Guild Wars 2

This looks like an idea for how to make the game “free to own” instead of requiring US$40-60 initial investment (depending on where you buy).

(Some F2P games allow you to start playing without spending any money, but they do charge for “basics” and some charge a subscription fee to unlock certain features.)

I doubt it’s worth the trouble for ANet: whatever the pros/cons of the current model, the game has surpassed all expectations in terms of how many people paid for the game and how many still play.

If you want a personal reply, I recommend you contact support. If this has happened before, they will be able to check if there’s a work-around. If it’s the first time they have seen it, they will be able to get the dev team’s attention and, if the stars align, offer you a solution.

If I recall correctly, ANet doesn’t currently have the tools to adjust a player’s inventory (for all sorts of good …and bad… reasons), so if there’s a “special” bug, they might not have a good solution for you.

Should that be the case, you can ask your ticket to be escalated. People I know who have politely stated their case and asked respectfully for assistance have reported good results.

PS Devs read a lot of forum posts (and the moderators forward even more), but they don’t typically respond to most. They tend to reply when they need more information or if they know the issue and have scheduled a resolution.

tl;dr support is your best resource for troubleshooting this.

Good luck and, if you have time, let us know what you find out.

I have never had the issue and I’ve never seen people reporting it. I play with several people who use non-English settings.

I would recommend you contact support with a few specific examples. It’s possible there is something wrong with the database file on your computer (gw2.dat) and repairing or replacing would resolve the issue.

Support can help you figure it out.

Good luck.

Elena.6581:

Ty very much and Anet sorry for the bugs reported!

I think it’s good for people to keep reporting this: there is an actual bug (6/10 = full) and there is confusion about the UI (full box = no gem shop email, but still get other system mail).

I believe the devs have stated that they plan on making changes to both. So in the meantime, we just need to keep our inbox clear (good idea in any case).

Set up your PC to automatically update the time/date (or at least, make sure it’s currently correct). For windows,

1. Right-click the clock on the task bar,
2. Choose, “adjust date and time,” and make sure the third tab (“internet time”) is selected.
3. Click “change settings” and then click on “synchronize.”
4. time.windows.com is a reliable choice, although you can select a .gov or other site if you prefer.

I encourage you to contact support directly; they will be able to help you troubleshoot this much faster than waiting for ANet to determine if there is a general bug that affects a lot of players, figure out how to replicate it, test solutions, and schedule it to be released in an update.

They look at this forum all the time. They don’t have time to respond to every suggestion or idea or bug.

Vyro.5802:

I’m not asking for new items to be added, …. I would like to see more than just titles, …to have the option to get a few items that require HoM stuff to get.

I get that you aren’t asking for new items to be designed. And I get that you aren’t asking that they be entirely free of effort or materials. But it’s still a substantial increase in the benefits of the HoM and it’s so close to asking for new items, that it is hard to explain how it is different.

Vyro.5802:

They gave us the Fiery Dragon Sword for free, and made the Icy Dragon Sword cost about 100g to get (it’s called Jormag’s Breath in GW2). I’m just asking for a few combinations on the Mystic Forge that require mats from the HoM for more high-end and harder to get rewards.

ANet stated long ago that after HoM/30, you wouldn’t get tangible items, only titles. Isn’t it being unfair to those that never played GW1 (for whatever reason)? Isn’t unfair to those who only went to HoM/30 because there weren’t any announced tangible bonuses?

I don’t see any reason why ANet should spend money (in the form of developer time) to provide us with added HoM benefits that will never be equally accessible to people who start playing GW2 today.

GWAMM has nothing to do with HoM; it’s a separate title that you can carry over without getting the tangible HoM rewards. And you can look at the GW1 wiki to see the history of articles — I don’t think you’ll find ANet ever promising that we would get something tangible for GWAMM.

While I agree that it would be nice to have gotten more attractive gear for HoM rewards, all of the armor and weapons look far better than starting gear or even a lot of other gear out there. My L80 characters are constantly using HoM skins instead of the defaults that come with a lot of exotic or rare gear. It might not look like top-notch items from GW1, but it’s free — and we can transmute as many times as we like. I think those are fantastic bonuses.

You can have a character of each profession without having to delete the others. I’m not sure why you think ANet should give that away for free, though. Especially since, as noted above, you can buy gems with coin, so it doesn’t cost you any RL cash.

I’m against upgrading the rewards from the HoM in any way. Those who played GW1 have been well-rewarded for their loyalty and I think it’s unfair to reward them further by allowing them access to additional items in the game, unless it’s equally easy for non-GW1 players to acquire the same items.

