Guild Wars 2

ANet isn’t that great about naming things (GW2 ranger doesn’t necessarily “range;” GW2 mesmer has only the name in common with GW1 mesmer). So it shouldn’t surprise us when the name for the new class gives people one impression (undead, death knight, etc), but is based on a relatively obscure (but accurate) definition of that word.

In the end, who cares what the class is called? Even the lore will be immaterial if it’s a fun and balanced class to play (and play alongside or against). If it’s tedious or ineffective, no one will give a skritt about the name or the in-game background.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Use this to find out exactly what a gift of mastery might be worth: http://gw2legends.net/

Great idea. I entirely forgot about that site.

What do you think a Gift of Mastery is worth?

I have some gold, my friend has an abundance of karma and gifts of exploration. I’d like to work out a deal that’s fair to both of us.

Have you actually traded for one and if so, how much did you give/get? If you haven’t done the trade yourself, but have the gold, how much would you offer a friend for it? If you have the gifts of exploration sitting around, how much would you want for them?

The trend in some 8-month (or older) posts seems to be:

• buyers offer 250-300g
• sellers ask for 500-700g
• 300g seems to be common from people claiming to have seen this in action

inb4: yes, of course the Gift is account bound. The idea is to mail the relevant mats to the gift owner, let them make the legendary, and send it to me. Also: trust isn’t an issue. We’ve done stuff like this before.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.

Below, I’ve noted some earlier estimates that people suggested prior to the recent drop in legendary/precursor prices:

• 250g — from samuirai (the redditor who posts precursor forging stats) — buyer offers up ectos and mystic coins (for clover tries) and seller keeps leftovers. — Link
• 600g — from samuirai — seller provides ectos/coins — Link
• 400-500g — ChaosV — Link
• 800g — ChaosDusk — Link
• 300g — CharmingRogue — Link
• 300g — darkace — “I wish to God I could sell some of the 10 Gifts of Exploration I have sitting in my bank for 300 gold apiece.” — Link
• 300g — tentonhammr — “2 of my friends in my dungeon team did this last week. They agreed to 300g plus expenses. However I personally think thats a bit low.” — Link
• 500-700g — laokoko — “I won’t sell it for 300 but 500-700 I’ll think about it.” — Link
• 350-400g — nevertrending — “50% of profit margin if the legendary would be sold on TP or 350-400g is what you can hope for atm” — Link

One thing I’ve noticed about this thread (and ones like it) is that people are using the same language to discuss several, distinct issues, which aren’t directly related:

1. Is there a problem with the market price of silk?
2. Are people frustrated with the market price of silk?
3. Is the system used to acquire silk similar enough to that for other basic mats?
4. Is the system used to acquire silk “unfair?”
5. If any of the above is true, is it something that ANet ought to address?

Those are all interesting and (usually) reasonable questions to ask. However, we tend to mix them all up in the same conversation and use the same words to mean different things.

People who are dissatisfied with the status quo, for good reason or not, tend to call the system “broken.” This causes the forum’s market experts to (correctly) point out, no, the system is working as designed. This frustrates the first group, who don’t understand the fuss about the word, “broken” and correctly point out that the system isn’t parallel to that used for wood (harvested from nodes) or even leather (which isn’t needed for insignia). The marketeers then point out that a vibrant and healthy economy uses a variety of mechanisms, so that prices aren’t identically for everything. And the first group, even more frustrated than before, tries to start over, since the responders “obviously” just don’t get it.

Personally, I don’t feel the need to acquire silk by farming it. I hate farming anything. So if I want to make one damask/day, I buy it, funding my efforts by selling stuff that just accumulates. And yeah, that means selling a ton of mithril (or whatever) to keep myself in just a bit of silk.

That works for me, but I can see why some people feel that it lacks a certain MMO/roleplaying panache and would prefer to gather their own directly and why they get frustrated trying to find 100 bolts/day.

The chain of questions I’d like John Smith to take a crack at is: are there too many people that are too frustrated by the status quo? Or does it seem to be a tiny minority? Can you tell if large segments of the community just gave up on crafting their own damask, because it was too grindy? Or does it look like people are being economically responsive, by farming (or accumulating) gold to buy silk and/or damask?

One change that I think might be interesting and not too disruptive would be change insignia so they can be crafted with leather (either in addition to or instead of cloth). This would put pressure on leather to rise (seemingly a good outcome) and some (but not too much) downward pressure on silk. I suspect it would mean introducing a new type of insignia (for new recipes, but also so that existing stocks of insignia don’t become devalued instantly). For example, maybe allow sinister leather insignia to be sold, even tho sinister cloth insignia can’t be sold

Why not fishing? You might as well ask, “why can’t GW2 chefs craft bacon? or poutine?”

