Guild Wars 2

I try to whisper to that name. For example,

/w Reincarnated
hello, world!

There are three possible results:

• (most common) ‘The player you are trying to whisper is not online’ → name not available.
• (least common) the whisper goes through! (only happened three times since headstart) → name not available
• (uncommon) ‘There is no player or account by that name.’ → name is available

It’s not as elegant as a name-check tool, but it gets the job done just fine.

(You can also try to add a name to your friends list or invite to your personal guild, but both those options involve undoing what you just did.)

Azhure.1857:

We don’t need new servers.
We don’t need players only ever aiming to get in the top 3 servers.
What we do need are players willing to join all the remaining servers.
…..sadly I don’t see that happening.

ANet needs to make it clear to new players that server choice has very little impact, except for WvW. I still see people who ask how to get into TC/JQ/BG so they can do various types of PvE content with friends. People who have no interest in WvW still get worried when they can’t get into a particular server.

Further, ANet ought to add powerful incentives for moving to low-pop servers, just as they do for people ‘volunteering’ to move out of an instance after the end of World Boss events. For example:

• 0 gem fee to transfer to the 3 lowest-pop worlds.
• A one-week buff increasing MF by 25% and PvE movement speed by 15% (same as the speed booster), for those who move to a lower population server (maybe one month, if that server is in the bottom 3).
• Perhaps some sort of special mini or other gem shop-like reward.

I feel a lot more mobile on a Guardian than on a mesmer and it’s comparable to necro. Guardian has leap skills on two of the 2H weapons and a swiftness boon on the other one. G’s have swiftness-generating shouts. Mesmers have one teleport (a good one, to be sure), one weapon skill that grants limited swiftness once, and a couple of skills that give swiftness a fraction of the time. In addition, nearly all illusion-skills on mesmer require a target, including the one mesmer leap…and that requires two casts (both with channeling and cooldown times).

Guardian wasn’t designed to be as mobile as a thief (or some variations of elementalist), but it’s in a much better state than mesmers.

That said, the issue isn’t whether guards are getting nerfed or not, it’s whether the game is well-balanced or not. In the context of all other changes, I don’t think the ones mentioned by the OP affect the overall balance in the game.

Brutal Bob.3812:

I seriously HATE ArenaNet now. Was at 67% of the survivor title, and they forced the map closed, so that I could not contionue. This then RESET the title track. How the H*** is this even entertaining? I know this title is supposed to be difficult to get, but this is PURE EVIL.

It is also not healthy to sit down physically inactive for hours. Now I just want to punch someone… Yes if you didn’t get it Arenanet, I’m angry with you!!!

They didn’t reset the title track. That was something that happened 2 years ago and was subsequently fixed. (I’m mostly replying for the sake of others who wonder why this older post was resurrected.)

As others have said, it’s not all that kitten a L80 toon. You can even do it using leveling consumables or via crafting.

I don’t know of any site that maintains a list of builds except Metabattle. MB’s goal is to list the most effective and/or frequently-used builds. Other sites list the builds that a guild or webcaster find fun or effective. Historically, I’ve only seen 2-3 sites that make it easy for players to share builds and I personally haven’t found it useful to return to them: not many new builds since my last visit or no way to distinguish among ‘meh’ + ‘good’ + ‘great’ builds until you look at them.

Some people maintain a list in profession sub-forums, so you might try there. The mesmer subforum has some excellent threads on just that.

Linken.6345:

biofrog.1568:

I also would like another chance to pick this up.. laurels would make the most sense, just like the Living Story season 1 rewards. I’d really like the Tree in my home instance also.

Going away for a holiday shouldn’t be a punishment!

What do you do that make you be able to go away for almost a month? its not like the xmas thing only ran for 1 week during the holiday mate.

I don’t see that it matters. Maybe the OP was busy, maybe there was a death in family, a new baby, a new job, or any of a number of RL good/bad things going on. Maybe they were bored.

