Guild Wars 2

I was just in Dry Top and the lag made the game unplayable.

This is not a complaint about a framerate issue. I was getting about 40-50fps. It was fine.

It would take literally 5-10 seconds for my skill actions to translate on map. Targeted leaps would only go a fraction of the distance I had specified. It was unplayable.

Yes. I completely agree.

We were successful on a TTS run a moment ago… traditional guardian reflects and such don’t work, just as reported. There’s a lot more damage to mitigate, and it feels quite a bit more difficult than before.

Mind those eggs!

thefantasticg.3984:

Oh, and doing Wurm and Teq are still virtually impossible unless on a super organized map (meaning TTS or the like).

Ha, so true! I agree emphatically. And that doesn’t even begin to speak to the flip-side of the issue, which groups like TTS face every single time they organize.

You know… just a bit of a sidebar here. I have to brag on TTS Commanders. They have the worst boss fight of all: battling the Megaserver itself for the first 15 minutes of each Tequatl and Evolved Wurm event.

• “Okay guys there are way too many AFKers here so whisper me if you have a clean map!”
• “Guys, I’m not a taxi right now! Don’t join on me! We’re looking for a clean map.”
• “No blind invites guys! If you have a map, whisper me first!”
• Two minutes later…
• “Okay, this… this is not a clean map. Only whisper me if you think you have a clean map.”
• Five minutes later…
• “Okay we have a map, so taxi on me or say in teamspeak that you’re a taxi.”
• “Guys if you get into the zone on me please drop the party and advertise so we can get everyone in…”
• “Okay the server’s full?” muttering “There are only 47 people on my tag… where is everyone…”
• “This map is no good. Okay guys, I’m tagging down and we need a new map. If you’re in 71, that one’s no good. Don’t invite me to that one.”
• “No, 71 is the last number in the ip, not the first one.”
• Five minutes after that…
• “Okay guys we have a new map so let’s taxi into this one. If you’re in 148 and see my tag, that’s the right one.”
• “Okay everyone stack on me for a supply count.”
• “Okay everyone follow my tag if you can hear me in teamspeak.”
• “Guys there are 175 people in the teamspeak channel, so move down to the Teq 3 channel if you’re not on this map already.”
• “Okay everyone, we’re running late so let’s get these positions filled. I need turret operators for turrets one through three. One two and three please.”
• Annnnd they’re off!

Yeah. That seems about as rewarding as solo farming Taidha Covington’s front gate.

So, hug your commanders, everyone! Make it “worth it” for them! Say thank you! Right now they’re battling the game just as much as they’re helping us battle the monsters inside of it.

For any of the anet developer folks who read this far, thank you very much for all of your hard work. This is just one example of why we’d really like to hear additional details from someone on what problems have officially been recognized, whether anet will address them, and how the problems will be addressed.

People are getting left out, there are tons of have- and have-nots, it’s a real shame, we’re really struggling, and we’re having to fight the game itself in order to have our fun within it. This is not how things should be. We’d really like to hear some details on how things are going to be fixed.

Hello developers,

Thank you for making Guild Wars 2!

Straight to my question:

• Does load-balancing in the Megaserver system include any sort of flood control or throttle on the rate at which players can join an instance? (For example, players may join an instance at the rate of five players per second or something.)

Please walk with me through a brief word problem: Let’s say we have 50 players in a given instance of Bloodtide Coast. We’ll call these players “anchors.” Each of these anchors has 4 other party members in another instance of that same zone. We’ll call them “extras.” So… 50 anchors, 200 extras.

Now, let’s say that within the span of about 1000ms, those 200 extras all right-click on the 50 anchors and click “Join in Bloodtide Coast.”

• What is the expected behavior after this single action by those 200 extras?
• How many of them should make it in on the first try?
• For those that don’t make it in, what response should they see from the game?
• What is the expected behavior if, over the next five minutes, the remaining extras right-click on their anchor and attempt to join about once per second?

From what I understand, TTS Commanders regularly observe that our Evolved Jungle Wurm participant stacks show 50-70 players, counting stragglers in the field of view that are AFK and not in the stack. It doesn’t add up to the hard cap by any stretch. At the same time, there are perhaps 100 players trying to join the instance. Largely, they can’t. They report one of three things: 1) a message saying that the instance is full; 2) nothing – no join, and no notice that the instance is full; 3) a successful transition to the correct instance.

We do realize that there are players wandering around in the instance and not on the stack. But since it takes so long to prep for Evolved Wurm (if it is to be done well), it all starts with a head count, and waiting five minutes for the head count to creep up is a luxury our awesome Commanders just can’t afford. If we don’t have enough committed players, we have to move to a clean map to maximize the participation rate. So in that context, we’re having a really hard time making heads or tails of the behavior we observe. Your insight would be really appreciated.

Thank you!

…

Okay okay… a few more questions, if you had time to read this far!

• Do you have any advice on ways for a Commander to gain additional insight into how many actual players are on map? Commanders currently use /supplyinfo to check the participant count in their stack… see below.
• Is there any hope for queuing to be added to PVE zone instances?
• Is there any other feature on the development radar that will approximate queuing or otherwise alleviate the overcrowding issues we currently experience?
• What advice can you give to groups that struggle to coordinate during those capstone world events that require a substantial amount of prep work and coordination?

