Guild Wars 2

I’ve run spot checks on the API when spidy seems “off” — and spidy is off from what the API is telling me (on those occasions).

You can find it out in game. Open up the TP, switch the conversion tab (second one, on the left). On the lower right of the panel, choose “Custom Exchange”. Type in the amount of gems you want.

As I type, it’s 326g 5s 54c, which is high relative to the last 48 hours, since gems are trading at 18g 16+/100 gems and ‘last night’ they were trading at 16g50 or so. (Plus a month ago or so, you could still get 100 gems for less than 14g, if you chose your time carefully.)

Seera.5916:

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

Up, still would like an official answer on refund/conservation.

And they won’t give you one.

They won’t tell you no because you may get mad and not buy HoT.

They won’t tell you yes because then they then have to guard against players reading forums and seeing that X will given out to players who unlocked traits.

Unless they decide to give anyone who unlocked Y or more traits a title called Trait Collector.

Naw, they haven’t told us yet because they haven’t worked out the details. People who care deeply about this will wait to find out, before they buy, so ‘hiding’ the answer won’t help ANet much (while it does harm their reputation a little).

Since they haven’t announced a date for advanced sales, it’s not really an urgent question. I mean, sure, I want to know the answer today, but I don’t need to know it until I have an opportunity to but the game.

hazenvirus.8154:

…it isn’t unresonable to think that increasing the velocity could improve these weapons,

Sure, but the OP argued that the physics was improper, as can be seen in the title of the thread. In a game, especially a fantasy RPG, game balance has to be (mostly) separated from other considerations.

If the OP wants to discuss balance in a new thread, great. (Even then, it’s more complicated than just looking at rifle vs longbow or pistol vs shortbow, since those weapons have very different functions for different profs and within the context of various builds.)

xavier.7308:

xavier.7308:

mawdrey does have a pay day if you’re lucky though

anyone spot the drop?

Gz on your precursor.

But that doesn’t really change the math: it takes time to manage your inventory and that time could be spent doing something else, which also has the same low, low chance to drop a precursor. Arguably, you are better off farming something that allows you to kill tons of foes in a short period of time: the odds are low per kill, but you have a lot more chances for the effort.

tl;dr for almost everyone in the game, mawdrey doesn’t have a payday greater than 15-20 gold per stack of gifts.
(and again: gz on your legend! that’s awesome and yes I missed it the first time)

dietzero.3514:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

As long as the player in question can still play the game, that player still has a chance to get the drop and thereby get access to the beta.

That said, the drop rate is still fairly low, so no it’s not a conspiracy to stop him from getting a portal key because he can’t behave on the forums.

Hope this clears things up.

You do not get it either. I am not saying this is a conspiracy or anything like that. It would be perfectly reasonable for Anet to not take forum banned people in a closed beta, which is why I am asking this question.

However, due to the nature of the way accounts are flagged, I doubt they did it. But that small chance made me ask.

I disagree with your assumptions, but I can agree it’s theoretically possible that ANet could set up the game that way. Here’s how we know they didn’t:

• They have said repeatedly that forum behavior doesn’t affect what happens in-game, nor vice-versa (with the obvious exception that if you’re perma-banned from the game, you ultimately won’t be able to post on the forums).
• It’s too expensive to put in the code to do it. The forums use a 3rd party system so they’d have to specially customize something to make a list of suspended/banned forum people, make sure it cannot be altered by anyone, and pass that list to the game, which would then have to have special capability to treat people differently.
• ANet has said many times, in many different ways that they don’t treat accounts differently for any reason, aside from suspending or perma-banning, i.e. you can either play the game or you can’t.
• Secret punishments fail as deterrent to bad behavior: the only reason to implement this (from a business or community sense) would be to let folks know in advance that their forum behavior could result in changes to their luck or rewards.