The point is that the Star of Gratitude was tied to a temporary-available event, whereas Mawdrey (and Luminescent armor) is not. That’s confusing, regardless of whether it is a good thing for the game that ANet did it this way.

There are several distinct issues raised by the OP:

1. The time gating on ascended gear.
2. The huge time investment to level up crafting.
3. The huge financial investment (laurels & gold) to learn ascended recipes for each prefix and each weapon.
4. The overall impact on the OP’s enjoyment.

The entire setup is a direct result of player complaints about exotic gear having been too easy to acquire and folks wanting something to aspire to. Some of us were perfectly happy: I prefer to level up all skills/traits/levels fast and then be able to enjoy the game without having to worry about; others prefer vertical advancement. ANet tried to balance as best they could.

The first three points are indirect results of ANet wanting to prevent a sudden drain on the economy, if people were able to bulk-produce ascended mats the day the changes came through. That’s less important now, but it would still be horribly disruptive to change it (both in terms of ANet resources required to manage the change and economic repercussions). Mind you: I hate time gating, so I’m not in favor of this mechanic; I just understand why ANet chose this route.

Fortunately, there are ways around it: you can think of Ascended gear as a type of bonus (like choosing to use food or not) and as a very long-term goal. Further, you don’t actually have to craft Ascended mats yourself: you can buy them on the TP. What I recommend is doing that to make your gear and then continuing the process at a leisurely rate, to earn coin to repay for your investment.

Finally, the OP’s fourth point: that’s a personal reaction to all of the others. I can see where the OP is coming from and I hope that ANet can use input like that when they decide to artificially impose vertical advancement on a game that was designed to be primarily about vertical challenges. I’m not saying they shouldn’t evolve the game, by learning from player Feedback; I am saying they need to be more careful in the future not to alienate vets as they ‘improve’ the game for the next wave of players.

Hobbitlauncher.7219:

Illconceived, thanks for the heads up – I’m guessing I failed at searching or the search still sucks, lol

…

Given that there have been threads already made, I imagine there is not much point in belaboring the issue then, Ill?

The search function is all-but broken. I use Google instead, e.g.

site:forum-en.guildwars2.com inurl:forum watchwork mining pick

Forum veterans might tell you “there’s no point in belaboring the issue,” because they’ve seen the 100 other treads already. But since you hadn’t, I imagine there are 1,000s of other players who don’t know the background either. I wouldn’t recommend investing much time on it, since ANet hasn’t really responded previously, but then again, sometimes they do respond when there’s a graciously-worded new thread that offers a new twist to the discussion.

Everyone enjoys or finds fault with different aspects of the game, so we all have our own ideas about what can be improved and on what changes ANet should focus.

ANet has only released very vague details about how home world population is determined. From their remarks, this is what I believe to be true: the status shown in the world guesting/transfer screen depends on several factors:

• The number of accounts currently logged on.
• The number of accounts logged on recently, perhaps a moving average such as ‘last 72 hours’ or ‘last month’ or even a combination.
• The number of accounts registered to the server.
• Concurrency of all players, i.e. how many people logged on across all worlds in the region.

Thus, if you refresh the guesting screen and sort by population, you’ll see the order of worlds change, e.g. sometimes TC will be on the top, sometimes JQ. But it’s not at all clear how often this changes or whether it means anything meaningful for those of us trying to transfer or guest to get into a new instance.

It gets easier.

A lot of people start the game not realizing how dynamic the combat is or how easily you can get swarmed by mobs. Practice moving a lot during a fight and positioning yourself so that you have the advantage. Considering adding gemstones to your gear to give yourself more offensive or defensive stats (those are the mats that you get sometimes as a bonus while mining ore). Also try out different weapons: you might try using ranged weapons until you get the hang of things.

Good luck.

The original design of Orr intended to give the impression of a warzone: high densities of mobs, contested waypoints, and hardly any ‘safe’ havens. I try to look at it as a region with a tiny number waypoints and it’s a nice surprise when ‘extra’ waypoints become available.