I hope this gets fixed soon… we spend a lot of time setting up and coordinating. To have to abandon the event after working diligently to prepare is very unfortunate.

Heya!

Suggestion: WvWvW queue system reused for Megaserver instances.

• Player right-clicks on a member and picks Join in Sparkfly Fen or whatever.
• Game asks, “That instance is full. Would you like to queue up for it?”
• If the player says yes, they get some feedback somewhere showing the queue length and their position in it.

Or am I supposed to make a new topic for this suggestion?

Here’s my idea, since Megaserver isn’t going away. We need a taxi service.

My scatterbrained thoughts are to code this up as part of the LFG tool, OR code it up as part of the Commander tag and incorporate its advertisements into the LFG tool. For now I’ll describe this as special Commander-only functionality coded into the LFG Tool, but I don’t care how the scope changes:

• Add special functionality to the Open World Content section of the LFG tool.
• Commanders bring up the LFG tool, go to Open World Content, and announce an event.
• Commanders can opt to flag their announcement as private, which means only their guildmates will see it in LFG.
• Joining that LFG does not put you in the Commander’s party.
• Instead, joining them moves you to their zone and instance if there is room in the instance.

This allows people to more easily converge on Commanders. It allows the LFG tool to act as a taxi service.

“That won’t work.”

Okay wait wait wait, let’s consider a proposed scenario with TTS and Tequatl. Here’s how I’d envision this working:

• Commanders from five TTS guilds join party and go to Sparkfly Fen.
• (If there are more than five, they just subdivide appropriately and do it as two little parties.)
• Next, those commanders converge on the same instance through the normal “Join in Sparkfly Fen” option in Party.
• Each commander then opens the LFG tool, goes to World Events, and announces their own private LFG.
• Their individual guildmates join the visible LFG.
• The LFG Tool knows, based on how the LFG is defined, to transport the participant to Sparkfly in the right instance if there’s room.
• If there isn’t room, the LFG Tool says that there’s not enough room and to try again later.
• Once TTS Commanders are sure they have all their desired participants, they can opt to flag their LFGs as public to invite others!
• Unaffiliated players are then able to see the LFGs and join up until the instance is hard-capped.
• Last, Commanders take their advertisements down so as not to be harassed by /whispers facilitated by the LFG tool.

What will happen with Megaserver load-balancing in this scenario? My expectation is that it would work as designed!

• The instance in which the players begin to converge will go out of balance on the high side.
• Megaserver will automatically bias to low-count instances for non-participating players, assuming load-balancing is determined by some load-weighting metric on the server side.
• People who get caught in the candidate instance and who don’t want to participate can just rezone to bounce to a less populated instance automatically.

Thanks for reading!

+1, Matheox! My hope springs eternal that we will be able to do this eventually. I’d buy the heck out of transmutation charges if it were possible, and I’d spend a LOT more on inventory space because I’d have about 60 slots dedicated to transmuted armor.

There are some medium and light articles that would look glorious on a heavy, and I struggle with appearance for my heavy-geared characters. They lack nice, casual appearances, especially now that the rules have changed concerning town clothes.

Unlocking racial armor… Yeah I’d be okay with that too, however it is managed.

Well… I suppose……. we could all get together and roleplay in WvW…

LazJones.2138:

I hope that something can be done about this, because I miss the uniqueness of the Tarnished Coast community. You can say “it is only in the starting zones, go elsewhere” but a LOT of the main hubs were in those cities and starting zones. I don’t know if I really have anything unique to add to this thread, but I felt as if I should tell my story, as a creative person and a fan of the TC community.

I cannot agree more. Thank you very much for speaking out.

When they closed Salma and then did nothing about the concern that was voiced, it made me realize that they have no idea how extensively roleplayers use their world.

They probably don’t realize that roleplayers actually use…

a tea room in Salma
a quiet hunting lodge in the Queen’s Forest in Queensdale
a tranquil little homestead in the Vitpeln Hills of Snowden
a house, a dwelling, and a sea port in Kessex
refugee camps in three different zones…

The list is huge.

Roleplayers have used every single zone in the game as their stage, and they use open areas extensively… the zones all have such useful structures and events that roleplayers use as their stage. And their audience transcends the the Friends list, the Guild list, and even the Server list. We want roleplayers we’ve never met to walk up to our structure or our campfire, and at least with a fixed server, there was reasonable certainty we could find one another. When we couldn’t, we knew it because the map said “Overflow.”

Now we are facing the demonstrated certainty that two roleplayers can be in the same area and miss each other on account of the Megaserver’s balancing decision.

Please

Hi Evon!

Well… hmmmmmmm. I don’t know. I mean roleplayers in GW2 play:

Nightmare Courtiers
Separatists
Sons of Svanir
Norn females who venerate Jormag
Flame Legion
Inquest
Aetherblades

They do it quite well, from a roleplaying perspective. The personal story precludes this type of characterization and has to be ignored though, and I’m assuming that this is what you are referring to – villains more supported by the game’s official storytelling.

Casting an entire race as the villain does not seem in keeping with the style of the GW2 writing team. We can already see from the way GW2 adversaries are written that these supervillains don’t care about race, so much as their influences have limitations. Consider that Sylvari are not corruptible by the dragons (yet), and how Norn females appear to never be cast as Icebrood. Doubtless there are other interesting observations to be made about this.

