Guild Wars 2

Vox Hollow.2736:

Not to accidentally defend OP, as I think that sort of acerbic one liner is pretty bad forum etiquette. But, undermining the act of criticizing on the basis of enjoyment doesn’t sit quite right with me, either.

I get that buttons got pushed and posting ensued, Ropechef.
But couldn’t you enjoy something and fully acknowledge it’s got some serious shortcomings?

That fully defends the OP, to which Ropechef was responding. It accepts the premise of the original post as being valid, which, as others have pointed out in fewer words, it wasn’t.

• The OP didn’t critique the game, they just said dungeons are “stupid easy.”
• They didn’t offer a single concrete criticism to discuss (or agree with or refute), so there was nothing to respond to…
• So Ropechef responded to the spirit in which the original post was delivered.

Further, only a small part of Robechef’s response is based on “enjoyment.”

• The first part offers an analogy to sushi chefs, who just “hack & slash” some fish. He could also have compared it to plumbing (you just remove/replace pipes, right?) or any of a variety of things in which the way in which you hack & slash is important.
• The second part offers a parable (perhaps based on a true story), in which, in fact, taking a run at dungeons is challenging, rather than “stupid easy.”
• The last section depends bit more on addressing the poster personally (and imo, could have been left out, with no loss to the impact of the post).

tl;dr since the original post offered nothing constructive, I don’t think it earns the right to be defended as if it might be the start of a reasoned discussion.

Trakarg.2095:

It’s utterly pointless. Thanks.

“Annoying” isn’t the same as “pointless.” It was put in place to slow down the acquisition of celestial stat gear; it succeeds at doing that.

You can go around the fort (either side, but it’s easier on the right side) and get to the area in which the elemental is supposed to spawn. If that doesn’t help it progress, then:

1. Eventually, that instance will become empty and will be closed.
2. In the meantime, you can guest to another server (best to try the most populated one) and retry; you’ll almost certain end up in a different instance where it is working.

Sorry you are having this trouble.

Since everyone is drawing conclusions based on a complete lack of facts, I’ll play too. I think Profession-influenced loot will work just like Magic Find:

• At first, everyone will claim buffs/nerfs, but no one will actually collect any data for weeks.
• The first people who do will fail to compare apples to apples, since that’s difficult when doing multiple runs and since different builds collect loot at different rates.
• When people finally have useful data to present, most people will misinterpret it and there will be another huge whinge/whining-fest.
• John Smith will attempt to explain what we’re seeing, and people will accuse him of lying and falsifying evidence.
• The actual result will be that new players leveling up their characters won’t have to buy as much on the TP (or sell as much) and hardly any of us will notice, because the difference between any two runs of AC will be negligible.
• A handful of players who regularly chain grenth, melandru, and arah will see some differences, and then realize that it’s still better to run Guardians, because auto-attack loot stick generates far more loot than anything a mesmer can do.

It’s great if you want to continue comparing GW1 to GW2, but they are different games and ANet had different goals for each. There’s no guarantee that people who liked GW1 are going to like GW2.

The point is that ANet has been clear from the beginning that they are trying something different from the standard MMO. And people who like the familiar are going to be disappointed.

In the end, no one cares if GW2 has “more,” people care about if the content that is there is fun …for them. Clearly ANet is betting that what it delivers is fun enough for a million plus people without offering the traditional. (Although they have a funny way of letting people know what makes this game great, in their opinion.)

Magic find doesn’t magically turn all your drops into rares; it increases the overall value of your drops (from foes) slightly.

Most people won’t notice the difference, because

• You increase MF slowly, over long periods of time and +1% won’t be noticeable unless you’re recording every drop.
• Even the difference between 0% and 200% is subtle, unless you are keeping track.

So, again, the rule of thumb is:

• It will matter a lot if you tend to kill lots of things, typical for event chains.
• It won’t matter that much if you tend to focus on just a few things, typical for speed clearing dungeons.

Lady Altair.3809:

Bug still exists, stuck at 9/10

I’ve probably done it 20 times this week (almost always a different instance) and it didn’t get stuck once. The last time, we did it with two people for most of the event.

