Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the cross-post.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

I’m pretty sure that just the other day I sneezed out two blues and a green, actually…

You get loot from everything in this game except sneezing and chatting.

Fixed

You need to distinguish between training raids, static groups, and PUGs. The most important thing is learning the mechanics, not the build or the gear.

1: How Flexible are raids with regards to deviating away from the metabuilds?

• Training: harder for commanders if there’s deviation, but doable.
• Statics: no problem; just make sure there’s synergy
• PUGs: problematic — commanders want to find a group likely to success, so they hate the idea of deviations.

2. How important is the profession composition of the party?

• Training: the ‘meta’ for training is different for that of statics and again, make your life easier on your commander by sticking to the plan.
• Statics: no problem; just make sure there’s synergy
• PUGs: problematic — commanders want to find a group likely to success, so they hate the idea of deviations.

3. Finally can you complete the raid with less than 10?

• Training: silly to try, in my opinion.
• Statics: no problem; just make sure there’s synergy
• PUGs: problematic — commanders want to find a group likely to success, so they hate the idea of deviations. (you see the pattern?)

Seems to me that Balthazar wanted access to our tools for fighting dragons — he wanted to be the one to defeat them. To do that, he needed to string us along.

Mind you, the big reveal seemed to undermine itself when it was so easily resolved — the Big B went down faster than a cattle rustler caught at a rodeo. Or as the Skritt Burglar says, “plan failed!”

Maybe he was so weak from the draining of his magic that he couldn’t come up with an actual, you know, plan?

Or maybe he didn’t have any control over much other than his disguise. After all, the Mantle were trying to summon Lazarus — maybe B was pulled out of the Mists and couldn’t come up with anything better than “the enemy of my enemy is… well, let’s see what happens.”

Actually, why is it even a scroll? Why not turn it into an account unlock? Spend unbound magic and every character on your account gains access to one WP on the new map (or even all 3 WPs, since there are generally so few). That eliminates the need to keep track of an inventory item.

I haven’t bought any of them because I can’t really imagine using them more than once per character.

The wiki does a pretty good job of explaining how map rewards work, in my opinion. Give it a read and then come back and ask any questions you have.

Short version:

• There’s a set list of map rewards you get from doing events; it changes each week.
• Roughly, you get one reward for every two gold-level events.
• The rewards continue to progress across your account for the entire week.
• The most profitable map varies each week and can be seen here

Reported to be a problem with stacking sigils generally:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/stacking-sigils-broken/6572882

Thanks for this. I had no idea that it was even an option (I guess I might have figured that part out by reading all the NPC offerings — I wouldn’t have imagined the utility tho! That’s very cool.)

I like the shield a lot, but I gotta agree with zealex that it doesn’t look like a serious weapon.

To answer the question properly, I think it’s probably unplanned which we get first. Someone looks at the progress on each and picks the order based on which are closest. It might turn out that the ‘serious’ ones take longer.

I understand ANet’s logic. I also understand the point the OP is trying to make — regardless of whether it’s a fair deal, it feels weird to the consumer. GW2 is less pushy about stuff like this than most other games (the content isn’t required and you can convert in-game currency, so it doesn’t require out-of-pocket expenses). All the same, it’s not necessarily what people like to see when they buy a new game.

Askadia.4395:

I don’t really like jumping puzzles, since the early Super Mario games… ever hated.
But when the whole Living Story actually IS a jumping puzzle…

There are no timed or precision jumps, you can reach all the relevant story bits without doing anything you wouldn’t do for an easy vista.

Mind you: that wouldn’t be the fast or efficient way to get around the map. But you can actually walk all the way up and glide down.

I don’t mean to suggest that makes the map trivial to navigate (I’m definitely confused). I just think it might be worth giving it another shot and running around without treating it like a JP.

Big tip: beg, borrow, or steal enough mastery points to get the new skill. You can point it up (at something) and it will launch you in the air, allowing you to glide without finding an updraft or a ledge. There are very few places without any of the nodes for refreshing the skill.

…our rough plan is to slot the expansion pack into the release cadence as if it were an episode: episode 5, then episode 6, then the expansion pack, then episode 1. But we’ll make some allowance for the fact that shipping an expansion pack is a big deal logistically and will probably take longer than the 2~3 months we normally allocate between episodes.

