And yes, most truly “smote” is best and I’ll try to remember to use the proper term in the future. However, for the most part, if you say “smote” in mixed company you’re going to get some level of polite derision.
I was so happy to read today that SAB is back on track!
Yayyyy!!!!
Troll :/
I’m sorry but my intent wasn’t to troll but to try to get Anet to wake up through the means of sarcasm. I mean I get it, they have thrown the towel for SAB, but the very least they could do is re-release the old content. Personally I don’t believe Anet when they say it’s coming back neither the reason they gave for removing it. Just like I don’t believe it takes more than a year to fix WvW population issues.
SAB was more fun than the new raid content. I don’t understand why you would remove something so original and game defining, where so much work has been invested on their part.
And people who bought Infinite Coins need a compensation.
Why didn’t you just say this then o.o
They were being sarcastic with their post.
And it really is shocking that no one caught the obvious tone of sarcasm they couldn’t hear because it’s text.
Ugh, I looked at this and said, it’s cool, and I definitely want it, but not for the price. I’ll just wait, and even then I only need one, not two. But now I know exactly why I want five. One for my Copper fed, one for my silver fed, and the other three for my eaters.
Is the guy who made SAB still employed at Anet? I forget his name (Josh something?), but he used to post a lot on the forums until he got in trouble for it. Someone somewhere posted a link to his blog where he commented on having to have his posts reviewed before he posted them, contrary to what Gaile had said (she may have been unaware of this disciplinary action).
This is the largest and most viewed post in all the forums. Shouldn’t that tell you something, Anet?
As far as I know Josh Foreman is still around. He’s kind of important.
It was just a thing to see if they could do it, and they cheated and broke whatever they could get away with in the original build of the game to make it work the way it does.
That explains a lot, and makes me appreciate SAB a lot more. It also infuriates me, however, that it was their pet project, yet they caved in to customer demands after the second installment (latency issues, no more timed water spouts), but then they refuse to accommodate to demand for its return (in ANY way shape or form, I don’t care!).
We, the ones who actually enjoy SAB, are in the minority when it comes to customer demand. Our voices are not heard over the booing of the rest of the crowd.
I haven’t returned to GW2 for HoT. The sense of community and purpose I had with fellow jumpers in SAB simply does not exist anywhere else. SAB was a place where anyone could commit major goofs and it’d still be amusing. It was a place where people waited for each other and as a result felt appreciated. It was a place where jumping on a pixel that was different from before, felt like a new experience, because anything can happen.
It was a place where I could root for someone else’s success. Where every little jump made a tangible difference.
So what actually happened was, World 1 was wildly successful. Because of that Josh got a full team to make World 2 and went WAY overboard on content compared to World 1. Every little thing he came up with he implemented. Unfortunately the result is that it had certain clear issues, primarily length. It also had a bunch of bugs that, when combined with timing and limits on coin availability, became a serious issue.
The issues, coupled with the opening of WvW season 1, or whatever it was called, made World 2 kind of a failure. Especially when comparing it to World 1. Add that to “minority” status, and SAB is a very low rung on priorities. But as long as it keeps coming up, as long as social media personalities keep asking in interviews, and they do, it will happen. It’s just going to take a lot of work to break what was broken so it fixes the problems.
And how do you propose ANet does this? A million tooltips when you hover over an item?
Yet another pop up to click through when you salvage something despite people asking for those “are you sure” pop ups to go away?
You give a problem but you don’t have a better solution for ANet. ANet’s solution? /wiki [item/place/whatever] it will open up the wiki. Because the wiki is such a good place to go for information, ANet decided that it didn’t need to devote resources to reinventing the proverbial wheel.
It’s called in-game databases and bestiaries. That’s the solution. And like the topic is about, if there were “Did you know?”s for random stuff like this, it would help. That is why a lot of games have these.
And I’ll fix that for you, white knight.
Anet decided that it didn’t have to do the work if players would do it for free for them allowing them to devote more resources to making money.