Maybe there’s a foe wandering around that needs to be killed. Or maybe there was a bug that affected your instance. If that’s the case, guest to the highest pop server that’s in your region and re-enter the map. That should get you into a new instance, in which it’s running smoothly (if there are multiple people in your party, make sure they all exit to character select or hop on another toon while you do this; if they’re in FGS when you come back, you’ll end up in the same instance).

Good luck

Behellagh.1468:

last day is 30% off keys

I was surprised (maybe I shouldn’t have been). I was expecting rename or makeover kits to be on sale and for them to bring back the sunglasses. Some sort of big finale.

Instead, keys, repair canisters, and transmutation charges (the last of which is helpful to a lot of people).

It’s definitely worth the investment, if you play a lot and generate a lot of drops from foe deaths.

Before magic find was account wide, it was easy to test what MF did. People who did controlled tests between 0% MF and 200% MF found:

• The number of drops were about the same. The high-MF results had a bit more.
• The quality of the drops was different, but not extremely so. High-MF meant more greens+rares (with very few rares) and a lot less whites+blues. There were more higher tier mats that dropped.

So having higher MF doesn’t mean you’ll be tons richer after a few events. It does mean that, over the long haul, you’ll get better loot. Or to put it as a rule of thumb:

• If you hardly play or tend to kill very few things, high MF won’t help that much and probably isn’t worth your time.
• If you play a lot and/or tend to do a lot of events with high-foe counts, then more MF will help a lot.

Based on wiki content, GW2 today has at least 50% more content than all of GW1. GW1 wiki has 21,400 articles and GW2 wiki has 32,400 articles.

I say “at least 50%” because GW1 wiki has near enough to 100% coverage of all content, while GW2 wiki is still missing articles on NPCs, some events, and a lot of gear. Further, GW1 wiki’s article total also covers a historical content, guilds, and a number of guides. In other words, 21k probably over-represents GW1 content and 32k probably under-represents GW2 content.

Obviously, there are plenty of other ways to measure and compare content, but I think it’s reasonable to conclude that there’s a lot of stuff in GW2.

Since we’re consumers (as well as players), it’s not surprising that we want even more content. Most games coming out these days offer a lot of content initially and offer more along the way. I think the issue that some people have is that they are used to that “more” including traditional things like dungeons, new races, and new professions.

And ANet has pretty much said, “we’re not offering the traditional — we’re trying something new.” That doesn’t mean people can’t want it or ask for it, but I do think that means we’re unlikely to see it and so I prefer that we instead focus our energies influencing what ANet is likely to deliver.

They could release two free expansions tomorrow and people would still be complaining.

1. We don’t know precisely how BLKey acquisition will be affected. If it’s like the Chinese version, then it will probably double the time and discourage a lot of people. But they could decide to update the Chinese version and avoid gating people by character level.
2. Even if key farming is reduced, we don’t know how it will affect how many chests get opened in September. People could start buying keys again in quantity — seems doubtful, but folks used to and it made less sense then. ANet could increase the drop rate for keys elsewhere or make them available for, e.g. laurels.

That said, it’s almost impossible to lose money by investing in the current skin; prices always go up. The only question is: will they rise in price fast enough to meet your goals of wealth? And that’s always been a dice roll. Some of the most attractive skins were so over-acquired that prices rose slowly (tormented shield). Sometimes unpopular skins went up a lot because no one invested in them early and the demand quickly outstripped the supply.

tl;dr sure, throw some money at a few skins, but don’t risk the entire piggy bank on it.

Asuaka.1528:

Just checked those skins ingame. All Rogue Masks are fixed.
I will also post a new thread with tons of Wardrobe Bugs soon

You can copy/paste the list of “unchanged” above, assuming you don’t already have it covered (pardon the pun).

Dagins.5163:

Gold ingots are being sold for ~2 silver coins each, while some hairdresser contract is worth more in gold than I weight… I mean, wtf?!

Assuming you’re serious, the price of any item depends on supply and demand. Gold ingots are in decent supply, relatively low demand, and easily farmed, hence the relatively low price.