Finally, if they threw all that logic completely out the window for reasons we can’t comprehend, why would they change their mind and tell us? They go through all the trouble above, forgo the benefits of such a system… then there would have to be some reason to keep it a secret, so they wouldn’t confirm or deny it.

tl;dr your brother has the same chance as anyone else.

lordhelmos.7623:

Something that bugged me is the slowness of the gun weapons in this game in comparison to bows.

….

This would give guns proper mechanics and give them a better “feel” compared to bows.

The physics is ‘proper’ for Tyria, even if it’s improper for Earth. Even aside from the obvious, there are plenty of examples that clue you into the difference:

• You toss Dragon’s Tooth and without hurting friends, it burns foes, and yet doesn’t burn wood objects nearby.
• You use a scythe to gather from a single plant and might end up with garlic, cloves, tarragon, or vanilla. That same plant yields a different set of herbs (or spices) in other regions.
• A fall from great height usually doesn’t kill you.

As long as the game is self-consistent, I don’t think it has any obligation to match Earth physics, chemistry, or biology. Or at least, I can still enjoy it just fine; I hope you’ll be able to as well.

edit: grammar clean-up

danizmax.4329:

Its year 2015… can’t you make 255?

Please, at least limit the input field to kitten we don’t have to manually count characters? That’s a 5min work for one web developer.

regards

Sure, it’s annoying, but they are using a 3rd party tool for the forum, so even if it was just 5 min work (which it wouldn’t be — there’s some reason why it’s got a tiny limit), it wouldn’t be ANet’s developer.

Shadey Dancer.2907:

Noticed today that diminishing returns on karma are following on successive new maps. I went from Silverwastes to Queensdale to clean my DR, which didnt work, so went to Blazeridgesteps, same thing again, karma rock bottom.

Edit* tried Gendaren fields there after, same thing!

I’ve not heard of DR persisting in that way. Unless something changed, it also was based on location and/or foe type. As long as you kept moving around, it wouldn’t hit you.

Try swapping toons and see if that changes things (it should, since DR for most situations is character-bound). If it doesn’t, I recommend creating a support ticket to get help from Customer Service.

It might also be worth posting here which events you did and what level credit (gold/silver/bronze) and what karma you did get.

Sorry for the frustration and keep us posted.

Reverence.6915:

kash.9213:

Either a game is good and the player base is decent, or one or the other sucks and people leave because of it. So, either GW2 is a bad game at it’s core or your guild sucked. Or, maybe they’re all playing together someplace but told everyone not to let you know about it.

Agreed with your first premise. I’m the guild leader for my guild. I try to organise events every single night, but with fewer and fewer people turning up every night, it’s hard to continue justifying playing on GW2 rather than moving towards other games.

This happens to guilds (and player bases) as any game ages, regardless of how much new content there is. Real life interferes with people’s gaming or they go looking for new distractions or they “grow out” of one type of gaming.

It could also be the long drought between content updates for this particular game, but I don’t think any of us have anywhere near enough data to say one way or the other.

tl;dr it could just be natural attrition rather than anything specific to the state of the game in April 2015.

One guy saved up a stack of each of Gifts of Gratitude and Gifts of Mawdrey. Takes about 60 days (averaging slightly more than 4 gifts/day) and eats up 50 stacks of mats.

On average, the redditor found that each stack was worth 15-20 gold or each gift being worth (on average) about 8 silver or 40 silver for every 5 gifts.

Rephrasing the math:

• Each stack of mats will eventually convert into about 40 silver.
• You can convert slightly less than a stack a day, i.e. about 40 silver/day.

So the question becomes:

• Is it worth hoarding the mats, investing in the mat-eating things, and waiting it out, so you can earn an extra 40s/day? Or
• Would you prefer to recover all your storage instantly by deleting the mats instead?

The answer will vary for each of us, depending on how much storage we have, how much we need, how much junk we hoard and accumulate over time, and how big a difference 40s/day makes.