Sexism is a bit of a different topic, since there’s a strongly-suggested example of sexism in the game, so I’ll split hairs on that for a moment. Jormag is probably not sexist per se. Rather, for some reason, Jormag is limited in its ability to bring females under its controlling influence. Sexism is a driver for those who venerate Dragon as Sons of Svanir (Jora killed their leader after all), but from the chair of the player, we see clearly that many males, and apparently all females are written such that they can resist the corrupting influence of Jormag. This puts them in a place of strength, not weakness. The sexism only exists at a lower level within the supervillain’s faction, and even then it only seems to be on display with a couple of NPCs. So as far as I’m concerned, these observations give the idea of sexism a real run for its money.

At least, that’s how I’ve always looked at it, based on the writing that I’ve seen. I’m a little biased though – one of the characters I developed happened to be a female norn that began venerating Dragon. And I am pretty sure that the good folks who have delved farther into the lore may take exception to what I’m saying. I’d love to read it and learn more, so perhaps they’ll send me a PM or something.

Anyway… I’m not saying I disagree. I’m saying that the momentum among the game writers seems to avoid our contemporary moral problems and classic lines of social division by race, gender, and orientation. I just can’t see them embracing the idea of a wholly villainous race.

With apologies if this is an infraction, I am repeating this message from the RP thread because there is no indication that the RP thread is officially recognized.

Dear ArenaNet,

Thank you for making Guild Wars 2. It has been a source of enjoyment to many, many people.

I am deeply concerned with the diminished roleplay aspects that this update has brought to the game.

As suggested before, please give us a roleplay checkbox somewhere and consider it when balancing us.

It seems to fix so much:

• People who want to RP, and who want to see others doing so, get balanced to places where other people have opted for the same thing.
• People who don’t roleplay, but who enjoy reading it, also tick the checkbox to be balanced accordingly.
• People who hate it and don’t want to see it simply don’t opt in.
• People who don’t care simply don’t opt in.

Roleplay is the only reason I picked Tarnished Coast when I first started playing. Before I ever bought the game, I did research to see where the roleplayers were. I saw that my best luck was on Tarnished Coast, so that’s where I signed up.

Me picking Tarnished Coast was me clicking the Roleplay checkbox.

Dear ArenaNet,

Thank you for making Guild Wars 2. It’s a very nice game.

Once you block another player, is emote text supposed to be blocked as well?

My observation is that blocking a player does not seem to block their stock and custom emotes, and I am not sure whether this is a long-standing bug or a feature or whatever so here I am.

• If it does block these, about how long is the expected delay once you block a person? It does not appear to be immediate.
• If not, please consider a remedy to this as soon as possible. If I block someone, I don’t want to see any of their text.
• I will add anecdotally that the apparent inclusion of Kessex in the Megaserver environment may have amplified this issue substantially for me and my RP friends. Last night was remarkably bad once we all managed to get into the same instance.

I am a roleplayer, and use chat extensively, but I am extremely reluctant to file a complaint about someone due to their lighthearted banter whether it distracts me or not. When they get nasty, they definitely get reported. But short of that, when they’re just having their own fun and they’re not really breaking any rules, I imagine they have as much right to the chat box as I do, correct? So I simply want to filter them out and avoid a confrontation, you know?

Therefore, I do ask that I be empowered to minimize these kinds of distractions on my own, please. Block comes close but it doesn’t seem to work as it should, and the issue is going to get worse as more players are piled into the same instance.

Making blocked people and their effects disappear entirely would be even better. Once they know they’re blocked, a troller’s next steps are usually to spam weapon and AOE skills in the middle of the scene and turn it into a circus…

…which would be like totally fine if we were roleplaying a circus or something!

…but we’re usually not, you see.

…anyway… so… that’s all, I guess. Thanks for reading this far.

Moderators,

Thank you for all your hard work keeping things orderly in the forums!

There is some confusion as to whether some forum members, discussing Roleplay issues in the Megaserver environment here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-and-RP

…need to re-post everything they have to say right here in this official thread.

There is an official comment from Colin Johanson in that thread. However, the thread is not listed as official, and there is a lot of feedback from the roleplay community. I want to be sure we’re voicing our concerns in the right place.

Would you please clarify for us these questions:

• Is that thread official?
• If so, do you intend to recognize it as an official thread here:
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feature-Patch-Feedback-Thread-list
• If not, would you please consider locking it up and advising people to re-post their feedback here?

We’d really appreciate the clarification. I am sorry in advance if posting here is inappropriate. I figured since this was the only official feedback thread on the topic, I may as well ask for clarification here instead of there.

Question, is the roleplay issue officially here? Or do we double up our posts here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Guild-World-Events-Megaservers-WvW

Roleplayers are being trolled in megaserver environments and can’t adequately block perpetrators.

From what we can tell, these folks are not from Tarnished Coast. Normally we wouldn’t even see them.

Blocking a player does not appear to stop /emote text.

See Kessex Hills, 7:26PM Server Time, 4/17/2014. Our guild started out split into two instances but were able to join up in one… and the trolls invaded.

We use one of the structures in Kessex as our Guild’s office… it was never this bad before.

Dear ArenaNet,

Thank you for making Guild Wars 2. It has been a source of enjoyment to many, many people.

I am deeply concerned with the diminished roleplay aspects that this update has brought to the game.

As suggested before, please give us a roleplay checkbox somewhere and consider it when balancing us.

