Guild Wars 2

kaffaljidhma.1496:

not everyone can learn scripting, so unfair advantage

False. Anyone can learn scripting. It’s no more an unfair advantage than allowing people with fancy mice to rebind their controls to the myriad of buttons they can access easily, rather than having to go through contorted hand motions. It’s actually less of an advantage, as it requires no extra outlay of cash to use, just your brain.

Also, how long do you really think it will be before there’s a site where you can go and download good stable scripts? I’d give it a month on the outside, probably less than a week. So if you don’t want to put the time in to learn, you will always be able to get something decent.

By “pet” I’m including Necro Minions, Ranger Pets, Mesmer Illusions, Guardian Spirit Weapons, Engineer Turrets, Elementalist Elemental Summons, Thieves’ Guild… Every player-summoned NPC. All of which have AI issues.

The only way I can see to let you micro-manage all of those would be to give you direct control of their AI. Lua springs to mind as the language designed for this.

spoiler tags are not working when you preview a post

Also, a single unclosed tag hides the rest of the message.

How’s this for a solution:

Let us write the Pet AI for ourselves.

Because, in all honesty, ANet can’t put as much effort into it as the players would. And you’re going to keep getting complaints about it until you either make it smarter than the player (which isn’t possible) or give players control over how it messes up.

I’ve been reading a lot of comments about how pets (ranger pets, necro minions, engie turrets, etc…) are useless in PvP, or in general.

So I’ve been thinking: Why not just let players write their own pet AI?

Then they can fix all the problems that they see for themselves, make their pets do exactly what they want.

It’s the only solution that I see, because each player wants their pet to do something slightly different. (It might even make minion necros interesting in sPvP)

I was thinking about this pre-release, and I have written up a spec for what I’d like to see in the way of the api, but I’ll save that until I get a positive response, rather than dumping a wall of text that most people here won’t be interested in.

Truga.5897:

lorazcyk.8927:

With rawinput patch gw2 works really nicely on wine.
Only problem is there’s no gem store or trading post. So if they could make a way to have this for us, OR let us buy stuff on the gem store / trading post on a website online, outside of the game, that would help a lot.

There’s an awesomium patch floating around in one of the bug threads attached to GW2’s winehq page. With that the store/TP work great for me.

If you’re willing to use PlayOnLinux, it has a wine build that already has the raw3 and awesomium patches rolled in. Conviniently labelled “Guild Wars 2”

Simple request for the web team:

Add a checkbox for extending the cookie duration to infinite for forum login details.

Simpole enough request.

Deria.9158:

I have no objection to a Linux client, but people in this thread are making some terrible assumptions:

1) OS X is not Linux. It is BSD Unix. Similar, yes. The same, no.

2) Someone described Windows as “terrible” for game developers. The opposite could not possibly be more true. DirectX is VERY GOOD. Speaking as a programmer who has used it, I can say with certainty that it is extremely easy to use and works well. OpenGL is also very good, don’t get me wrong. People need to stop wearing blinders, though. Whether you love or hate Microsoft, you have to admit that they pushed the gaming market -massively- forward with DirectX and continue to do so.

3) Implementing a Mac client makes much more sense than implementing a Linux client. Sorry, but the reality is there are many more Mac users than Linux users in the gaming market. Linux is great, and I love it, but the number of gamers using Linux full-time is minimal. I’d be happy to see ArenaNet implement a Linux client, but the idea that they should have done that before a Mac client is unreasonable.

1) True, but the way they say they’ve ‘ported’ to Mac has an increadably similar parrallel on Linux (which also works on Mac and other *NIXes, as long as they run Intel/AMD processors)

2) Windows is terrible for developers. I know, I have to work with that mess every day. OpenGL would be better if MS wasn’t pulling every dirty trick they feel they can get away with to neuter it. Also, Microsoft don’t push markets, they trail behind them. They may have thrown money at companies to get them to use DirectX instead of OpenGL, but that’s just them trying to maintain their consumer lock-in.

3) ANet actually have the numbers of Windows, Mac and Linux users. (Or they can get them with a little bit of logging of command-line flags to differentiate between Windows and Linux users if they don’t do that already) Also, instead of supporting Mac, they could have supported Wine, which would have given pretty much every non-Windows user support (including Mac users). I don’t see how supporting Wine would have been more expensive than dealing with Transgaming.