Similarly, I view contested waypoints in Harathi as a tool to let me know which events are up (and where to go to help the Seraph).

There are half a dozen or so waypoints that are actually broken, as part of the Living Story: mordremoth has sucked the magic out of them. This includes the one in LA that you mentioned.

As to movement speed: I think it’s fine. If it gets much faster, then travel time would be reduced to a trivial amount and I would want it reduced even more, allowing instantaneous travel to any coordinate (outside of combat).

There have been a number of threads and a number of posts on this topic. ANet hasn’t directly responded to the discrepancy between the Watchwork Mining Pick and the other infinite-use picks.

I don’t think it’s unfair to sell items in the gem shop that offer different features. For example, some outfits come with great ‘toys’ and others don’t. There are variations in price among armor pieces, finishers, and minis. All of that seems like what happens in most businesses: pricing isn’t always entirely logical.

On the other hand, I do think it’s unfair to release items in the gem shop that offer features that are unavailable through normal game play: it’s really hard to obtain more than a few sprockets on your own without the Watchworking Mining Pick. (I say that as an owner of multiple WMPs.)

The current interface can be a little wonky and I’ve gotten caught spending more than I meant to (or getting less than I planned) by using my old routines for setting prices.

Until the TP UI is revisited (which happens more often these days, thanks to the new TP code), be very careful checking the values before pressing the buy/sell button.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Serophous.9085:

Mini John Smith. So I have insider trading info when standing beside a trade post NPC.

Mini John Smith who says random lines like “I am the destroyer of the designers intention to make people happy”.

ANet pls

L Step.8659:

You already did everything you can do, just keep them blocked and have your girlfriend enjoy a nice pay day.

I agree: all you can do with trolls is ignore them (and /report if they do something egregious, such as cursing you out repeatedly in /map or /say or threatening you personally).

L Step.8659:

They’re just internet trolls, as long as you’re not like 12 you should be able to resist the urge to get upset from a mundane situation like that.

Eh, I don’t necessarily agree. It’s upsetting to be attacked and ‘yelled’ at for just playing a game, especially if you come to Tyria as a distraction from real life. To be sure, it’s not worth obsessing over, but then few things are.

What you can do is to think of those guys at a bunch of 9-year olds who stayed up past their bedtime and got cranky because they were sleepy and didn’t get exactly what they wanted for Christmas.

I didn’t see you mention a specific legendary, suggesting that none of them really hold that much appeal to you.

So I think you should focus on the Chainsaw and wait to see what happens with collections, precursors, and legendaries.

Tyreal.5230:

why is this still coming up as a topic…

Not everyone participated in the other threads covering the same ideas. It will keep coming up as new players join and a subset of the veterans get bored with the status quo.

Khisanth.2948:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

You can apply any skin to an ascended weapon, so I don’t think it’s necessary. Yeah, you spent a lot on the skin, but that was why you spent a lot: because of the skin.

On the other hand, I wish there was some way to side-grade existing ascended gear to change the stats. It’s a huge investment to make ascended gear and it’s all-too-easy to choose one set of stats today only to learn that it was a bad choice, as we evolve are our playstyles (and the game, I hope, also evolves).

For example, I’d like to combine the Keeper’s Brazier I have (from ascended chest) with an assassin’s inscription, a minor vision crystal, and maybe an Eldritch scroll, to convert it into a Soros Brazier.

I like that idea but that might be requiring too many SP considering the change to SP acquisition in HoT.

Also doesn’t seem like it would scale too well which is a problem for armor. That would be 420 SP for a full set of armor.

Right, maybe not the right formula. OTOH, it would still be less tedious than making an entire new set of armor. The main thing is that I’d like to see a way to change the stats of ascended gear. It’s properly free for legendary weapons, so it should cost something substantial, but maybe not as much as I proposed originally.

There’s a total makeover kit (350 gems or 280 each for 5) and an Identity Repair kit (1,000 gems each).

According to the wiki, the second does resolve into two different items: the makeover kit plus a Name Change Contract (800 gems).