I agree that HoM items should have their own special icon (some do not yet). I also agree that some HoM items are fantastic (the FDS might be the best non-legendary sword in the game), while others are lackluster (I don’t find any of the other weapons worth the effort to transmute on a regular basis). Nevertheless, I’m extremely satisfied with the reward system — it did exactly what ANet said: provided cosmetic benefits without providing a gameplay advantage.

DreamOfACure.4382:

It’s highly probably that ArenaNet plans to release new elite skills (especially new racial skills or exclusively WvW skills)

It wouldn’t surprise me to see future uses for skill points besides crafting mystic weapons or legendary components, but I’m not sure about “highly probable.”
————
Incidentally, even if you don’t want a mystic weapon for personal use, they are a convenient way to turn 3-4g worth of mats into something that sells for 7-12g on the trading post.

For me, the point of dungeons is to have fun. If I depended on good loot for my enjoyment of dungeons, dragon fighting, jumping puzzles, or the personal story, I’d go back to single player RPGs. I hardly ever get greens, let alone rares or better. Most of the time, it’s blue after blue after blue, which is (ahem) fine with me.

Dungeons are very rewarding: without consumables, you get about half a gold just for completion and killing the various bosses. Selling off the trash drops (blue after blue after blue) yields some more cash. And I’m not sure why you are so quick to dismiss the tokens: some of the dungeon-vendor gear is fantastic (and a relatively cheap way to acquire exotics, especially if you don’t care about the looks).

You can add the bot to your /block list instead.

The monthly tiers show in the UI after you complete your dailies.

Delete all the mail in your inbox — it can be “too full” for the BL TC sometimes (even though it doesn’t look full or the tooltip says x/10, where x < 10).

For support tickets, you don’t have to create an account — go to “support” above, then “ask a question” and enter the email address you want them to use.

It’s not easy for them to do, because there are a lot of things in the game tied to race. Personal story, some encounters in the wild, the nature of some system emails you receive, the type of elites you have unlocked, and things we probably aren’t aware of.

@Bonesaw: of course, you can ask for this. I just think that it would already be in the game, unless it’s more difficult to implement than we imagine. I’m sure ANet would happily collect gem fees for this

I would recommend you contact support and instead of telling them you are suffering from DR, just tell them the amount of xp/karma you got from that Pinion Pass event and list the expected amounts (listed on the wiki). They can investigate and help you troubleshoot.

It could be that DR is broken, but it’s more likely that something else is wrong that is affecting you and/or the specific event(s). I don’t think it’s a generaly issue, since e.g. my guild does dailies together regularly and no one gets hit with DR, even though we tend to spend 60-90 minutes in the same zone.

Good luck.

Try mailing a friend and see if you can add the spear to the email. (You don’t actually have to send the weapon.) If the game doesn’t let you do that, then something is wrong and you should contact support directly.

If you are able to attach the weapon to mail, then there is some sort of trading post issue. It could be you didn’t have enough coin (in inventory) to post the item. It could be you are having general issues with the trading post (and, again, support is the best place to go to resolve them quickly).

Good luck.

You probably want to adjust your graphics options (and perhaps those of your graphics card, too). The glow from the FDS is one of its cooler features, imo, since it allows you to easily navigate otherwise dark corners of Tyria.

Consider changing your game (or windows) gamma settings — from your screenshot, it looks like that is turned up higher than most people run them. The FDS glow is barely noticeable for me in areas that have direct sunlight or are locally illuminated.

If that doesn’t work (or you have already tried it), please post what your in-game graphical settings are so that people can more easily recommend other things to try.

Good luck.

The last update included a fix for a game-breaking bug for some players. Unintentionally, this also resulted in lots of players losing 1-2 points of progress on previously completed achievements. ANet is aware of the issue and is working on a fix. (There are many other posts about the topic.)

For Carver, as you noticed, it’s strictly cosmetic — you can still display the title.

There are all sorts of things that the game considers to be “in combat” — if any party member is suffering from a condition, has recently taken falling damage, and, rarely, not stowing weapons automatically. I don’t know if that applies to your situation.

However, for things like this, try to use the in-game bug reporting feature (command: /bug). This way, the bug report automatically includes your server, specific location, and makes it easy for the dev team to see what you were doing right before. Posting on the forums makes it more difficult for them to troubleshoot.

(There are some bugs worth reporting in both places…and others probably better reported in the forums alone.)