I translate that as:

• Episode 6 appears late July or August
• Expac November or December, but maybe later
• LS4 probably launches March (more than 3 months, but ANet is usually lightly staffed in Dec & Jan)

Mind you, none of those dates are “promised” — things can (and probably will) change. Just that for a change, those who are overhyped aren’t exaggerating the release date by much.

That said, ANet has usually had about 5-7 months between official announcement and the actual launch November is 6 months away.

I’m not sure why it matters. Whatever is going on is unlikely to change because someone has a vague worry about the previous story + map they guess was done by the same team working on Episode 6.

What didn’t you like about Ep3? What don’t you like about Bitterfrost? I know what I would mean by “no clear theme” or “uneven pacing” or “wasted areas” or “badly arranged transit”, but I don’t know what the OP means by those.

In fact, I thought Lake Doric and its episode were the worst, or at least, that’s the one I barely got through once. I don’t like being forced to progress the map slowly to move the story forward. The hearts on LD copied the worst issues from the hearts I hated the most: few ways to progress, each way is slow, one heart requires being stealthed and cannot be completed on a single run (or at least, not that I was able to manage), and so on.

Even so, I wouldn’t care if the same team works on any other episode: perhaps they’ll learn from the constructive feedback, perhaps they’ll make different mistakes, or perhaps what I didn’t like was simply anomalous.

In short, the OP shouldn’t try to judge a single team by a single episode. And even so, they should offer constructive criticism about what they do want to see (or what they don’t).

Why does ANet have to do anything? Some people love Silverwastes, but plenty just do their own thing. You get loot from everything in this game except chatting or sneezing; it’s only people who like to do the same thing over and over again who look for something repetitive — such folks will always find a farm worth doing in the new maps.

Behellagh.1468:

Well I opened 25 Monday night on the assumption it was going to change. But I guess the sword skin still applies for this patch.

Near as I can tell, the contents are identical this week as they were last.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Do you have too many of any of these? What do you end up doing with them?

Sometimes I do. Mostly, I can keep up with the backlog. When I can’t, I make the mats for the vision crystals or I delete.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Do you have too little of any of these? How do you usually get them?

almost never. they accumulate since I do a little of everything

ArchonWing.9480:

• Do you have, or would like to have one of the items that consumes these materials? If you do have one, how difficult was the process for you to get one?

They aren’t really worth the time. I use them because they are there and I have an inventory management that allows me to have too many.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Would you like to see more of these eaters?

Absolutely not. There’s no reason for that these have to be worth something. Eaters take up more space. If ANet doesn’t want to release recipes that use these, then I say ANet should encourage people to delete them, rather than worry about it.

Orpheal.8263:

Fact is, Guild Wars (2) is a western stylized game. Tyria’s continent is based on a european setting, not an asian one like Cantha. This includes its profession design and why we have for example now Thieves and not Assassins from begin on.
“Warrior” is a very broad and generic term into which you can interprete alot into if you want.

“Thief” is a broad term. “Assassin” used to be Arabic, but now is just as broad. “Mesmer” doesn’t exist as a trope, so could be anything.

But even if it did, what difference does any of that make? GW2 includes an actual video-game-inside-a-box, computers, lasers, and robots. (The Eastern European ‘golem’ is made from clay and imbued with living force — it’s more like a necromancer minion than what we have in GW2.)

In other words, GW2 borrows from all sorts of styles. The only thing that matters, ultimately, is whether people have fun with the design choices made by the developers (which only partly depends on whether players ‘believe’ that those choices fit the game).

Let’s try not to impose our preferences for what we would like to see on the developers. Instead, let’s wait to see what they end up delivering and how well it integrates into the existing game.

zealex.9410:

on that matter can we pls start getting some serious legendaries?

Flames of War is a serious legendary…
… if you imagine yourself back in the US Civil War, hiding in the basement of your family’s plantation cottage outside Greensboro, NC.

A Union soldier stumbles into the secret entrance and points his gun at you.

You pick up the object closest to you, a table lamp, with a shade crocheted by your Great Aunt Maude.

You swing the lamp once. You swing it again. The soldier goes down without firing the shot that would alert his company to your presence. The plantation is saved!

