Guild Wars 2

Buy the permanent hair stylist? I wish that were available as a direct buy, I’ll never have the gold for it. But like Tigaseye said, avoid the hair styles that have the accessories unless you’re okay going with the antique gold on them since gold generally goes with everything as an accessory.

Unfortunately it does not go that great with blonde hair.

I’m gonna have to add to the nay-saying. The ‘new’ info releases are anemic at best, flat-lined and redundant at worst (three weeks straight of Stronghold? Why are they still talking about that? Especially since Revenants only got one week so far, perhaps the biggest feature that might actually change the game).

It’s been what, three months now? Either the expansion is still a year or two out there (since this level of content was what I saw from GW2 original release a year or two before it was released) or they’ve REALLY taken the whole ’don’t say anything at all until it releases in two days’ to heart. Which is sad, since this is a bloody expansion! This is the best time to talk about what’s coming.

I was really hoping for announcements like they did for the feature packs with a general outline of what’s going to be discussed weekly, then a fleshed out announcement when the proper week came around.

Example:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/feature-packs/

They have yet to talk about:

8/8 specializations to actually discuss in real depth, so far all we know is Rangers get staff and are called druids and Necromancers get greatswords for a fact. Nothing about how their new mechanics work, what the new skills are like, or even HOW you specialize and how much of a grind it might be (one every two weeks gives them 16 weeks from that alone, the path to specialize could be another two weeks).

The glowing race from the trailer (I’d like to hear about them more than Hylek to be honest, sorry but even though the Hylek in game now have great lore to them basically all I care about is the red ones are mean, the orange ones might be mean, and the blue/green are generally friendly). Theres another two weeks. (20 now, that’s over 1/3 of a year)

Guild Halls (another 2 weeks, up to 22 now)

And general fluff pieces (new armors/weapons/outfits/the other masteries) which could probably add another 10 weeks.

Basically, if they started discussing the real meat of the expansion at the pace they’re going they have 32 weeks until release. Which means they’ll release on December 1st… after very nearly a FULL YEAR of nothing to improve the game. I feel bad for PvP/WvWers, they’ll have 16 weeks (every other one, since apparently PvP information is given the weeks PvE isn’t) touching only on Borderlands and Stronghold. Well I guess they’ll have 3-4 more PvP tournaments as well to be busy with.

I dunno, but nearly a full year of nothing meaningful added to an MMO? I don’t think that’s normal, is it? Especially not for one that’s already been around for three years and already had a previous game that had full- yes they were also stand alone games- expansions every six months to a year. FULL expansions that added massive maps, two professions, hundreds of skills, dozens of armor, complete stories where your character actually spoke and had- granted not too exciting- animations to watch instead of a green screen behind two people staring at each other every year while they were working on it before focusing on GW2.

More and more HoT looks like it’s going to be a major let down from a company that KNOWS better.

I’d like to see them- or a whole bunch of brand new ones- available to new characters created after HoT if you own HoT, kinda like the new faces that came with all of the GW1 expansion/standalone boxes (as long as you went with Cantha or Elona that is). Not only that, but it would put just a little bit more- though entirely cosmetic- of a boost to the feeling of a ‘new’ experience for Vets who are making a Revenant after getting the other 8 classes any number of times to 80.

This way they aren’t technically free of charge, but are a permanent addition if you have HoT.

Try enjoying the story, it gives nice boosts of XP after each part is completed.

1-90 in 2 weeks isn’t much of a feat in WoW anymore, they had to super speed it up so you could get to the gear treadmill at 95… or is it at 100 for the max level now?

Basically forget what your years in WoW taught you. GW2 is not about the ends but the journey to reach them and the continued journey- hopefully- that the Living Story will be again after the release of HoT.

Stop to smell the proverbial roses, you’d be surprised at the detail they put into the world if you just pause every now and then between the hearts to get a good look at the scenery. Take some screenshots (some people have tens of thousands of them). Enjoy the world, there’s really no pressure to get to 80 ASAP. But if you feel like you must then you can get to level 80 in less than a day if you have the real cash and/or gold to max all the professions with just a bit of exploring thrown in.

Or spend time in PvP, your character is maxed in gear and level (play around with builds yourself or copy and paste from Meta sites) and earn tomes of knowledge to level up with outside of PvP.

I’m not seeing how these are mistakes…

If you said NPE and Trait Revamp I could see a reasonable argument being made for those two… but two that are ENTIRELY based on Lore of a fictional world?