The infinite-use hairstyle item is in tiny supply, not easily farmed, and in high demand by a narrow subset of people, many of whom have money to burn. Hence: incredibly high price.

In a broken economy, something else would be true.

PvX wiki

If each map is at 100%, then the missing POI are likely added since the game launched. Check the wiki; I think it has a list of those.

There’s no way I can think of that would allow you to have missing skill points and vistas and have 100% on each map. Could you be missing 100% in WvW?

If not, I’d recommend visiting each map (not just hovering over) and looking at the map completion status until you find the maps with gaps. Alternatively, you can wait for the next update, which supposedly includes hints in the UI to point you in the right directions.

They announced these changes poorly. Instead of saying, “hey, exciting new stuff for you” they should have started with their research results:

• Despite the forum and ANet’s preconceptions, most new players are overwhelmed at first. (Yeah, seems strange to me, too, but that’s why they ask people.)
• Despite a lot of us thinking the new system adds unnecessary delays (gating), apparently ANet’s target audience of new players far prefers it.

After saying that, then ANet should say, “so, while most veterans might be surprised, these changes are going to help us bring in new players, which benefits us all.”

And end with, “oh, and by the way, here are some of the types of changes we’ll be making.”

Somehow, ANet completely forgot that the people reading this week’s blog are mostly veteran GW2 or veteran MMO players; their target audience will just buy the game and find what they find.

I think ANet is too forthcoming about some of their plans. The entire reason players went crazy was because some developer said too little about too much during a minor interview. Had he delivered the usual, “we’ll let you know when we’re ready” that everyone hates, people would have been calmer.

I think ANet also does a terrible job of hyping their own product. When they deliver solid changes, they act if they’ve invented teleportation (“changes galore” anyone?). When they deliver game-changing updates, they act as if it’s a minor addition to the existing system (“ascended gear”). They fix bugs that people have been complaining about for ages and don’t bother including a mention in the patch notes.

In regards to minority/majority and representative opinions: sorry, 300 people can never represent a million people, given the vast amount of content and types of opinion. Of the 3 people in my guild who frequent the forums, none of us represent the overall opinion of our guild about …nearly any topic. The reason the commander tag got changed isn’t so much a result of 300 people responding, it was because it was a bad decision in the first place and ANet, if they didn’t suspect it when they announced, quickly realized they (a) did a dumb thing and (b) handled the original announcement poorly.

The two have nothing to do with each other. Expansions are a traditional way of delivering content in chunks, far apart. ANet has opted to deliver content, story and features, gradually. They’ve been clear about it, too, saying (words to the effect of): “as long as we’re making money using the free-to-play model, no expansions.”

A similar question is: does ANet intend to add new professions, new races, and a lot more dungeons/maps? They’ve been all-but-silent about this. My guess based on what they’ve delivered is: no new races or professions, but at some point, more dungeons and all existing zones are subject to change. Completely.

Slow whisper turn-around is a type of latency, which can result from issues on your end, your friend’s end, ANet’s end, or anywhere in between. It also can be affected by live server maintenance (which, afaik, ANet always tells us about): the chat servers are different from the combat servers.

See if you can narrow down possibilities:

• Is it just a few of you or are randoms on the same map affected?
• Does it affect /guild, /party, or /map chat? or just whispers?
• Are you “rubberbanding”? Is your friend?
• Are combat skills also lagging behind your actions, e.g. if you press ² is there a delay before the ² skill fires?

Which ever the case, if it keeps happening, open a support ticket with as much of the details as you can offer and encourage others who are seeing the same symptoms to also open a ticket.

This will give ANet the data they need to do something. If it’s on their end, it should be enough to help them pinpoint the hardware involved. Otherwise, this will help them convince various third party internet service providers that the problem is between you and ANet. (And, in many cases, the problem might turn out to be on your end and ANet will be able to help with that, too.)

SKATE.1394:

Bumping this, I just started a new thread about this issue because I didn’t realize this one existed since it’s several months old. Saw this linked in another thread about Koss on Koss/Book of Secrets. Will try to either delete my post or have it reference back to this one since this list is more complete than mine.

