Guild Wars 2

Reverence.6915:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There’s a huge cost establishing a “server farm” in another country, which is why ANet only contracts for two: one in Texas (for NA) and Germany (for EU). All accounts tied to NA servers use the one in Texas; those tied to EU servers use the German one.

It wouldn’t be cost effective to set up a single server for SEA. I suspect the minimum number to make it worthwhile is 12. Does anyone think the game has ever had an SEA pop big enough to support that many worlds at similar capacity to NA and EU?

In addition, there are at least two other complications:

• SEA would have to be a fourth region for the game, in addition to NA, EU, and CN. Although ANet has solved a lot of technical issues, they so far haven’t figured out how to allow NA players to join up with EUers or vice versa. I don’t see them spending energy to split the community up even more than it is now.
• What country would the servers be housed in? SEA is a huge region and for this game would include Japan, Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Aus:Tokyo is 7,800 km compared to Tokyo:Germany @9400 km or Sydney:Texas @13,800 km. Thus, the benefits would be small for some substantive portion of the SEA community.

Finally, distance alone isn’t a good predictor of latency. It’s a big factor, but it’s not the only one that influences whether the server is slow to react to things you do in the game.

tl;dr adding SEA servers would be a major undertaking and it’s not clear that would provide the benefit some are expecting.

There’s quite a few asian MMOs that have far bigger followings in SEA than in NA. Western MMOs rarely market successfully to these populations because they rarely understand the culture and what it takes to make advertising work in these regions. MMOs like Maplestory and Lineage are far more popular there than they are in either EU or NA.

It’s definitely viable to create servers for South East Asia. There’s already a HUGE Korean, Filipino and Australian following in the game. There’s a decent sized Thai and Singaporean following too. I also know many Indonesians that play, as well as a few Vietnamese. It’s viable. It just needs good marketing strategy and investment into creating the servers.

Of course there are popular games based in SEA, but only a handful of those games have server farms in NA or EU. For the same reason: there are just aren’t the numbers to justify the additional costs and effort.

I agree that there’s a chicken vs egg issue here: GW2 doesn’t have the numbers to consider another region, although maybe it would have the numbers if it invested in another region first. The problem is: it’s a lot more difficult to ramp up as you get farther away from existing resources and teams. Some companies (and games) are better situated to spread out globally and some, like ANet/GW2 aren’t.

Put another way, given that ANet is owned by Korean-based NCSOFT, I’m sure they would be the first to encourage ANet to aggressively enter the Korean market. The fact that they haven’t suggests to me even NCSOFT doesn’t see this as “viable” — at least, not yet.

Deli.1302:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Although ANet has solved a lot of technical issues, they so far haven’t figured out how to allow NA players to join up with EUers or vice versa.

They know how to do it (they had it in GW1). They just aren’t because the maps would still have to be hosted on either an NA or EU server and one region of players would be at a disadvantage connection-wise.

GW1 was a completely different technology; it doesn’t require anything close to the level of resources as GW2. Heck, you can play GW1 via dial-up. ANet devs have talked about this before and they’ve never suggested that “disadvantage” was the issue — I know people in the EU who play on NA servers (and vice versa) for various reasons; few of them have any trouble being competitive in sPvP or WvW.

Instead, ANet has said there’s something fundamental about the way the servers work that prevents NA accounts from sharing maps with EU accounts.

I’m not having any trouble with it. If you are still seeing the problem, contact support and/or clear out the TP cache. (Directions.)

There’s a huge cost establishing a “server farm” in another country, which is why ANet only contracts for two: one in Texas (for NA) and Germany (for EU). All accounts tied to NA servers use the one in Texas; those tied to EU servers use the German one.

It wouldn’t be cost effective to set up a single server for SEA. I suspect the minimum number to make it worthwhile is 12. Does anyone think the game has ever had an SEA pop big enough to support that many worlds at similar capacity to NA and EU?

In addition, there are at least two other complications:

• SEA would have to be a fourth region for the game, in addition to NA, EU, and CN. Although ANet has solved a lot of technical issues, they so far haven’t figured out how to allow NA players to join up with EUers or vice versa. I don’t see them spending energy to split the community up even more than it is now.
• What country would the servers be housed in? SEA is a huge region and for this game would include Japan, Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Aus:Tokyo is 7,800 km compared to Tokyo:Germany @9400 km or Sydney:Texas @13,800 km. Thus, the benefits would be small for some substantive portion of the SEA community.

Finally, distance alone isn’t a good predictor of latency. It’s a big factor, but it’s not the only one that influences whether the server is slow to react to things you do in the game.

tl;dr adding SEA servers would be a major undertaking and it’s not clear that would provide the benefit some are expecting.