That, my friend, is a serious weapon.

This is the first time a scheduled patch has been released without an update to the BL chest offerings (since they implemented the ‘seasonal’ version). I hope they go back to the pattern, since the lottery aspect is more interesting when the potential ‘prizes’ keep changing.

Good idea. The API tells you what the game thinks you have unlocked. After reviewing, the following possibilities emerge:

1. Zenith fully unlocked for account (API), but not on your display.
2. Zenith not unlocked for account nor on your display.

If it’s the first, then it’s just a matter of convincing your computer to display the correct unlocks. Try repair first. You can also try logging in from a different PC. If neither helps, you’ll need ANet’s help in tracking things down.

If it’s the second, then it’s close to what you feared and you definitely want ANet working directly with you. They’ll want to know what happened, too.

As far as I can recall, no one at ANet has the power to re-lock skins (mentioned by them since it is an issue preventing mitigation a variety of other things that come up) — in other words, this would be really weird and concerning.

Or really, any 3rd party add on — a lot of them break due to a change to the client (e.g. after a patch) and some after a change to the servers (which usually means a change to the client, but not always). They can also break for other reasons.

Besides that, you should start a support ticket and work with ANet. If you manage to troubleshoot on your own, great — you can close the ticket; if not, then you’ll have started the ball rolling and get back to Tyria all the sooner.

Soonest a scheduled update releases is ~ 9 am ANet time. (about 15 minutes from my post). Latest a scheduled update has released is ~5 PM PDT (about 8 hours from ‘now’)

Up to you. Are you ok without HoT features (and unlocks) for (at least) another 6 months? Do you want to be playing catch up when you first acquire the next expansion?

For me, if I’m really enjoying the free game, it would be worth $US25 to start today. I can forgo a couple of fancy coffee-flavored beverages/month, if I’m short of the funds.

What would you like to see?

AncientYs.8613:

make them same as Core Tyria Orr map or SilverWastes difficulty, even making the maps of the new expansion like the difficulty of living world maps would be really ok.
Like the ember bay map etc those mobs were just fine.

You forget that:

• There’s no fixed difficulty to the core maps.
• Some people still think that Silverwastes is difficult.
• A lot of people complain about the difficulty of Ember Bay, Bloodstone Fen, etc

And you also forget that lots of people buy an expansion to be challenged, not to see more of the same (from their perspective). Everyone perceives difficulty differently; everyone enjoys different sorts of difficulty.

Colly.4073:

I just hope there isn’t going to be an extended delay like the last time.

You mean when there was a Blizzard in Seattle that prevented people from reaching ANet HQ to work on the release? Other than that, there’s never been a scheduled release that was “delayed” — most release at 9-10 am ANet time, a few 10am-noon, and even fewer in the afternoon. But they’ve never promised the time; only the date.

There is no such thing as a “legal” DPS meter — ANet will never test every version of any 3rd party tool and declare it “safe to use.”

The best you can hope for is that ANet posts guidelines about the use of DPS meters — which they have and that developers detail the way in which their app is compliant.

Currently, at least two DPS meters have current versions that are claimed by the developers to be fully compliant — you’d have to DL different versions to be out of compliance.

Feel free to message me privately if you need help with finding the specific apps.

Thanks for the screenshots. Definitely something is going on, but there’s little to say whether it’s an actual bug, a temporary display issue, or something going on with just your computer.

It definitely doesn’t matter when you unlocked the zenith skins — whether you did so before or after the wardrobe was added the game, all should be unlocked.

Two things worth trying:

• Repair your client. (as Inculpatus cedo suggested)
• Open up your hero panel to the wardrobe sub-tab & see if you have the option to use the zenith greatsword or hammer etc (easiest way to check is typing “zenith” in the filter, after selecting a weapon)

Please keep us updated on what you learn.

I think it’s fair to post this issue in the bug forums. I’m 99% sure that each individual item is intended to behave as it does; I’m also 99% sure that if someone at ANet thought about it for 5 minutes they’d agree that consistency would be better.

The issue is exchange rates; it’s got little to do with taxes. Banks charge retailers a fee and 3rd party providers for retail sales pass those fees back to their corporate clients. While the price is fixed in dollars, euros, and pounds, the rate for other currencies varies relative to those three.