The number of gamers using Linux full-time is minimal because the number of games availible on Linux is minimal. Vicious circle. Also, try buying a computer from anyone big without Windows on it. Change has to start somewhere, and then people have to join in the change.

The idea is that they could have done a Mac, and Linux, and BSD, and… client, instead of just a Mac client, for about the same amount of effort. That isn’t unreasonable at all.

One ability that probably wouldn’t help the dragon fights that don’t have adds, but might help with the zergs elsewhere that I thought of was this:

Too… Much… Power… “BOOM!”:
Trigger: I go from 100% health to 0% health in less than a second.
Effect:
2000 range PBAoE, no target limit:
Allies:
3 secs Retaliation
3 secs Aegis
3 secs Regeneration
Enemies:
5 stacks Confusion
Blind
Knockdown

Give it an animation that looks like a small nuke going off and give it to everything, then sit back and watch the zergs dissapear.

Ah, an online petition, because those work so well…

People, ANet already have the numbers of people using Linux. So if you want to encourage them to support it, don’t dual-boot, and actually play on linux. It works well enough.

And they haven’t done a mac port, they’re supporting a proprietory, mac-only wine look-alike, that seems to require more work from them than wine would. Why they’re doing this rather than just supporting wine I have no idea.

What the title says.

It leaves in the <p> tags, etc.

Also, preview replaces < with &l t; (without the space) in the text body.

Well, the reason for the 250 stack limit is that it probably seems like a better number than 255 (or maybe they need some error values in there?). And they’ll be using that magic number for data footprint reasons rather than anything else.

I’d like a currencies tab as well. But I wouldn’t call it a high priority.

The suggestion with some logic behind it is generally: “Darkness Falls”.

ie. A tier-6 drops, no points, WvW area that is only accessible to the winning team. This gives a winning team a reward for winning, while getting people off the points-bearing maps, giving the other two teams a chance to fight back. Call it “Troll Cave” or something.

I believe the Mists boon you get from points was meant to do this, but the drops in WvW are so good, you’re best off staying there to benefit from it.

Rompetomp.1253:

@Illiander.8049:

Yes, excuse me, that’s what I meant, I’ve got a low framerate (not native English here, y’know).
I’ve got an i5-3450 with a Sapphire Radeon HD6870 (1GB).

So, lots more questions:

Which graphics driver are you using? What’s your glxgrears framerate? (I know it’s not a benchmark, but it works as a “Is my graphics accelleration working?” test)

Unfortunately, I don’t have much experience with AMD cards, and I’m think I remember some issues that they had when used with wine, but I’m not sure if those have been solved or not since I last needed to look. Do you have objections to using the closed-source driver? Does your distro’s package manager have any helpful-looking options? (What distro are you using?)

Umm, hate to say this, but if you can’t get the Vizier’s Tower then you will have much bigger problems than jumping puzzle difficulty in this game.

Not asking for details that you seem uncofortable giving, but if it’s a mouse issue, then you should chime in on the requests for look up/look down keybinds.

Otherwise, I think you’ll just have to remap keys to something you can use more effectively. You can map modifiers on keys, so you can have, for example, “1” as basic attack, “shift-1” as profession ability 1, etc…

Hope that helps.

Rompetomp.1253:

I too would love a Linux port, or just official support for Wine.
I tried running Guildwars 2 with Wine and with Playonlinux, but I’ve had a lot of lag (between 1-10fps), and it was just unbearable to play.
I’m hoping for a fix, or better support for Linux, so I can finally get rid of Windows.

Low framerate is not lag. Which is it?

Lag shouldn’t really be happening due to wine. Check your internet speed on linux in general if that’s the issue.

Low framerate is likely due to not using your graphics card fully. For a very rough check of whether your graphics card is actually being used, run glxgears and check the framerate, if it’s under 10,000fps, look into installing the drivers for your graphics card, some linux distros don’t install the good ones by default. Also, you will get low framerate for the first 10 seconds or so after loading into an area, while everything gets background-loaded, but then it improves.

If you need more help than that, I’m going to need more information about your system.

Azaziel.3608:

No seriously I think a samurai banner would be awesome

Something like this or this?

It would give us something from the guild armourer that really displays the guild logo clearly on the battlefield.

None of the forms I have used let you dodge, jump, or attack while moving.

It’s like I’m playing a character from 250 years ago!

I’m assuming that this is probably an animation issue, rather than a balance issue, as the form I’ve spent the most time with (Asura Golem Suit) seems like it makes me less effective all around than if I simply didn’t have an elite slot.