Only a small bargain at retail prices (1,000 gems vs 1,150 bought separately, 1,080 if you buy 5 makeovers at a time).

I’d like to see a combination of pure RNG + tokens (in the wallet, of course), similar the BL Ticket System. BL chests will drop full tickets for skins, but you can also get a ticket scrap and 10 scraps gets you a choice. Similarly, Ascended rings will drop in Fractals, but you can earn enough pristine relics to buy your own, every 10 full runs (5 if you do them as a daily).

So I’d like to see that coat continues to be RNG (lucky drop for some of us), but every 10 successful vine events, you’re guaranteed to earn one.

I stack them all the time, until I have a chance to get some karma bonuses. A lot of people are nice enough to share banners during major events (e.g. Tequatl), at key points in Tyria/Mists (e.g. WvW spawn/garri and outside dungeons), and during special events (e.g. Lunar New Year in DR). Otherwise, I keep a few things on hand.

However, unless you are rigorous about managing the booster time/popping the hearts, it won’t make that much difference in the long run. You can generate karma more quickly by running lots of chained events (e.g. silverwastes or the Serpah-clearing-Centaur-camp chain in Harathi, with or without the Ulgoth), by running Fractals 10 levels below yours, or from daily bonuses.

Olba.5376:

You can’t just add weapons because they’d be “cool”. Not only is that not a proper argument, but it’s also missing the fact that you would need to design a niche for the weapon to fill before it can even be considered. There’s no point in having two different weapons that do the exact same thing.

And your argument about 1h and 2h options existing other than for axes, you’re kind of not in the right there either:

• What is the 2h option for Dagger? Can’t be GS since that’s Sword already.
• What are the 1h options for Shortbow and Longbow?

So for your argument to be anything valuable, you need to:

1. Establish a niche for it
2. Give the same treatment to every other weapon

+1

Increased weapon variety would be interesting for an hour, until people found out how to adjust the meta to accommodate it.

That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing something that happened in GW1 towards the end of active updates: existing weapon types that were designed to look like others, e.g. we could have a greatsword that looked like a 2H axe.

I’m in favor of fewer restrictive items generally. Account-binding makes sense to restrict supply or to reward players for participation or being veterans. Soul-binding makes a little less sense, but does help ensure that there’s a decent economic demand for high-supply items.

What problem are you trying to solve by introducing a third type of binding? I see it as adding to clutter, complicating the sharing of loot, and as JT suggests above, complicating the drop tables in undesirable ways.

Right now, it’s easy enough to support guildies by asking them what sort of gear they want and helping them acquire it (either through giving them fish or teaching them to fish).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’d love to see this as a quarterly blog feature. “This week in GM Proheal’s Tyria!”

pdavis.8031:

I would totally suscribe to that blog!

Michael Henninger.7451:

Hmm… this could be fun.

Excellent. Looking forward to it.
(Assuming you have the time and the Powers That Be sign off on it.)

pdavis.8031:

I know Michael already does this on a much smaller level. As shown in this thread, and the GM proheals thread, but something a bit more would go along way in the eyes of the players.

Oh does he? I’d love to see this as a quarterly blog feature. “This week in GM Proheal’s Tyria!”

You can apply any skin to an ascended weapon, so I don’t think it’s necessary. Yeah, you spent a lot on the skin, but that was why you spent a lot: because of the skin.

On the other hand, I wish there was some way to side-grade existing ascended gear to change the stats. It’s a huge investment to make ascended gear and it’s all-too-easy to choose one set of stats today only to learn that it was a bad choice, as we evolve are our playstyles (and the game, I hope, also evolves).

For example, I’d like to combine the Keeper’s Brazier I have (from ascended chest) with an assassin’s inscription, a minor vision crystal, and maybe an Eldritch scroll, to convert it into a Soros Brazier.

Why is there no “Mini Me” ? 300 laurels, so it’s a reward for long time (and very patient) players.

Mea.5491:

CMM.6712:

Mea.5491:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Focusing on the “fastest way to level” is the best way to ruin the game for yourself.

