Guild Wars 2

He’s also been convinced that any means to achieve his goals were okay, because his goals were important to the world. He never really seemed to value other people’s lives, ideas, etc.

So I don’t think his “current” dialogue is inconsistent. He was cutthroat then and he’s cutthroat now.

What’s interesting (to me) is that Anise doesn’t seem to have a problem with hiring a (potential) sociopath. Either she imagines she can redeem him or she thinks its useful having a “Dexter” around to do “what must be done.” How far is she willing to go in defense of the realm?

Shorter version of the original post:

• Changing drop rates for loot is going to affect market prices.
• It’s really hard to predict by how much or how quickly this will take place.

The net effects depends on metrics to which we have no access:

• How frequently does “gear” drop now? How frequently will it drop after patch?
• Are the results for armor alone currently 33%|33%|33%? How much will it be after?
• Is the effect the same at all levels? Is it different at L80?
• Does it affect all loot tables? Or just bags? Just foe drops?

And the list goes on.

I’m sure Vol is right, that this will throw the current equilibrium into disarray, but as much as I love to speculate, I don’t think we have enough data to even guess.

They haven’t found a good way to update TP listings.

It’s a lot of work to create a script to find all items offered for sale that can no longer be sold and all buy offers for items that cannot be purchased any longer (or where the price is lower than vendor +1c). Well, it’s not that creating a script is such a big deal, but validating it and ensuring it runs perfectly — can you imagine the outcry and confusion if ANet removed even 10 legit orders? It’s far easier to wait for people to remove their own listings and let the problem (slowly) resolve itself.

I agree with the OP that this sounds like a bug, but I doubt very much it’s going to be addressed any time soon.

@OP: if you want ANet to address this for your account, file a support ticket; that’s the only way to ensure individual attention.

The attendance-generated influence has never worked consistently.

• On any given day, you can get 10-80 influence per account. 50 seem the most likely.
• The day after getting 10-80, you can sometimes get 0.
• You only get credit for your home server. If you’ve moved recently, the logs will be …odd, at least for a bit.
• The more people in the guild, the harder it is to keep track, since the game doesn’t tell you which toons/accounts are providing the influence. (I’ve run tests with 1, 2, and 3 people logging in.)

There are things you can do to improve the likelihood of getting 50+/day (and things you can do that decrease your chances), but there’s no guarantee.

I used to make a point of logging in strategically to maximize the attendance-based influence, but then decided that I could just pay one silver to get 10i any time I felt I needed more. Much less trouble and I’ve had more fun playing since I stopped worrying about it.

Katran.9186:

Please, fix that. The activity became unplayable.

I find it find to play still. Not sure how it’s “unplayable”

Katran.9186:

1) Immobilized condition works randomly in the beginning. You don’t have it while 10 seconds of timer and then SLAM 59 minutes as the game begins.

I’ve sometimes had less than 10s to start with, but never 59 minutes.

Katran.9186:

2) You don’t get loot when you kill someone. Isn’t looting corpses the point of this activity?

Loot? No, you’re not supposed to get any loot from a kill, just at the end (participation or victory). Do you mean are you supposed to be able to take the stuff from their corpse? Sure and that works fine, although I think you only drop about half your stuff. Once in a while, I’ve been killed without any supplies, so I don’t drop anything.

Katran.9186:

3) PvP build affects your character, granting regeneration and other stuff.

It’s a PvP mode and maybe they should do something about that, but so far, I haven’t found it’s made any difference in who wins, i.e. I’ve made it to 1st, 2nd, 3rd in competitive maps without any PvP buffs.

Rachiia.6045:

It’s a little pricey, but you can convert sockets to blade shards:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blade_Shard

If you have the gold, you can get all the shards you need, this way.

Unfortunately, that’s the only reliable way to get a lot of shards quickly. 30/hour at peak luck & efficiency sounds really horribly tedious to me.

It’s always going to be cheaper to save your gold and buy directly from the TP. The market price for precursors reflects demand and supply from those producing them in the Forge.

There will be a tiny minority of players who will spend less forging. (And of course, those willing to invest thousands and thousands of gold will make money.) But for the rest of us,… TP is the way to go.