WoW had the same issues as your first so called mistake. Sorry, but Goblins are green gnomes, Blood elves are practically humans mixed with night elves (and look better than both), and Worgens are just humans who can turn into wolves… just like Norn except in human form they have everything copy and pasted from the humans instead of actually having different models. Tauren are the only- more or less- original race of WoW and even they have bipedal animations 100% of the time.

ESO’s mistake has been how The Eldar Scrolls have always been, not much difference between the races visually (again, this is how that world treats its different races… more like actual races of the same species instead of different species). I’m not sure what ESO did for their racial traits, but in Oblivion and Morrowind (the last two I played) they were pretty noticeable in how you played the characters which is a much better experience than slapping a different mesh and texture on a basic skeleton (WoW) and calling it a ‘new’ race.

As for the second mistake… Jormag (if looked at it from a different line of deduction) IS the so called wind dragon. What do you get when a cold front (far shiverpeaks and Jormag’s realm) meets a warm front (the rest of Tyria)? You get a storm, and a whole bunch of wind. Ice is just the visible byproduct of this storm. I would not be surprised if Jormag’s realm is riddled with blizzards that mastery points will let you ignore the buffeting of the wind with.

Basically, this is GW2’s lore. Kodan are- pardon my racism- a lesser race like the Hylek, Skritt, and Quaggan. Sure, they may have a pretty philosophy, but that does not make them as advanced as the Norn/Humans/Charr/Asurans/Sylvari when it comes to technological and magical advances. Jormag and Bubbles are dragons, more like forces of nature. Even in our real world different cultures have different ideas of what the base elements of nature are.

Sure a lot of people think of water, fire, earth, and air as being those forces in our world but Taoism believes in five: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. So why can’t Tyrians believe in fire, ice, shadow, crystal, plant and (assumed to be) water as their base elements?

Who says Primordius is fire anyway? He could be earth (destroyers look more like living magma than fire, not only that but he comes from the earth), and Jormag could just be ‘cold’ in general. Kralkatorikk could be glass, not crystal. The only dragon elements that are confirmed are Zhaitan (death and shadow) and Mordremoth (plant and mind).

Decided I’d post a picture of my main Elementalist, who I’m working on world completion very slowly right now. I keep getting distracted by working on completing the carapace sets.

Head : Ele starter (fire stone)
Chest: Cultural T3
Shoulders: Student
Gloves: Illustrious
Legs: Phoenix
Boots: Illustrious

Dyes are a mixture of yellows (illumination on chest, gloves, legs and butter on shoulders and boots) that look the same on different armor for highlights with I think Sapphire and Shadow Turqoise and some Stream in there for a lighter color.

I wish the mini plush griffon squeaked when it walked, but yeah ‘mute minis’ button +1 on my end. That or make them heard only by their owners, I mean the torch auras (FDS/balthazar back piece for example) are only seen by those wielding them. Thought it may be more difficult to program sounds the same way, I can’t say since I’m not a programmer.

Wait, I bought a gaming mouse that has a button next to my left click that acts as a double-left click (no software beyond the mouse driver needed). Is it a bannable offense to use that to open a stack of 250 bags (only 250 clicks instead of 500) then? That’s a stupid reason to be banned if it is.

PS, I had no idea this was a feature on the mouse. I only discovered it because it wasn’t registering as a button when I tried to turn it into a skill key. So I exited the program and decided to try clicking some shortcuts on my desktop- low and behold it was one click opening instead of the two clicks I have my system set up to. Tested it in game on a bag, same thing.

Sorin.4310:

I highly doubt they will do that. They may not even have that functionality. Have you unlocked the skins in the wardrobe? Reskinning items to HoM skins does not cost any transmutation charges, I believe.

That’s why he wants them sent to him. You can’t unlock them until you buy them from the merchant for the first time.

I really wish they would fix this. My brother (who I played GW1 with as our first MMO) FINALLY decided to pick up GW2. Now he wants his guardian to use the fellblade he had unlocked in HoM but can’t because Anet has been twiddling their thumbs on this issue for over a month.

It’ll probably be a while yet until its fixed since it must be low priority, if it ever is. Which is too bad, because I wanted to see his little Asura running around with that giant, black blade that I used for the first three years of GW1 on my warrior since I never got it unlocked in HoM.