It seems to fix so much:

• People who want to RP, and who want to see others doing so, get balanced to places where other people have opted for the same thing.
• People who don’t roleplay, but who enjoy reading it, also tick the checkbox to be balanced accordingly.
• People who hate it and don’t want to see it simply don’t opt in.
• People who don’t care simply don’t opt in.

Roleplay is the only reason I picked Tarnished Coast when I first started playing. Before I ever bought the game, I did research to see where the roleplayers were. I saw that my best luck was on Tarnished Coast, so that’s where I signed up.

Me picking Tarnished Coast was me clicking the Roleplay checkbox. Okay?

That was me opting in.

Please don’t take this away from me.

Please tell me you understand this complaint.

+1

This will be extremely useful, similar to the way it worked in GW1. It was a huge time-saver then.

I’ve noticed that I don’t have a whole lot of use for Chef these days, and I don’t know if anyone has talked about its future. But I got to thinking about ways to breathe life into that skill. It occurred to me the number of complaints about how to get various types of cloth. And, while it felt like off-label use of a Chef, it occurred to me that a lot of textile manufacture has a substantial degree of heating, bleaching, and water-based “cooking” processes involved.

So an idea I had for L400-500 crafting for Chef would be the manufacture of scraps of various types of cloth!

• Jute: harvested from various Corchorus plants. These harvesting nodes might need to be added.
• Cotton: Cotton bolls would be harvested via sickle from cotton plants, which would also need to be added.
• Wool: raw wool would be harvested (via sickle) from Dolyaks and other non-hostile creatures.
• Linen: fibers would be harvested from flax plants
• Silk: strands would be harvested from silkworm coccoons located on various bushes.
• Gossamer: harvested from spiderwebs in high-level areas.

In all cases, three strands make a scrap.

Anyway, a thought!

I believe the developer’s description of poker-style allocation is called round-robin distribution. It looks like two overflow maps today (1/25/2014, 12:00 Server Time and 14:00 Server Time) experienced a problem in which round-robin distribution on platforms did not occur. We had three platforms with four or five, and one with zero.

I personally saw what appeared to be the an empty platform with a single boss fighting an NPC in my overflow at noon server time. Others reported a similar issue at the 2pm overflow.

I do not believe that what I saw was a problem with my culling settings, furthermore. My character model limit is set to Highest, and there was a platform farther on that had players visible.

So the conversation has morphed into a discussion of Silk as a broken commodity on the market. Exciting! I should have expected the conversation to meander from the original post, as my initial question can only be answered authoritatively by ArenaNet anyway. I love it when a thread turns into group therapy!

Okay so first, I will make no argument in defense of Silk on the TP prior to the December update. It was lousy. Way too depressed.

Second, I cannot argue against Thaddeus’ contention that ArenaNet might consider adjustments to bring up the price of other t5 commodities.

Third, I likewise cannot argue against Murven’s claim that Silk was “broken” and has been “fixed,” though I would contend that this ignores the elephant in the middle of the room.

All that said, I contend that the current Silk requirements for ascended armor crafting represent a substantial overcorrection for that commodity’s former price in the market.

Hi everyone. Thanks for your responses.

While I hope for an official response to this, I don’t really expect to get one. Realizing that they have people who watch the markets, and they know what has happened over the past month, ArenaNet must be okay with what’s going on. There have been no resource nodes for cloth since the beginning of the game. They had to know that this would be a bottleneck… it has to be intended.

I dislike this intensely. I hope this is remedied, because my gosh, it currently costs over 7gp to buy the materials for a spool of silk weaving thread. To me, that’s insane.

Hello,

Thanks for making gw2! It’s still very enjoyable.

Something’s been bothering me lately. I’m anxious to understand why twice as much silk is required to create its ascended crafting material, Spool of Silk Weaving Thread, as compared to other ascended crafting materials.

I will confess, I dislike this bottleneck pretty intensely. I mean it’s not just Silk, either… all cloth materials are required by all armor types. And no cloth materials can be gathered from resource nodes.

Here are today’s prices for relevant t5 materials

• Elder wood plank: 1.2sp
• Mithril Ingot: 1.02sp
• Cured Thick Leather Square: 0.31sp
• Bolt of Silk: 7.8sp

In mid-December, a bolt of silk was about 28 copper.

I doubt I’m alone when I say that I’m hoping for a remedy. Here were my ideas:

• Put in harvesting nodes that allow us to craft various cloths…
• Lower the Silk requirement…
• Let us downgrade materials in the Mystic Forge…

Or maybe I’m just making up a problem that doesn’t really exist. Is this an issue for other players?

I want sooo much more concerning these world events like Tequatl… it’s hard to put down just one thought. But I want ways to engage these world bosses dynamically, apart from the locked scenes on the map.

I never WvW, and I never PvP, apart from getting stuff to fulfill my objectives in the PvE environment. So those cool blueprints? I give them away. I’d rather not! I want to use them in the PvE environment.

It would work like this:

• When a world boss pre-event starts, I want to be permitted to deploy siege equipment wherever I want, and have effect on the scene.
• When the world boss event is over, all siege equipment de-spawns.

…Maybe?

Thank you very much for the encouragement, and for confirming that I’m not just seeing things. I hope this is something they’ll be able to get to. It’s not a show-stopping issue, but it can definitely be a drag when you try to swap skills between fights.