Fast leveling means we get through the crappy NPE quickly which actually ruins the game experience for most of us…

I do not agree with your assessment here, and reject your usage of “us”

I said most of us…

That’s still probably inaccurate, although I don’t have the data to back it up.

For what it’s worth, among people with whom I’ve discussed the NPE, everyone wishes it was the original system, especially since the gating goes away quickly and the rewards are much better. (That said, people are very unhappy with trait unlocks, which pre-dated the NPE and dislike the hack/slash changes to the personal story — and fortunately the latter is going to be fixed soon.)

I am not in favor of this change. I would probably never have tried WvW without the requirement. I found the challenge unique, especially when I remained disinterested in any form of player-vs-player combat: how do get to the required locations without running into opposing players.

Still, I don’t mind the change. WvW is a tiny fraction of map completion, but it’s the most annoying for the most players. And with ANet introducing new legendaries and new ways of getting precursors, I think it’s good that they are overhauling the other requirements for forging a legendary.

I hope this also means that people who primarily WvW will get some love, too: since it just got a lot easier for PvE-only folks to gain certain rewards, there should be some changes that benefit those in WvW, too. (PvP already got some great reward boosts a while back: it’s really easy now to get leveling consumables and mats.)

Many.8419:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Before ANet will decide to act, it would help to identify what the issue is. In my opinion, there are very, very few situations in which AFKers affect my ability to enjoy the game and complete content. Silverwastes is not one of them; I have yet to be on a map that failed primarily (or even likely) because of AFKers.

Mind you, I dislike it when people leech like that, but if they want to risk having their account banned for “botting” (even if it’s a small risk), then that’s their choice.

Botting is using 3rd party automated programs, afking is using guild wars 2 client.

“Botting” is the drop-down to use in the /report dialogue when you think someone is AFKing. There is no other ‘good’ choice at the moment.

That’s why I put the term in quotes, because I’m using to mean doing something in game without actively playing. I apologize if that colloquial usage was confusing and can restate the same point as:

If people want to risk getting a permanent ban for “gaining rewards without active participation,” that’s their choice.

pdavis.8031:

Michael:

Would it be possible, or appropriate, to perodically post statics of people being actioned without revealing names, account info, or anything.

Something like:
Last month
22 people were warned about being abusive in chat.
37 people were suspended for disrupting game play
13 people were banned for using thirdy party cheat programs.
etc.

Something like this would go a long way to show that something is being done about such people. As it is now, we hear so little and see even less in game to even consider that the GMs are doing something. Which leads to many many people believe that such behavior is acceptable because as those people were saying “Anet doesn’t do anything so why does it matter?”

Just a thought….

Yes, anything that ANet can do to let us know that action is taken regularly would be helpful. Obviously, doubters are still gonna doubt, but there are many players who would be more likely to spend the time needed to make a verifiable report, if they knew that their actions are likely to result in action…instead of inaction.

I’m sure you guys do internal metrics regularly, since that’s how you know if your policies are effective, so maybe some of that could be “cleaned up” for the public.

Many.8419:

Isn’t there? I think the seller is obligated to refund or replace what you bought in the shop in the short period of time after transaction (depending on country)

Naw, mostly not for in-game digital purchases. (Although it turns out that ANet will sometimes refund gem shop purchases. I suspect it’s more likely if the person buys gems with cash, which seems reasonable to me.)

The ‘purchase’ for GW2 is when you buy the gems, not when you use those gems to get something in-game.

Before ANet will decide to act, it would help to identify what the issue is. In my opinion, there are very, very few situations in which AFKers affect my ability to enjoy the game and complete content. Silverwastes is not one of them; I have yet to be on a map that failed primarily (or even likely) because of AFKers.

Mind you, I dislike it when people leech like that, but if they want to risk having their account banned for “botting” (even if it’s a small risk), then that’s their choice.

Ltomato.8649:

And I’ve also mentioned that I’ve experienced this 4 times, all 4 times which support my hypothesis. So no, I don’t literally only have data for two trials.