I think people look back at GW1 with rose-colored glasses. La Tyria en Rose.

I loved GW1 and still prefer many of its features compared to GW2, but GW2 is a much, much better game in my opinion. I have tried going back to GW1 to help folks out with their HoM and… I can’t do it. I spend an hour in old Tyria and that’s all I can take for six months.

• There’s no jumping in GW1. None! I press [spacebar] and I end up following an NPC. Consequently: no jumping puzzles, like the amazing one in Silverwastes.
• You generally can’t move during combat (some exceptions), so it’s less dynamic and less interesting.
• Combats and missions can be trivialized by including heroes with efficient builds, i.e. you can solo most of the game.
• It’s not massively multiplayer: except for chatting in outposts (equivalent of towns), you can only have 8 people per instance. In other words, the entire game is just a series of dungeons.
• GW1 lore is considerably more naive (in my opinion). GW2 has more interesting and complicated personal, group, social, and political relationships.
• Drop rates are worse in GW1 than in GW2. You have to play a lot to see someone get a nice skin (and it won’t be you) and then it often has the wrong stats (since: no wardrobe).
• The economy is entirely underground: unless you are a market player, you are going to get paid less for your unwanted (but coveted) items and going to pay more for the ones you want. Worse, you have to spend time waiting for potential trades without being able to play the rest of the game. (I bought a second account just to be able to play and trade, without “wasting” time.)
• It doesn’t have the useful build variety of GW2. Sure, GW1 has 50-200 times more skills than GW2, but most people never used most of them. Further, in PvE at least, choosing the right build matters more than your skill at using it.
• In GW2, people matter. In GW1 (at least for the last 5+ years), builds matter.

Some good things about GW1:

• Easier learning curve. I find it’s a lot easier to introduce new people to online gaming via GW1 than GW2.
• 8-person instances. Be nice to have some instances in GW2 that took more than 5.
• Skin variety. I didn’t like most of the skins in GW1, but I felt like the different skins were more distinctive. (That could be my own rose-colored specs, tho.)
• Player-to-player bartering. I think GW2 is better off with the TP’s truly global economy, but I miss the social aspects of bartering. (Unfortunately, that’s a system that favors people like me at the expense of those who don’t follow the markets, so I don’t think it belongs in MMOs.)
• Pre-searing: The original GW1 had a tutorial area that couldn’t be entered once you left. It therefore has some special game mechanics and social dynamics not found elsewhere.

Bomber.3872:

That doesn’t sound like a hack, it’s just common sence. In southsun survival you only have to gather ~9 rations from the plants. After that you search for a save spot and just wait until everyone else is dead -> You won.

Playing like that I usually “earn” only around 10-20 points each round but still win.

Thanks for offering the point count for that technique. Maybe the OP was paired off with you

Bomber.3872:

I never unterstood why people run around and scavange for worthless stuff at this game mode or even try to kill each other.

I used your technique a lot when the mini-game first came out and it was fun. But it’s boring camping out. I have more fun doing a bunch of early kills/gathering and then sometimes getting killed and collecting motes or sometimes waiting until there’s just one opponent and trying to get them.

All three methods are viable and efficient. Yours is more likely to succeed, but it’s also the only one that bores me to tears.

Since I play to maximize my fun (not my loot), you’ll probably always ‘win’ a match against me. But we probably both have the same amount of fun.

edit: replaced pronouns for improved context

Ayrilana.1396:

You can’t name the sword after something that doesn’t exist.

zenleto.6179:

People, I think that’s the point of the OP.

In fact, that is the point of the OP.

Regards
The OP

Korimor.2406:

I have every legendary in the game and honestly i could care less. the price of a sigil is so minuscule to the price of the weapon that i swap them out whenever I feel the need. I don’t know why you want to be swapping them all the time anyways. I pretty much leave all my weapons on zerker or celestial with either air, energy, fire, or battle and call it GG

Most people don’t have enough gold to consider spending a few gold/day to swap in sigils at will.

I do like the idea of adding a wardrobe of sorts for sigils, that uses “upgrade charges” (as opposed to transmutation charges). Maybe legendary owners get free unlocks or a bunch of charges to start with.

I don’t like the idea of legendary owners getting a 5-6g discount on swapping, when compared to other players. That seems economically unfair and potentially destabilizing to the sigil market.

Gold Sellers will always offer gold for real world currency. To make that less profitable, ANet offers an official mechanism for players to legitimately use their wallet to get gold: the gem:gold converter.

If you want to see gold selling (and the related issues of account theft and botting) get worse, then sure, encourage ANet to do away with gem:gold conversion.

Regardless, the only “win” in this game is having fun, it’s hard to understand any argument that begins by complaining about “pay-to-win.”