Striker, thank you for the additional examples. Hopefully this is a very low-cost fix that the Developers can see to. I didn’t realize it would hurt Warriors at all, let alone quite that much. Ouch!

Speaking of Devs… thank you for making Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet! It’s a great game.

I noticed that it was removed from the historical achievements list, but it never showed back up for me as a jump puzzle that could be completed. I navigated the JP as well, on 10/20 or 10/19, and did not receive any credit for it.

I acquired both pieces of the key in the emerald jp on Tarnished Coast yesterday, but couldn’t get completion for the jp and couldn’t open the chest with the key halves.

Hi!

The scope of my testing of this bug is specific to Guardians and shouts. It seems to only happen under very specific conditions, and I’ve been trying to nail it down for months. I finally found some decent steps to reproduce the issue, and have created a video to illustrate it.

Basically, I like to get set up on Guardian to run and will use the combo “Retreat!” and “Save Yourselves!” to stack up quickness. What I noticed is that once in a while, when my skill bar is set up wrong and I realize this after I’ve activated 7 and 8 to stack up swiftness, I try to switch 9 to Save Yourselves in order to get swiftness stacked up properly.

What ends up happening is that Save Yourselves automatically inherits the countdown timer of the last skill used, and flips over as if it’s cooling down.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set utility skills to 7) Retreat; 8) Wall of Reflection; 9) Stand Your Ground
2. Activate 7) Retreat
3. Activate 8) Wall of Reflection
4. Switch 9) Stand Your Ground to Save Yourselves

Observe how Save Yourselves inherits the remaining cooldown timer for Wall of Reflection, and will not activate.

Next, do this:

1. Allow all skills to cool down.
2. Activate 7) Retreat
3. Activate 8) Wall of Reflection
4. Switch 9) Save Yourselves to Stand Your Ground

Observe that the same issue occurs.

Okay, so the #9 skill slot is being toggled between skills within the Shout discipline. What happens if it’s moved to a different discipline?

1. Allow all skills to cool down.
2. Activate 7) Retreat
3. Activate 8) Wall of Reflection
4. Switch 9) Stand Your Ground to Purging Flames, a Consecration.

No bug, like this is a problem with Shouts only.

Another thing: depending on what skill occupies slot 8, and possibly the order in which the skills are activated, this bug won’t repro.

Here’s my loadout:
Guardian 80
25 III VII
25 IV VI
0
10 II
10 VI

I’ve done a quick FRAPS video to illustrate the bug. The example video is here:

http://youtu.be/IX6Fz57eHU4

The problem, as it was pointed out to me, is class identification in PVP.

I am completely willing to accept the idea of replacing any armor appearance with any other armor appearance, any armor with any clothing appearance, and any clothing with any armor appearance. So +1 to you for that.

This combination of features that blurs the line between armor, which is class-specific, and clothing, which is not, MUST come with the ability for a PVPer to override your custom armor with stock appearances so that they know how to properly react to you as an incoming enemy. If that feature already exists, great. If not, it does need to be included or our PVP/WvW types will be quite angry with this appearance feature.

Hello everyone!

Roleplayers who gather for large festivals run into a very severe issue with character visibility. Most of us assumed it was a culling issue.

On 6/22, there were about 25 or 30 of us attempting to observe an archery contest. We had to get ridiculously close in order to observe the actual archery, and people were constantly moving around because they weren’t confident that they were able to view the entire scene.

Suggestion:

Please consider adding PvE character limit and PvE character quality settings to Graphics Options, similar to the options that are available on the PVP side. It would be very nice if you would please give us some control over the number of characters we have in view in the PVE world. I would suggest that the options include the following:

High
Medium
Low
None

Pretty please?

This will also permit players who do not care to interact the opportunity to

We don’t ask for much, because we’re out exploring this wonderful world that was created, but this truly does get in the way of an immersive experience.

I can’t believe this is closed! Please, open this area up! I can name scores of players in Tarnished Coast who use this area daily.

Please… It has been such an excellent area for us to roleplay in.

Please?

Heya everyone,

Thank you for making and continuing to develop Guild Wars 2. I love this game! It’s such great fun.

This is hard for me to explain since I don’t know the graphic design / 3D terms to describe it. There seems to be some kind of “light box” or light source that shines down on the character from above it. In the case of Norn using a certain helmet style, the light source is not positioned high enough and some artificial shadowing is visible.

You know what, I don’t know the terms so this is hard to describe. I’ll just give steps to repro and you designer-types can tell ME how to properly articulate it!

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1) Make a norn female. (Not sure about Norn males, though I would imagine this applies to them as well since they can be even taller.)
2) Max the character’s height.
3) Equip a Vigil helm. It may not have to be this style, but the Vigil helm is particularly tall.
4) Color the horse hair element at the top of the helmet something very light so the problem is easier to see. I colored mine Winter Sky since it’s in the starter set.
5) Zoom in and watch the top part of the helmet.

See that shadow line near the top of the horse hair? It’s like there’s an invisible light source above the character and the helmet is high enough that it’s above the light source.

Workaround: color the horse hair portion of the helmet a dark color so you don’t notice it.

Thanks!

Just let people copy armor skins between armor weights. As in, transfer a medium armor skin onto heavy armor. Put a heavy armor skin on light armor. etc. It seems so simple.