If you really like gambling, then, sure, throw a few rares in — you’ll get 4-6 exotics for every 20 tries and that can be fun.

Essence Snow.3194:

So for those that really enjoy wvw it’s perfectly fine b/c wvw is known for providing ample resources. Yep…can’t see any issues……

Yes, WvW provides “ample” resources. You sell the stuff you don’t need and use the coin to purchase the stuff you do. I wvw as a mesmer, so I get far fewer drops than most anyone outside of sentries and I’m still earning more than enough to pay for gear and consumables.

I don’t expect to get rich playing WvW compared to other parts of the game, but I’ve never been impoverished for playing it to the exclusion of the other modes.

John Smith.4610:

Hitman.5829:

Hi John Smith,

Chili peppers, lemon grass, and a few other crafting materials are ridiculously high on price. What is anet doing to solve this problem?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Farming-Prices-on-TP-must-go-down/first#post4326876

I’m not sure we’ve all agreed that’s a problem.

What’s the problem? High prices means high reward for people willing to farm and for folks just exploring the area.

I’d agree there was a problem if I couldn’t get these items at any price, but since I can get them at any time I’m willing to pay the going rate, seems fine to me. Mostly, I’ll just use substitutes.

It’s an okay change, but unimaginative:

• It’s almost exactly like Arcane Thievery, but without the defensive option.
• Most PvE content involves foes that don’t live long enough to have good buffs to steal or ones that have buffs that can’t be stolen. I can’t imagine using it in WvW, so maybe it’s great in PvP.
• I’d prefer something more “mesmery.”

Riccardo.7254:

Anton.1769:

bers>>asassin ewerywhere except reflects. No reflects -> bers gear

is there any good mesmer build that does not run Feedback or iWardens? :P

Sure. Any dungeon/fractal room where there aren’t projectiles. There are a lot more unblockable projectiles now, too, e.g. worms in Frostgorge Sound.

I think it’s premature to call for a vote when we haven’t seen how people will play with this and since it’s going to depend on the game mode.

The problem, as always, is that mesmers can do well in sPvP, but only fill odd niches in WvW, PvE, and Dungeons/Fractals. (Roaming WvW is closer to sPvP.) So the very skills that make mesmers “too powerful” in sPvP are the ones that make us too weak in other modes.

I don’t see this changing how I play much: as always, I’ll use scepter only when I can’t stay close enough for sword — it won’t be because I like the scepter better; it will be because there’s no other choice.

In no particular order, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that flipping gets progressively more difficult. The short version: increased competition and decreased opportunities, a typical progression in a healthy, player-driven economy.

1. There’s more information about how to flip every day, making it easier for folks to learn.
2. There’s better and better data about “best” flipping niches in the market, making it harder to find one without significant competition.
3. Veteran flippers get better; they’ve had 1-2 years to hone their skills.
4. The game always has new players; some of them will be flippers.
5. More and more players have the seed money to trade at a scale that is noticeable.
6. There’s an increased demand for flipping profits, since people tend to (mostly mistakenly) believe that it’s the “best” way to earn enough to pay the current prices for precursors.
7. The market is responding more quickly than ever to a lot of niches (for a variety of reasons), thus decreasing margins.

GammaBreaker.9102:

Well, thanks for this post. I was wondering if those Gem Store costumes worked like the Zenith skins, or if they were a one-time usable, then standard transmute after that. Just confirms that I will never buy them.

“Costumes” are free; those are called “outfits” in GW2. Individual skins (applied to each of 6+1 pieces of gear) require transmutation charges, with a tiny number of exceptions (HoM/Heritage, Zenith/et al).

GammaBreaker.9102:

The means by which ANet has implemented hairs, faces, transmutations — basically, all the cosmetic recustomizing — is remarkably unappealing. It makes me NOT want to spend my money until I have carefully considered what I want to look like, and then only a small bit of it. They’ve gone completely backwards from the usual approach, and are successful in not suckering me out of my money. I guess I should be thankful.

It’s a matter of taste, tho. I far prefer playing for free and being able to convert in-game coin to use in the gem shop, whereas others, such as yourself, prefer spending something monthly and having a ton of stuff included in the deal, e.g. infinite-use skins.