This thread keeps derailing from the original post. All OP said was:

• OP grew to hate the game.
• OP left, came back, and discovered they took for granted a bunch of cool stuff.

OP isn’t asking anyone to agree; they are just pointing out that if, like they did, you hate the game, it might be worth taking a break and/or looking at the things you take for granted.

Ethera of Ninane.7239:

You can also add Black Lion Claim Ticket Scraps and Trading Post Expresses to the list – those are now also not stacking. It appears that if/when you drop these items from the daily Log-In Rewards chest, that’s when they don’t stack.

Please fix!

Different issue entirely. The one you mention is a new bug affecting items with identical IDs; the OP’s concern is about items with identical names, but different IDs.

(Inculpatus cedo’s post links to the relevant thread, which includes a work-around: put all the non-stacking items into inventory, change maps/log out and return.)

Essence Snow.3194:

Since we have a global (-China) economy they want to keep rates low so as to not flood the market. They do this b/c it is the easy option. If they were to increase the value of drops on the micro scale (make the individual’s better), they would flood the economy (given no other changes), which would decrease item value……a catch 22 if you will.

To avoid these opposing forces they would need to get creative, which is not as easy said as done. It however would be to the game’s GREAT benefit if they would.

I’m not sure how this relates to the original post. The OP is asking for help explaining their data: could it be that drop rates have changed? that there’s a lot more variability than could be found from opening 10,000+ bags?

(As a side note, some of the phrasing was confusing: I had to re-read the bit about China 4x before I realized that your “-” meant “not including China.” Next time, consider spelling it out or just leaving out that nuance — most folks will know what you mean; those that don’t probably wouldn’t even consider the CN reason in the first place.)

laokoko.7403:

Ayrilana.1396:

eithinan.9841:

Its not really a stock market as its more an unregulated commodities market. And yes the timing of the post is suspect considering it comes near the upper range in price not when it was slowly rising.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/bltc/Post-Your-biggest-Trading-Post-Flip-Flops/first#post4607826

If the OP really don’t know you can store items in TP, he know now. Better than using all those characters to store candy corn.

I think when GW2 have those 10$ sell, some of the items supply drop a bunch. Last sell, a bunch of leather is depleted. I bought some too.

Good point. I know a lot of people that bought $10 accounts exactly for this reason: they can put in buy orders for stuff that is cheap now and only collect it from the TP when it’s gone up enough. Until then, they just get the daily login rewards and convert laurels to T6 mats.

(I dunno if this is the only reason T6 mats have dropped so much this year, but it seems likely it’s a major factor.)

Oxidia.8103:

Buy fractal bags

That’s only economical if you run fractals frequently, which most people asking this question do not.

@OP:

• Crafting bags is only rarely a lot cheaper than buying them from the TP (at a custom buy offer, not the instant-buy). Unless you like crafting in this game, I recommend buying the bags.
• Uncanny Canner and 20-slot Pails are among the cheapest, low-effort methods. (As noted above; links are to the relevant wiki articles.)

People have been suggesting since game launch (maybe since BETA testing) that ANet show the border on the mini or world maps.

However, the game does have two mechanics useful in ‘seeing’ the border:

• As Garambola says: the right side of your screen will show the heart progress if you’re in range.
• The game makes a sound when you move in/out of a heart zone. (Unfortunately, it’s very similar, if not identical, to the sound made when you get in range of an event.)

There are several mechanics going on:

• Daily Reset is at midnight UTC — all relevant nodes/chests/etc will not reset until after “Reset.”
• Diminishing Returns — events (especially Rhendak) will be substantially nerfed, by your remaining within a narrow area for longer periods of time. You can avoid it by swapping toons or taking the toon to other spots. Or you can wait for it to hit, but then it takes longer to “wear off.”
• Minimum elapsed time — a small number of nodes, including JPs, rich veins, and ori/ancient, also require a minimum elapsed time. It’s less than 20 hours and more than 6. (Another poster thinks it’s close to 8, which would explain both their test results and mine.)

All of these systems are setup to make it more difficult for people to bot, AFK, or otherwise “avoid playing” the game in ways that tend to be too much of a gold faucet. Consequently, they are all avoidable/removable by moving toons around and/or playing lots of different toons.

There are a couple reasons to require 100% rep:

• Your guild regularly has 400+ active members with a waiting list; you need to find a way to make room.
• Your guild has a specific purpose that requires participation: GvG, coordinated WvW, speed-clearing records, or (much less likely) certain types of RP.
• It’s a new guild and you are trying to develop your ‘brand’.