• There is no further financial investment in art resources
• The people who want skimpy stuff get three times more variety from existing skimpy stuff
• The people who don’t want more skimpy stuff don’t have to worry about anet dedicating resources to creating new skimpy stuff
• anet gets to sell conversion stones in the store
• We can kick the can down the road a few months

I know this conversation took place about a month ago, but I came back to the forums to post a comment about heavy armor wearers deserving circlets and came across this thread while researching.

Thank you very much for thinking about this topic. I’m doing my part to add to this thread and up-vote other writers who have contributed meaningfully to the discussion. I have the same position on this subject as the post from TottWriter above me, and couldn’t agree more.

I truly long for more customization.

• Put out some town clothes, even if they are race- or gender-specific as designed right now.
• Let players mix armor appearances from other armor types. Stop tying light, medium, and heavy armor to the armor’s appearance. A Norn female wearing a tier 2 heay top and a tier 3 heavy bottom looks fit for a beach outing in Cozumel. Not a romp around the Orrian wastelands. If that is heavy armor, ANYTHING can be heavy armor. There are examples in each armor type of this same situation.
• Let people push armor over into town clothes. In fact, stop differentiating between armor and town clothing all together. Merge the ideas and use the town clothes slot as an alternate gear slot. That helps those of us who switch gear for loot farming vs. being properly geared for dungeons.

These mechanical limiters in the game’s design are a bit lost on me. They seem to have our interests in mind, but they are not what I would consider optimal at all. We have features that are in the right place, but they do the wrong thing. There is a way to fix this and make money doing it, so please consider it.

When lots of time is spent on things like the Super Arcade box, it’s nice, even though it doesn’t interest me. So I’m really hopeful that at some point they can focus on the things that appeal to folks like me as well: personalizing my characters, looking nice, having lots of clothing options… put a stone in the store that lets me do what I want to get the appearance the way I want it. I’ll buy a bunch of them, and I know I’m not the only one.

Anyway, lots of +1’s to give out. Thanks again for making this thread and contributing to it.

On Tarnished Coast this evening (4/24/2013 9:17PM Central Time) any time I type something in Guild I get a message stating “You are not in a guild.”

I have made sure to represent with each of the guilds I am in. Every time, I see “You are not in a guild.”

I must be in Guild Purgatory. It’s nice! Really quiet. Kind of like the library, but with Risen.

I can /whisper folks, see Party, see other stuff… just no guild.

I’ve logged for an hour… no joy.

Any thoughts on the matter? (Besides “Count your blessings!”) I’m going to make a ticket pretty soon unless anyone has something I can try.

+1, agreed, was about to post this request as well.

I didn’t like the GW1 costume system at all.

This suggestion is so simple… the art resources are already made. The clothing system is already made. It’s just a matter of making armor convertible to clothing. I am not a professional programmer, but this particular suggestion seems like it would be really easy to put in. It’s a way to bring in revenue with very little development time while additional clothing resources are developed.

So, I disagree completely, marnick: in my view it is precisely the right suggestion.

Thank you! There are some light/medium combinations that might look really elegant. Hard to know for sure, but I think there’s some real potential!

I don’t really begrudge ANet for the lack of town clothes yet, and do recognize that they’re extending effort in this area if the added selection of clothing is any indication. It occurred to me that with any armor / clothing appearance you buy, each gender and race has models and textures that are tweaked so that it looks proper. My guess is that they can’t sell a lot of the existing town clothing we see on NPCs because they aren’t tweaked to both genders, and/or they’re not tweaked for every race. There are ways around that, like by race-limiting items, but I would be willing to bet that this workaround is considered pretty inelegant and confusing.

Not so with armor that’s already designed for the players to use! Design and sell “Clothing Conversion Stones” for 50 gems apiece. Let them be used to convert any armor piece to a comparable town clothing piece. I bet you’d get a really steady flow of sales. I know I’d buy a bunch.

Okay I wasn’t clear, so I need to amend my original post. As a guardian, I wear heavy armor. When I acquire something like a Rawhide Vest, I do not see a way to equip this, whether as regular armor or as town clothing.

I want my character as a guardian to be able to equip non-heavy armor types as clothing.

Hello developers! I love this game. Thank you for making it.

For the sake of enhanced immersion, please give us a way to drop any type of armor item, whether heavy, medium, or light, into the corresponding town clothing slot, whether by letting us do it spontaneously or having some sort of transmutation stone that will permanently strip the properties of the item and flag it so that it is eligible to be slotted on the clothes side.

This will allow, for example, a heavy armor wearer to equip some of those lovely medium and light armor sets as town clothing. Others would certainly benefit similarly.

Thanks!

Hello ArenaNet! Hi everyone! I love this game.

I wish there were Branded-themed armor skins available. It has really struck me just how eerie and awesome all of the Branded humanoid races look out in Blazeridge Steppes. I sure would love to see armor that was thematically similar, and I hope you will consider making this happen sometime in the future.

Thanks!

Hi developers;

Still loving the game! Thanks for making it.

When I encounter a merchant who does not use gold/silver/copper as currency, I frequently have a problem identifying the exact currency that the merchant wants.

For those who hit the dungeons frequently, the expected currency may seem obvious, but for players like me who don’t really get into dungeons as much, this can be fairly confusing.