I don’t think you understand the problem. For this specific problem: why would I even type “/wiki changing stats on ascended armor” ? If I don’t even know that you can do that. Why would I wiki that? You can’t do that for any other armor in the game and you couldn’t do it with ascended for years. Hence, why would I /wiki it?
But I was being serious about the alternative. Don’t give people shaman ascended drops. Let players pick their stat from the drop, then this isn’t even an issue (mostly).
It’s kind of like how since the games release you haven’t been able to combine 4 superior sigils in the forge but then one day they make an update that allows you to. Meanwhile, you’re still selling them to NPCs for silver because you couldn’t possibly know otherwise.
I love this argument. People don’t read the readily available information about the game, so lets give them different readily available information they won’t read.
The information already exists. Cluttering up the game with the same information is pointless. This is a universal thing across games. The information is in the patch notes, if you want to know what’s going on you have to read the patch notes. If you don’t want to read the patch notes, then you’re going to make mistakes. It’s alright to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.
Tier 6 bag is the only thing that is consistently worth buying. Everyone has infinite laurels, that’s a true thing. You get them for doing nothing, just log in. The only things that are worth buying are ascended gear, and once you’ve done that you never need to do it again… per character. Eventually you will run out, maybe, at which point the Tier 6 bag is still worth what it always was worth.
I am fine with TP bundling, on the condition that they also make the things in the bundle available outside of the bundle. This does not even have to be at the same time as the bundle. If I knew that after a month, or whatever time period, the bundle would go away and the pieces in the bundle would become available individually, at a marked up price, obviously, I would be perfectly ok with it.
Currently, though, bundle items are only available in the bundle and seem to stay that way indefinitely. I’m not ok with this.
“play how you want” does not apply to this. It was a statement about getting to max level and getting the strongest gear, which at the time was only exotic. Want masteries? Do things that earn masteries. Doesn’t matter if you like that activity or not.
Why doesn’t it matter if we like the activity or not?
Anet made Festive Imbiber last only through Wintersday. People complained that they didn’t like the activity and so Anet changed their stance and now Festive Imbiber will be open all year.
Things can change for the better if people complain about activities they don’t enjoy… It’s kind of the point of complaining…
If masteries where a limited time achievement you might have a point. You can earn more masteries than what’s required, clearly they didn’t want to just give it away and yet still gave you options. They want you to work for it
Being time-limited has nothing to do with my argument. My argument was that people don’t like certain activities and therefore they have the right to complain to seek adjustments.
Actually it has everything to do with it. The only way to complete Festive Imbiber is to drink Wintersday Drinks. They did not change the amount you need to drink, and they did not change the only way to acquire drinks which is getting them from presents or buying them. They only changed how long you had to complete the achievement.
They changed how long you had to complete the achievement. Why? Because people complained.
So it still proves my point. So I’m saying there is no difference… I thought that was clear.
Because people complained about fairness. And ANet saw reason in the argument, making it more fair. This is not a matter of fairness. It’s completely different.
There are already 17 more available Mastery Points than you need to unlock everything in Tyria. That’s a line of four masteries worth of points. If you can’t manage to find something you can do in that much, then you’re not even trying.
Doesn’t the Revenant have 15 underwater skills? 5 weapon skills and 10 utility? Except for the Ele, that’s the same number of skills as the other professions. It’s just in different places as the other non Ele professions have 10 weapon skills and 5 utility.
There are 17 more tyria mastery points than required to max them all. So there are plenty of options
For HoT there are 22 more mastery points than required. Good luck.
I did not know that, this actually really disappoints me. There is no good reason to have extras since they’re not good for anything else.
“play how you want” does not apply to this. It was a statement about getting to max level and getting the strongest gear, which at the time was only exotic. Want masteries? Do things that earn masteries. Doesn’t matter if you like that activity or not.
Why doesn’t it matter if we like the activity or not?
Anet made Festive Imbiber last only through Wintersday. People complained that they didn’t like the activity and so Anet changed their stance and now Festive Imbiber will be open all year.
Things can change for the better if people complain about activities they don’t enjoy… It’s kind of the point of complaining…
If masteries where a limited time achievement you might have a point. You can earn more masteries than what’s required, clearly they didn’t want to just give it away and yet still gave you options. They want you to work for it
Being time-limited has nothing to do with my argument. My argument was that people don’t like certain activities and therefore they have the right to complain to seek adjustments.