GammaBreaker.9102:

Rift certainly has a leg up in the wardrobe department. I spent more on wardrobe slots there than I will ever spend on Transmutations here. Too bad the rest of the Rift isn’t as fabulous as its wardrobe.

Also a tradeoff. It’s a rare game that has zero awesome features. And even the best ones have some “features” that drive us crazy. All any of us can do as players is find the game that balances the best of what we like, minimizing the worst of what we hate.

edit: added a missing “prefer”

Ryan Diederich.8179:

Asmodeus.5782:

…Personally I always started my own dungeon parties to avoid kick-happy couples. Now there’s nothing to kep me safe.

Stealing instances using the LFG tool, or booting people for no reason (or to give your buddy the rewards for no work) at the end of a run are bannable offenses and should be reported.

This will only work as a disincentive if (a) people take the time to report getting kicked and (b) if ANet acts quickly and decisively. Currently, many people lack faith that ANet takes action against folks who troll-kick or “steal” an instance (for their friends).

Obviously, there are going to be times when it’s hard to tell what really happened, but that should be rare. Yeah, there are always “two sides” to any story, but sometimes one side represents “the Earth is flat” and can be ignored.

The Highpeaks event chain is resetting too quickly upon failure, causing folks to purposely fail the event, even at the expense of people wanting to complete it for the living story.

I call it a “bug” because it was under similar circumstances that Blix’s event was adjusted. Reset upon failure is about 5 minutes; reset upon success is 10-30. It should be adjusted so that success is more rewarding than failure, e.g. decrease the reset time after completion and increase it after failing.

It’s really too bad, because it’s so easy to farm champs and complete the story: do then event legit then cycle through the traditional FGS champion train until this one is up and running again.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with letting events fail to farm them. I do, however, think it’s bad when farmers get better rewards for working against those working on LS/chieves and smaller rewards for working with them.

The area involved is:

Coiled Watch to [&BHYCAAA=] to The Barrowstead [&BHUCAAA=]

The event chain is:

• Defend Coiled Watch (72) — this is the one that should have its reset timer altered.
• Drive the Sons of Svanir from Coiled Watch (72)
• Escort the explosives-laden dolyaks to the Barrowstead (72)
• Destroy the totem foci to stop the Svanir corruption ritual (72)
• Defeat the Dragon shamans to destroy their totem before Svanir reinforcements arrive — this is the one that people are deliberately failing.

INB4 I wasn’t personally affected by this: I had been wondering for a long time why this event didn’t get farmed (it generates champs like a Scarlet invasion) and I was always glad to collect my share. I only decided to post when I saw how hostile the farmers have become towards the folks just trying to get that last event for LS or their chieves. Of course, it’s not even most of the farmers: just enough that the event is no longer cooperative.

Raire.7983:

How about a “permanent charge” that you apply to a particular item skin, then that skin becomes free to apply across your account? That wouldn’t need to be so rare – it could be a gem-store item for say 300-400 gems? I’d be interested in something like that – especially for novelty/festive skins, that I don’t necessarily want attached to gear all year round.

This seems more likely to get a go-ahead. It’s still going to be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be priced out of everyone’s budget.

Outfits are agnostic, armor sets are not. There are some technical reasons for this: medium armor uses a substantially different frame than light (iirc, light & heavy are the same or nearly so).

There are also aesthetic reasons: people want scholars to look different from adventurers and soldiers. I’m a little sorry that each prof can’t have its own look, even though I understand why (it takes a lot of time to get armor to work well; the effort probably grows exponentially with the number of potential sets).

tl;dr There are reasons we have the current system and I, for one, happen to prefer it this way.

I don’t have the magitech set, so I can’t do a full test. I might be able to do a parallel test if I can find something that has the same number of dye channels as each of the two sets you are using (Emblazoned and Magitech).

Today’s announcement suggests that the September 2014 Feature patch might result in changes that reduce the issue you guys are seeing.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/september-2014-feature-pack-improvements-galore/

I have a new take on “Communicating With You:” less is more, if you’re consistent. What I’d like to see is ANet picking any one of the ideas mentioned above (by ANet or players): stickies, blogs, CDIs, whatever, but just one. Then, commit to that method, regardless of what happens.