I suggest one of the following:

• Add a tooltip to certain areas on Vendor screens – when hovering over the price column, over the “Your funds:” section, or over any other image of the currency expected, the tooltip should display the name of the expected currency.
• Name the currency explicitly – just to the right of “Your funds:”, add the name of the currency to the right of the number and image.
• List the currency parenthetically in the title bar – at the top of the Vendor window, to the right, add the icon and name of the currency expected. I believe some vendors actually have their currency displayed here, but this is not consistently implemented.

Thanks!

Hi,

I have one primary question:

If an item is soulbound, and you delete and re-create the character to which the item is bound, will the soulbound item be equippable by that new character?

I am a roleplayer and normally stick to one character. I also normally stick to one character name.

I have decided that my character’s personality is more nornlike than human. There are also some gameplay characteristics of human characters that annoy me.

I am trying to weigh the pros and cons of deleting and re-creating this character.

I will gain:
The race that I prefer
The gameplay characteristics I prefer
The character name I continue to prefer

I will lose:
Priory Armor (Soulbound)
Mystic Claymore (Soulbound)
A nice staff (Soulbound)
220,000 Karma (I can live with that, as I’ve been saving karma jugs for a rainy day)
…I’m not sure what else I will lose. Anything that’s soulbound, basically?

Anyway this is a fairly heavy price to pay, so I’m trying to be really careful before deciding. It all kinda hinges on the question above. My first thought was to suggest Reincarnation: A character retains its name, returns to level 1, returns to the character creation screen including race, the character name is pre-filled, and inventory is not touched. This would allow the character to keep the stuff I just mentioned. Realizing that there are some technical issues with making this work, I had to move on.

I agree, the primary list could use a little clarification to save a little time. This is how I amended the list. (I’ve quoted her and made my amendments inline to make sure I’m giving her full credit for this awesome planner.)

Skye Marin.3250:

Skye Marin’s Crafting Guide – Oct 22

With this Cooking Guide you should be able to get to Level 400 for about 1g 50s without having to explore for karma produce. Prices can shift very rapidly, so I’d like to start a weekly guide for the lowest-cost path to Level 400. Many players likely have most of the early ingredients. If you’re stuck in level 40-60, and you want a worth while level boost, sell some of your materials you’ve saved up, and do some cooking!

Shopping List:

25 Bag of Sugar – 8c
50 Jug of Water – 8c
75 Bag of Flour – 8c

50 Tomato – 1 Tomatoes in Bulk from Master Cook
25 Bowl of Sour Cream – 1 Sour Cream in Bulk from Master Cook
25 Cheese Wedge – 1 Cheese Wedge in Bulk from Master Cook
25 Rice Ball – 1 Rice in Bulk from Master Cook (Moved from Auction House)
50 Packet of Yeast – 2 Yeast in Bulk from Master Cook

Auction House:
75 Stick of Butter – 3c
50 Bottle of Simple Dressing – 1c
75 Head of Lettuce – 3c
25 Pile of Cinnamon and Sugar – 1c
25 Grilled Mushroom – 7c
25 Beet – 9c
25 Bottle of Ascalonian Dressing – 3c
25 Onion – 12c
25 Rice Ball – 1 Rice in Bulk from Master Cook (Moved to shopping list)
25 Zucchini – 11c
25 Head of Cabbage – 9c
50 Ball of Dough – 17c
25 Bowl of Cherry Pie Filling – 4c
25 Egg – 18c (Griffon Egg Omelet is not discoverable)
25 Green Onion – 7c (Griffon Egg Omelet is not discoverable)
25 Chocolate Bar (added Chocolate Orange)
25 Orange (added Chocolate Orange)
50 Pile of Salt and Pepper – 27c
25 Head of Cauliflower – 17c
25 Orange Cake – 3c
25 Bowl of Orange Coconut Frosting – 50c
25 Tarragon Leaves – 48c
25 Asparagus Spear – 34c
50 Slab of Red Meat – 4c
25 Cayenne Pepper – 90c
25 Bowl of Peach Pie Filling – 25c
Feel free to craft any items you see here if you can do it for cheaper.
Prices may change.

Level 0 – 100

Discover: 1 Jug of Water + 1 Bag of Flour + 1 Packet of Yeast
Make 25 Loaf of Bread – Level 0

Discover: 1 Bottle of Simple Dressing + 1 Head of Lettuce
Make 25 Bowl of Simple Salad – Level 25

Discover: 1 Pile of Cinnamon and Sugar + 1 Slice of Buttered Toast
Make 25 Slice of Cinnamon Toast – Level 50

1 Bag of Flour + 1 Stick of Butter
Make 25 Bowl of Roux – Level 75

Level 100 – 200

Discover: 1 Loaf of Bread + 1 Tomato + 1 Head of Lettuce + 1 Grilled Mushroom
Make 25 Veggie Burger – Level 100

Discover: 1 Beet + 1 Bottle of Ascalonian Dressing + 1 Head of Dressing
Make 25 Bowl of Ascalonian Salad – Level 125

Discover: 1 Tomato + 1 Onion + 1 Rice Ball + 1 Zucchini
Make 25 Stuffed Zucchini – Level 150

Discover: 1 Bag of Sugar + 1 Bottle of Simple Dressing + 1 Bowl of Sour Cream + 1 Head of Cabbage
Make 25 Bowl of Coleslaw – Level 175

Level 200 – 300

Discover: 1 Ball of Dough + 1 Bowl of Cherry Pie Filling
Make 25 Cherry Pie – Level 200