So, way back when they were revamping a lot of things like the Wardrobe (I like the wardrobe) they claimed they would make drops weighted towards the armor class you were playing on… Well… has anybody verified this? I just hopped on an Elementalist who is at a chest to farm empyreal fragments (not the best way, I know) and I decided I’d check if this was close to being true. My break down is as follows in regards to her 20 greens- after 10 days- (she’s at a magnificent chest so only gets greens) so far.

10/20 are weapons (meaning, yay ore and wood).
1/10 weapons can be used by an elementalist.

10/20 are armor (yay, what I really want cloth)
2/10 armors are light (that’s what I want since I’m working on ascended- hence the emp frags)
2/10 armors are medium… woo… leather, I guess. At least that’s the last set I have to get mats for.
6/10 armors are heavy…

Where is this ’you’re more likely to get drops you can actually use’ thing? If I’m an elementalist shouldn’t, at least, the armor drops be more like this:

10/20 greens are armor
2/10 armors are medium
2/10 armors are heavy
6/10 armors are light

I’m going to keep an eye on this and see what happens. I’m just interested if anyone else has tallied things up regarding drops and profession. If what I actually got is the ‘norm’, no wonder cloth prices are through the roof compared to ore/wood.

This is all charr and not just on your engineer, saddly its why I don’t use the blacksmith back pack (just the steel chest) because it would have gone perfectly with my charr character’s color/armor scheme but… alas… the entire bloody box seems to be floating because it was placed so high up. I wouldn’t care if there was space between my character and the actual box (like shields on every character) if it wasn’t floating up there.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Lower silk amount for damask and raise amounts for everything else.

Or let heavy armor and medium armor have a chance at dropping cloth. I mean they take more cloth than ore and leather anyway, why aren’t they dropping cloth instead of ore and leather? If everything’s going to take cloth, everything should have a chance to drop it.

Once upon a time you could list an entire stack of items in the sell instantly and everyone with a buy order would get them- even though as each order was filled you got less for your goods. Now you have to constantly re-list too, or start off getting less than you could, I could see the Orange thing being a bug stemming from this ‘feature’ that came around with the market update. Or like someone else said, a bot.

What I wished they’d done with the market update was get rid of the vendor armor/weapons that look like the salvageable ones- but can’t be salvaged- from the market and made them soulbound as well so they couldn’t be listed in the first place. That and the whole issue where you can’t sell for less than vendor price but people can put up buy orders for less than vendor price which artificially deflates the value of some items.

It’d be awesome if they make Bubbles into a plushie!

Wait for the expansion where we fight Bubbles.

Ralanost.8913:

Kentaine.4692:

If they were both in the same zone standing beside each other I might call it a bug. Otherwise it’s just Evon going about his own business in the zones he needs to go visit. You just happen to always stumble upon him in those two places.

NPCs have their own lives as well, sort of. It’d be cooler if he walked from one place to the other instead of permanently being in both places.

Those are both in Lion’s Arch, just one is in the north and the other is in the south. It’s a bug.

But they aren’t standing beside each other. More than likely, though, the Captain Evon Gnashblade is a remnant of Season 1.

If they were both in the same zone standing beside each other I might call it a bug. Otherwise it’s just Evon going about his own business in the zones he needs to go visit. You just happen to always stumble upon him in those two places.

NPCs have their own lives as well, sort of. It’d be cooler if he walked from one place to the other instead of permanently being in both places.

Dante.6352:

Hey all,i’m kind of new to the game (playing for like 3 weeks and a half) and i saw so many people with different looking armor and weapons.So i saw this guy standing in front of AC and took a screen to look at his armor but i cannot seem to find the items in-game. Could someone help me with those items ?

That is Norn cultural armor tier 3 heavy for females, only female Norn warriors, guardians and- with HoT- Revanants can get it. The sword is the legendary Twilight (or Eternity since it is night time).

monkeyofmist.8529:

divinity’s reach has a secret room under the bird statue, west of the centre, it happened to me when i jumped from the beak into the hole. i glided down and seen a big shiny room with something in it but i couldnt make it out, (hopefully someone else will and will upload it here) doesn’t happen all the time though, i jumped off about 10 or 15 times and it only happened twice, so i think its random chance.
if someone finds out let me know whats in that room, it looked weird but couldn’t see it properly :/

You can get their by using the elevator portals behind the bird, unless I’m thinking of a different room I landed in once.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

warduke.1780:

As a Christian, I find the new bug highly offensive – everyone seems to be stuck in a crucifixion pose, and there appears to be no way to disable this. Even worse, I’ve heard this might be intentional.