Right, I never thought you were reporting something based on zero data. What I have been trying to say is that it’s nothing close to enough data to get anyone at ANet to make a note about it. There are lots of other possible explanations.

I don’t blame you for not wanting to collect more data (I do this all the time and it’s both challenging and tedious to do it well). I do want to help you manage your own expectations about what is likely to happen without such data, which is not much.

(If you do to decide to organize collecting data from others, as well as yourself, I would be happy to assist you with putting together a post that makes it clear what would help.)

The other thing you might want to consider is that if you are able to present more data (but not enough necessarily to convince ANet), you would be able to get some of the people reading the forums to look more closely. The Great Ecto Drop Rate Nerf of 2013 was, in fact, identified through this method: a few people posted the kernel of sufficient data and it was odd enough to get other people to post their own numbers, resulting in enough data to get ANet to look closely. (Of course, it’s far easier to collect ecto drop rate data than fractal data of any kind.)

1. Unless you WvW, it does not matter which home world you choose; you can play with your friends in sPvP and PvE simply by being in the same party as they are.
2. The ability to move to a nominally “full” server depends on a number of factors, including how many from that server are playing right now, how many accounts are registered there, and how many have entered/left recently. There is no way to predict when there will be an opening, so the three most efficient strategies are:
   1. Try in the slowest parts of the day, usually US early am (everyone is asleep and EU players are at work). This has worked for a number of friends, but can take a week or two.
   2. Try early and often, i.e. bring a laptop to work and try every time you can get to Starbucks or other wifi hotspot. This has been successful for everyone I know who has tried it. (Requires more patience than some of us have.)
   3. Unless the aid of a large guild, who can arrange for 50+ members to sign off for 5 minutes at exactly the same time, e.g. 12:05 am Pacific. That should temporarily open up a spot or two for just long enough for someone new to join. This has also worked in every case I know about, but obviously, not everyone can manage it.

My friends do PvP dailies (and just that) and end up with a ton of tomes/xp consumables. You can knock them off quickly by finding an unoccupied ‘server’ and joining with a couple of friends there.

Nafeasonto.8925:

The wings first of all, are WAAY to big. They look horrible on an Asura. and why can’t you change the color?

They also don’t flow right and are very rigid. When you run they shouldn’t move back and forth on how you run, they should actually move like wings.

You can dye everything else in this game, why are you restricting dyes on things you pay for with Gems?

This seems kitten backwards to me.

I can’t be the only one who is thinking this.

I agree:

• I think the wings are the wrong shape and size and don’t scale attractively; they seem especially large for asura.
• I don’t like the color and I don’t like that I can’t change it.
• I also think the animation is unattractive.

Accordingly I didn’t buy the wings. Best non-use of 500 gems this month.

Put another way, I agree with the essence of the OP’s criticisms. However, I don’t think the post was phrased as constructively as it could have been.

edit: grammar

Just because someone taunted folks in mumble or /map or /say doesn’t mean they actually deployed any siege or wasted supply. It’s not enough to have screen caps of their threats.

And screens from mumble aren’t that helpful, since people’s mumble IDs need not match their in-game names.

The thing to keep in mind about trolls is that they thrive off discord; their goal is to disrupt as much as possible. The more you engage them in chat or complain about them on the forums, the more they see themselves as succeeding. Therefore, the most effective tactic in dealing with them is to ignore them in game and quietly report them (along with details useful to anet to help catch them in the act).

The OP’s original problem statement says, in effect: “GW2 content (combat and dungeons) has gotten stale, now that people have learned to minmax it easily.”

The OP proposed that the solution to the problem is: bring back the traditional trinity.

I can’t disagree more: adding the traditional trinity wouldn’t solve any issues by itself, it would create all sorts of new ones, and it would remove one of the distinguish features of the game.