There are also a couple of reasons to avoid asking for 100% rep:

• Guild isn’t “active” during peak periods for its members.
• Guild isn’t active in all game modes, e.g. doesn’t do WvW or maybe dungeons.
• Guild is well established and there’s typical amounts of new joiners, veteran leavers.
• The guild doesn’t offer anything special for requiring full-time rep.

tl;dr don’t ask for full rep unless you have a very specific reason that your most active members will get behind

Nova.7261:

Not helping…

This thread is kinda getting side tracked by talking about gold spammer psychology…

At least, does reporting each message help more then reporting just one?

I’m also surprised reporting someone as a gold spammer doesn’t automatically block them for you. It seems to make allot of extra work that seems unnecessary for the player.

1. Yes, report each message.
2. Not everyone wants to auto-block gold sellers because (a) sometimes it’s from a stolen account and folks don’t want to block it and (b) the spammers/spam bots know that they won’t get to send that many messages, so they stop on their own (or get banned quickly), i.e. it might not be that important to block them.

I see demand steady over the long run and supply starting a steady decline since January. There are a several possible explanations:

• The ‘hidden’ supply has dried up, i.e. quartz is priced high enough so people have finished selling out their stock left in guild banks etc.
• Speculators have bought up 4 million units at 80c to 180c over the last 3 months.
• A core group of people have started to panic about having enough quartz/charged quartz for celestial and other stats, for later on down the road. They are buying now, to avoid the rush they expect to happen.

The first and third seem a lot more likely to me than the second.

OP: you didn’t say which champ bags you opened; they have different drop rates for just about everything. Were they 15k of the same bag? Or different ones?

Angelica Dream.7103:

@Illconceived Was Na, I am not name calling, but making an observation. Why does this happen just for Shatterer, and Two if this was not lazy then ANET please answer one of my 100’s of requests, posts, or Bug reports. Either way it ends up lazy.
I really should not have to move character around, it’s one of the reasons they sell extra slots. Right? Though I will try your advise and report back.

As I explained above, world bosses require a lot of character movement, but a few do not. I continue to believe that this sort of DR is ultimately good for the community & I’m convinced it has nothing to do with ANet wanting to sell more gems (there are far easier ways to increase sales, without faking the players out and annoying them). You’re welcome to disagree.

Even so, this can be frustrating, regardless of whether this is a bug (as you think) or intended part of DR (as I believe). I do wish ANet spent more time giving us legit players more hints that there are ‘hidden’ mechanics, even if they can’t tell us the details.

I wonder if I explained my recommendation about phrasing poorly: would you agree that ANet is more likely to act on suggestions phrased neutrally? If your team was described as “lazy” and their work as “shoddy,” would that make you more or less likely to read a thread in detail? Naturally, true professionals are able to ignore hype and focus on the salient details — but personally, I prefer to aim to make it as easy as possible for ANet to want to follow up, rather than add more barriers.

queen of recovery.2378:

its a very old bug thats still not fixed

not getting wxp or anything sometimes for capping keeps and towers
most of the times its keeps or sm but happens to towers aswell

funny thing is even if i solo a tower, cata the wall down kill all the guards … i sometimes dont get anything for it, its like i didnt participated in the fight…

is this ever going to be fixed?
my guess is no and it probably will still be there after expansion.

I’ve not heard of anyone else encountering this.

• Have you used the /bug report tool in game, to make sure the QA team has the information they need to troubleshoot?
• Have you contacted support? (Ideally providing them with the exact time/location.) They probably won’t be able to fix anything for you, but they might be able to let you know if you are the only one suffering this issue or if the devs are aware of an issue (and maybe working on a fix).

Bomber.3872:

Hi,

the second gw2 Birthday happend now more then 4 month ago. So in only 8 month will be the third birthday. Update after update I login and hope the birthday experience scrolls may be finally stackable…. Well, is there ANY chance that you may fix the bug with the (20 lvl) experience scrolls?

It would be great if we could stack 1st and 2nd birthday scrolls, like it should have been from the beginning…

They don’t stack because they have different item IDs, so I speculate they were intended to offer different bonuses. I suppose ANet could spend resources to convert all the existing “twos” to “ones,” but even though that might be easy, I’m not sure their staff wouldn’t be better off working on one of the other issues that annoy us.

I’d be happy if they at least changed the display names, so we know what should stack and what shouldn’t.

Kedarrian.2905:

For all we might point out its floors, GW2 is a very good game that does a lot of things right. But the current payment model comes with restrictions on how Anet can operate and what they have to prioritize.