Actually it has everything to do with it. The only way to complete Festive Imbiber is to drink Wintersday Drinks. They did not change the amount you need to drink, and they did not change the only way to acquire drinks which is getting them from presents or buying them. They only changed how long you had to complete the achievement.
I’m not complaining about the amount of options, i’m complaining about what the options require me to do.
I’ll be more specific:
Why can’t I unlock tyria mastery’s through hot content?
Why Didn’t they add mastery’s related to fractals?
Why didn’t they add mastery’s related to dungeons or pvp?
Why didn’t they add mastery’s related to WvW?
You’re failing to understand the point and design structure behind Mastery Points. There are not meant to be more Mastery Points than you need to unlock all the Masteries. Mastery Points are meant to be a finite resource. The fact that you ran out and are now stuck with options you don’t like is testament to it actually working as intended.
Read my above post
This works as intended for NEW Players. Not for old ones who decided to skip content because back in the day you could obtain various things in various ways.
Where did that go eh?
Of course it does. Just because you skipped it doesn’t mean it went away. It’s still there. Whether you want to do it or not is the choice you make. It’s not on ANet to fix anything. You’ve decided that not doing those things is more important to you than having all Masteries completed. If you change your mind, you’ll do what you need to do. It’s as simple as that.
I’m not complaining about the amount of options, i’m complaining about what the options require me to do.
I’ll be more specific:
Why can’t I unlock tyria mastery’s through hot content?
Why Didn’t they add mastery’s related to fractals?
Why didn’t they add mastery’s related to dungeons or pvp?
Why didn’t they add mastery’s related to WvW?
You’re failing to understand the point and design structure behind Mastery Points. There are not meant to be more Mastery Points than you need to unlock all the Masteries. Mastery Points are meant to be a finite resource. The fact that you ran out and are now stuck with options you don’t like is testament to it actually working as intended.
What would happen to people with 100% before the maps were added?
It wouldn’t be fair to new players who would have more to explore than others
How would f2p players complete World if part was locked behind a paywall?
I understand your sentiment, but the existing system throws up far less problems. They just need to rename it “core World completion” and it will be fine.
The same thing that happens now when new PoIs or Waypoints are added, nothing at all. New players have to complete 100% map complete on those maps, not 100% minus the additional points, so why should new maps not be part of it. I’ve never understood why Southsun has no map completion at all, let alone counting toward world completion.
Also, for all you people talking about pay walls, maybe reread the OP?
and the new HOT maps (only for players who have HOT)
HoT shouldn’t ever count, though. HoT should count toward HoT completion. The base game should count toward the base game. Just Southsun, Dry Top, and Silverwastes should all count toward the base game.
It works the same as it’s always done. All three years, I sometimes end up in an instance that is on “free play” and I’ve never been in an instance where I could join a song mid-way.
What changed this year is that people are more avidly farming for Wintersday Gifts, since a lot of folks decided that’s a good way to farm drinks (whether it is or not is a different topic). Consequently, this year Choir Bells instances are more consistently populated, whereas in previous years they tended to be empty outside of near reset (and then only on days when it was a daily).
tl;dr you are probably having more trouble than you expected, but it’s not due to ANet changing the mechanics.
One thing about players with large characters is that you can learn to ignore them. Your character is always at a certain location on your screen. You can eventually get used to jumping with other players and jump based on where that location on your screen is.
The problem is at the presents how ever. Where you have to make that max distance jump. Normally I’m pretty good and jumping. But on occasion I do miss that jump because a bunch of over sized people are obscuring where the platform ends.
The problem is mostly attributed to the presents being bugged. You shouldn’t be making a max distance jump. There are those blue presents there for a reason. But ever since they let the jumping puzzle be running at a constant instead of rounds like the clock tower, it’s been like that.
Bugged? They’re just the last to spawn. The only reason you don’t see them is because there are people farming the JP unlike last year. If you get used to where your character is on the screen, you can make that jump, just like any other, even if there is a norn or charr blocking your view.