It just seems really wierd that in a game that’s all about mobility, all the forms basically immobilise you in combat.

A quiver model for the backpack would certainly be a good addition. The bow animations are already drawing arrows from an invisible quiver, and the back slot is right there, begging to be used.

Been suggested lots before, and in much better ways. The general problem is this :

So you’re in the middle of a dungeon, and I know this, and I don’t like you. I report you for botting, you get this captcha in the middle of a fight and die while fighting the UI to enter the captcha. I get a little clock next to my computer and do this every hour, on the hour if I’m feeling really mean.

If the captcha-free time can be reduced by number of reports, I will get everone in my guild to do the same. You will be unable to play due to constantly having to enter captchas.

The botters will automate entering the captcha and will be completely uneffected by it : They can set their bots up to post the captcha to them whenever one needs entering, and then they sit there running 300 bots at the same time, and spend their time entering captchas, or using social engineering or money to get someone else to solve them instead.

tl;dr:
Reports=>"Player enters a captcha" is security theater.

I really don’t like the fantasy weapon-sythes, they never get good animations.

Polearms would be neat though,.

The devs have said that they would already be here if it weren’t for clipping issues on Charr. So, what can we think of that would be a good look for Charr “cloaks”?

Tabards?
Kilts?
Samurai-style back-banners?

Any other ideas?

The devs have already said that “the night capping” issue is working as intended. For so many reasons, one of them being:

“I’m part of a guild that has players in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and probably a few other countries that have never come up in conversation, which server should we play on as a guild?”

What’s your responce to that?

WINE is a third-party application in the same way that Windows is. And I haven’t heard anyone being banned for using that.

I think the upcoming guidlines on third party applications will clear this up though. It’s certainly not against the spirit of their policy, as it provides no advantage.

Just a request on how you increase difficulty:

Drop the monsters HP and Toughness. As it stands now, once a monster is down to about half HP, the fight is essentially over,everyone has learnt the patterns, and now are just going through the motions. Doing something to keep the fight interesting the whole way through would go a long way to increacing the fun from dungeons, even if it’s as simple as an AI change at HP thresholds.

Icarusdown.6584:

Wow, I seem to be late to the party once again!

I came into the suggestions section to ask if a Linux client would be possible. I understand that the Windows client is still getting sorted and that the OSX client is still in beta, so it’s going to be a while before we see this come our way. It would be stellar if it could though.

It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one looking for this to happen. I have a list of things that keep me tethered to Windows, but that list gets smaller all the time. Here’s hoping I can scratch one more thing off that list.

Grab PlayOnLinux, it’s a WINE wrapper that has a build that fixes the issues with GW2 on WINE. Scratch another thing from your list.

GW2 on Linux is perfectly possible, what we’re all here wanting is official support. I think even just official support for WINE would be very much appreciated by the Linux community here. (And then ANet could stop messing about with Transgaming, as WINE runs just fine on a Mac : wouldn’t that be nice, just one alternate environment to support, and you make everyone happy?)

For multi-mob encounters: Bring a Shield!

Seriously, the Engineer’s shield is the best defensive weapon I’ve seen in the game. Both skills can be used to counter ranged mobs, and both skills can be used to counter melee mobs. They’re just excellent panic buttons. Bring along the bomb kit for PBAoE Launch and Blind if you’re struggling, but I never feel the need to.

Just going to chime in that I find the personal story really quite easy, to the point where I was attempting it about 2 levels below recommended while I could. (One bugged quest got me to leave it alone for a while, and by the time they fixed it I was level 80)

The only time I found it hard was when I was 5 levels too low, and the quest was bugged.

For the record, I main an Engineer, Pistol/Shield, rocket turret, rifle turret, supply drop, grenade kit (Which is pretty useless solo, as you can’t kite very well while using it)

Count my vote for “Please don’t make the Personal Story boring by making it any easier”

As for traits, I was built pretty glass cannon on stats for most of my leveling.

Best advice I can give a struggling engineer is:
Mobility: Dodge-roll, kite, and circle-strafe. You’re a guns-only class, think like you’re playing an action-shooter.
Interrupts: Shields are excellent. It’s stacked with interrupts/counters. Double-tap 4 to get melee off you (with an interrupt), double-tap 5 for another interrupt. If you need more interrupts, bring the bomb kit for it’s toolbelt skill.
Damage: Your best mob killer is either the grenade kit or the bomb kit. If you use grenades, learn to double-tap the attack button to fire them fast, it lets you see the targiting reticle better than the “fast-cast” option. Also, if you’re using grenades, trait for them: the number of effects you can stack on them makes them really powerful.