If GW2 went subscription based, do you think it would grow or struggle?

It would fail quickly. No-subscription is an important attraction for GW2, especially for players who are already subscribed to other MMOs.

Further, it would be horribly expensive. Tons of things would need to change in the game beforehand. So instead of removing restrictions, it would add a whole lot of new ones, at least in the beginning. This would have to happen without any type of assurance that the game would be more profitable in the long run.

Ultimately, it might actually be cheaper for ANet to launch a new game using the same engine.

GuzziHero.2467:

It has been suggested time and time again. They can’t even implement multiple build saving…

The two situations aren’t remotely comparable. Build saving is a mere UI/mechanical issue. Sounds easy in theory; probably more complicated than we think (although I do wish they would explain why it’s taking so long).

Adding events is much more complicated:

• You need dialogue and voice acting; neither is simple to design or implement.
• You need event chain scripts and need to ensure that these don’t interfere with other things going on in the zone.
• It gets even more complicated if any of this becomes instanced.

You keep comparing other situations to this one and they aren’t analogous.

• In Orrian temple chains, the ground chest is rewarded for completing a chain, not for failing defense; it happens that you can’t start the chain unless the defense fails.
• In the situations in which ANet has responded quickly, failing actually offered immediate rewards which were more lucrative in large part because the event restarted quickly. Merely changing the reset-after-failure to match the reset-after-success timing changed that dynamic.

So the rewards for Orrian temple assault/defense are commensurate with the effort involved, which normally is good design. In contrast, the effort for success/failure in previously changed events was nearly the same, but the rewards/time were drastically different. Even so, that wasn’t so much “bad design” as ANet not realizing that they had setup perverse incentives.

In other words, the other situations you use as examples had a different problem. Further, the origins of the issue weren’t always as simple as “poor design.” Originally, success offered better rewards for the Coil chain. Later, ANet guaranteed drops from champs, which greatly increased the potential loot from a fully scaled-up chain. It also turned out that champs would appear in great numbers in the early part of the first of the chain’s events.

But this went unnoticed for ages — you couldn’t get anyone to do the event. It wasn’t until the introduction of Living Story content that required completion of the chain that people noticed the champs and figured out how to game the system: scale up the first event by standing in specific spots, kill champs, fail the event, and wait a brief time before it restarts. This turned out to be more efficient than completing the chain.

So it wasn’t “poor design” — it was unintended consequences plus player ingenuity, catalyzed by unusual circumstances.

And theoretically, this could have gone on forever, if people had been willing to share. In practice, of course, farmers were bound to compete with those wanting to do the chain (for the story or achievements or loot). And ANet acted quickly to prevent the competition between PvErs. In this case, it was merely a matter of resetting the timer so that failure was just as slow as success, thus making it more profitable to complete the chain than to fail it.

tl;dr Orrian temple defense vs assault has a different combination of mechanics and it’s not so much design as it is people learning how to game any system to get the maximum perceived reward.

I agree there’s something worth changing. I disagree about how easy it will be to do this sensibly.

Liet Talen.7284:

Maybe the chest doesn’t drop e-frags because it isn’t associated with a jumping puzzle.

Based on your description, the Vista in the Drowned Brine is nothing more than a vista.

Except, other non-JP chests drop empyreals.

tl;dr for the responses already provided

UndeadCrisis.5103:

Do I have to be level 80 to go in to a path that someones selling or do I just need to be the level that unloks explorable mode?

Any level will do to join someone else’s group.

UndeadCrisis.5103:

Also do you get 1 level from finishing the dungeon (killing the boss) for each path?

70% of a level.

UndeadCrisis.5103:

I was just wondering because i’m fine to throw some gold away and level faster, thanks in advance

Leveling + getting some tokens are decent reasons to buy a run.

Buyer beware:

• If you get scammed, ANet will not help you get your money back (or a run).
• They will, however, punish anyone who scams, so be sure to file a support ticket if the worst happens to you. (Also take screenshots and make sure you understand the costs and when you are supposed to pay.)

I think one of the big reasons for ANet offering the discount: they hope to grow the player base to increase pre-orders for the expac: buying now gives people time to develop L80 characters, which are then ripe for HoT.

I’m sure some of the other things matter, too: many new players will spend more on gems than a lot of veterans (although plenty of veterans spend a lot already), more new players means a more vibrant community, etc.

However, it isn’t logical to assume ANet prefers new players “more than anything” — if veterans don’t enjoy the game, new players aren’t likely to buy the game even for 75% off. Worse, if veterans don’t stay, neither will new players (not for long), which means a problem for selling gems worse than failing to get new players.

tl;dr it’s more complicated than the OP seems to believe.