They are legitimately bugged. It’s a legacy thing from the first Wintersday. It only happens from the Gingerbread path. When the wave of crumbling snow flakes reaches the end of that path a cluster of presents right in the middle pop. This is how it worked in the original JP when you reached the end from any path, so the safest way was always to go to the line third from center on the left side.
Since I only use the Gingerbread path, on account of being the easiest and fastest of the three paths, I always aim for the safe line by default. Anyone trying to run up the middle can experience any number of issues, though.
I’ve already done Toypocalypse Survivor. I thought in the past the repeatable ones didn’t count for the meta. If they do now that makes this a lot more reasonable.
Kal Spiro, you must have a lot more free time than I do. 2.5k drinks would be over 3k gifts, or over 12 stacks. I’ve farmed less than 2 stacks total so far. Am I missing something?
You don’t need to do either the candy, nor the drinks for the meta. You don’t need the candy for the skin either. I got 2.5K drinks done by the end of the first week. I slacked a lot the second week, but 2.5k times 4 equals 10k. Which means that achievement is completely doable without buying drinks, just by playing the game.
It’s not missing Lion’s Arch. Lion’s Arch isn’t the racial home of any of the races. On the first Winter’s Day event the Infinirarium traveled to each of the different cities, delivering their specific present at each stop before finally stopping in LA. But LA didn’t get a special present, it just made all of them available.
I can actually dig 300-400 ping. Yesterday evening on the 11:55 pm (Philippine Time) Teq run, my ping jumped to FOUR THOUSAND when the undead dragon arrived.
I don’t know what’s wrong. I know the net sucks in this part of the world – the Philippines is, after all, holder of the title, “Worst and Most Expensive Internet on Sol-3” – but I’ve only rarely experienced this level of bad ping only recently.
And seconding your request for a ping/fps HUD readout.
Those aren’t milliseconds, those are just regular seconds
I would love to experience the JP for myself before commenting, but so far I have not been able to get in to it. I either get a message saying it’s full or, after sitting for a while on the JP’s flash screen, am ejected back out to DR. And what is Anet’s solution for an already overcrowded instance? Make it a daily. Brilliant.
This is the thing I don’t understand. This has never been a thing before, as far as I recall. So I don’t know what changed this year.
Since no one actually waits, I don’t know what this is talking about. I jump when the presents are available. Waiting is just asking for someone else to do it and to mess up the timing.
It’s still 100% optional. It is required for a skin….
You know that you’re wrong and you clearly say so. Thanks!
:)
I don’t need to respond, all the others who did for me made sufficiently effective points, but I will anyway.
Don’t cut a quote off so that the ragged edges of the statement make you’re point. That’s called Cherry Picking. It’s disingenuous and and frankly rude. Skins are optional extras and always have been. It’s not something you need and if you’d quoted the whole statement you would have me saying the same thing twice in a row. Optional is optional. Since you don’t need the skin for any reason you don’t need to do any of the things “required” to acquire the skin.
The whole game, every achievement, gear or part of the game is totally optional. You do not need it and no one is forcing you to play any part of the game.
Because everything is optional, every criticism is wrong? I do not think so. I think the “it is optional” is a cheap way to justify a few things like grind etc.
If you WANT the skin more than you want to not do the puzzle, then you’ll have to do it. But that is you making a decision on what is more important to you, it is gauging your priorities, not being forced to do something you don’t want to do it. No one is making you do it other than you.
Right. The same is with everything else in the game. As an example: No one is forcing you to level to 80. All level 80 content is totally optional. It is your decision you want to play level 80 content and to level to 80.
So the whole “it is optional” answer to invalidate someones critique or opinion does not count and I think it is improper.
Not true. In order to play anything in HoT you are required to be level 80. In order to enter certain dungeons you are required to be certain levels. In order to do Fractals at all you are required to be level 80. In order to do Fractals at some level gear is required to be on par. In order to do Raids you have to be level 80 and gear has to be on par. In order to complete the personal story you must reach level 80. In order to do certain things other things are required. Level 80 isn’t an option if you want to play the game.