I forgot to say: welcome to GW2, Brap!

I started playing during BETA testing and I have to admit, I found the transition difficult, too. There were many things (including some of those you mention) that I found required an adjustment in my play style and thinking and I had trouble getting used to it. Now, however, I can’t go back to GW1 — it’s so slow, colorless, and static by comparison.

ANet also made adjustments since BETA, most for the better. I expect they will continue to tweak and restructure parts of the game, based in part on constructive feedback.

There are all sorts of things that IMO are more fun in this game: jumping, dodging, moving while casting, depositing collectibles without visiting a bank, and so on.

I hope you learn to enjoy the game as much as I have done.

• Click-to-move: the game has other features that aren’t compatible with this, e.g. being able to walk through foes.
• Show all character dots on map: this is a limitation of this type of MMO: with so many things on the map, it consumes a lot of resources to display them all at every instant.
• Item Appearence: ANet admitted that they didn’t finish some of the icons. They have been updating them a bunch at a time with various releases. Post a separate suggestion with a list of duplicates that you find; devs said that they will follow-up (as they have time to do so).
• Heroes and Henchmen: it’s a multiplayer game. Although virtually all the content can be managed solo, it’s designed for group play. If that doesn’t appear to you, I am sorry to say this might not be the game for you.
• Character Select Menu Screen: [h]ero panel allows you to take a closer look at your toon.
• Ranger Pets: turns out, the devs decided it wasn’t worth creating a huge data table for 50 pets/ranger, so they set it up to have the names saved by slot (Terrestrial top & bottom slots, aquatic top & bottom). A lot of players feel the same as you do about “juvenile” and saving more names. Add your voice to those existing discussions and there’s some chance ANet will reconsider. However, this probably isn’t a cheap solution, given how they designed things originally (meaning: to implement this, they’d have to forgo something else equally important to players…at least for a while).

I’d prefer that the current system is changed so that the underwater helm uses the same stats as the overland helm — we don’t change the rest of the armor, why should we change the helmet? You don’t even need the breathing apparatus to breathe under water (that was the original plan, but it got changed along the way).

Instead, the underwater headgear becomes an optional skin that people can toggle on or off, as we do with other items.

Recording audio for player characters and NPCs is a lot more work than most people think. It’s also a lot more difficult. Most of acting is “reacting” to someone else, but for video games, you are typically all by yourself, with a script and the tech people. You get some background about story and context, but you might not have played the game. Like any acting, you will do multiple takes so the director can choose the most appropriate and most consistent with other voices in the same scenes. There are sound and volume checks. There are retakes to change accents, stress certain words, and so on.

It might not be rocket science, but it’s not something that even the professional actors whip out in a day. I agree it would be fun to have some variety of voices — I’d like to be able to recognize when I’m in need of healing vs my guildie vs someone else, but I’m also willing to cut ANet some slack because adding even one voice option for one race/gender combination would take a lot of effort.

I have to agree that terminology in the game is more confusing than it needs to be. Different skins can share a name, similar/identical skins can be called several different things, and, as Vayne notes, something as simple as armor class is difficult to determine without careful inspection of each item’s description.

Although I would love to see someone with OCD review the game’s nomenclature and clean it up, I imagine this might take a while (even if ANet agrees its a good idea).

In the meantime, perhaps the devs could visually distinguish the different classes of armor, e.g. using different color text, different font families/styles/sizes, or different colors for the icons.

Let’s pretend that ANet can figure out how to protect the overall economy of the game if completion of the personal story rewarded a precursor weapon instead of a rare one. Let’s also pretend that ANet figures out how to compensate people who have already completed their p-story and/or those who spent 100s of gold to purchase or forge one.

Then the question is whether the personal story should provide something that is instrumental in creating a legendary. I would still say no, because I think it should be incredibly difficult to obtain a legendary. I think it should be something that most of us never even consider. One the things that makes legendaries interesting is that they are exclusive. As soon as ANet removes the random factor in the acquisition process, anyone can choose to grind one out…and that, too, makes them less interesting.

However, I have to agree that the reward at the end of the personal story feels anemic relative to the amount of effort (and to the importance of the player’s impact Tyria). I think it would be worth considering adding laurels to the reward and/or making the weapon exotic, instead of rare.

My guild groups together and organizes without a guild hall. Largely, a guild hall would actually make it harder to coordinate, since it would require one extra zone crossing.

I think GHs would be a fun thing to have in the game and I’m sure it would be convenient for guilds that want to throw a private party, but I don’t see how their absence affects the running of successful guilds.