There are all sorts of other things that could be addressed to make the game more exciting for those bored with the status quo. Most of those have been mentioned already, but I continue to believe that the most important one is to make the AI smarter. Bosses need to dodge, avoid getting ‘fooled’ by line-of-sight tactics, focus on the weakest player, etc. In addition, they need to have defenses that make direct damage irrelevant (the only way to make conditions more relevant imo) and offensive abilities that discourage the current meta.

The good thing is: we’ve seen previews of all of this. Changed to defiance/stability, new AI, and so forth.

I am not going to predict whether this is going to solve all (or even the plurality) of issues we to which we can point. I am willing to say that I think it means that ANet is looking in the right direction. We know from past experience that sometimes their implementation is better than the hype …and sometimes it’s … not.

As the OP writes, the final step in the personal story is jarring: it’s the only one that requires group play. In university, the equivalent would be giving 10 weeks of homework on Newtonian Mechanics, but making the final about Einsteinian Mechanics. (A fair test for physics, but a poor way of preparing the students for it.)

I do, however, really enjoy the racial components of the personal story: most of the charr, asura, and sylvari stories include a bit of gray and at least a few multi-dimensional characters. There’s lore you won’t encounter elsewhere. Aspects of the order stories are also interesting: a lot of people still remember Tybalt fondly (although I found him less interesting than Sieran, who changes from being a flighty party girl to being a serious scholar and able to see the bigger picture).

I think the story bogged down after the pact gets together: there are a couple of really good components (“greatest fear” for example), but it pretty much plays out as if they ran out of time to polish it. I enjoy replaying the racial stories; I barely enjoyed the pact story the first time.

But all that said, I continue to be far more interested in new content rather than overhauling the old. I’m glad they are restoring the parts of the story that got hacked out to allow the NPE to release on time for China’s release and I’m glad that they are fixing some of the dialogue (whether for consistency or just to get a ‘better take’). Afterwards, I’d be just as happy if they leave the original PS alone and focus on making the LS really good (and replayable).

You can complete most of the game’s content without being a great player. However the great players (and the just darn good ones) make strong use of things like combo fields: a few “area mights” make all the difference for taking down dungeon bosses more quickly and in certain group fights (e.g. vs Tequatl).

Rustux: you don’t have to change to your friend’s server at all, unless you want to do WvW with them. PvE and sPVP can be done by anyone in the same party (if in the same region: NA, EU, or CN).

If you really want to change now (while you don’t mind deleting your character), then just make sure to unequip everything that is account or unbound (e.g. bigger storage bags). I’ve deleted more than a few toons and about once every fifth time, I forget something like that.

Ltomato.8649:

As much as I would LOVE to have a job where I can bugfix and test things for GW2, that’s not my job.

Nor should a low number of cases prevent a report from being taken seriously and recorded.

Actually, a low number of cases should prevent a bug report from getting resources deployed. I would want my QA team working on high-priority, wide-scope issues primarily. If a tiny fraction of fractal players are claiming an issue that others cannot see, I’d be inclined to think that there are a dozen other explanations that don’t involve game code: observation bias, clustering bias, and so on.

As I said above, if you really think there’s a problem, start collecting data. If you run fractals often, it won’t take very much time for you to expose a pattern (or a lack of one).

As a counter example, let’s say I had an American quarter and flipped it 10 times, with only a single head. The odds of this are less than 1 chance in 100: low, but not crazy low. Should we investigate whether my coin is unbalanced in favor of tails?

Now consider that there are 10,000 other people with the exact same coin. Some aren’t paying attention to what happens, but a few are. From those reporting back, we have a person or two seeing exactly 1 out of 10 heads, but most are seeing 4-6, as we would expect. Should that make us more or less likely to investigate the initial report?

Finally, regardless of whether any player reading this is convinced there is an issue or not, there’s also the matter of realpolitik: the powers that be are swayed by data, not by anecdotes. I’ve gone through this with many people in many situations (developers, business executives, education professionals, …) and it’s always the same: management is convinced when you can show them numbers that demonstrate there’s an issue of concern. Without it, you can type or talk forever and they won’t take action.