I support the idea that

• Any events tied to collections and/or traits and/or achievements should be prioritized for review and modification (including bug fixes).
• Such events, especially those tied to event chains, should be setup to work as consistently as Arah temples, World Bosses, and other collection/trait/achievement-related events. If necessary, put them on a full reset timer or a schedule, so it doesn’t matter (as much) if they stall midway.

Without dev confirmation, it’s difficult to know for sure, but I’m convinced that this is how Diminishing Returns in dungeons was designed: don’t clear too quickly. Possibly, that type of DR is outdated, since few people run the same path multiple times/day anymore.

Instead of discussing whether this is (or is not) a bug, I’d recommend making a suggestion that the devs review the dungeon rewards, including any dungeon-specific DR. I don’t think this particular mechanic can be changed without looking at the overall impact of all dungeon rewards (and also comparing to other sources of tokens and gold, such as PvP reward tracks).

I received a note stating that a post of mine had been moved (see below). In fact, the entire thread had been deleted. The person who made the ‘move’ also failed to update the boilerplate text to include the reason.

I don’t have a problem with moderators deleting entire threads or individual posts that violate rules and/or create divisiveness (as opposed to those that offer constructive, if heated, conversations about the game). But I do object to using generic language to describe what happened.

If you don’t want to tell us the reasons, then simplify the text to: “To promote a productive atmosphere in the forums, we deleted an entire thread (including a post you made). Our apologies for the necessary confusion and inconvenience that this might cause.” Skip the links & avoid implying that the mods are likely to have time to explain the details.

Here’s the message I received:

A moderator moved a message you posted to the forum ‘Trashcan’ with the reason:

The thread “Threads questioning or contesting the suspension or termination of a player’s game account” was removed from the forum due to “insert reason here”. All posts responding to it have been removed with it. Threads which violate the Forum Code of Conduct will be removed from the Guild Wars 2 Forums.

Follow the new thread here.

I’ve emboldened the parts of the generic message that I feel should be removed:

• No reason was inserted ‘here’ or elsewhere.
• There is no ‘new thread’ and so nothing to follow.
• There is little point in providing the name of the original thread, since again, there is no ‘new thread’ and no way to review the context of the moderator’s action.

Again, I’m not objecting to the action (deleting the thread). I am suggesting that the message be simplified, whenever a thread is removed for any reason.

If the rewards were much more substantial, then all people would do is grind-grind-grind collections. In their current form, they are a minor encouragement to people to engage in exploration and specific content. Most people will find that they get 30-80% through basic collections eventually, merely by playing the game as they like. As they reach 70%+, some of those people will decide to complete the collection because it’s so close.

I think that’s a perfectly fine system and so I’d be against buffing up the rewards for existing collections.

Invoker.5462:

I feel like this should be reworked- i don’t know how exactly, but i think there is something to be said about the overall health of the game when one of the single most rewarding things to do is a tedious speedrun on a new character every 20 mins.

….

But i still dont like the principle of it. Guild Wars 2 is a massive game with tons of different things to do- why can’t you just remove this award or make it once per account? I think the drop rates in the world could use a little buff- maybe increase the frequency so people get more than 1-2 key a year off doing normal game-play stuff (i.e. getting keys from mob drops)?

I’m not exactly sure what principle the OP is invoking here. The game is massive and folks do all sorts of things to farm. This isn’t the single best farm out there and most folks find it stupefyingly boring after a few times.

At best, key farmers earn a steady income, but it’s not considerable better than farms in Silverwastes, Frostgorge, or a variety of T6 mat farms or even chef mat runs (e.g. vanilla, chili, lemongrass).

I think it’s great that the game offers this much variety. Unless the OP can point to specific ways that the community is hurt by keyfarming, I’m inclined to support the status quo.

they could change things so the foes offer 1 xp or something like that. This also affects other on-kill mechanics , so I agree it smells like a bug rather than intended behavior.

If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that the other player found a way to to retain health without scavenging.

If it happens again, I’d screenshot and just send a note with details to ANet (or create a support ticket). Let them sort out if there’s a hack or not. You can explain why you think it’s not possible and they can investigate.

If it doesn’t happen again, well, I wouldn’t worry about it. (Life’s too short, etc.)

There is no single location as convenient as Royal Terrace. And no mystic forge.

• Rata Sum offers equally close bank, TP, and guild bank, but crafting is further away.
• Of PvE cities, only LA offers the mystic forge.
• Borderlands require walking a long way around to reach all services. The mystic forge doesn’t always have a nearby waypoint (and in fact, sometimes it’s owned by the enemy). This doesn’t even address the queues and the possibility that you are interfering with your world’s WvW, either by forcing an active participant to queue or depriving them of an outnumbered bonus.
• Heart of the Mists has only a bank and a vendor. No crafting, no mystic forge, no guild services.