All things equal (which they never are), it’s less total effort to do an extra dungeon path each day. On the other hand, I do love opening up gifts, since just about anything might drop.

ezd.6359:

Thanathos.2063:

ezd.6359:

2) Same chances i think. Of course it is 20% chance to get exotic, but it is 5 times cheaper.

Well, it’s a 20% upgrade to exotic, true. But you have to get a Lv80 exotic though for a chance on a precursor.
When you put in 4 exotics of Lv75 or something like that, you’ll always get a Lv80 exotic. If you put in 4 rares (of any level, even 80) you have to get lucky twice: a) get an exotic (20%) and b) get a Lv80 one. So I’d say the chance on a Lv80 exotic isn’t 20%, more like 10 or less.

2) When you forge 4 × 80 exotics you can receive 75 lvl exotic back too. People say it does not matter the chance to get precursors remains the same.

Those who do industrial forging of precursors didn’t see any change in the drop rate for precursors after the change to the drop table:

• The number of different skins increased.
• For the forging of four rares of average L75:
  • The percent of upgrades to exotic was unchanged at ~20%.
  • The percent of rare L80 weapons was unchanged at ~80%.
  • The fraction of exotics that were also L80 dropped from 100% (i.e. 20% of total) to ~55% (i.e. 11% of total tries).

In other words, nothing changed about the precursor drop rate. What changed instead was how many different weapons might drop. (Initially, the value of the outputs was, on average about the same — that’s because some of the skins were new to most people’s wardrobes. Now, of course, the skins are common so the value of the outputs is down.)

Reanne.5462:

Is it still botting if you set your skill to auto attack using the capability that is built into the skillbar?

ANet can (and will) penalize players it identifies that are not actively playing the game, including those running scripts (aka bots), or macros, or otherwise giving themselves the ability to “walk away” (figuratively speaking) from the keyboard.

Players who want to report suspected behavior via the in-game tool should choose “botting” as the reason, since that is the closest to the circumstances. If reporters want to convey additional information (screen shots or a description of the behavior), they can create a support ticket instead.

Since it’s not my job to investigate and determine if someone is or is not botting or afk or otherwise getting rewarded for “afk” behavior (again, figuratively speaking), I would just /report and leave at that. ANet will either agree or not and either take action or not; as long as it’s not that many people, I’d prefer to enjoy the game than worry about people who are enjoying the rewards (but not the game).

Try clearing out the TP’s cache. Instructions are in a sticky in the account/technical support forum. Sometimes a file gets corrupted there, preventing the entire TP from loading.

If you have no luck with that, create a support ticket so the Customer Service team can work with you individually. (The forums are good for getting help from other players, but bad for ensuring your specific issue gets looked at quickly.)

Follow-up (near as any of us can tell):

• There aren’t any rare or exotic trinkets that meet all of the criteria.
• Any L80 fine trinket (including “fake” Sam, fake “Commissar’s Manifesto”, etc) will work; they have condition damage as their only +stat (ugh).
• There are plenty of exotic back items (and a small number of trinkets) that remain account bound after upgrading; none of them are salvageable.

Put another way, there’s no ideal choice. The best possible are:

• Slot into a weak item to allow sharing and later salvaging (and selling it again).
• Slot into particular exotics to allow it to be shared, but not recovered.
• Slot into the usual exotics to allow it to be recovered (but not shared without rinse/repeating the process).

insanemaniac.2456:

“salvageable” and “things that dont become soulbound” are mutually exclusive to the best of my knowledge

They aren’t “mutually exclusive” by definition, there just aren’t many examples in the game. The most common is that Fine or Basic gear becomes account bound when you upgrade; it remains salvageable.

ANet is notoriously inconsistent about stuff like this, which is why I was hoping that I missed a possibility.

Personally, I would have preferred to see Zodiacs at 1 ticket each, rather than Tormented (which are nearly as bad in GW2 as they were in GW1) or Chaos (which were great in GW1, but just a glowy typo of a weapon in GW2).