Koss on Koss appears fine. Book of Secrets does not, per the OP by Sariel.

Here are the API links for Koss on Koss

Skin 2376 points to 2376 ->
37001 Koss on Koss points to 2376 which is valid
37010 Koss on Koss (infused) also points to 2376.

Sariel V.7024:

I surveyed a grand portion of the items available from Karma Vendors across the game and I’ve found that there are a lot of medium head armor items that show the Rogue Helm icon but no skin. Apparently this is due to them pointing to bad skin IDs. The API quotes them as errors.

So if you’ve been wondering why Rogue Helm and any other item that doesn’t reveal what skin it is won’t unlock for you, there’s an answer.

I’ve reviewed the API for the following items/skins and marked which ones appear to be updated.

Fixed:

SKIN 881 -> all of these now points to skin 941, aka Rogue Mask
4173 Oldgate Leather Mask
4187 Redreave Leather Mask
4244 Bloodsaw Leather Work Mask
4681 Scout’s Mask
4684 Improved Scout’s Mask
4940 Brackwater Mask
4960 Brackwater Mask

Unchanged:
SKIN 1763 -> still points to 1763, which remains invalid
5651 Stalker Boots

SKIN 2009 -> still points to 2009, which remains invalid
6274 Studded Leather Bracers
6394 Stalwart’s Bracers

SKIN 1570 -> still points to 1570, which remains invalid
6305 Chainmail Helm

SKIN 1763 -> still points to 1763, which remains invalid
6419 Mending Boots

SKIN 2318 -> still points to 2318, which remains invalid
37005 Symon’s History of Ascalon
37014 Symon’s History of Ascalon (Infused)
49366 Symon’s History of Ascalon (Infused)

SKIN 2326 -> still points to 2326, which remains invalid
37007 Tome of the Rubicon
37016 Tome of the Rubicon (Infused)
49368 Tome of the Rubicon (Infused)

SKIN 2325 -> still points to 2325, which remains invalid
37009 Book of Secrets
37018 Book of Secrets (Infused)
49370 Book of Secrets (Infused)

Did you try combining them in the Mystic Forge?

Be nice to have characters that don’t look like they lost their doll. I describe most of the expressions as: annoyed, depressed, really annoyed, really depressed, constipated, lost, and suicidal. How about happy? Determined? Cat-with-the-Canary?

The current everlasting tools work like orichalcum tools. If they ever introduce a new tier, I’m sure™ that they’ll be upgraded to handle them.

ANet is notoriously inconsistent about their item descriptions; I wouldn’t read anything into the differences.

There’s nothing wrong with OP’s point of view: they want the end-game content they are used to (and they enjoy). Fortunately for them, a lot of games offer that sort of thing.

GW2 offers a different sort of content, which is fortunate for those of us who enjoy this type of thing.

It’s like arguing about whether the new Italian place should offer Pizza: there’s already a pizza joint on the corner, so maybe it’s good that the new only offers non-starchy dishes.

Arah offense has a series of events that include a ton of foes and a few champs. Arah defense is time-limited.

Arah offense automatically includes the High Wizard, and killing him unlocks a trait and pops an open-world boss chest. Arah defense doesn’t automatically include him (although they might have changed it to unlock the trait whether he’s present or not).

I’ve done the offense chain and defense and I get much more loot from offense. If it’s just the one event (final offense vs defense), then it depends on how fast the wizard goes down. All things equal, I get about the same amount of loot (of course, things are rarely equal).

Finally, I enjoy chained events more than isolated ones and the Arah assault chain is one of the more interesting ones.

So, if the map asked me to decide, I’d go for Arah offense every time.

I think it’s fantastic that there are events that can’t be done by just any disorganized group of PUGs. There shouldn’t be a lot of these events, but there should always be a few things in the game that only appeal to a certain group, in the same that SAB has a diehard group of supporters (and is considered “meh” by the majority).

Assuming this is an easy fix to implement, I’m all for it. I don’t see any downside to returning people recently DC’d (5-8 min) back to the instance they were in. I’d even say it’s worth hard capping the map with 5-10 slots free, just to allow a few back in.