In short, Royal Terrace is a lot more convenient. Is it worth 1,000 gems? At the peak in November, that would have cost under 200 gold (19g50s/100 gems). By comparison, the Mystic Forge conduit (which would turn Rata Sum into a nearly-as-convenient location) costs over 800g, the perma bank access is over 700 gold, and the merchant over 300 gold.

I’d like the option to disable the sounds of

• voiced gathering tools (the jack-in-the-box and golem ones are particularly annoying after the first 300 times)
• backpacks (“faaaaaaster” was funny for the first 362 times)
• salvage-o-matics (“this is the only proper course” — what the heck does that even mean?)
• and sure, while you’re at it, minis

Mind you, I still want to be able to hear mine, so if this is a wish list, I’d like to be able to disable other people’s sounds separately.

Mor The Thief.9135:

Actually it might be a possible change that will come with the expansion.

In one of the latest POIs someone caught a glimpse of the amount of WPs, POIs, SPs etc. required to get 100% map completion when the devs opened the big map in order to use the wp. The amount actually required PVE only excluding the amount needed currently with the addition of the WvW maps.

In short if this change will come i will automatically get 14 Gifts of Exploration :O

Or that could have been a result of the test servers not including any WvW maps.

Why isn’t this sword called, Lord Faren’s Wit? I’m sure Faren thinks his keen sense of humor is as sharp as any rapier.

(Belaboring the point for those unfamiliar with the English idiom)

Meriam Webster

rapier
Tweet
adjective

: extremely sharp
: extremely sharp or keen <a rapier wit>

I don’t see anything wrong with requesting 100% rep, but I will never join such a guild: I like too many different aspects of the game and I doubt there’s a guild in which everyone has the same diverse interests.

Full rep (at least during WvW and especially “raid nights”) is critical for a serious WvW guild: there’s simply no way the group can perform to its full potential without training and bonding together. It’s also important for newer guilds, as they seek to build influence, both from the game mechanic and throughout the game. I’ve seen several small (< 20 people) guilds grow to 300-500 strong or multi-guild alliances because they initially required full representation, in order to connect within their ranks and become known in the open world. The ideal recruiting situation is when you don’t have to spam advertisements, because people are frequently whispering your membership about whether/how they can join. At that point, a smart leaders (or council) will realize they can drop the 100% requirement.

OTOH, there are also lots of poorly-managed guilds that ask 100% rep for the worst reasons: control-freak leadership or misunderstood concerns about the inevitable attrition and so on.

So, if you really like a guild and like committing to a cause, by all means, join a 100%-rep guild. But if you have mixed feelings, look for a different one. Regardless, don’t worry about what someone else is doing to have fun if it’s not preventing you from doing your own thing.

I don’t have two monitors, but I imagine it would great if one could set things up so that the various panels and windows appear in one monitor and the main game/environment appears in the other.

Short of that, the OP’s request seems reasonable: allow one to use the options panel to set the monitor in which the game appears.

Wiella.8567:

timmyf.1490:

Bebunw.8137:

intensive chestfarm which gives ton of obsidian shards which are used for making t6 mat

Obsidian Shards are used for making T6 mats? Like… though the clover recipe? Are people actually doing this?

In average I get around 20-30% of profit if I convert 400+ ectos into T6 mats.

I gather you are ignoring the potential cost/value of Obsidian when you calculate that profit (which makes sense if you farm in silverwastes every day). Are you factoring in the potential value of the required skill points? Those are worth 20-80s without much effort and you need 0.6 SP/clover, which cuts the profit by at least 10-40s. 30% profit on ectos selling at 30-35s is less than 11s.

tl;dr isn’t it more economical to upgrade tiny fangs to small ones (or green wood planks to soft planks) and delete any obsidian? (obviously, unless you need mystic clover for a legendary)

We’re not able to buy or sell fractions of gems and I don’t see this as significantly different. Sure, I’d prefer a true “custom exchange” interface (with appropriate sliders, defaulting to 100 gems instead of 400, and not hidden behind a separate button). But when originally added, the current interface was added as a stopgap to deal with not being able to buy gems in increments other than 400.

Thus, I’m happy enough with the current UI until the next time they do a major overhaul.

RoseofGilead.8907:

I wouldn’t call that a bug. It affects the five players who enter into its range first. There’s no “creator” buff.

It’s probably intended behavior, but it sure is annoying. I lay down a fire field and …no might stacking because 5 other people managed to fire projectiles through the field 0.1 seconds faster than I (or anyone else) could blast it.

I suspect it’s expensive to change the current mechanic, otherwise I’d love it if the game could ensure that creators get dibs on their own buffs/fields/combos.

Hey Mescaline: I’m really sorry that what should have been a great experience for you has turned into misery. (And by the way: your English is fine.)