Please remove this from the game, as I’m sure other Christians are offended also.

It’s a plane pose not a crucifixion pose omg…
Wooden crosses don’t make airplane noises.

Obviously you’re playing crucify the pilot wrong.

Orochimaru.4730:

This april fools things is great if you are in a matchup with EU and German server.

WW2 all over again, we’ve already started to have fun by killing roamers and then our entire group just circling them!

I’m sure the Germans enjoy being called kittens (I’m sure this word is kittened out, but you know what I’m saying), too! Sounds fun… ‘sarcasm’.

Or, how about the kamikazee pilots jumping off the bridge in DR? That’s in good taste, right?

Asmodeus.5782:

Wildkitten.3872:

Aviate.1376:

Im again log off sad and waiting for hot… anet again you made fail…

Please don’t come back for HoT. I don’t care if that is harsh, but if you have zero sense of humor, can not for one day have fun, then you just are not needed.

Reposted for truth.

Reposted to point out the heartless, of which I am included.

I like chocolate milk.

AlphaWolf.2709:

Therodin.2970:

AlphaWolf.2709:

Despite my opinion of SAB, I just don’t understand why people can’t understand “no” when it’s being told to them over and over. Anet has already stated SAB isn’t in the current plans. How many times do you have to let yourself down before you believe them? Also, stop hating on Anet when YOU do this to yourselves. They have already given everyone an answer, now believe it or continue to be disappointed. I agree with wanting to know what are we suppose to do in the meantime, but throwing a fit about something anets already told you isn’t the answer.

All of that would make lots of sense except for the infinite continue coin.

It still makes perfect sense. SAB doesn’t fit into the current direction of the game. Not saying its never coming back, but they never promised a date. IF anything, what you can bank on is not any time soon, as they’ve stated. Which is why I don’t get people getting so worked up when it didn’t come today, as anet already hinted it wouldn’t.

SAB could have easily been turned on for April Fools and it wouldn’t have wasted nearly as much development time since it is, technically, already in game as compared to the 24 hour long, forced 1919 airplane mode. Not only that, but anyone who didn’t want to participate in April Fools (RPers, those who don’t enjoy being frozen above the waist) could have ignored it completely. One day of SAB would have been greatly appreciated over this, and I hate SAB.

How does 1919 airplane mode fit in with the current direction of the game?

Except, the arms perpetually up is what’s really turned me off of playing the game today. The 10 minutes I spent in game were broken up as follows: 2 minutes dive bombing off of Dry Dock, 3 minutes wandering around DR and 5 minutes being annoyed by the whole thing while I went to my home instance to harvest my nodes and logging into my cloth armorer to make my damask for my ascended light armor.

I understand it’s april fools, but an entire day like this is taking it too far. There’s pranks, and then there’s excessive pranks. The former are generally amusing, the latter are distasteful. Anet’s April Fools tend to fall withing the latter unfortunately. Maybe someday they’ll have them set to timers so those who are there to play can suffer the 10-20 minutes of the joke then go about business as usual. That or a way to turn it off once it starts giving you a headache or disrupts the flow of playing too much.

I’d prefer if they kept it in. In fact, make it actually a crucifix pose by giving me bloody ankles and palms and a crown of thorns. That would be an awesome April fools joke, it even ties in with easter.

Did you see the aviator cap on you character and hear the airplane noises?

Shaaba.5672:

I haven’t bothered to cook any dyes up in forever. I remember them taking an unreal amount of mats for what you got. I’m wondering if it’s a little more feasible now that costs are rising.

Probably not, 100 onions is around 1 gold and the chance of getting something besides a blue is so low… I can’t see it being feasible until fine dyes have reached 50-75s.

I’m too tired, so many typos and misspells.

IndigoSundown.5419:

One aspect of the original GW I enjoyed was getting dye drops, particularly in Pre-searing Ascalon. Some of that joy was in GW2 at launch. Now, not so much. Just another way ANet has slowly leached the joy from the game (obviously, “from my perspective” should not need to be said, but I’ll say it to forestall the comments about not speaking for everyone).