What will never be required for anything is a gear skin. That will always be optional because it doesn’t provide for anything and doesn’t allow for anything. It’s just cosmetic. That’s the actual difference between optional and required.
If you’d like eating, drinking and breathing are optional. It’s your choice to continue living. It’s not actually required for anything. This is why YOUR argument is invalid.
I have no reason to believe I’m not still at least passable.
Problem is, online games are not like offline ones and them trying to pretend they are, against all the evidence to the contrary, is really not working, for me.
Maybe if I had a $3000 laptop, instead of my reasonably new, but less expensive “gaming” one and I lived on the same continent as the server I play on, it would be OK?
But, in my current location, with my current laptop?
Nope.
I could also turn all my settings down, but I don’t want to.
Why play a beautiful game, just to spend all your time looking at rubbish graphic quality?
Or, for significantly less you could get not a laptop. And considering WP plays on the NA servers (I believe) and has a whole series of the Jumping Puzzles, it seems like that is probably your biggest issue, though ISP is still a valid complaint.
Ok… so I had the opportunity to spend the past couple hours inside a bugged JP. Timer set to 00:00, like the one guy in the post. They have it wrong. I was all alone in there, the last person to finally leave it. It has nothing to do with people approaching anything. I think this might actually be a relic of the original Wintersday event. The presents start popping when the the crumbling wave starts approaching them. In the original Wintersday you couldn’t stop to rest on the platform, you had to immediately move forward because if you didn’t the presents would pop and you’d be stuck.
They are correct that it only happens in conjuncture with the Gingerbread path.
I suppose the difference is that I truthfully see no difference between the game we started with, the one we had before HoT and the one we have now including HoT. There is just more content, some of which is harder than others and some of which requires more people. It’s all the same game that I enjoyed before.
It serves the same purpose, but it’s much harder to get through. It’s either I cough up way more more money for a small boost to my connection, or just wallow in the mud.
Granted, but there is really nothing ANet can do at all to alleviate it.
This game doesn’t cater for casuals anymore. I don’t care for anything other than WvW and PvP either.
Caters to me just fine, I’m as casual as it comes. I’ve started most of the elites. I finished one, am pretty close on two others, and I’ll get to the rest when I do. That’s casual. If you expect to burn through all of them right away that’s the opposite of casual. If you’re a casual, be casual and you’ll get things done eventually. If you’re not casual, then you shouldn’t have any trouble burning through everything and getting things done right away.
All through WvW on a dead end tier? Wow that’s actually impressive, if not then you should try it out lol.
I’m still casual, but it’s purely PvP now. In PvP everyone has equal footing, which makes the game fun to me.
I don’t PvP, nor WvW, neither of those things appeal to me. Being on a dead end teir, though, is a different matter entirely and doesn’t really have anything to do with casuals or casual friendly anything. PvP, though, should not be effected at all by how casual you are or otherwise.
My point was entirely based on the statement of casual friendliness.
So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.
- I am a gamer. I’ve played lots of games during my life. Most of them were good experiences. 20-40 hours of high-quality content for a fair price. It used to be that developers would strive create an experience or a challenge for players to face. These days there’s a talk of “player retention”. What a bizarre concept. It sounds like some drug dealer wanting to hook up his customers so they come back for more. All the “dailies” and achievements are just there to hook you up once the game has lost its appeal. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the core of the game is with all the fluff. What if there was no items? What do we need them for? The slot machine effect, that’s what. Reinforcement for player to keep on playing indefinitely. Minimum effort for maximal player retention.
Is this what “a game” means to you?
A gamer would not consider 10k hours playing a game they like/love as a waste of time. So maybe you just don’t actually like this game, in which case the previous question stands. why stick around if you consider the game to be nothing but a chore? You’re not doing anyone any good by it.
Y’know what else sucks? Having your connection to the server be a gate to success in jumping puzzles. No matter how good your motor skills are, you’ll never be able to complete a JP if your actions happen a second or two after you press a button.
I understand the complaints, but I kind of feel like a gate is something that can be taken out, and I don’t think that’s really the case with ping times.