I feel some of your pain. I was holding out for 6,000 gold (a price I thought worthy of the skin) and I kick myself for not selling when it was worth “only” 5,000 gp.

As you have discovered, high-ticket items follow different market rules than most of us are used to. The original Legendaries are in a downward cycle now, with the announcement that HoT (the GW2 expac) will include new ways of acquiring precursors (and it seems like new legendary skins). And Eternity follows a different pattern altogether, as its creation unlocks skins for two legendaries, so its always going to lose value more quickly than other legendaries. (And, annoyingly, it gains value more slowly, too.)

If you do feel up to logging into the game, whisper me or PM me here and maybe we can discuss some options for taking some of the sting out of getting undercut by so many so quickly…and perhaps even figuring out a way to relist your Eternity, without having to grind for the 200g you’d need to do so.

Once again, I’m sorry you ran into something that turned your beautiful new shiny into a miserable pile of gooey pixels.

While the OP is correct that their guild can spawn the Steam Ogre ahead of the Fire Elemental, it’s also clear that this bugs a lot of people. Their guild will never be able to communicate their plan to everyone who is likely to share an instance with them, however briefly.

Therefore, I see it as divisive to insist on their “right” to spawn a group event at the time of their choosing, especially when waiting until after the Fire Elemental dies costs their guild a few minutes at most.

At the same time, people shouldn’t go nuts if the guild continues to do this anyhow: it’s just one event and just a tiny bit of loot (relative to what people pull in nightly).

Regardless, if the raging continues along these lines, ANet will be forced to take time out of working on content or fixing bugs to address this and will likely choose one of the most expedient solutions: nerfing the loot or removing the event.

tl;dr be pleased when you get the chance for the Steam Ogre’s loot and don’t sweat it when you don’t. #life’s-too-short

I think the game should have stuff that can only be obtained a few people. I don’t like making limited-supply items account bound, though: if the game makes it nearly impossible to obtain, then allow the lucky folks to trade it. Oontz necklaces have about the same drop rate, but you can salvage their poly-luminescent jewels and sell them.

That said, I don’t mind the fact that mini-gwyne is unobtainable for love or money (or near enough as makes no difference): no matter how cool/cute it is, it’s a skin for a single mini and having it (or not) doesn’t make the overall game more (or less) fun for me. If I didn’t enjoy playing the game and opening ToT bags, increasing the drop rate on that one mini wouldn’t make any difference. At least, not to me.

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The mails isn’t really an issue. The issue is the dungeon’s levels.

It’s out of scope for this particular team to change the level requirements for the dungeons, so all I can do at this point is either change the level at which the mails are triggering and/or adjust the mail text. Totally open to suggestions here, but I wanted to let folks know the constraints.

Change the level the mails are triggered to match the story line and remember next time you decide to alter the personal story: it connects to other parts of the game; those have to be updated to be consistent.

Here’s my reasoning on retooling the trigger level:

• Some people don’t care about the story at all; it won’t matter to them what you do.
• Those who must do the story in proper order won’t care about whether the dungeon is minimum L20 or minimum L60; they won’t do the story path until they’ve completed the relevant part of the PS, so make sure that syncs up.

I did the dungeons as soon as I felt I could attempt them and didn’t care about where I was in the personal story. My friend, by contrast, didn’t want to start them until they had seen the relevant background in the personal story (and then they also refused to continue the p-story until they had completed the sideline dungeon story).

It would be great if you could review the entire story and make it more consistent with itself, with the order of things in the NPE, and with other changes in the game. But since that’s not likely to happen soon, in the meantime, just change the trigger level (and the wording, if it needs to be).

edit: grammar

Stuff that can only be used at a vendor (bandit crests, etc) should be put in the wallet (or a supplementary wallet, if there’s a screen real-estate issue).

Some stuff that currently can be used for a few mystic ford recipes could equally become currency, by offering a "Gift of _ " at a relevant vendor:

• Gift of Mystic Coins for 30 coins and Greater Gift of Mystic Coins for 50
• 15 Fractal Relic for the cost of one Pristine Fractal Relic (also eliminates the issue of accidentally double-clicking)

Some stuff would have to remain outside the wallet, e.g. Candy Corn.

dietzero.3514:

It should start low and scale higher, the more you buy. Linking something as critical as space to gems is severely punishing to new players and people with multiple characters/accounts, and the problem is only going to get worse. A static gold cost is a far better option.

Currently having to buy ~1000 gold worth of gems to max bank tabs and ONE character’s bag slots is ridiculous.

I strongly disagree.

If you have multiple characters and accounts, you have more storage than others. When I’m a new player, I expect to be short of space until I can afford more.

Currently, you can get 8-slot bags for 30c or so and 18-slot bags for 2 gold.