For the OP, it’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to run 100s of fractals on your own. But you can still coordinate efforts among others, from your guild or using this thread. Tell people exactly the steps you want them to use and how you want to collect the data (in-game mail, forum, whatever). It doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time (it’s mostly just careful bookkeeping really). Once you have some rigorously-collected data, you won’t have to talk most of us into supporting further action.

You can only be outbid if you are, yourself, already outbidding someone else. If you sell to the highest offer (or buy from the lowest), you cannot be outbid.

When I want my price to be successful, I increment my order by a noticeable amount over the previous. When I’m being frugal, I match +/- a few copper. (And when I’m greedy, I study the item’s history and trends and price accordingly.)

And I accept the risk that others are thinking the same way and will outbid/underbid me by coppers. If you don’t want that risk, accept the existing offers.

Naw, I get foxfire and flakes at the same time. The drop rate for foxfire is really low and it’s pretty high for flakes, so it will seem that you get too much of the second and not enough of the first.

I’ve been using frosty tools exclusively in southsun and my foxfire/week remains consistent.

I agree that there’s a big issue with how Arah/story is set up.

• You can do the entire personal story alone (or with just 1-2 people); you do not have to do any dungeons.
• You reach Arah and you are required to do a dungeon (story path) and it’s the only p-story instance designed for five.

I don’t think that’s “trolling,” but I do think it’s bad design. (Likely, one of the unintended consequences of rolling out in August 2012 instead of later.)

OTOH, it’s been like that for 2 years. I don’t think it’s worth spending a lot of resources “fixing” the issue (i.e. completely redoing that story) as opposed to devoting time/people into the next new thing(s).

The absence of the traditional trinity doesn’t limit GW2 any more than the inclusion of that trinity limits WoW and other games. Content that has to be designed around the traditional trinity means working out ways to avoid ‘cheese’ tanking, cheese healing, and offer enough health that stuff can’t die quickly. In contrast, GW2 allows the potential for all sorts of teams to play, without depending on the traditional roles.

The issues with GW2’s dungeons is that players quickly figured out how to beat the AI easily, so all of the speedy runs boil down to figuring out how to stack might, vulnerability, and thus make most foe mechanics moot. ANet has started to address this in open world content, but largely has left dungeons and fractals untouched.

Thus, the real issue isn’t the trinity (or lack thereof). It’s that players are evolving faster than ANet is changing the content.

(Incidentally: DPs/Control/Support is present in the speed-clearing, although somewhat dull. Support is primarily might stacking + stealthing through disliked-mechanics. Control is primarily about using LoS to draw foes into a corner and sometimes about pulling them; only occasionally do people use skills to pull beyond that first aggro. And, of course, DPS is king, as it is in all games ultimately.)

If at least one member is still in the instance, it will not reset. If everyone leaves, then it resets.

I’m not sure how the game would be able to tell if everyone DC’d versus everyone bailed on the dungeon. Since dungeons have multiple paths and many groups run them all, it would be inconvenient if everyone had to wait some time after running a path to start the next one. (I can think of some ways around it, but they would all involve semi-complex algorithms that would have to be thoroughly discussed, tested, played-to-fail, and debugged.)

I’d like to see any currency that requires more than a full stack have a wallet option. I think it might even be fair to require laurels and/or karma to update the wallet to include tokens.

Ltomato: if you’re convinced it’s not random, collect the evidence. For ANet to start considering an issue, they’d have to see results for a couple of dozen runs (which could be just you or you plus guildies).

I agree with the previous posters that once you start tracking, you won’t see any pattern.

We humans are really good at spotting patterns (it’s one of our survival traits), but we’re also good at seeing patterns where there aren’t any, especially when it comes to random mechanics in games or nature. One of my favorite examples is clustering, which you can see demonstrated on wikipedia. A random distribution of stars in an imaginary sky shows patterns (like constellations), whereas a perfectly even, non-random distribution shows no patterns, i.e. we easily see a pattern in the randomness, but cannot see any pattern in a predictable mechanic.