Still, based on the past, it’s pretty common for ANet to suddenly retire one or more skins and/or bring back others at a reduced ticket cost. I don’t have any problems with what ANet did — it just wouldn’t have been my choice.

Vaupell.8542:

Returning player, left at the destruction of Lions Arch, came back today to see if the game
has become fun again, aparently not.

So first issue, spendt a consideral ammount of irl cash on clothing etc, and making sure it has the right colors etc..

Today i learned Arena net decided to screw us, by turning everything into some new system, well that’s fine except i have to find some useless npc.

Where is that "Black market trader "armorsmith"" located, so we can get our rp clothes again ? Norn btw, looking in Hoelbrak

• ANet introduced a new wardrobe system that, on the whole, is much better for reskins. It includes the ability to engage in combat with outfits, some of which are more suitable for RP.
• You might be having trouble locating the NPC because of the name. It’s the Black Lion Armor Trader, not “Black Market.” In the racial cities, they are always located next to the Black Lion Trading Company NPC and those are marked by the balance/scale icon on both the mini and regular maps.
• Be sure to speak to that NPC with each character and to follow through on all the dialogue trees, to make sure you didn’t miss something.

As a side note, speaking in general (and not about you specifically), I have found that people who return to the game to “find out if has become fun again” are universally displeased with what they find. People who return to the game to try it out again are often happy with the game.

It’s one of those self-fulfilling expectations: if you expect the game to annoy you (again), you can find plenty of stuff that will annoy. If you (instead) look for stuff that might be fun, you’ll find that (instead). The choice is yours.

People keep posting about this gap between the end of LS2 and the next big thing, as if ANet doesn’t worry about the same thing. You think they want people to be twiddling their thumbs and get bored?

Either they have stuff planned and it’s not ready to talk about or they just have everyone tasked on unexpected-but-urgent issues for HoT and the overhaul of the trait/skill system.

We all want new stuff to do, but that requires diverting people from working on the Big New stuff. If it comes down to a choice, I’d prefer they continue to focus on the big picture: HoT and specializations.

Most of the complaints I see fall into two categories:

• My current build will be altered in some way I don’t like.
• The number of build options I have today will be reduced.

(Personally, I’m looking forward to the first and I don’t think the second is true in a meaningful way, although it’s true in a mathematical sense.)

The only complaints I’ve seen about the system of acquiring the traits/skills are from people who have map completion on lots of L80 characters and feel that they will miss out on this aspect of vertical progression. (Podcaster Wooden Potatoes is among those worried about this.) In other words, some are complaining that it might be too easy.

Kaetar.2685:

am i the only one who finds underwater fighting dumb? its one of the lamest things ive ever experienced in an MMORPG. i wish there was no reason to go in the water but they put stuff there so unless you want to miss out on skill points and more you have no choice. other then that, love the game

You’re not the only one. Even ANet thinks they kitten ed it a bit, which is why they removed some underwater from the game (notably in WvW), hardly ever offer underwater weapon skins for new Black Lion sets, and spend almost no time reworking/rebalancing skills/traits for underwater.

I’d like it if it worked as well as terrestrial fighting. To make that happen, they’d need to:

• Enable creation of the underwater build while still on land.
• Enable auto-trait swapping for underwater (since many skills don’t work underwater).
• Change the breather to be skin-only, so you don’t have to have a 7th rune or deal with the lack of diversity of ascended or even exotic (or heck even rare or masterwork) options.
• Rebalance a lot of the skills and traits.

It’s intended behavior, as part of Diminishing Returns . This includes offering a bonus reward 1x/day/path/account and reducing the regular rewards for repetition or rapid completion.

You probably want to create a support ticket to follow-up with Customer Service. (They can offer an individual response to a ticket, but not to a forum post, at least not more than a few times/month.)

I wonder if it’s weighted to certain missions based on size of guild, amount of influence, number of merits, or something along those lines.