I don’t want mounts in the game in part because the NPCs in the game don’t have them either. The trinity has a few copters (that seem to break down a lot, just when they are needed) and a couple of airships, but they use asura gates (and presumably waypoints). They don’t ride horses, they don’t tame eagles and fly them to rescue the dwarves from the goblins (oh, wait — wrong story).

I am sure that mounts are a fun component of a fun game, but I don’t see that they are necessary for GW2.

This is by design. You even get a warning before upgrading that the item will be bound.

(edit conflict – soz for double posting the same info)

The problem is that people aren’t usually comparing apples to apples for runs. A full MF build has to drop some other stat, which means you will tend to kill less stuff and take longer to do it. That means fewer overall drops. For some, this will mean less total value.

The people who have published results using controlled tests did so by counting the number of times they got XP from a select few foes and totaling their loot and coin. In every case, those using 100% or more MF found more golds and greens, fewer whites and blues; more higher tier mats, fewer lower tier mats. Overall, the high-MF runs also had fewer items in total, but the total value of run was greatly increased.

For most players, this isn’t going to be enough to notice. I recommend that people only go full MF if they are committed to farming, rather than chasing events and if they can already clear their particular target foe quickly. For example, farming earth or air elementals for cores, as opposed to following one of the popular event chains.

The achievements happened with the last update and are being worked on. They tried to fix some game-breaking bug for some people and caused a reduction in progress for a lot of us. There’s a thread about it already.

I use mail to send mats to friends all the time. Never had an issue.

I like the current system much better. I only have to create one character for each profession that interests me and I have access to every game mode. I even get to choose my own gear and have a separate skillbar for sPvP.

I don’t see any advantage to separating by character.

(I would like it better if it were easier to update gear/build for switching between PvE, dungeons, and WvW, but that’s a different idea.)

It’s weird that they spent so much time balancing above-water combat and left out some details from underwater combat:

• 1 elite/class.
• Traits that have great value on land, but none underwater and no compensating feature.
• One of six armor pieces has no rare or better variety and can only be acquired soulbound.
• You can hide your shoulder & headgear, but not your breathing apparatus.
• You can craft every piece of underwater gear except the breathing gear.
• You don’t actually need the breathing gear to breathe, so the game could just use the stats from your land-based head gear instead.

More holidays is more better :-)

I agree.

The names that show up in the bank log are the last-logged in. If someone’s account is compromised and then blocked by ANet (and therefore not logging in), you won’t see any name.

It would be better if, at minimum, you always see the account name. If an issue arises, people will be able to view who took what by reviewing the log.

Regarding Oscar’s comment: in our guild, most everything in the bank is valuable, because we use the bank to transfer useful items. Stuff that no one wants doesn’t go in the bank in the first place. We are selective about who gets permission to remove stuff from the bank, but anyone’s account could be compromised.

I use the ignore list primarily for gold sellers and bots, so I don’t really want their /block to expire. For people who are annoying in /map, I don’t really care if they stay on the list forever. Every week or three, I’ll review the list. If someone is online, has a “real” name, and I can’t remember why they are on block, I take them off.

In other words, your suggestion would make it harder for me to maintain the ignore list, not easier.

I imagine ANet could consider adding an optional timer, but I’d just as soon see those programming resources devoted to other suggestions.

They didn’t promise anything about the dye system. They had a lot of ideas about how the game would play and they changed their minds about many. This is one of those areas where they decided that the original proposal wasn’t best suited for the game.

I would prefer an account-bound system, but I’m also ok with having to decide which of my toons gets celestial and which merely gets a lesser-quality white.

You couldn’t play with 500 other players in GW1. There’s a lot more data that needs to get transferred between their data centers. The client and data files are substantially bigger. I don’t think we can compare the two games one feature at a time.

Even if we could, I am sure that the developers would sincerely prefer that EU & US players can adventure together and that, if it were feasible, it would be in the game or at least, they would announce an ETA for adding it in. I can’t imagine any reason why they would refuse to do this.

As Eisberg stated, if you want to play during US-peak hours, you can join a US world. If you want to play with US- and EU-based players (as I do), you have to consider buying a second account or living without it for a while. That is unfortunate, but I don’t see any other options for us in the near future.

Ahmrill.7512:

I agree with everything you posted!

Thanks. These are ideas that other people have been kicking around; I can only take credit for the phrasing.

Ahmrill.7512:

I think more people need to let the Devs know this is an area we’d like to have a little focus on.

Yes.