Communication shouldn’t stop because you guys get busy doing a release in China or the tinfoil hats come out in force. Instead, task someone with making sure we hear from you through good times and bad.

If the avenue of communication chosen becomes ineffective, modify or update it, or drop it and replace it with something else — but keep communicating.

The fact is, no matter how much you talk to us and how clear you are, it will never be enough. The best you can do is to make sure people know you are listening.

tl;dr Communicate with us consistently (and meaningfully), rather than worry about starting up a lot of new things as a reaction to recent events.

PS it wouldn’t hurt to make a point of telling us when you fix things: a lot of recent updates fixed some annoying, little issues, but there’s no mention of them in the patch notes. (INB4: I’m not going to list them, since I want ANet to toot their own horn.)

havellian.4073:

What I am about to say, in the view of most will almost certainly be an anecdote and probably worthless in the eyes of statisticians… but for what it’s worth…
Everything (slightly) rare i’ve gotten have come in doubles and triples. 3 crystal guardians while opening champ bags, 2 mini tequatls, 2 foxfire in one tree, etc. etc…

Of course I hardly get anything rare and when i do, it turns out not to be very valuable so this is not a good sample at all, but at least based on my experience, the system certainly doesn’t seem all that random. Anyone else experience something similar?

That’s pretty typical for random results with odds in the 1-30% range. When you flip a coin you don’t get HTHTHTHT. Instead, you maybe get a couple of heads, a tail, a few more heads, a few tails, etc.

Tracking over short periods of time, you’ll see a pattern (hey, today, I’m getting heads 58% of the time — did they nerf the tails drop rate?).

People are really, really clever about spotting patterns (it’s one of our survival skills) and our intuition about randomness suffers.

Even state-supported lotteries (some of the most over-analyzed sets of random numbers we’ll ever see) show patterns, but only because we don’t have a lot of data from them. The question isn’t, “how many times have we seen 32 show up since the lottery began,” it’s “what are the odds of seeing 32 the next time?”

So in response to the OP: yes, the RNG system is truly random, as far as any players have been able to determine from the data collected. According to John Smith, the data he sees also demonstrates true randomness.

(While it’s true that computers only simulate ‘true’ randomness, we wouldn’t be able to measure any difference between that & simulated RNG — there just won’t be enough “dice rolls” to demonstrate any meaningful difference.)

Thanks, Beldin, for the tests.

I guess they need to release the new Placebo Illustrous Armor set.

ipan.4356:

The Manifesto promised ‘no grind’.

To me, this means I should be able to access content in the game without needing to do any excessive farming (excessive: repeating any piece of content more than three times, and for any reason other than I find it fun and want to do it).

This game is nearly 95% farming. I’m still working on outfitting my 7 (soon to be characters with a full set of exotic gear plus sigils and runes. I have no legendaries, no ascended.

Bosses – whether they be world, or dungeon – should have chances to drop exotic, and even legendary, items. The chance should be high enough that we shouldn’t have to repeat content more than two or three times to get it. Dungeon token rewards should be higher, or not capped every day.

GW2 was promised to NOT be a treadmill of any kind – but it IS.

Hey, we have the same definition of grind. And guess what: I haven’t felt any need to grind stuff out. Ever. I guess that means, at some fundamental level, you just don’t like the content in the game. And that’s fine — the game can’t possibly be awesome for every player.

I feel bad that you aren’t enjoying anything enough to want to repeat it. I hope you find another F2P game that you like more.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

You can always pool resources with a bunch of people you trust, share the burden and take turns ‘holding’ the minis.

A great idea: the more people in your circle of trusted confederates, the easier this is.

I forgot that one of the reasons why I don’t worry about this as much as the OP might is that I use the HoM heritage skins when I’m leveling. Without paying extra, I can use whatever had dropped recently or standardize.

The closest gem shop item to this option is using Outfits (also free to re-use).

Admittedly, not everyone will find those options (ahem) suitable.

