal Spiro.9745:

So basically this thread serves no purpose. You’ve already done everything you can, and should do to involve yourself in this. You reported them, you put in a ticket. your job is done.

If they’re botting, something might come of it. If they’re not botting, then nothing will come of it, they’re not interfering with you, and they’re not stealing your rewards. Whatever rewards they are getting, if anything at all, are insignificant and not worth your concern. Move on.

True, there’s not much that individual players can do aside from reporting, so sure, there’s no sense in dwelling on this. “Report it and move on” is reasonable advice, as it can help people to enjoy the game instead of being distracted by how others play. If the response had stopped there, I wouldn’t have responded.

I think this thread serves several purposes. First of all, I wasn’t aware of this specific form of AFK/botting, so I learned something. Second, the OP didn’t know if there was something more that could be done — obviously they had hoped that posting here would help ANet to act more quickly.

In addition, botting does “steal” rewards: it affects the supply of goods, which then impacts prices on the TP. It makes black market gold cheaper, which also affects the economy. While it’s true that individual botters won’t make a significant difference, left unchecked they will multiply (as those controlling the botting create more and those that go AFK tell their friends).

So I’m glad that the OP was concerned and took the time to report. I also got something from their taking the time to report it on the forums.

Gibson.4036:

You’re trying to fit fantasy into a scientific mindset. It just doesn’t work.

Ah, no, that I have to disagree with. Some fantasy allows for the existence of science (that is, the field of study that offers up “falsifiable theories” that people attempt to break, and build up a set of ‘truths’ from those that can’t be shown to be incorrect). A lot of fantasy doesn’t work that way.

For example, the Harry Potter stories (and the Harry Dresden ones, too, for that matter) invent a new sort of magic whenever the story requires it. Any consistency is either coincidental or a result of an amazing memory (or note taking ability) of the author (and their editors). On the other hand, Larry Niven goes out of his way in his Gil Hamilton (and Magic Goes Away) stories to provide all the science (or magic) needed to solve mysteries long before the end of each tale.

In other words, Fantasy can include learning from replicable experimentation as well as plenty of Deux Ex Machina (i.e. it’s true because we say so). Guild Wars 2 has a mix of this: most of Taimi’s (and Scarlett’s and Snaff’s etc) research is consistent with things we already knew from the game and consistent with how the stories continue to play out. On other hand, sometimes the writers invent something new (seemingly) to help resolve a plot complication (or sometimes, to help create one).

In the end, all that really matters is if the ‘facts’ in the game are reasonably self-consistent. If they aren’t, people will worry too much about the contradictions and not enough about what’s happening gamewise.

That’s no big deal until people try to impose what they know from Earth on the game — that automatically creates tons of potential contradictions and doesn’t allow the writers to tell any sort of story. Players (and readers, film-goes, and TV-watchers) have to accept the initial premise, or there’s no story to tell.

For example, unless you are willing to believe in faster-than-light travel (which to date, there’s no evidence to support), there’s no Star Trek or Star Wars. Unless you are willing to believe in flying dragons with seemingly unlikely wings and heavy surface-to-mass ratios, there’s no Guild Wars 2.

tl;dr sorry that the OP “can’t believe Tequatl can fly” — that makes for a really brief gaming experience.

• The daily is on a monthly schedule, so it always shows up on 4, 7, 11, 20, 27 of each month.
• The activity rotation is on a seven day rotation: Survival, Crab Toss, Sprint, Survival, Keg Brawl, Crab Toss, Sprint.

The math works out to give us the same activity when the daily includes activities for a few cycles. Right now, it’s crab toss; for a while it was sprint.

Personally, I’d prefer to see activity always be an option, to encourage people to play them more often.

I treat guardian staff as a melee weapon: I only use it for close range combat. Pretty much every weapon in this game is used to channel some form of magic — thus they are each some sort of “focus” (in the traditional, not the GW2 sense) and I don’t think there’s any special connection between how the weapon gets used on planet Earth (or traditional fantasy lit, media, or games) and how it gets used in Tyria.

• Revenant hammers are ranged. (And guardian hammers do more than localized physical damage.)
• Mesmer greatswords are ranged. (And guardian GS do more than localized physical damage.)
• Ranger warhorns summon birds.
• Elementalist daggers shoot flames and bolts.

Tyria need only be self-consistent; it doesn’t need to be consistent with Earth lore (nor, in my strong opinion, should it).

Final countdown to? Chronometer? Do you mean a stopwatch? There already is an in-game clock (which certainly counts as a ‘chronometer’); you can set it to display your computer’s clock time or the server time (aka UTC).

That said, I would like to see ANet add an in-game tool for showing the location of scheduled world bosses.