I agree with separating promote/kick (it was closer to that during BETA, but, for a variety of good reasons, it got changed). Some people are good at recruiting, but terrible at figuring out who to promote (and vice-versa). In at least some guilds, you might want anyone to be able to invite a new member to join as a recruit (no permissions), but only allow officers promote recruits to member (with basic permissions).

You can already separate permissions for the shared bank: the top tab (and coin) uses one set; the bottom two tabs (and coin) uses another. I wouldn’t mind more layers of nuance, but there are other guild issues/suggestions I’d like to see addressed first.

DeWolfe.2174:

In the Feb 1st announcement on “Dynamic Leveling Adjustment” I’d like to point out something Isaiah Cartwright wrote. It was “While this will make some areas harder, our goal is to make all areas of Guild Wars 2 exciting and fun for players of any level.” I’d just like to point out, harder doesn’t equal fun. Fun is a completely different emotion. I do notice most of the game design is based upon a thought that challenge+adrenaline=Exciting and fun??? Which is simply not true….

Just something to think about for future design and content

If there is too little challenge, there is little fun to be had for most (but not all) players. I took Izzy’s comment to mean that they increased the challenge so that more players would find lower level areas more interesting to return to.

I agree that “hard” doesn’t necessarily mean fun for most people, but I don’t think going to low-level zones as an L80 is anything close to difficult since the last update.

Shade.6081:

Level scaling is a major disease of gameplay. It makes gaining levels totally irrelevant. If you have level scaling in a game then that game should not have levels at all because scaling makes leveling worthless. Making scaling and OPTION in this game I could live with. Then those who want it can use it and those who don’t won’t. PLEASE get rid of this heinous practice in gaming. Level scaling should NEVER NEVER NEVER be used as it takes the satisfaction of becoming more powerful away from the player.

My L80 characters have a much easier time in L1-15 zones than my L1-15 characters. The maxed ones are nearly indestructible and rip through foes like a warm knife through butter. ANet could increase the amount of downleveling and I still wouldn’t feel much risk in newbie zones.

If you aren’t feeling more powerful, then you probably want to re-evaluate your gear and build.

The point of scaling is that it allows lowbie and max toons to play side-by-side. Accordingly, it can’t be optional, otherwise high-level characters would have too much of an advantage. This would allow them to farm without effort and/or grief new characters. Plus, it removes any challenge for going into lowbie zones.

However, I would support an option that allowed you to be super-downleveled, i.e. that you would have traits, skills, and gear comparable to the zone, rather than just reduced in stats. For example, in L10 zone, you would have no traits, no elite skill, and only two stats/gear instead of three (from green+ gear available to L80 toons).

The issue raised in the OP is making it easier for guild groups to stick together, follow a guild-leader, and not confuse people on the map. There are a number of solutions:

• A green commander icon option for guilds, only visible to players representing the guild.
• Larger group sizes for guilds, with a separate channel. So you can have an Arah team of 15 and a anti-shatterer team of 10, without interfering with each other.
• Green dots on the map showing all guildies.
• Different levels of command: small squad, large squad, map-wide strategic squad.

I’ve been proposing true auto loot since beta testing. One of the devs said in an interview that he thought it was more fun to discover loot if you had to take the time to pick it up and (apparently) that’s why Diablo 3 has autolooting, but GW2 merely has auto-sorting.

Personally, I don’t like having to worry about looking for loot during battle, worrying that the loot will disappear if I don’t pick it up, or having to decide between reviving someone or going after a potential item. I especially don’t like that the most common work-around, spamming the action key [f] results in unnecessary NPC dialogue boxes or in picking up unwanted environmental weapons.

I am willing to bet that if ANet offered true auto-looting as an option that the vast majority of people would use it and never look back at the current method.

I am sorry you are having so much difficulty finishing Arah.

I have been in Arah/story five times and never had any trouble. During the last 24 hrs, a number of people appeared to have been logged out of the game — although frustrating, this had nothing to do with Arah or any other dungeon.

I would recommend that you contact support and give them the approximate times you started the storymode and ask them to look into it. They will be better able to help you troubleshoot, especially if it turns out to be something specific to your account or installation.

The ranger box was dropping the wrong items. So, until they release a fix, you can’t open them. Hang tight — devs will let us know when that’s fixed (maybe in the late February update).

It’s always been 5% and 10%, but both are mathematically rounded, so there will be occasions when it’s off slightly. I’ve never seen “14.5%” — a 1g item sale generates 90s, although I also had to offer up 5s to list it.