Anything beyond that… well, that becomes a convenience and, in my opinion, that’s properly offered via gems.

I’m sorry that the OP doesn’t see it that way, because ANet is unlikely to change this (outside of the occasional discounts) and therefore, the OP is likely to remain disappointed for a long time, at least on this topic.

When I am in the mood to offer ports, I don’t expect a tip (but always pleasantly surprised when I get one). That said, I have no problem with people saying “tips appreciated” as they offer a port.

I also don’t expect anyone to thank me for my services (even if that would be the polite and gracious thing to do) any more than I expect people to always say thank you when I hold open a door for them.

I always offer my thanks when I get a port and I sometimes tip, I sometimes don’t. (More often if I get something exceptional from the chest and less often immediately after porting.)

I don’t see anything wrong with the OP requesting people to tip more often and explaining why they think that’s appropriate.

Khisanth.2948:

Especially in Bloodtide Coast and if you were near the heart with the sick quaggans.

That’s one of the ambient-rich environments, with quickly-respawning bugs (for the nearby heart), making it ideal for farming Trick-or-Treat bags via the Maize Balm.

Each time I’ve attempted to help someone with Diving Master (and for myself), it turned out not to be a ‘bug’ so much as one or more dives didn’t register achievement progress. That is, the person got the goggles, dived into what appeared to be the exactly correct location, and moved on, marking that dive as completed.

The only way to address it is to put the chieve on your watch list and systematically go through all the dives. Again. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the game that lets you know whether you already have credit or are just missing the trigger.

Myself, I had to go through the full list a second time and then about 1/3 of them a third time. Turned out, there were two that have a large body of water below, but only a narrow spot in which you get credit.

I recommend taking a mesmer and setting a portal, so you can attempt each dive twice, trying to land in different spots.

Good luck.

Since ANet found the time to gussy up the icons for various otherwise identical icons for junk items, I believe that we can call it a bug that the Mystic Salvage Kit Icon still looks like that of the Crude Salvage Kit. One is great at recovering ectos from rares, one is a waste.

Can we get a little shininess shone on one of the most popular tools?

yolo swaggins.2570:

It has come to my attention that some players participating in large scale events are having issues learning the fight while others don’t understand the importance of WPing when they die. While the first can be remedied by asking for advice or teaching players prior to the main event, the other is more difficult to remedy because players want to avoid “the walk of shame” from a nearby waypoint.

Let’s return to the OP’s assumptions:

• People seem to be learning event mechanics by asking questions, reading /map or /say chat.
• People don’t seem to be learning the importance of waypointing if dead (not downed).

And the OP’s suggestion:

• People will learn to waypoint, if the game forces them to do so.
• At the very least, the ‘dead’ will be forced to walk back to the event and therefore will no longer be in the way of rezzing or interacting (e.g. with siege, banners, environmental weapons).

While I support the spirit of the post, I think this isn’t a technical problem that the game can solve for us easily. It’s more of an educational/sociological issue: until one has a good sense of how the game works and which mechanics matter, it’s hard to understand why waypointing matters to the success of the event and how it won’t hurt (and likely will help) your rewards.

I agree with an earlier poster who suggested more mechanics like those used in Tequatl, where remaining dead for too long prevents you from getting the top rewards.

In the meantime, I recommend that veterans accept that there are always inexperienced players in events and the best way to help them is to politely offer advice about how to help out. Getting angry, YELLING, or putting folks down just encourages people to turn off /map or even /say chat and won’t have the desired behavior change.

tl;dr I’m sympathetic to the OP, but I don’t think the issue is easily solved by a simple mechanic. For now, veterans just need to be patient with those who don’t understand the game as well.

Ticare.3948:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I buy/sell dozens of different items per day and I can count on one hand the number of time I have run into any restrictions. I wonder if John Smith has data on how many players see this message and how often; I suspect it’s a tiny fraction of the community.

You must be a slow clicker or sell small amounts of items at a time. This error comes up every time after 6-7 items if you sell them one after the other and it’s extremely annoying

Relative to people in my guild, I’m an extremely fast trader. Relative to you, I’m not.
So while I’m only affected rarely and the OP might be affected daily, we have no idea whether this affects 0.0001% of traders or 10% or 90%.

Obviously, if the issue affects a majority of those using the TP, ANet should consider committing resources to address any technical limitations or other issues that create error messages when attempting transactions every 3 seconds. From a business perspective, I hope it’s just as obvious that if the number is less than .1% of traders, then this is unlikely to be worth tackling. In between those “extremes,” ANet would have to make a judgment call.

Incidentally, I don’t think one transaction per 3 seconds counts as “near botting” levels. I don’t come near that because (a) I buy/sell a variety of things and always set my offer price and (b) I rarely buy/sell more than 5+ stacks at a time.