For now, as noted above, the work-around is to join a party; you’re automatically prioritized (within the hard cap) to get back in.

Please add your experience to this one (assuming it isn’t already covered):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Cliffside-Fractal-Hammer-Bug-1

They haven’t given an ETA, so more data is going to help them figure out a fix (or a work-around).

He said, “teach me to be a Power Trader, while I stand on one foot,”

… [his mentor said], “buy low, and sell high — that is the whole of Power Trading; everything else is just commentary.”

Flipping is not as easy as some would have you believe. It requires getting a feel for the market as a whole and finding a niche that offers consistent profits or to frequently vary what you flip. It also requires having good instincts, i.e. knowing when to hold-em and when to fold-em. Some people are born able to flip, but most people will need to (and be able to) learn it.

I recommending starting with a relatively safe product that allows you to experiment. Try items that have a WTB (aka “want to buy” aka “highest custom buy offer”) that’s around half of the WTS (aka “want to sell” aka “lowest custom sell offer”). This gives you a lot of room to play with. You also want items will be likely to sell at both those prices throughout the day. For some reason, fine dyes almost always work to experiment with flipping.

Example: try orangespring dye (ok, don’t try it, since other folks will be reading this post, but you get the idea). As I type, the WTB = 0.63s and the WTS = 1.32s, just about 2x the WTB. Put in a buy offer for maybe 25 units at 81 copper; should fulfill quickly. When you get them, resell at 1.19s. You’ll net around 20 copper profit/unit.

Now that you have the idea, experiment with other dyes to see how much over the WTB you have to offer to accumulate product quickly and how much lower you need to sell at to avoid competition while you have inventory. Get a feel for how quickly the market ebbs and flows. Try it with masterwork or mid-priced rares to see that the profit goes up a lot per unit, but the “velocity” of the market is a lot slower.

Now that you’ve practiced in a “safe market,” try to look for a niche that suits your needs in terms of risk vs reward, profit vs investment, etc. You’ll find a lot of commodities (i.e. easily-farmed items) will follow daily and weekly patterns: low-ball offers might fulfill 1-2x/week and high-ball sell prices might take another week to be purchased, but the net profit will be better.

You can’t make “quick money” from ecto, but it’s a great market to watch to see how much it changes throughout the week, during the day, and even within a few minutes. Going rate might look like ~38-41s, but there’s a decent chance you can pick some up for 37 or even less.

Alternatively, you can find high-cost items that rarely trade, but have a huge profit margin. Since those sell so slowly, the odds are better that competition will show up before you buy or sell. But if you work enough items, your per-unit profits will be excellent.

No thanks. Expansions attract people who obsess over “finishing” the “content” quickly. After 2-5 weeks, they leave.

I prefer the new system introduced (sort of) by GW2: gradually and organically add new foes, new zones, and other new content.

I would like to see more dungeons, a really big change to WvW, and other things that are traditionally associated with an expansion. But for the next year, I’m happy with how things are progressing.

Deathly Claws :
The projectile summoned by this skill will damage enemies in a line from the caster to the target.

What are you seeing instead?

What is it that you want ANet to take a look at? Are the nodes not resetting? Is there something wrong with one of the heart quests? Has an event become stalled? If so, which node/heart/event? What part of it is not working?

gobax.6185:

Convenience?

Get 250 mystic kits and it can last up to a week. Its really easy to get and very cheap. Also takes 1 bag slot.

Silver fed o matic? 5 times more expensive to use than mystic and also takes 1 slot.

I doubt you will stay in the map you are farming for more than 1 week without going back to lions arch to mystic forge or do other stuffs which can make you restock on those msvs.

Convenience wise it does not add that much for something that cost 5times more.

Stop being a white knight and open your eyes.

Stop being a dark knight ;-)

Again, if some people find the convenience worth it, great. If you don’t, then just ignore it.

I’m not buying one and I can’t imagine anyone I know preferring to spend 500 gems on this over …even a set of swim boosters, but hey, world’s a big place. Plenty of room for different likes/dislikes.

I use basic for everything except rares, exotics, or ecto. I reserve BL kits for removing expensive upgrades.