I had that same joy, I remember a black dye dropping for me off of a devourer near the ranger mission and- not knowing its value- wasted it on my original pre-searing armor that got replaced an hour later when I found the collector for that armor piece because it was better. It still wasn’t until I reached Droknar’s Forge for the first time did I realize what I’d wasted (it could have paid a large chunk of my first max armor set). In fact I still have that joy whenever I get onto GW1 and see a blue/pink/or even brown dye drop for me and had they same feeling when I’d get them from harvesting in GW2.

Now I enjoy seeing the few I get from PS or leveling up, not because I think I’ll get something from them but because they’re worth 75s now, but you can only do PS so many times before it just drags out… especially once you join one of the orders.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Oh there’s no question dye prices are much more these days than before. Prior to the announcement of the dye wardrobe, it was easy to pickup fine dyes for 30-50 copper. Now, the lowest price for fine is 1s 70, masterwork is 12s 85, and cheapest rare is over 64s. Average prices are much higher than that.

On the other hand, a single dye is a permanent account unlock, so covers a minimum of five characters per player. On the whole, prices aren’t yet five times more than before, so currently, I’d say we’re better off on average.

Using your price example of 30-50c (I remember it being different at 22-64c) for a fine dye and the lowest fine dye of 1.7silver now… uh… how do you get that prices aren’t yet five times what they were. I checked the listed offers on fine dyes. They range from 1.94S (close enough to your 1.7, since I’m aware the market shifts) to over 10S. Before the range was 30-50 copper… Ten silver is twenty times that of fifty copper, and close to twenty times the cost of 64c.

So, really, they are 6-20 times as much as they used to be. At the other end of the spectrum, for example, pre-wardrobe I picked up Midnight Ice for 2.75g (instant buy, not listed order price) and now it’s up to 28g (again ten times the price). So, I’d say that- comparing both an exclusive dye and the fine dye range- prices are well above the average 5x you seem to think it would be okay considering that the game starts with 5 character slots. Same goes for the masterwork dyes, before they were around 1 silver (I remember picking up a bunch shortly after the wardrobe at 1.07s instant buy even) and now they’re ALL over 20s on instant buy. Again, twenty times as much.

If Shadow Abyss had not come out, Abyss Dye would be the same way. It’s about the only dye I found that was anywhere close to its old cost (36g) at being only 55g now.

Looking at unidentified dye alone speaks to the ‘average’ increase. Before the wardrobe they were 1-2 silver, now they’re 75 silver (that’s over 35x as much as they used to be).

Do I like the dye being account unlocks, yes but I’m biased because I had a reasonable number already unlocked from before. I have, however, seen the account dye system has on a new player. It really does point them towards the BLC more than anything because leveling a character 1-80 gives maybe 10 UI dyes and the PS and LS give a chance at around 30 more. I know my first 40 dyes when I started playing were mostly blue with a few green rarity in there. Not even one yellow.

I guess what I’m saying is that they aren’t going to change it since the inflation has already progressed so far in one year. More than likely, it’ll continue this way because new players just don’t know what it was like before and will think the dyes are exclusive to those who can afford them and give them something else to save up for.

Nike.2631:

Maxzero.4032:

No matter what system you use you will never have balance.

Its fascinating what a low standard of expectation is applied to computer RPGs vs. tabletop RPGs.

Its probably the presence of live, thinking gamemasters who tend to stomp the crap out of spotlight hogs and who occasionally present scenarios that can’t be resolved entirely by doing the maximum Damage per Round.

Or it could just be that since tabletop RPGs don’t take 200+ people, 5+ years, and millions of dollars they iterate on their mistakes much, much faster.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard TTRPGers complaining after a game about how their DM doesn’t let them progress because their encounters are too hard when I played Heroclix just a few yards away. What about that is balanced? Even worse was the smug look on the DMs face the entire match, as if he were competing to keep them in the dirt. I’d much rather accept the fact that balanced professions will never exist than that frustration of never leveling up.

Why are we comparing the two in the first place? It’s completely off topic. Is the Revenant the last profession? Possibly. Would I be upset if it was, not really because I finally have 3 classes for each armor type and that has bugged me since launch. If it isn’t, then huzzah… I just hope it keeps the armor weights equal. Without actually seeing the specializations, and experiencing them first hand I can’t say if they play differently enough to satisfy being considered 9 almost new professions.

Caedmon.6798:

SRG.3607:

Bad point is that the old “Abyss” color has been lighten in this patch.

So “Abyss” is now just another “deep gray” and “Shadow Abyss” is exactly like the previous Abyss color was previously.