Generally for defence, I focus on interrupts and invunerable frames rather than stats. Full defensive stats only let you take one or two more hits before you’re downed, they don’t let you sit there and eat attacks without moving.

Kendra Nightwind.8734:

From where I sit, the only reason that Mac OSX is being ported to is market share. There are enough clients out there that ArenaNet can make a profit porting the game. Linux is at a point where it’s market share is what Mac’s market share was seven years ago (less than half of it’s current user base). I am fairly sure that if Linux had a large enough user base it too would be supported.
There have been in the past a few companies (such as HP, Dell and E-Machines) that would ship computers with LInux pre-installed. Sales were so poor and in the case of E-Machines the support complaints were so costly that almost all of them have dropped Linux as a standard offering.

The sales were bad because they hid those options away such that you had to spend 5 minutes searching their website to find them, and then they were more expensive than the machines with windows on them. And they didn’t advertise them at all. What do you expect when you do that? There’s a HHGttG quote that I am very tempted to use here: it ends with “beware of the leopard”.

Linux is gaining ground with absolutely no mainstream advertising, against two companies with some of the best marketing departments on the planet. What does that tell you?

Also, ANet could have supported Mac and Linux for about the same as supporting just Mac. Official support for WINE would have done that, yet they chose not to. That’s why I keep asking for user counts of Windows, Mac, and Windows using “-dx9single”. Because those are the firm numbers.

Skyliner.7436:

There is no “port” as such the whole linux client request is null.
The mac client uses technology based on WINE to run on OSX. Perhaps tehy added an installer, but not much more than that.
I pity the poor souls who get the game for mac. if performance under native windows is bad, I can only imagine how worse it’s gonna be on OSX.

Haven’t you heard from Valve? Games run better on Linux

I think people may have missed the sarcasm tags in the OP.

I know I read them clear as day.

To make this clear (It’s stated maybe three posts up, but when do forums care about people reading the whole thread?)

GW2 for Mac is using a compatibility layer similar to WINE, so that the devs can write for Windows and DirectX, and just have the Mac handle it.

This begs the question, why didn’t they go to CodeWeavers instead for the better OS coverage? (CodeWeavers are the group behind WINE, and WINE does work just fine on Mac)

And I still want to see the numbers on All Users, Mac Users, and “-dx9single” users.

To make that count accurate, I would encourage anyone who is dual-booting to install PlayOnLinux and run GW2 from there, so ANet get accurate numbers of what people want. I can confirm that it runs just fine.

Undermine.1678:

a Linux Client is not really needed since there are Terminal Emulation with linux to create a windows shell such as WINE.

Not going to pick that apart, but replacing Linux with Mac is just as true there. Yet they did it anyway.

They seem to have done it by using a proprietary, Mac-only Wine-type application, but thay still support it.

I still want to see the numbers on All Users, Mac Users, and “-dx9single” users.

Well, that disagrees with my experience, I find I hit harder underwater. To the point where sometimes I actually take a fight into the water from on land.

What classes have you tried, and to what level? And have you upgraded your Aquabreather?

Colonel Kernel.7506:

@John Yanez
Try *nix

@Illiander
Actually there are 25 or so bullet points that an OS must adhere to in order to be considered a Unix. Linux is missing like 4 or 5 last time I saw the list.

That’s why I put “Everyone Knows” as a quote, rather than a statement of fact. I assumed that there were a few things missing.

TeeBeeNZ.1963:

If I was Arenanet I would wait to see how things go for Valve first. We should see the steam linux beta next month if all goes to plan and a small selection of titles moving over each week. Within 3 months or so there should be enough data to say of its worth it or not. I’d love a linux client, but Im also aware of the additional costs involved.

Supporting Wine should not have significantly more cost than supporting Transgaming.

Also, ANet now have the info on who’s using Linux, I for one would like to see a numbers breakdown of how many people are using the Mac client, and how many are using the Windows client with “-dx9single”. If the Mac numbers are smaller, then ANet have some serious thinking to do.

Yeah, the big shame is that the only thing really stopping Linux from officially being a UNIX is the certification costs. “Everyone knows” it would pass, so no-one is bothering with the cert. And it’s used more than the official UNIXes these days anyway, so it’s becoming the standard.