I no longer bother with crude kits; the money saved isn’t worth the time lost to inventory management.

It’s generally true that generating DPS is more rewarding than any sort of support task. You get more loot from tagging everything that you do by healing, removing conditions, or rezzing. Thus, it’s a testament to the cooperation of the community that so many people do take the time to do these things.

But it’s hard to imagine how to adjust the game mechanics to reward those things without leaving exploitable loopholes. Say they did offer loot for people who rezzed others — can you imagine how many people would purposefully die so their friends could get the extra loot?

tl;dr system’s not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be either.

I buy ori tools generally, even when I know I’ll be spending some time in mid-tier zones because it’s inconvenient to keep and track multiple sets of tools. I pay extra per use and it’s completely worth it for me. The Silver-Fed isn’t really any different in principle.

This is just a new convenience item that costs less to get and more to use than we are used to. Not willing to pay a premium per use for the convenience? No problem, don’t buy it.

gobax.6185:

Its a scam!! Same effect as mystic salvage but at a much much higher cost per salvage!!

ArenaNet!! Lower the price per salvage or increase the chance to get rare materials! (Not on par with black liln though just a little bit lower)

It’s not a “scam” — it’s a convenience item that costs extra per use. Just because we are used to convenience items that decrease their per usage cost doesn’t make this one worthless.

Of course, I won’t be buying one, but I could see why some people might.

I suspect you’re right that tagging first is more important than tagging last (although, there are other explanations besides there’s a bug). But regardless, joining a party helps, because other people are also trying to do the same thing.

That said, I have sometimes missed getting the champ bag from Karka Queen after being first to tag (not even among the first) and sometimes gotten the bag, even after joining the fight late. With and without a party. I’ve always gotten event credit, the bonus, and the open world chest (except when I’ve crashed or DC’d, but that’s another set of issues).

In response to the original post: Players confuse those with the ANet dev with GMs. Anyone who works at ANet can have an account and belong to the ANet guild; representing that guild displays the tag. These are otherwise ordinary accounts with no more abilities than any of us would have.

In addition, ANet employs people to moderate player interactions and investigate situations. These GMs have special account names (beginning with “Gm”), have a special color for their chat, and have extra abilities. We don’t know what those abilities are (or at least, ANet has never confirmed any, as far as I know).

There are ANet employees in EU and NA regions and GMs in both, too. Any claims of seeing more (or less) in recent days or weeks should be attributed to small sample sizes and confirmation bias.

Shinki.8045:

Thank you for the clarification Regina.

Is it possible to get any feedback to the dungeon community regarding how they interpret the feedback threads we’re trying to put together? It would be nice to know they’re getting eyes on them before they lose steam.

“Nice to know,” of course. But we shouldn’t expect that ANet can comment on every thread. Based on changes to the game, we’ve seen that ANet has utilized ideas from even obscure posts without discussion and sometimes ignored ideas with a core support group (e.g. mounts), since they are always trying to do what’s best for their vision of the game.

I always post assuming that someone at ANet reads and is clever enough to figure out which devs and designers (if any) should take a look. I never expect a response, so I’m always pleased if there is one.

So, clearly some stuff is getting changed, some stuff is getting fixed, some will get unfixed, some will get fixed again, and so on.

What I’d love to see after the feature patch:

• We are diligent about updating the list at the top, giving credit when ANet fixes stuff and giving them a hard time if something new is broken.
• Give it 2-3 weeks before collating a new list of remaining bugs, which should start a new thread.

The goal of this thread is to improve the playability (and fun) of the profession, so let’s keep focused on that.

Iconik.8712:

>The situation is pretty simple: failing the event is about 20% more rewarding (for repeat customers) than succeeding. That creates tension between those who want more stuff and those who want to do events (and get credit for LS or regional achievements)

Luckily, video games are 100% voluntary. We had a huge map doing this yesterday for 12+ hours. Every one that was with us was there voluntarily. That is to say, they were OK with the way we were doing it. If they disagreed, they were free to leave and do it their own way.