Not true, at all.

Yes, not true at all. Abyss and black dyes were always lighter than Midnight Ice on most materials (its why I never bought them and went with the far cheaper option at the time of a few gold- before they removed dye drops from the game).

The only reason people are saying they lightened abyss dye is because they finally have something truly black to compare it to without thinking outside of black, gray, white colors.

Here is my armor in only Midnight Ice (1st) compared to Abyss (2nd) and Shadow Abyss (3rd)

I have the story and the book case is missing the moment I enter the building. If you still have the book case, or can’t even enter the house where Scarlet’s stuff is, then yeah you probably need it unlocked. I would search every house in that pueblo-esque village (across the quick sand) you can outside of the dark mining cave first to make sure though.

Dungeons (start at 25 I think), the more difficult personal story steps (more noticeable in Season 2 than anything before), Fractals, Zerging/roaming in WvW, and world bosses are typically better done in parties for various reasons.

As for hearts and world exploration, rarely. There is, of course, always the partying to play with a friend aspect however. I typically party with friends who are clearing the same map as me to give a social side to the exploration.

Zelanard.5806:

yeah… right… It was a MAJOR issue with low levels trying to do tasks with high levels around… you never got to land a blow before the mob you were on your way to died off… it took a low level triple the time to do the same tasks that the high levels was bursting over like a kitten… HOPEFULLY they made the scaling harsh enough for it to be the same…

I never had this issue, using exploration to level each profession- sometimes more than once when I remade them into a different race, until after the New Dailies. I must be in the bizarre minority since it was a major issue before that. Strange that leveling to eighty at ten times (I did elementalist and guardiant twice) didn’t give me enough opportunities for 80s to come by and kill groups I was attacking. In fact, I rarely even saw level 80s in Queensdale, Caledon Forest, Metrica Province, Plains of Ashford and Wayfarer Foothills unless a world boss was about to start (excluding the Queensdale train, but those were champions with enough health for even a level 2 to get hits in). Again, though, I must be the strange minority. Post New Dailies, however, is a completely different story.

And no, the scaling isn’t harsh enough still. You put 20-30 level 80s in a low level event and the low level player will still miss out on the event because they didn’t actually fix the underlying issue (hint, it isn’t the 80s but the events themselves having too few targets (example: Svanir Shaman pre that spawns 3-4 grawl at one time) for too many people or only spawning minions instead of vets/elites/champs (example: bandit raid of the farm just across the bridge in Queensdale)).

Arkinos.7245:

The scaling had to be nerfed.

Even scaled level 80s could kill low level mobs in 1-2 basic attacks.

If thats the scaling used, you might as well not bother scaling at all.

This is only an issue with events, and that is only an issue because of the new dailies. Again there were other fixes, fix the events to scale with the influx of level 80s/multiple people (vets/elites/champions spawning) or fix the dailies (change them to region instead of zone). 80s killing in 1-2 hits wouldn’t matter if the events had 50 level appropriate characters running around trying for the same event (I remember the early days when everyone was level appropriate, a rarely got better than bronze) for the same reason. Too many people, not enough targets.

To be fair, though, what I’m most annoyed about this is the fact that Anet didn’t even bother mentioning it in the patch notes even though it affects every character in the game.

Vayne.8563:

I tested the scaling on my ranger. I agree it takes longer to kill stuff. Sometimes an entire second or two.

If you upgrade to ascended armor to one shot stuff in Queensdale I’m not sure what to tell you, bit it’s not the fault of the game.

The game needed to make it take longer to kill stuff in early zones, so people that are actually in those zones could get credit for events.

First of all yes, it is the fault of the game.

Second of all, no it did not need to take longer to kill stuff in earlier zones.

Here’s why:

The game was not designed for the new dailies in mind which funnel high levels to low level zones (that’s why it is the games fault) because they did not release with dailies. If it had been, the events would probably have better scaling in them (most don’t even spawn vets, even when there’s 50 or more players around). The last ones worked because they were general enough in PvE it didn’t matter what you did. If you plugged along with map exploration you were likely to get them in an hour or two of playing, ten-twenty minutes if you actually focused on them.