I just opened some black lion chests. Each one includes a wintersday gift as well as the usual 3 random items.
Interestingly they have proved to contain last year’s loot table. I’ve only opened 3 so far (inventory space, arrgh) and here’s what was in them. The far right gift is an Unsafe one.
Come to think of it, I think that’s where I got the one I received too
After failing quite many times, I have achieved at least the level of cruising through the snowflake flatforms without even thinking about it. the boxes are one of the worst parts of the thing imo, I could never figured out the pattern, through strangely I got through quite frequent. And the absolute worst part of the puzzle: OTHER PEOPLE! gosh, so many distraction and charrs and norns are so big they can obstruct your views of the platforms.
There is no pattern. It is based on how many people are going through the gingerbread part. Reddit has a thread about it.
I would like to see that thread, because it sounds stupid and wrong. Also not effectively trackable, nor confirmable. It is more likely that it’s based on time, either actual time or timer time.
HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.
- I don’t know what long terms goals you have for your own life, but there are people out there who aren’t actually happy to announce that playing some MMO is the thing they plan to do the next five years in absence of more fulfilling hobbies. Calling it grind puts the focus on the mind-numbing activity it is. Cook for 10k hours and you’re a chef. Play piano for 10k hours and you’re a pianist. Farm game for 10k hours and you’ve just wasted your life.
So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.
This game doesn’t cater for casuals anymore. I don’t care for anything other than WvW and PvP either.
Caters to me just fine, I’m as casual as it comes. I’ve started most of the elites. I finished one, am pretty close on two others, and I’ll get to the rest when I do. That’s casual. If you expect to burn through all of them right away that’s the opposite of casual. If you’re a casual, be casual and you’ll get things done eventually. If you’re not casual, then you shouldn’t have any trouble burning through everything and getting things done right away.
After failing quite many times, I have achieved at least the level of cruising through the snowflake flatforms without even thinking about it. the boxes are one of the worst parts of the thing imo, I could never figured out the pattern, through strangely I got through quite frequent. And the absolute worst part of the puzzle: OTHER PEOPLE! gosh, so many distraction and charrs and norns are so big they can obstruct your views of the platforms.
The problem with the presents is that they’re inconsistent. There are three or four patterns, but so far I haven’t been able to figure out how to predict which pattern will be the one to occur. I’m trying to figure it out based on which ones spawn last, because that will probably be the answer.
It’s still 100% optional. It is required for a skin….
You know that you’re wrong and you clearly say so. Thanks!
:)
I don’t need to respond, all the others who did for me made sufficiently effective points, but I will anyway.
Don’t cut a quote off so that the ragged edges of the statement make you’re point. That’s called Cherry Picking. It’s disingenuous and and frankly rude. Skins are optional extras and always have been. It’s not something you need and if you’d quoted the whole statement you would have me saying the same thing twice in a row. Optional is optional. Since you don’t need the skin for any reason you don’t need to do any of the things “required” to acquire the skin. If you WANT the skin more than you want to not do the puzzle, then you’ll have to do it. But that is you making a decision on what is more important to you, it is gauging your priorities, not being forced to do something you don’t want to do it. No one is making you do it other than you.
When you regularly speed run this puzzle you can find all kinds of small shortcuts, patterns in the exploding presents, timing of the snowflake respawns, etc. There’s absolutely a puzzle aspect to it.
Not really. You learn to roll when passing a snowman. That is basically it.
If that’s all you can think of then you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Nice double post, champ. And yes, that is basically all you learn. Rest is just normal running and jumping.
As a matter of fact I’ve been refining my jumping lately. Figuring out some of the harder skipable platforms. Just because the only thing you’ve figured out is “dodge at the snowman” doesn’t mean there isn’t more to learn. When to wait on the candy cane vs making a mad dash to the peppermint. How to skip the peppermint after the turn by cutting corners and dodgerolling twice at the end. How long to wait so you don’t over take spawning platforms and which platforms you can consistently skip. Jumping straight up the presents, or having to angle right or left because an important present might burst unexpectedly.