ANet has no particular use for rubles or rupees, since it has no corporate presence in countries that spend those currencies. Consequently, it’s not worth it to ANet to save a fraction of its potential players that fraction of the game’s cost that is due to variance in exchange rates.

Other companies, such as Steam, can afford to offer prices in all sorts of other currencies, because the volume is high enough that they can minimize transaction costs.

In short, as long as the world continues to use different currencies, there are going to be price discrepancies due to the costs of converting and the volatility of the rates of exchange.

Ryudnard.2587:

Considering how difficult it is to craft the legendaries, I think it should be little more rewarding than just being able to change stats and awesome looks. How about 1% movement speed bonus? What do you guys think?

Considering how difficult it is to craft legendaries, I think they should look especially different from all other skins. That’s all they need to do. The reward is the skin.

Ragnar Stormcaller.6253:

the new weapon choice did or did not fit with the aesthetic of the profession.

….
Do I want a pistol or scepter weilding warrior? hmm….no.
Do I want a longbow or rifle weilding necromancer? hmm..no
Do I need to make more examples?

I can’t agree with your definition of the aesthetic of the professions — those are your preferences, not something that necessarily fits the game. Normally, I wouldn’t imagine a psy-class such as mesmer using sword, greatsword, and certainly not pistol. However, those work well in this game.

Similarly, I wouldn’t have chosen greatsword to match the necro, but the way it’s done also seems to suit the class (even if I don’t love the skills it offers).

Do I want a pistol-wielding guardian? No. Do I really care as long as it works for this game and provides for more interesting and fun gameplay possibilities? I do not.

tl;dr I can’t agree with the premise that specific classes can’t be matched with specific weapons

I think I’d wait to see how the Chinese law actually affects game publishers before suggesting that do something like it in other countries.

I’m always in favor of more data. I’m always in favor of such data being able to everyone, which is why the GW2 TP and associated API makes the game more fair for more people than its predecessor and many of its competitors. I’m not, however, convinced that the ‘more data’ mandated by the law is the sort of thing that would actually be helpful to us.

Philkafou.7481:

. If it happened

Let’s confirm that it’s an issue first.

Confirmed: SlippyCheeze is Jeffrey Dean from Google.

Contact support:
https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

They can help you now.

you’ll get the subset

The first four sound pretty good (crafting, gathering, dungeons, raiding).

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Latency for a satellite connection will be painful. It used to be in the 600 to 700ms range, which is fine for bulk transfer, and absolutely unplayable for games. I’m not sure it has reduced much since 2012 — the last time I looked — but since most of that comes from physics, I wouldn’t bet on it.

I’d honestly find out if you can get data via mobile LTE, too, but that or “Internet25” should either by completely fine for your needs.

My LTE is faster/fatter than my ATT “broadband”, but it’s not as reliable. YMMV

Orpheal.8263:

Mobility and Movement Speed is a topic for GW2,

Sure, but it isn’t a topic of this thread.

Orpheal.8263:

which needs to get finally excluded completely out of Class Balance.

That’s an opinion that isn’t shared by everyone.

Orpheal.8263:

All Classes should be able to move same as fast (in PvE).

That’s a design preference, not a requirement of a balanced game. And it’s present in this game: all classes can move as fast; they just have to make different tradeoffs to make it happen.

Regardless, this thread is about expanding the utility of the singular enrichment slot — is it sufficient to buff only four things? (especially since one of the things has no value to people with maxed masteries or core-owners without HoT, and the other three have niche value). If not, what else could be added to the mix? The OP suggested a movement bonus, which isn’t realistic for many reasons. Surely, we’re a creative enough bunch to come up with other things.

The game, unfortunately, doesn’t give you any warning that this will happen, any notification that you have reached a cap, nor make it easy to see your total of “daily + monthly.”

Not dial-up. Anything else will work fine. The game uses relatively little data to play.

The only time you’ll have trouble with bandwidth is downloading patches; you’ll need to be a lot more patient with each new instance (or, you can just copy the new .DAT file from one machine to another).

voidvector.2780:

Guardian has a lot of utility. I would recommend learning to use those, especially there are two guardians.