Then again, there’s not many choices. With so many guilds in the game that do weeklies, some are bound to be among outliers in getting primarily one mission repeatedly.

• BL Chest
• Gift of Mawdrey
• Gift of Gratitude
• Mystic Forge

Those are all various forms of lotto in the game already.

Thanks for all the responses. I was afraid there wouldn’t be anything rare+. I think I still have an original karka shell (have to check), but if I recall correctly, it’s not salvageable, which would mean no luck on the 4th requirement. Even if I don’t have it, it might be worth trading for — 1,000 karka shells retails for about 60+ gold, which is ~10% of the price of the poly-lumi jewels; not cheap, but small relative to the net acquisition cost.

I’m looking for what I would consider to be ideal gear for slotting Poly-luminescent jewels (those glow-in-the-light upgrades for trinkets). This would be any ring, amulet, accessory, or back-item with the following characteristics:

1. Has an upgrade slot of L80 or better.
2. Is at least rare quality.
3. Is account bound.
4. Is salvageable.

The first is an absolute requirement, since these jewels are rated at L80. The second reduces the stat loss due to replacing an ascended item. The third allows one to share the upgraded trinket across all characters on your account. And the final characteristic gives one the opportunity to eat one’s cake and have it after, i.e. if you get bored, you can still recover the upgrade and sell it on the TP.

There are plenty of items that first (1)(2) & (4), but very few that have (3), even without the others.

Does such a thing exist? Or is the “ideal” limited to fine-quality, L80 trinkets (thus losing a bunch of stats)?

Thanks in advance.

@ezd: the 2-3 redditors who forge for precursors on an industrial level have reported being down up to 5,000 gold during their worst streaks (and iirc, that was during periods where it cost less to acquire the required rares). In that context, 2,400 spent without a pre isn’t that bad.

Three things to keep in mind:

• Your mileage will vary: mice are very much an individual preference, affected by the size of your hands, your ‘reach’ (how far you can spread them comfortably), manual dexterity, and how many buttons your right-hand is comfortable negotiating.
• After acquisition, it can take two to eight weeks to get used to it. Give yourself a little while to get comfortable with the shape (where possible, consider adjust shape or weight). Then take some time to learn the customizations: what keystrokes can be mapped to which buttons. Ask others how they do it and take what you like, throw away the rest.
• After you ‘perfect’ your setup the first time, take another look and see if there’s something you missed or don’t like. If often takes people a few weeks of using it to realize that there are still more options.

Put another way, don’t believe anyone’s review of comfort or utility; that varies. (Do consider comments about reliability or quirks.)

Knighthonor.4061:

Any word on Inventory changes?

Will we get more bag space? Because I am running out of room.

Why are you running out of room? Seems to me that’s an issue that can be solved now by each individual.

lordkrall.7241:

We haven’t had any PvE beta yet.

The first public BETA was PvE.

I think it’s likely that the next one will include a larger area than the original.

The day the game came out, there were 5 newbie zones and they were all in overflow on all worlds. As the game aged, the L15-25 zones peaked next, and then the L25-40 zones, and so on. Prior to Maguuma Wastes, people massed in Orr and following world bosses.

This is inevitable for any new game or expansion: people will start at the beginning and work their way through the content, ending up at wherever they feel has the best loot-per-hour and/or fun-for-the-effort.

If you want to avoid the masses, just wait a few weeks.

Khisanth.2948:

The behavior was inconsistent with how the rest of the game works but that inconsistent behavior was also the only thing that kept the fight from being in ‘stupidly designed’ category.

Agreed.

I wouldn’t call it a “silly” question, since it’s one that many people would like to see addressed. However, it seems to me that ANet would have given us a hint or started hyping something or other, if they had a definite timeline.

I think it’s unfortunate that their grand plans for HoT can get overshadowed by easily-predictable community reactions like this one of “what do we do while waiting?”