Beaded weapons always sell out, but often that takes a few weeks. The dungeon-specific trinket recipes don’t sell well, because there are generic alternatives that are much cheaper.

Legendaries: those are only almost always profitable, especially if you consider labor as well as parts. But regardless, one can only build so many.

@OP: I bet if you PM most of us who have replied, we’d be willing to provide you some assistance in figuring out your investment niche. I am “teach them to fish” type of mentor, so I would ask you questions or point you in general directions. Others might ask you what you’re considering and offer a “good idea” or “um, maybe not so much” in response. And you might get lucky and find someone who is willing to offer specifics.

Another good way to turn karma into gold: chef-crafted unidentified dyes. Rare unID grays can be worth over 100s/1,000 karma while other colors vary more. Some of the profit is due to the fact that (last I checked) spidy had the wrong karma costs associated with the recipes, which tends to keep out any competition that hasn’t done the research.

Cassius.4831:

I’ve bought an unbreakable choir bell and, after using it a few times, I noticed something wrong on it. Finally I’ve found it: my unbreakable choir bell’s first not is a Re instead a Do. My flute is right, btw :/

My first reaction to this Homer Simpson breaking his flute and shouting, “Do’h!”

It sounds to me as if it’s working as designed, but it would be nice if there was an option to change the scaling to the traditional Western octave. (And for that matter, a traditional Chinese set of tones.)

Ayrilana.1396:

Great. They’ll likely do their normal fix and just ban it from WvW altogether.

Hot fixes take a lot of energy. A quick resolution that solves most of the issues is often better for us, too: it leaves the team free to work on stuff that we consider more important.

ANet promised a new type of game: no traditional trinity, pure open-world cooperative content, and an evolving world. They never promised the things that are associated with traditional expansions. They promised an amount of content that would be similar, but they have never said: new races, new professions, new dungeons, and 10-20 new zones all at once.

They did promise it wouldn’t cost us anything, if they had anything to say about it.

I must say, I love this system:

• For those of us who logon daily, the world continues to change and there’s almost always something new and challenging.
• For my friends who only logon every 1-3 months, it’s as if they are starting a new game.
• Did I mention the “free” part? (Oh yeah, I guess I did.)

In contrast, the traditional expansion gets boring (for people such as myself) after 1-2 months because a lot of the content becomes obsolete (due to no down-leveling) or dull (due to lack of changes).

Of course, people have their preferences. If you are looking for the content & features of a traditional expansion, you are bound to be disappointed. You could try another game or you could try resetting those expectations. Or, you can get increasingly frustrated by ANet failing to deliver what you want.

The choice is yours.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

The CDI is starting up again. How would you like the topic/s to be chosen for this round.

Here are you options for now:

1: Anet chooses.
2: You list your number 1 topic and the one with the must number of votes wins.

Note: This isn’t a call for topics just asking how to pick them(-:

Chris

How about a combination:

• Take one week to ask for player suggestions. 1 or 12 is ok, as long as people are brief.
• Collate those and pick the 10 or 20 you are willing to invest time on.
• Let us comment on those choices.
• Use that to prioritize the next 3-5 CDIs and repeat that process every six months or so.

This allows us a lot of input into the conversation and leaves control of the overall direction to you.

I think this is a case of “is this the right tool for the right job?”

• CDI takes care of actual discussions and feedback. Won’t be enough for a lot of us; we’ll always want more than you have time for.
• Blogs are ideal for capturing the “in the moment” ideas. Instead of trying to navigate the entire forum folder structure, folks would just have to go to one place and see all the recent (and aged) posts.
• Forums are good for player-to-player discussion. I would welcome you guys starting — and stickying — threads to direct our conversations towards certain ideas. For example,
  • “what are the biggest gripes about playing a mesmer? discuss (politely) to help us prioritize the next set of balancing changes” or
  • “what are the most fun (and most horrible) parts of leveling a new character? discuss (politely) to help us prioritize the next changes to trait hierarchy, weapon upgrades, etc”

I’m against anything that creates exclusive enclaves. The game is designed to be open world content. ANet needs to keep working to ensure that that won’t slow down guilds engaged in missions or other types of content.