Discover: 1 Egg + 1 Cheese Wedge + 1 Green Onion
Make 25 Griffon Egg Omelet – Level 225 (Griffon Egg Omelet is not discoverable)
Discover: 1 Chocolate Bar + 1 Orange
Make 25 Chocolate Orange – Level 225 (added Chocolate Orange)

Discover: 1 Stick of Butter + 1 Pile of Salt and Pepper + Head of Cauliflower
Make 25 Bowl of Cauliflower Sautee – Level 250

Discover: 1 Orange Cake + 1 Bowl of Orange Coconut Frosting
Make 25 Orange Coconut Cake – Level 275

Level 300 – 400

Discover: 1 Bag of Flour + 1 Packet of Yeast + 1 Jug of Water + 1 Tarragon Leaves
Make 25 Loaf of Tarragon Bread – Level 300

Discover: 1 Stick of Butter + 1 Pile of Salt and Pepper + 1 Asparagus Spear + 1 Slab of Red Meat
Make 25 Plate of Steak and Asparagus – Level 325

Discover: 1 Cayenne Pepper + 1 Slab of Red Meat
Make 25 Spicier Flank Steak – Level 350
(For a cheaper alternative that requires produce, look up Tarragon Stuffed Poultry or Peach Tart)

Discover: 1 Ball of Dough + 1 Bowl of Peach Pie Filling
Make 25 Peach Pie – Level 375
(For a cheaper alternative, make your own Peach Pie Filling, and sell it after)

Perfect!

Trouble is, my fridge isn’t big enough for all these leftovers…

Hi, I just noticed the issue too and this thread came up when I did a search. I can reproduce this as a Guardian using a staff. Symbol does not stack properly on top of other speed boosts. Other speed boosts stack properly on top of Symbol. Symbol only adds one second if applied while a speed boost is already activated. My current values on a Guardian:

“Retreat!” (R!) : 23s
“Save Yourselves!” (SY!) : 11.5s
Symbol: 9.25s

Here’s what I observe when using these in immediate succession while standing still:

• “R!” + Symbol = about 23 seconds
• Symbol + “R!” = just over 32s
• “SY!” + Symbol = 11.5s
• Symbol + “SY!” = just under 22s
• Symbol + “R!” + “SY!” = over 43 seconds.

Then I tried this combo:
Symbol + “R!” = 32s. -12s recharge = 20s. +Symbol = 21s. Naturally that one second refreshes until the symbol is depleted, at which point the countdown continues normally.

I’ve also observed what others do about Symbol not hitting at all while the character is running.

• If I target the symbol just right, so that I’m passing over the circle as it’s drawn on the ground, the speed bonus gets applied.
• If I target the symbol ahead of the character and run through it, there is a chance that I will pass through the circle before the speed boost is detected and not receive any bonus. (This is evidenced by the timer for the foot speed indicator not resetting to 12 o’clock. Even when receiving a bugged speed boost from the staff, the countdown outline on the haste indicator will still reset to the top and wind down clockwise from 12 o’clock.) If I take a skill that widens symbol diameter, it significantly lessens the possibility that this will happen.

Dear developers,

Thank you for making Guild Wars 2. I really like it, and have a lot of fun playing.

We’ve had games such as Left4Dead for a while now, and they had proven themselves replayable not because of new content, but because of the random elements brought into play by the Director, an AI that controls the pace and substance of dynamic encounters on the map.

Right, so GW2… many people will be familiar with Penitent / Shelter farming, which I will use as the primary example since many are familiar with it. For those who are not, the Penitent/Shelter farm is a route at the eastern end of Cursed Shore. Players simply traverse the Penitent Path north and south, completing the world events that occur at each point over and over again.

Trouble is…

• The spawn points are predictable.
• The spawn timing is predictable.
• The mobs spawned are predictable.
• The spawns are all bunched up and susceptible to massive AOE.

Recurring quests could be adjusted as follows:

• The number of spawn points increases, and the radius from the event increases.
• The AI spawns some creatures en masse (sometimes scattered, sometimes in formation) and others at a trickle so that some spawns converge with player groups while AOE skills are on cooldown and/or player groups have to stagger AOE in a more tactical manner.

Or, if you want to think bigger, you could do a fully dynamic system:

• The start and end points for dynamic events could be variable based on a large collection of available points.
• Quests could dynamically chain, similar to how assault-style events build on one another in some areas.
• The objective(s) could be variable – escort, assault, defend… really anything.
• The reward could be variable based on distance, time, number of enemies destroyed… anything.

You’ve got the rock-paper-scissors stuff down, so I think the game could definitely benefit from more “Mad Lib” play. From your own observations of map play, I am sure you can understand how this would be beneficial and interesting to the community. I would love to see more events with dynamic criteria!

Thanks again for making Guild Wars 2. It’s a great game.

Hi,

Thanks for making Guild Wars 2. I really like it.

When I first started playing GW2, I was able to consistently complete the Daily Kill Variety (DKV) objective in the time I had to play – about an hour to an hour and a half at the most. Now that I’m running around in Orr, I am no longer able to complete the full DKV achievement in the time I have to play.

Please consider one of the following solutions:

• Allow Risen to count against their original species with respect to DKV
• Add some variety to Risen species so that they are a little more beneficial to DKV
• Increase the variety of non-Risen in Orr.

Thanks!

This sound drives me crazy as well.