Lil Puppy.5216:

This wasn’t a bug or exploit (all other skills work exactly the same way) why was it stealth nerfed?

Arguably, it was a bug and/or exploit: very few skills that involve shielding can be cancelled and restarted without the usual cool down. And plenty of stuff gets ‘fixed’ without making it into the patch notes (although I do wish they would be more comprehensive).

That said, I agree that it’s worth asking why they changed it. Was it because they think it was bugged? Because they think it was overpowered? Because they think the Clawr of Jormag is supposed to be able to fear half-dozen times in a row?

It’s too bad because the event is fairly dull during phase 1 and this change will just prolong it.

Xehanort.4589:

From the Specializations news page: “As long as you’ve purchased Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, you’ll automatically unlock access to all elite specializations in PvP.”

This means that the playerbase will be divided in those who won’t be able to use specializations (aka those who didn’t purchase HoT) and those who can. My fear is that in the future, after the first set of specializations will be released, they will make the new ones a gem store purchase.

How would you react if this is the case? Personally I think it would be a shame for them to keep gameplay mechanics not available for everyone. Like you go in wvw or pvp and find yourself against people running new builds and that you can’t play. As it is now, only quality of life upgrades (bank space) and aesthetics items were put in the gem store.

You realize that the expansion won’t be in the gem store, so it will continue to be true that Evon Gnashblade only offers QoL upgrades and cosmetics.

Regardless of the phrasing, I’m not sure what you expect as alternative.

• Keep releasing free content, including changes to core content, even though the market will force the price of the game down. → That’s not sustainable.
• Stop releasing new storylines and changes to core content and work on GW3 instead. → That also splits the player base and probably means less new content overall, since demand for fundamental changes will be high.

I had hoped that ANet would have been able to continue with a gem-shop-only model, but I think it’s just too soon for the industry and for gamers to make that sort of transition. After all, look at how many people come to this game with gameplay expectations based on the old standards.

tl;dr you’ll have to offer a real alternative to charging for an expansion, in order for ANet to continue to stay in business long enough to keep delivering new content.

I agree. At the very least, you should have some sort of warning before activating the bonfire that you have active boosters that will interfere with choosing a community boost.

It’s a beta test, not the actual game. Most beta events for most games are also random; there are typically more people who want to try out the pre-game than there is room on the test servers.

Usually, the RNG is based on people who sign up for the beta. Sometimes, it’s people with a subscription to a newsletter. Often, fanzines give away ‘keys’ for the event.

I think it’s a cool idea that ANet incorporated the “sign up” and “RNG” into the game itself, increasing the likelihood that folks chosen are keen on the game and not just johnny/jills-come-lately.

If you don’t like playing in Dry Top or Silverwastes, skip this beta event and try for the next one. Despite the ‘reward’, I can only manage 1-2 breaches/day tops and then I’m ready for something else, so I’m sure I’ll be joining you on the sidelines.

Dinks.2478:

No, it is literally anet. This problem happens for a large portion of the player base. It shows on reddit, these forums, twitter and facebook during most patches.

No, it’s not a large portion of the player base, it’s a small number of people. And there are many reasons, including bandwidth limitations, ISP routing issues, and problems on the client end.

It’s not even necessarily a problem with the installer.

Your best bet is creating a support ticket and working with ANet’s customer service to track down the situation for you. They have been extremely helpful to anyone I know who’s contacted them about stuff like this.

Also use the in-game /bug tool for that. It logs your current position and makes it easier for the QA team to find out where you started.

(It’s fine to report here, but they also need the details.)

kimtingen.6472:

So.. In other words.. When you hit L400 in jewelry you have to buy recipes for nearly everything you can make? It’s rather silly if you ask me, that you at L400 have to buy recipes for what you have so far on the crafting profession have used the discovery tab to make the jewels and the jewelry.