JoluMarti.9165:

Players really want:

• New Dungeons/Fractals
• New Dungeon/Fractal Rewards
• PvP modes/maps
• Guild Halls (GvG)
• New Legendaries
• New Weapon and Armor skins (No RNG)
• Precursor Crafting

Actually, I don’t want any of those things. I do want Living Story.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Obtena.7952:

Is Poutine even known outside of Quebec + neighbouring regions?

Not really….I had to look it up. We just call it Gravy Fries w/ Cheese, down here in the Deep South. But then we have grits, fried green tomatoes and Andoullie (ok, that’s really Cajun….tho I guess Canadians likely have it in some other form…the name originated in France (but the French version is quite different)).

I’ve had poutine and I’ve had southern gravy fries (with cheese and without). They aren’t the same.

Allaraina.8614:

So I was chatting with a friend of mine and our conversation went something like this,

Me: (sigh) Tell Anet to give me legendary armor recipes…
My friend: Tell Anet to give me poutine.

You had me at “poutine.” No further reasons are required.

Behellagh.1468:

LordByron.8369:

few months after the game was released gems were 30 silver for 100.

Ha!

I say again.

Ha!

It was over 30s 5 days after the exchange went live. Over 40s in 22 days and over 50s in 30 days. At two months it was 78s per 100 gems. At three months it was 2g per 100 gems.

Not only that, but I didn’t have 30s across all my characters during the first days after the exchange went live. If I did, it usually got spent on trait manuals. Leveling five toons at once was very expensive.

People seem to focus on the changes that support their point of view:

• There are major balance changes to all 8 profs. Everyone would like more, but frequent posters in the prof subforums seem pleased with a lot of the changes.
• There are changes to sPvP. I don’t play, so I can’t speak to how good they are, but they don’t sound like simple fixes.
• There’s a new combat log that is supposed to cover everything. That’s huge, in my opinion, and not any sort of simple change.
• Siege Disablers and Golem Mastery will have a big impact on WvW, although not anything that will change the current “coverage uber alles” meta. The new tournament forum is a lot different from those we had before, so that might be great and might not be. OTOH, it’s only four weeks, so we’ll find out more quickly this time.
• Changes to commander. I agree that was overhyped by ANet — account bound and new colors will be really helpful, but that won’t change the game. It will add a lot of untried commanders and it will make it easier for stellar leaders to shine, but it hardly constitutes “big changes.”
• Megaserver Guilds: this is huge and people have asked for it since the world-bound influence system was introduced. Improving the experience for joining g-mish and destroying unpopulated maps is also big. (Perhaps the OP was submitted before this was announced.)

There are a lot of important changes coming down and we don’t even know half of the ones that will be covered on the main website, never mind all the other stuff that we’ll find in the feature build.

Now, that might not be the content that some people want and it might not address individual concerns, but I, for one, am really happy about these, especially considering I don’t have to pay a cent to get them.

It’s a different psychology and not everyone will like either system.

• Some of us prefer paying a set fee and getting lots of freebies.
• Others prefer paying for what we use, as we we need it.

People will get frustrated when they have the first viewpoint and come to a game that is based on the second, or vice versa. It’s human nature.

What we shouldn’t do, however, is say that the game, alone, is at fault. Those of us willing to adopt our attitude to fit the circumstances will be happier with the game; those of us who prefer to promote our strong preferences… will be more frustrated.

And, of course, there are plenty of examples in any game where the development company doesn’t get it right in the first place — that is frustrating for both groups.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/continued-improvements-to-the-megaserver-system/

Good news: the feature patch will resolve all of the above (and addresses all of the issues I’ve identified above, except for guilds that spent extra to accelerate upgrades).

The question ANet would have to address is:

• How much cash do people spend to get transmutation charges now?
• How much less would they spend if such an item existed?

I think ANet would have to price these too high.

Even if this is by design, it “feels” like it’s a bug. I spent 10 minutes last night swapping toons, relogging, etc to be sure it wasn’t me, my account, or the blaster I was using.

It is also annoying that you have to wait out a 30-60 minute buff to use this. Let’s say I just finished a dungeon and have 20 minutes left on the buffs — shouldn’t I be able to get this buff before I head into an open world event chain?