Liet Talen.7284:

I truly do not know understand their logic with this issue.

It’s a bug, not a design change. The devs have acknowledged the issue, have not provided an ETA for resolving it, but have endorsed the work-around provided above: put the non-stacking stacks in one character’s inventory, change maps (or logout) and return; the items will stack after that.

Helle.8754:

I have been placing all my gold in my personal guild banks…a little over 6000 gold, that I now is not able to withdraw all at one time.

With the 500 gold limit it will take me 12 weeks (3 months) to be able to get my gold …

Is that really the purpose with this rule?
- I am very displeased with this restriction and this new restriction is gonna affect a lot of people that have honest reasons in this game.

I sure hope you don’t want me to wait 3 months to get my gold out of my personal guild banks, that I have earned the last 2½ years.

1. This isn’t a bug; it’s a design decision for dealing with RMTs. (As Robotosis says, right now a compromised account can lose everything from their personal guild bank and there’s no restoration on guild banks.)
2. I doubt very much if ANet likes the idea of inconveniencing customers, especially not for 3 months. On the other hand, they have always encouraged us to use the wallet and reminded us that guild banks aren’t eligible for restoration.

I sympathize with the OP’s situation, but I doubt ANet is going to make a substantial change in the mechanics any time soon.

@Helle: I recommend you take a few minutes to create a support ticket and see if Customer Service can create an exception for you. (I suspect not, but only costs you a few minutes to find out.)

edit: added quote from the OP to whom I was responding, since after merging, the context was otherwise lost

Bloodstealer.5978:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The OP is pointing out something that has been fixed in other situations: event failure shouldn’t offer better rewards than event success.

In this case, retaking a temple (after failing) is part of a chain (including a special ground-based chest) while defense is a single event. So, this would be less simple to rebalance than the Coil chain in Frostgorge, which provided more champs/minute if failed than during a successful chain.

It should not be difficult at all to change.
The defence stage just needs to be altered in line with how Arah was so players could receive the trait unlock for either the assault or defence phases.
Linking a specific reward that requires failure is just plain dumb and will always be prone to the creation of toxic behaviour, whoever dreamed up the notion of rewarding for failure doesn’t belong in an MMO creative position.
As for fail farming .. that’s is just simply down to not even caring about their game anymore, which is then further extended when looking at how the Watesofsilver map has become nothing more than a dig for gold event with large zergs of players running the loop all day long with each loop yielding between 30-40 chests in about 15minutes maybe less.. that kind of loot haul can only be destructive to the game as a whole – simply put its just terrible creative design… but ANET simply do not care about it they would rather put the time into ensuring the tooltips have all the spellings correct.

Dry Top had the better idea.. force players to run events in order to increase the reward tiers that could open up new items to buy and reduce cost of other items.. they could then simply add new items into the vendors as and when to keep the map interesting.. but no once players have their achievs in SW all that’s left is to farm chests cos the events are meaningless except on occasion when shovels are needed.

Even if everything you mention above is true (and I doubt that it is), it wouldn’t be “easy” to change:

• Orr is setup so that there’s a single event to defend and an entire chain to assault.
• The ground chests are a reward for completing the chain; it would be imbalancing to simply add them to defense.

In this case, the game doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination “reward failure” — it’s rewarding completion of a long chain of events, which do not start up unless a different event fails. The simplest way to change it is to remove the possibility of successful defense entirely, and that breaks the model for the game’s lore, as currently structured. It also isn’t trivial to implement, since you have to remake the existing defense event to always fail.

(Yes, there are other examples in which the game has rewarded failure, but this is not one of them. The Coil chain in Frostgorge is one of the more recently changed examples: failing gave you more champ bags/hour than succeeding did, so there was no reason to complete the chain. In contrast, the reason for failing defense is entirely to allow people the opportunity to succeed at the longer chain.)

tl;dr no, it won’t be easy to resolve.

I think the OP’s comment could more productively be phrased as:

Will our characters ever get to pursue the challenges introduced in the personal stories that don’t relate directly to fighting dragons?

They aren’t really asking about “role playing;” it’s more about other parts of Tyrian lore.

However, the answer is similar: probably not.

The Tyrian universe is already wide in scope and relatively complex compared to a lot of other games (even single-player ones) and ANet can only afford to devote resources to so many stories. The epic tales of the entire world’s struggle against dragons rightfully takes precedence over the more local concerns, except where Svanir, Inquest, Nightmare Court et al interfere with those efforts.