I speculate that only a tiny fraction the community runs into this “transactions/second” limitation. And if that’s the case, it’s completely understandable that that ANet would be unlikely to spend much effort to address this, even though it might be very frustrating to those affected.

The current trait system has a number of problems:

• It makes it distractingly difficult for new players, since the game does not guide you to specific traits. You just get trait points and learn that you can unlock major traits.
• It discourages experimentation: one can’t just swap between e.g. banner traits and stance traits to see how it affects your build, until you unlock each relevant trait.
• It’s repetitive: each new character is given identical unlock tasks.
• It’s paternalistic: it requires completing content that doesn’t appeal to everyone e.g. finishing most of the personal story or doing map completion. Some unlocks are challenges that few people do more than once, except for traits, e.g. defeating EB’s Overgrown Grub or Obsidian Sanctum.
• It’s laborious and tedious: full unlock requires ~30+ hours of investment or spending 360 skill points. That’s a lot of effort for people who don’t play every day.
• Worst of all, it’s not actually fun, at least not after the first time (if ever).

People have offered a lot of great specific advice about what a new trait system might look like, but here are my generic requests:

• Encourage new players to experiment with traits. They are critical to good builds and folks should be able to compare or contrast before having to grind out the unlocks.
• It should be easier to unlock traits for alts, especially if someone has multiples for the same profession.
• Unlocks should be relevant, i.e. necromancers could defeat minionmasters to learn about minions and mesmers might shatter illusions to unlock shatter skills.
• It should be fun.

Specifically, I’d prefer to see one challenge to unlock all adept traits, another to unlock all master traits, and one challenge to unlock all of the original grandmaster traits for a single line. Thus, only the most-recently added grandmaster traits would have an individual challenge. That would reduce the number of tasks from the current 65 challenges to only 12 per character.

I buy/sell dozens of different items per day and I can count on one hand the number of time I have run into any restrictions. I wonder if John Smith has data on how many players see this message and how often; I suspect it’s a tiny fraction of the community.

orenwolf.1953:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Sariel V.7024:

Unlike crafting recipes, which are often bought as sheets and remain forever documented in your UI after you learn them, the combinations of the forge are intended to be a puzzle. They are a secret, and their revelation to the world at large remains at the discretion of the players that discover them. Or, in a single case, at the discretion of John Smith ;D

FWIW, I share this sentiment.

They might be intended to be a puzzle, but they certainly aren’t. They get documented on the wiki. The ones that don’t get documented allow a few people to control a niche in the market, which seems unfair to me.

So, I’d argue that it’s ok to hide undiscovered recipes from the API, but the greater good to the community is to expose known recipes to everyone.

No way. Nothing is stopping others from discovering these recipies, so it isn’t about fairness at all. If I farm and dump 50k of item X into the forge in various combinations and find a recipe you don’t have, NOTHING prevents you from doing the exact same thing.

Just as if I find a new way to combine my skills to be more effective in my class, I am not suddenly obligated to tell the world, because anyone else could do the exact same thing.

“Fair” == equal access to opportunity.

I apologize for confusing the issue by using the word, “unfair.” I stand by the intent of my post, which is to point out that:

• The recipes are only a puzzle until they are discovered by someone .
• Hiding the recipes after discovery benefits the few at the expense of the many.

I’d add the following idea: distinguishing forge from craft recipes is a design decision, not an intrinsic one.

• The wiki treats them the same, combining all recipes together on an article, except to make things more legible (usually when there are a dozen plus associated formulas).
• There’s a difference between hiding the discovery of new recipes from the API and hiding established recipes from all but the few lucky enough to have the time to experiment.

I like the fact that there are hidden recipes and that some of us (including myself) are able to experiment and occasionally uncover new ones. However, once those recipes are discovered, I don’t see the benefit to continuing to hide them from the API.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Sariel V.7024:

Unlike crafting recipes, which are often bought as sheets and remain forever documented in your UI after you learn them, the combinations of the forge are intended to be a puzzle. They are a secret, and their revelation to the world at large remains at the discretion of the players that discover them. Or, in a single case, at the discretion of John Smith ;D

FWIW, I share this sentiment.

They might be intended to be a puzzle, but they certainly aren’t. They get documented on the wiki. The ones that don’t get documented allow a few people to control a niche in the market, which seems unfair to me.

So, I’d argue that it’s ok to hide undiscovered recipes from the API, but the greater good to the community is to expose known recipes to everyone.

I don’t think the problem is 2/5 vs 4/5 — I think the issue is that there are few (if any) consequences to kicking for bad reasons, especially trolls kicking people selling a path, guild members kicking non-guildies at the end of a path, and so on.