LordCrull.6950:

I apologize I did not see it in the bug forum.

Eh, don’t sweat it. Hard to be aware of all the potential discussions.

Personally, I think of this as the “Silver Surfer feature” — I get to glide around until the next time I use a skill, dodge, etc. I wouldn’t mind if they fix it, but I’m pleased that they haven’t. Yet.

Megaserver doesn’t sound like the root cause. Instead, you seem to be saying that you find that instruments lose their value when there’s a lot of skill lag and that such lag seems unavoidable in many parts of Tyria. And I agree, you should be able to play instruments anywhere.

There are probably two avenues you can work on to address this:

• Create a support ticket and work with someone on ANet side; there might be something you (or they) can do to reduce skill lag.
• Wait — yeah, not ideal, but ANet is aware that there’s skill lag when a ton of people are using skills/effects (big problem in blob-vs-blob fights in WvW). So far, they haven’t figured out a good way of addressing this (unless it’s hidden in the feature patch that’s coming up).

You can just click on them to preview; no need to right-click.

I’d be against this, as I prefer the contrast between locked and unlocked to be as high as possible and because the icons don’t do any justice to how most of the skins look. Of course, these are matters of preference, so I can’t speak for others.

In that case, you should file a support ticket. It seems unlikely that this is a general problem affecting everyone (although there will be more data available on that over the next 2-3 days, as we reach the anniversary of the official launch).

The forums are good for communicating a general issue or finding out if anyone else is experiencing similar symptoms. Only support can give you the personal attention required to resolve this.

sorudo.9054:

read closer, i will never exchange gem->gold with this low exchange rate, i will if i get a respectable amount.
yesterday i was checking what i could get for 30 gems, just a pathetic 3g.
if i bought it with gold then i could understand but i bought the gems with real money, i would expect a bit more then such a pathetic amount.

LordByron.8369:

few months after the game was released gems were 30 silver for 100.

Now they are almost 15 gold.

See: Byron is complaining that 15g/100 gems is too much and sorudo thinks it’s too little. Which of these viewpoints represents the community? Both? Neither?

The economy has to be designed in such a way that both interests are addressed and, in my opinion, the global exchange is a great way to do that. Too many people like me who are too cheap to spend cash on gems: the ratio goes up up up, which is good for Sorudo, but bad for Byron. Tons of people (like a few of my friends) spending cash to convert to gold, the ratio goes down; Byron will love it and Sorudo will be disappointed.

In this way, the community is always the primary factor affecting the ratio. (And it helps a lot to combat inflation that there’s a 15% fee attached in both direction.)

I made five characters probably within five minutes of each other during headstart and wrote down the “birth dates” of each. This year, /age was showing 370, 368, 365, etc, instead of 370 for each.

I was concerned until I remembered: I forgot that I created those toons to reserve names and then completely forgot that I re-rolled a couple of times during the week (to get the looks right).

Worse, I remember that this confused me last year, too.

@OP: not saying this is what you did, only that such a scenario is far more likely than some bug randomly changing the start dates of a few toons.

Regardless: today, those “missing” few days are annoying, but by next month, it won’t matter at all.

laokoko.7403:

it feels more and more like stock market everyday.

Some one pull the price up and some one dumping early.

It’s a commodities market, so of course there are similarities, especially in the way prices respond to seasonal interests (e.g. Halloween) and momentary “shocks” (e.g. new crafted items due to an update affect the supply/demand of mats).

There are always a number of items that can be crafted for profit, but the list changes with the market. If you have r500 crafting, you can make money by converting cloth to Damask (~2g/bolt) or metals to Deldrimor Steel (about 75s/ingot). Some of the Mawdrey-required items are also good for profit: Plant Food (both about 1g/plate), Clay Pot (5g each, discounting your effort to acquire geodes), and heat stone/grow lamps (2-4g, depending). — that’s profit after discounting fees, parts, and your labor.

On the whole, most players are crafting to gain levels (cheap still for chef and early artificer/jeweler) or to make ascended gear (currently the only reliable way to do so for weapons and armor). It’s still too expensive to make it worth ranking up to 500 for its own sake.