The system is setup to prevent people from using passwords that aren’t secure and/or are close to those seen in published lists of breached passwords. So if the system is telling you to change it, that means your account is at risk.

Change it and then you won’t have to worry about it again for ages.

Tigaseye.2047:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Tigaseye.2047:

I’ve listened, I just don’t happen to agree in the case of the most extreme priced dye(s).

As far as I can tell, you have yet to point out a specific dye that has increased to an extreme amount.

I pointed out one that currently costs 234g.

Surely you know which one that is?

Not sure it’s “increased” to that, but it costs that.

And why is 234g a magic number that means the price is too high? Given the popularity of the color and the fact that it unlocks for all characters, it’s a better deal than what it cost before the wardrobe was introduced.

edit: adding some specific comparisons

The most expensive dye that drops from Unidentified Dyes (those that are the topic of the OP) is currently Celestial, at ~75g (highest buy offer) to ~92g (lowest sell offer). This same dye sold for 25g in December 2013 (before the Wardrobe was announced) and 44g in March 2014 (after the announcement, but when unidentified dyes still dropped from plants). In other words, the current price is less than 4x it’s pre-Wardrobe price, even though it unlocks the color for all characters.

None of the dyes available from the old system cost 234g; only the limited edition dyes cost that much and many of those are actually much cheaper now than they were originally. Shadow Abyss is an exception, but then again, it’s the new blackest black and it’s only been out a short time.

tl;dr the new system remains cheaper for each account than the older system.

Neural.1824:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

See also: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Jumping-puzzle-chests-1/4951855

Some JPs (and rich metal veins and a few other nodes) apparently use two different timers: the reset (midnight UTC) and a minimum elapsed time between opening. It’s been in the game since probably launch. Not sure if that is by design or it’s a bug.

Weyandt’s/Sharkmaw is one of the chests affected. You should be ok by about 1 am Eastern. When I encounter it, I usually just blow off the node for that day; I prefer to miss a single chest than try to schedule my next appearance at the node.

If you read what I had posted, you’d see that with several alts at the same jumping puzzle I had two different results.

I did see that and I still think it’s a matter of multiple timers. I have several toons at that same JP and I’ve seen it hit differentially. When I was in the mood to do the extra work to research when it happens, it always clears up by skipping a day (or waiting a few extra hours).

So, sure, it’s entirely possible that there’s something else going on. But I believe the 2nd timer theory does as a better job explaining the data compared with any other I’ve seen.

In case it wasn’t clear, I do think it’s a bug that some open-world chests are affected by this, but not others. I don’t think ANet is going to prioritize fixing it, though, so I’m more interested in figuring out how to avoid or mitigate it. Opening chests well in advance of reset avoids it entirely; skipping a day (or waiting longer after reset) mitigates it.

I recommend, Angelica, that you simply move a few of your characters around whenever this happens. Any Diminishing Returns in effect will be canceled with little effort. And if it doesn’t work, you have useful data to give to ANet, for troubleshooting purposes.

Diminishing Returns can kick in any time you sit in the same place for long periods of time or for the same event repeatedly. Some events require you moving around the map, which ends up canceling the DR debuff; some events keep you in a confined area, so DR hits more rapidly.

• Rhendak hits DR quickly. Sometimes I get only 2-3 days before I need to swap toons.
• Karka Queen probably never sees DR, because she can spawn in four distinct ‘areas’ of the map.
• Most people hit the Steam Ogre after FE or do some of the other events, so DR is probably rare.
• Similarly, Frozen Maw, Jungle Wurm, and Covington also have you bouncing around, with other events in the chain.

I have to disagree with your characterization of DR as ‘sloppy programming’ or ANet devs being ‘too lazy’ to fix this. It’s in the community’s best interests for the game to make it more difficult for RMT farmers and botters. There are lots of things that ANet does that I disagree with (e.g. time gating for so many crafts), but I don’t think I’m likely to get them to change their mechanics or design choices by calling them ‘lazy’ for making those decisions.

Could be just the one. I have to admit I haven’t tried to run them all recently and I thought ANet never intended for all of them to drop e-fragments.

If you visit again, use the in-game /report function to make it easy for the QA team to identify the specific chest (when you use /report, it includes the location and a time stamp, which speeds up their work — the easier you make their job, the more likely it is they can troubleshoot).

I’m not sure why people are arguing about this.

• If you love fractals, how bad would it be to make fotm part of the daily an extra day each month in exchange for losing the double-fractal day?
• If you refuse to fractal, how bad can it be if you miss on day (or two) each month?