With their big push on security, I really feel the need to pipe up about “Linux doesn’t suffer from keyloggers.” <Waits for someone to try the old dead horse about size of target>

AoE only being five targets was implemented somewhere around BW2.
Specifically to stop the massive dominance of AoE in WvW.

World map player limits are good for actual competition. I know you just want to AoE nuke everyone while massively outnumbering them, but some of us want something approaching a fair fight in PvP. Perhaps your playstyle favours certain dynamic events in Orr?

Third one is good, but is probably constrained by a combination of the Minimum System Specs and their server bandwidth. ie: They’re throwing out player details to stupid numbers of clients, so they prune the least important ones to maintain quality for the rest. Though it would be nice if they gave some indication that a zerg is headed your way. Maybe a single large dustcoud for a group of more than 10 players who are being graphicly culled?

I would second this. It seems such an odd thing to have left out, it must just be an oversight.

tiennen.6890:

Crise.9401:

Just something worth pointing out, according to their press release ANet is using/used middleware solution to accelerate the creation of their Mac client… I am unaware of such solutions for linux at the moment.

However, the point is, because the middleware they are using is aimed at Mac OS X portability of games I doubt the point about Mac and linux being similar platforms holds water here, unless the middleware in question supports linux as well, which based on the website of the mentioned company it does not.

Edit: http://transgaming.com/cider

Considering that Mac OSX runs on the Linux code base, I don’t see how there would be many problems making it compatible.

A user could prolly could make it work right now if you used the MAC OSX client on Linux.

OSX doesn not run on Linux, it runs on BSD. Very different UNIXes.

Now, if they’d done a generic UNIX port, or, you know, just officially supported Wine (Transgaming seem to use something similar that’s Mac-specific), then they could have made everyone happy, rather than just the small number of Apple fans.

Adzy.8370:

or just buy a Windows..

How about: “No”. I like not having to worry about keyloggers and virii, or paying through the nose for software I don’t need, thanks.

alcopaul.2156:

i would understand a Mac port. But Linux?

Computers are preloaded with Winblows. I would think that a Linux port will be necessary if at least half of the computers sold in the market is preloaded with Linux.

Computers won’t come pre-loaded with Linux unless there is a significant, visible reason for manufacturers to irritate Microsoft (they get discounts for being a Microsoft-only shop). What Valve is doing is a start, Google’s comments about Ubuntu help, ANet could have been another pebble in the avalanche.

There is this wonderful “News and Announcements” section at the top of the OFFICIAL FORUM. You also have your own bunnying website.

Why would you think using facebook or twitter, both of whom have serious security concerns, for official status updates is a good idea?

This was infuriating during the betas, and it’s plain unprofessional now.

kozzy.8365:
“I’ve had no trouble playing Guild Wars 2 on my linux os.”

True, but official support would be appreciated, and as I said before, probably cheaper and easier than what they’re doing for Mac.

Cider!=Cedega, apparrently. Cedega==Wine.

From today’s anouncement: “means that friends and guildmates can play together regardless of what operating system they favor.”

I would assume that means that either a linux client is coming, official support for running on Wine is coming, or ANet are pretending that the OS that runs all their servers doesn’t really exist, as plenty of us “favour Linux”. Or maybe they run their servers on BSD and official support for that is in the pipes?

@ANet: You could have saved yourself some money if you’d decided to just officially support Wine. It already works (with a few easily-availible patches), and then you wouldn’t have had to pay Transgaming for Mac support. Or you could have gone to CodeWeavers, and got Mac, and Linux (and BSD, and Solaris, and…) support, probably for less than what you’re paying Transgaming, as all it would take is for two patches to be cleaned up and intergrated into trunk and it’s done.

SammyIAm.1726:

MikeFerguson.8921:

Due to the amount of people we see queued for maps while spaces are open in other maps, we have started talking about possible ways we can change the current setup to help get people into the other maps if they have space available, but that stuff is all still in the discussion phase so it’s not likely we’ll be able to change things anytime soon.

As DooJoon said, it seems like some sort of way to see how big the queue was would be helpful. Even without showing the the number of slots available in the map/server, just knowing that I’m #7 in line versus #320 in line would make a big difference in choosing where to head with my guildmates.

I would second this as an intermediate fix.

If on the button to join a WvW area it also said: “X fighting, Y queued” it would solve a lot of the bad feelings, and would balance the zones out really easily.