At every rank, there are recipes that can be discovered, bought, or found; there’s nothing special about r400 (although some of the more basic recipes cost karma, for reasons that made more sense at launch).

kimtingen.6472:

Go IG and hover your mouse over the different orbs, then you’ll see that the orbs I mentioned in my OP are not marked as crafting material, like the others are.

ANet has never been consistent about how it treats crafting materials. Further, unlike most other crafting mats, Orbs have other uses (notably: as upgrades for gear, although they aren’t often used for that any more).

It’s a big game and there’s too much stuff to remember, so I use the wiki a lot to look up stuff.

/wiki

from inside the game.

You can also type that and then ctrl-click an item, to look up its details. The wiki has enormous amount of data and more.

What would be the point of making the portals common enough that 100 people would get more than 1 during an hour of playtime?

10,000 ingots isn’t all that many. I’m a small-time investor and I routinely buy 2,000 units at a time.

Platinum is used in jewelry crafting and people have long expected it to be important when it allows leveling to r500. I’m not surprised people are buying (and/or unloading) loads of platinum.

Regarding your second post, I have no idea what you are attempting to show in those images. All I see is someone at gathering nodes at various times.

SlothBear.9846:

Doesn’t seem like this was fixed in the patch for me. Anyone have any better results?

I don’t remember that they said this was fixed in today’s patch notes.

The word ‘locked’ means you don’t have the skin unlocked in your wardrobe. If the item is a skin, you need to consume it (by applying it or adding it to your wardrobe). All skins, including aetherized and super adventure are ‘locked’ in the same way.

Or they might just changed the description to conform with the actual behavior, i.e. don’t be so sure it’s a bug.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I would suggest NOT buying any further Traits as the new Trait system (that will likely be introduced soon) does not appear to require gold / skill points to obtain (and they will change in any event.

I’d rephrase that to strongly consider.

If I really need a trait (for whatever reason), I’m not going to sit around waiting for a theoretical release that might happen in a month or four.

OTOH, neither am I going out of my way to do any of the current trait challenges (I’ve done all of those at least a dozen times before the current system was introduced; I have never had any interest in repeating them again for every character created since the system was introduced.) I can live without most traits until the new system kicks off and I’ll be happier avoiding the tedium.

How much diversity is there now? That’s difficult to measure, although we can make a stab at it by looking at popular build & theorycrafting sites. For high DPS, there is little diversity, but that’s true by definition: it’s very hard to create skills etc that make it possible for more than 1-2 builds/prof to be “highest DPS.” When you look at highest team DPS, there’s also little room for choice.

After all the new changes go into effect, this is still likely to be true unless there are also changes to foes and especially to NPC AI. There will still be a tiny number of “highest DPS builds” for individual and group play. The specifics might change (in terms of total damage or how you get it), but the diversity is likely to be the same, in that niche.

Outside of high DPS, the current game has a ton of theoretical diversity. But in practice, many of those builds are silly. At the extremes, you can spec for reduced cooldown on swords without equipping a sword, reduced falling damage (where there are no survivable falls), etc.

If ANet does a good job of pruning the useless traits and balancing each line so that all traits at each level are comparable, then diversity of useful builds should increase overall. If they do a poor job, then I don’t think we’ll lose all that much.

tl;dr I doubt if “actual” diversity is going to change that much after the community has played around with the new system.

DaveyC.4398:

As per the title – Will Magic Find affect the drop rate of the Beta Portals?

They haven’t said if the ‘portals’ are in a loot table affected by MF. It can’t hurt to stack MF while in Maguuma Wastes, since there are tons of foes and plenty of loot to be had.

darthdarticus.8962:

Please someone tell me that final Achievement Chest is worth the effort.

Final? There is no ‘final’ chest. We’ll keep getting them until the game is shut down.

Basically, they are meant to be minor rewards for loyalty; they aren’t intended to be awesome or game changing. Still, you get +gold/magic find, free coin, free karma, free boosters, and occasionally free gems.

If you find that stuff disappointing, delete the chests.