1. How do you know whether anyone had “any problem” with the way the event was being done? People don’t always say.
2. “They were free to leave and do it their own way” — how was this true? The farming group dominated the map.

In any case, it’s moot: the point is that there are competing incentives and, as a result, ANet’s going to change the way the event works. This would not have happened if the hard-core farmers had voluntarily chosen to give up a fraction of the maximum possible loot. Instead, ANet is going to decide and, based on past experience, we can expect that the max possible will be less than what we have seen to date.

Now that we have confirmation that this will be relatively minor , does anyone wish to change their opinions?

Everyone values different things. The key feature for the SFSoM is: takes one inventory slot. For this you pay (as noted above), ~1.5-2s/use instead of 0.61s/use for the 25-use master’s kit. (People who started playing recently won’t have a lot of mystic stones.)

Given how much I paid for infinite-use gathering tools, this doesn’t seem totally crazy. Of course, I won’t buy it, but then I didn’t buy the copper-fed either. I don’t mind keeping 4-5 kits on each toon and refreshing them, since I have to visit a vendor to sell of junk anyhow. I do mind having to visit a vendor for gathering, because (a) if I run out, I can’t gather and (b) that saves me a lot more slots.

tl;dr everyone values convenience differently. If you don’t think this is a good deal, don’t buy it. If too few people spend for this one, then ANet will rethink its future plans.

Zaxares.5419:

If you ascribe to the theory that Anise is, in fact, Livia in disguise, then there’s practically no lengths she won’t go to in order to protect Kryta.

Perhaps chillingly, that also leaves open the possibility that one day she might decide that she could do a better job protecting Kryta as its Queen than Jennah or her descendants.

I cancelled my subscription to that theory, only because I think it’s more interesting if Anise is a spiritual heir to the role that Livia served and that Livia is out and about involved in some other mysteries (assuming she still lives).

To your other point, it’s always been interesting observing the Grand Viziers: their role is always supposedly to support their boss, but sometimes they seem to relish being a power behind the throne. I don’t think that will be the case here, since it’s very rare that stories in GW1/GW2 get so nuanced.

Nick.6972:

I’d like to know what’s being done to fix this bug?
Apparently Arena Net begun investigating this glitch 8 days ago.
Second time this week Hammer bugs.

We know what’s being done:

• They are collecting data and trying to replicate the circumstances.
• For each situation, they will attempt to determine a root cause.
• They are hoping that there will be a single root cause that can be addressed by an easily adjusted bit of code. If not that, at least a single root cause.

What they are not doing is kludging a solution and potentially creating new issues.

None of that is easy to do or quick. It’s rare that any development teams discuss their methods or theories (no one who eats meat wants to know how bacon is made, never mind sausage). I hope, however, that whenever there’s a solution, it will make it into the patch notes. (ANet is worse at this than they really ought to be, for their own sakes, never mind for ours.)

Berelious.3290:

In all honesty I have never received a drop from either the Karka Queen or the Svanir Shaman either, at least not since the world boss updates. There have been more than a few occasions where I haven’t received one from Ulgoth either. I don’t know if it’s a bug or not though.

You’re not doing enough damage to get credit. Join (or create) a party of five; it makes it easier to hit the required minimums.

Once again, the case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The situation is pretty simple: failing the event is about 20% more rewarding (for repeat customers) than succeeding. That creates tension between those who want more stuff and those who want to do events (and get credit for LS or regional achievements).

Any time we’ve seen that situation before, a core of farmers go manic trying to optimize the loot/run …and they get angry at anyone with any other goals. ANet’s solution to that in the past is to change the reset timing, the amount of loot-bearing champs that spawn, or otherwise rebalance the rewards so failing is no longer more profitable than succeeding.

This has almost always resulted in fewer rewards per hour, i.e. a kind of nerf.

I’ve always liked this event, one of the more interesting non-world-boss chains. It’s always generated a lot of loot, especially if you can get a large group to do it. It’s a shame that a tiny number of people get so fixated on farming that they can’t see it’s easy to compromise and avoid the nerf. In this case, we could have combined the traditional FGS champ train with this one for about 80% of the loot without ANet needing to intervene at all.