Regardless, I think ANet should review the current schedule of dailies anyhow: it’s stale, it’s unimaginative, it creates a few imo minor issues (such as the OP’s complaint), and it favors some professions (pvp) or types of content over others for no apparent reason.

The OP is pointing out something that has been fixed in other situations: event failure shouldn’t offer better rewards than event success.

In this case, retaking a temple (after failing) is part of a chain (including a special ground-based chest) while defense is a single event. So, this would be less simple to rebalance than the Coil chain in Frostgorge, which provided more champs/minute if failed than during a successful chain.

chaos.3062:

public shaming actually does go a long way in correcting behavior

It also makes it easier for trolls to start arguments. And it doesn’t “correct” or change people’s behavior usually; it tends to make the accused fight back.

Plus, sometimes people make up stuff to punish someone else for some perceived or actual wrongdoing, slight, or affront.

In short, there’s a reason most modern societies don’t allow punishment without a trial. In this game, it’s more of a tribunal made up of Customer Support staff.

Better to send the details to ANet; let them sort it out.

See also: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Jumping-puzzle-chests-1/4951855

Some JPs (and rich metal veins and a few other nodes) apparently use two different timers: the reset (midnight UTC) and a minimum elapsed time between opening. It’s been in the game since probably launch. Not sure if that is by design or it’s a bug.

Weyandt’s/Sharkmaw is one of the chests affected. You should be ok by about 1 am Eastern. When I encounter it, I usually just blow off the node for that day; I prefer to miss a single chest than try to schedule my next appearance at the node.

There’s an odd bug where you can get stuck at #1. If you ever find yourself waiting more than a few minutes in the top spot, requeue.

In addition, if that happens, be sure to use the /report tool while you’re in the queue, so that ANet can collect as much data as possible about the bug. Such issues are difficult to troubleshoot; they’ll need all the examples we can give them.

I know: that’s small comfort for your long wait. Good luck for next time.

Tigaseye.2047:

I’ve listened, I just don’t happen to agree in the case of the most extreme priced dye(s).

As far as I can tell, you have yet to point out a specific dye that has increased to an extreme amount.

• The new system unlocks dyes for an entire account, which means at least for 5 characters. The previous unlocks were lost if you deleted a toon; the new unlocks are permanent.
• The current TP prices are far less than 5x the costs prior to the announcement of the wardrobe (and roughly the same as they were between the announcement and the implementation).

So overall, it’s cheaper now to get unlocks for your characters.

When Zommy first started dropping sub-L80 exotics, it was actually good for the bottom line, good for wardrobes, and good for the community. Some of the L70+ exotic skins were quite valuable (due to the wardrobe system) and some included decent, salvageable upgrades. It also expanded the pool of potential drops, so it wasn’t always the same 3-6 of each weapon type.

A year later, a lot of us have those skins, the TP value has dropped considerably (for all exotics, not just these), and, sure, it’s disappointing to get something less valuable back from the forge.

But that’s not new. At other forging tiers, you can get back stuff that’s worth a lot on the TP or soulbound karma items.

I don’t love getting sub-L80s back from the forge, but it’s not that big a deal really. It only happens with exotics and the loss of value only affects those gambling; I think it’s fair that high reward (chance of precursor) comes with high risks (chance of boring L70 skins).

The OP basically said: “thought I was hating the game; turns out I took stuff I like for granted and here are some examples.”

That seems like a useful point of view for some people who are getting frustrated with the game.

1. The HoT expac is going to have new features for guilds. We don’t know what they are yet.
2. The game’s design gives small, dedicated guilds a lot of content to play with.
3. Prior to guild missions, it had almost nothing that was a challenge for guilds with more than 50 regular players.
4. The current set of guild missions are old and some were never that challenging to begin with.
5. All of the current guild missions can be done by fewer than 10 people, depending on the people.

I think it’s worth waiting to find out what HoT has in store for guilds (large|small, dedicated|casual) before proclaiming the “Death of Guilds.”

Not all chests give empyreal fragments. There are plenty of other sources, so I don’t expect ANet to adjust this unless they plan on rebalancing the loot tables for all open-world chests.

I mostly play a mesmer, the only profession without a reliable, persistent speed boost. And I think the system is fine the way it is.

• Each profession has different types of mobility.
• It doesn’t take that long to run around maps.
• It does take long to run around WvW, as it should; any faster, and undisciplined blobs (as opposed to coordinated armies) can wreak havoc on the map.

Could the system be tweaked a bit? Sure, but I don’t think we need +10% speed.