People are reluctant to report this sort of behavior because it’s unclear where ANet draws the line (and people are afraid to over-report), it requires amassing forensic documentation (which, frankly, most people aren’t that good at), and even when people do that, they almost never learn what, if anything happened. In other words, the onus on enforcing reasonable communal behavior is on the victim.

Maybe kicking while in a dungeon or fractal should require a reason (from a pull-down or typing it out) and ANet can enable anyone kicked to report the party. This makes it easier for the victim to start an investigation and it gives ANet some documentation right away.

tl;dr Changing to 3/5 or even 4/5 will reduce the number of times this comes up, but it doesn’t really address the underlying issues.

So far, I haven’t seen any proposal that I would prefer to the current system:

• There should be some consequence to dying besides waypoint costs.
• The game shouldn’t become immediately more difficult, since that would discourage experimentation.
• The penalty should be only as painful as needed to encourage people to be on their toes.

For me, the current system meets those three requirements. I can imagine other systems that would also meet the requirements, but none different enough to make them worth the time/effort to implement.

When you are suffering latency, the servers disagree with you about your location and therefore will bork any skills that require you to face a certain direction to operate correctly.

I’ve never been in a “bugged” instance, which suggests that the problem might be on your end or, as is increasingly more likely, occurring somewhere between where your ISP hands off your data to the internet’s backbone and where ANet picks it up again.

If it keeps happening, open a support ticket. The tech guys seem pretty good at helping people track down issues and/or following up with ISPs, by providing the data they collect along the way.

Good luck.

oneply.9586:

because gamers are notorious exploiters and hackers. the more info they have the more they are able to cheat the system. its why we cant have nice things.

Actually, ANet is generally very helpful in providing information to wiki editors, for just about everything except specific drop rates. Sometimes, ANet prefers that the community figure stuff out first, after which ANet will verify the conclusions (or not, depending). And even for drop rates, ANet is willing to say if folks are in the right ballpark or not.

However, in this case, it’s hard to see why ANet would want to hide the mechanics for PvP, when they readily expose the equivalent mechanics for Achievement Points, WvW Ranks, among other things.

If you think people are trolling, document as many details as you can: time, place, names, screen shots and/or video. Then create a support ticket and ask ANet to investigate players who are abusing the game’s ToS.

You won’t find out what ANet chooses to do directly, which includes the possibility of “no action,” “warning,” “temporary suspension,” and “banning,” the last being unlikely for a single offense. However, any action ANet takes goes into the account’s record and is used when deciding appropriate action in the future.

There’s no particular value in mentioning it here on the forums: trolls like attention (so don’t give it to them), you can’t name&shame on the forums (posts get redacted/removed), and people tend to end up arguing about it; players can’t actually do anything directly to help.

You are still showing as offline. What changed is the “last logged in” time — that now updates regardless of your status. For example:

• 2 PM logon
• 3 PM logoff: shows 3 pm as your last logon time.
• 4 PM logon and immediately go invisible; still shows 3 pm as last logged in time.
• 5 PM logoff while still invisible; game now shows 5 pm as your last logged in time, instead of 3 pm.

In addition, anyone watching you on friends list, blocked list, or via guild panels can see your current location. If you move or change toons, they can tell you’re online.

So “invisible” is really “less easily visible and don’t whisper me” rather than behaving as if you really aren’t in the game.

Not had a problem with BL kits.

What was the item you salvaged? What did you expect to get and what did you get instead?

Aguasatori.7236:

Before the wardrobe update, I had both my Set I and II completed and my Set III was at 45/49. Being an achievement collector, I wanted to get it done as soon as possible, but the last few minis (the exotics) were outrageously expensive. So I put if off.

The wardrobe update came and changed the way the mini achievements worked – making them require adding minis to the wardrobe. The three “new” mini achievements appeared in my achievement panel, giving me duplicates of the mini achievements (2 Set I achievements, 2 Set II achievements, 2 Set III achievements).

They aren’t “duplicate” achievements; they are for doing two different things.

• The old achievements were for putting the relevant minis in your bank; you were able to sell them afterward.
• The new achievements are for unlocking the relevant minis for your wardrobe; you cannot sell them.

I’m sympathetic to your current achievement progress being bugged and support should help you resolve that, but it has nothing directly to do with whether you had any previous achievements or whether you had all the minis in your account vault before.

Aguasatori.7236:

Can I get some help here? Not having those delicious 10 points I rightfully earned burns my soul

If you want individualized attention, you need to create a support ticket. The queue is currently backlogged with staff helping new players, so anet has asked people to wait a week. (See: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Tickets-for-Review-7-days-older-Part-2/4742091)

Posting on the forums and using the in-game /report tool is useful for letting the QA team know there’s an issue, but it won’t help you personally to get a quicker response.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.