Most pug guardians I see just camp their DPS setup, and offers no utility to the group. Because they often camp melee, they would die more than my ele.

Guardians can:

• block/reflect projectiles
• tank mobs with mace/spirit weapons
• group mobs with GS/trap
• knockback with hammer
• protection and aegis for the group
• might with staff

I agree with everything except for bringing staff. (Unless you press ‘4’ before combat & then replace it with, oh, any other weapon set.)

ANet Ben wrote

I can’t give any specific dates on when the next fractal will release unfortunately, for reasons that I cannot discuss. Know that the fractals team is working very hard, and I for one am very excited for the next fractal. It is my favorite so far.

You can get 85% of the map without the meta being in progress and have been able to do for almost a year. That’s not as good as most maps, but it’s as good as the other HoT maps and only slightly worse than map completion on some of the new ones.

I wouldn’t mind ANet changing it so there’s some way to get 100% of every map without waiting for a meta to complete. And I certainly hope that in the future, they reduce the amount of gating-for-gating’s sake in the game. All the same, I don’t think it’s worth their time to worry about changing DS again.

The outfits in GW2 are made differently. The helmet portion is not separate from the rest of the outfit; it is merely able to be hidden.

Outfits are designed in a way that assumes that they aren’t mixed and matched with hairstyles, heads, races, or gear. It is that assumption that allows them to be produced more quickly than armor sets.

So not only would it require time to create this feature, it would also require additional time for any future outfit and helmet in the future.

I’d prefer that ANet invest in other aspects of the fashion infrastructure, e.g being able to save a combination of gear as an outfit (or even a 3-6 transmutation charge saved design).

Raven.1524:

What I find weird about Season 1 skins is that we still have content from that event on the fractals, it shouldn’t be illogical for some stuff to be dropped there or the aetherblade path

And those fractals do drop some of the related items, e.g. azurite crystals

However, we don’t have any of the content that drops your coveted Shiny, Scarlet’s Kiss.

I agree that we should all get a free transfer — I even made that suggestion a couple of times. I don’t think it’s practical though, to implement it at this late date.

Raven.1524:

I was wondering, is there any other way to get season 1 skins and other molten stuff?
I would really love to get my hands on Scarlet’s Kiss skin without having to pay the price of a legendary weapon on the TP.

Short answer: nothing guaranteed. If you want such skins “now,” be prepared to pay dearly.

Longer story: you’ll have to check the wiki for sources of each particular item. Some items reappear (such as the southsun skins/minis now supplied from the Consortium Chests in the gem shop — that’s dropped prices by 30-70%, including a 1000g+ reduction for one of the minis). There’s no predicting when this happens and whether it’s random gem shop, random drop from temporary content (e.g. during a festival), or random from something permanent.

Some of the skins drop randomly from the Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock, which itself is an RNG drop from BL chests.

tl;dr if you want a skin now, be prepared to pay a premium. Otherwise, many have re-appeared in some form over time, although that might mean paying a smaller premium rather than being able to obtain them cheaply.

PS Scarlet’s kiss is selling for under 1400 gold. The cheapest legendary sells for ~2400 gold. So while it’s horribly expensive for a single skin, it’s not as expensive as a legendary (not yet anyhow — that will change if there’s no new supply added to the game).

There’s a lot of data out there, Saxi.

• The junk that drops from encryptions is worth ~40s, on average (the variance is high, so you’ll see a lot less if you only open a few at a time).
• Other stuff drops, too, including agony infusions & (at near-zero probability) some high value skins
• The thirty discount keys cost 20s + 1 relic.
• In the last six months, matrices could be sold for as much as 42s (pre-tax) or bought for as little as 22s.
• Over the same period, the chests were worth as much as 32s (no fees) or bought for 20s.

Putting it altogether:

• The junk alone makes it worth buying the discounted keys — with the worst conceivable luck, you’d still break even on a stack.
• It’s rarely worth buying keys with matrices, although if you can get them at 22s, you won’t be risking much.
• It’s sometimes worth buying boxes on the TP, but only at their lowest possible price.
• However, the margins are low, so it’s reasonable to simply sell all the encryptions, after using all the keys you get from drops. You’ll miss out on the low-chance of additional drops, but you’ll spend a lot less time dealing with inventory.