This does come up from time to time. But I think the criticism is too narrowly focused. In the old system, dyes were cheaper, but you needed to unlock them for each and every character on your account. The Wardrobe system gives most players at least 5 unlocks and yet dye prices are only 2-3 times what they were in the 5-6 months before the announcement of the wardrobe system. (They are only now reaching similar prices to the post-announcement/pre-wardrobe panic of 2014.)

The account-wide unlock is worth even more for the limited-edition dyes and for players with more than five characters.

tl;dr economically, we are better off overall now than before. Noticeable increase in the individual prices is more than made up by the account-wide unlock.

I like fractals and I think it’s odd.

To correct some misunderstandings:

• Daily Fractal means any single instance.
• When it specifies a level, you need to complete the boss fractal (normally for a full run). One of the fractals is bugged, so sometimes it triggers on the third. Currently, we can get L1-9, L21-29, L11-19.
• Unlike every other PvE daily type, fractal is the only one that sometimes shows up on the same day. We never get double gathers, double events, double vistas, etc.

I don’t think ANet should put PvE-only players in a situation where they feel compelled to go to PvP or WvW to complete their 3; players who dislike fractals do end up with that situation.

OTOH, we have some incredibly easy days, too. WvW Big Spender is trivial for anyone who has gotten a few achievement chests.

Personally, I think there are far worse problems with dailies:

• There isn’t that much variety compared to the old system. It also seems to be unimaginative relative to the diverse and interesting scope of the game.
• It’s static, i.e. the same every month.
• Events for a zone end up being pretty annoying for a lot of people, since most events don’t scale properly. If you aren’t at the event when it spawns, you can’t possible arrive in time.

RapidSausage.4620:

I sumbitted a ticket about this, i had listed a lemongrass poultry soup recipe on TP and didn’t receive the gold when it was sold.

Is this a somewhat common occurance that is actionable by ANet?

I don’t believe it ever happens. On occasion, for various reasons, the TP history on your browser can lag what’s going on, but as far as I’ve been able to tell, items and money never “disappear” from the TP — if you listed something, you’ll either get the item back or the coin. At worst, you might have to wait a bit.

I can’t definitely “prove” that goods/gold are never lost, but in all the time I’ve been reading reports about this (forums, reddit, guild chat), it has always turned out that “missing” items or gold were merely misplaced. Poster forgot (or didn’t realize) that they cancelled the listing, they took the gold at 2 am and forgot, etc.

I’m meticulous about my TP management and yet I’ve certainly borked a listing or 3 myself, in one case grabbing items from the TP using a toon that never talks to the NPC, so when I couldn’t find the item later, it never occurred to me to look there.

tl;dr I’m confident that you’ll either see the item/gold next time you check the TP or be able to see what happened in the TP history or discover you still have the recipe in an unexpected place.

Good luck and please let us know what you find out. (Especially if it turns out that the recipe really did get sold without you getting your coin.)

Knapper.3508:

Its a necessary evil, I get that.
I just wish it wasnt hahaha

It also prevents people from asking for exaggeratedly high prices and then changing their minds, which is exactly what keeps agony infusions from going up in price. In other words, the system is designed to prevent exactly the kind of thing you want.

And that’s actually good for you: if everyone could raise prices without risk, then sure, you’d get a little more for crafting infusions, but you’d also pay more for everything else.

In short, it’s not a “necessary evil”, it’s an “important good”. (And yeah, sometimes, it’s hard to see the distinction, especially when we are trying to find a reliable and profitable niche.)

Khisanth.2948:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

You don’t get the achievement for opening JP chests; you get it for stepping in the right spot. If your toon remains up there, try walking around the spot near the chest etkittenil you get it.

and some JPs have weird trigger spots

Indeed, some do. (Thanks for adding that — I meant to mention that …and forgot.)

It’s even worse for the diving achievement, since unless you are monitoring the count before/after, there’s often no way of knowing if you hit the target or not. (I got in the habit of doing each one 2-3 times, just to be sure.)

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You can take advantage of either of these:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enchanted_Reward_Boost

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enchanted_Combat_Boost

Good luck.

This only costs you gold instead of making you some.

Gold costs upfront? true enough. But you can profit in the long run by choosing well.

• More inventory slots → less time spent managing inventory. Time is money.
• Speed boosts → faster to get to events, through dungeons, etc.
• More XP → more skill points, which can be used for profitable promotion of mats or to avoid tedious trait unlock challenges.
• More karma → can be converted to gold, used in place of gold for gear, required for crafting things like legendaries.

None of that is huge profit, of course. But I doubt very much we’d do any better if ANet ends up offering any booster trade-in value.

Some of the items are also useful from a convenience stand point, e.g. I find the speed boosts invaluable for mesmers.