Everything did not need to die slower, just the things in the events, there is a completely viable mechanic already in the game to address the insta-dying, low-level events. ELITES, no matter what gear they take more than kittens to kill (have you done the largely ignored toxic events that are still around recently? They’re largely ignored because the elites and vets require a group to complete for most people). Or, heaven forbid, CHAMPIONS without bags spawning in low level zones. Oh, the horror! Newbs can’t fight a champion with 35 level 80s near by! Oh the humanity! Instead of going through and fixing all- not even all would have been necessary, just SOME- of the old events by giving them vets, elites, and/or champions for scaling measures they went with a ‘lets adjust down scaling so 80s do less damage and effectively nerf every single player’. Why? Because it was quick and easy.

An alternative to this- and possibly just as quick and simple- would have been to FIX THE DAILY, instead of events in Queensdale, make it events in Kryta. Boom, problem solved and without getting out the nerf mallet because suddenly all the players have 5-9 zones (depending on the region and no I did not count how many zones each has so this is a ballpark figure) to muck about in instead of one like it used to be.

Downscaling affects ALOT more than just the daily event. Suddenly I’m killing things slower everwhere. Sure, 2-5 seconds doesn’t sound like a lot if you kill ONE thing. Last time I played however, I think I killed more than one thing. Did you? Multiply that by 1000 though and suddenly you have 0.5 hours to 1.4 hours of additional time spent just slogging through a zone. Me, I explore maps and tend to kill most things in my path so it takes 2-3 hours to clear a zone. Now I’m looking at 2.5-4.5 hours to clear a zone, assuming I only kill 1000 things in an entire zone.

What… a… bore.

Now people who don’t have that time decide to just run from one WP to the next as fast as possible (ignoring creatures unless they’re at a heart)… that means fewer goods going into the TP which in turn means TP prices go up. On top of that, it affects the farmers driving the markets, now Farmer X is spending Y more minutes per Z mat, suddenly the price of Z goes up to compensate otherwise they stop farming Z because it isn’t worth it to them which also results in Z going up because supply is down but demand stayed the same. Maybe it goes up enough X goes back to farming, but not all of the farmers will and the price will remain higher.

The decrease to stats when you down scale is a horrid choice given perfectly reasonable alternatives that wouldn’t impact other facets of the game in any way… at all. Unfortunately it reeks of Anet taking the easy way out. On top of that, suddenly my level 80 warrior (who has no issues mowing through things in a level 80 zone) is threatened by several level 5 creatures because my damage was not the only thing targeted by this nerf. My armor rating, my toughness, my vitality, my healing… well every single stat was.

Happyfool.8951:

yes, but to actually have gems into the system, someone has to pay for it. and unless anet has been planting gems into the system.

player A buys gems with real money
player A converts the gems into gold.
player B converts gold to gems(player A’s gems)
player B buys expac with $60 worth of gems

real money is still paid to anet

edit. I did not know you could get gems from chests

Player A buys gems with real money, player A converts gems into gold because that is the feature Player A’s money paid for in development costs/server upkeep/employee wages.

Player B converts gold to gems (Player A’s Gems)
Player A should get the expansion pack because Player B stole Player A’s money… wait, that isn’t how it works. Anet isn’t paying you to earn gold.

You are not an employee of Anet, Player A did not give you their money in any form. Essentially you’re expecting Player A to shell out $60 for their gems, which you snatch up with in game gold, AND to shell out another $60 if they want the xpac while you buy the xpac with the gems you snatched from them?

So Player A, essentially, paid for yours and their expansions.
Or did the gems Player A bought, pay for their expansion? If so, two expansions are being bought off of one player cost. This is not how businesses operate. You both have to spend money to get the expansion because they’re in it for the profit.

Happyfool.8951:

considering that gems come from purchase with real money, why the hell not?

Why do I keep seeing this?

Why do people think that if I buy gems with my money, they get to claim the gems only exist because of being purchased and, therefore, should be allowed to buy the expansion with the gems they earned by grinding gold?

Essentially people who argue for the Xpac to be in the gemstore so they can grind gold are arguing that since someone else paid for it, I should get it.

I’M NOT PAYING FOR YOUR EXPANSION PACK! I’m paying for this or that gemstore item because I don’t have the time to grind the gold to get it that way.

Despite what you might think, there is no monetary value for gold because it only goes one way. You use real money to buy gems and then buy gold with the gems, you CANNOT grind gold to buy gems and then turn that into real money. Since you cannot go the full spectrum both ways, gold is not backed by real money. Exchanging gold for gems is NOT the same as buying gems with money.

The person who buys their gems is supporting your game, that money has been funneled into giving Anet employees a job as well as paying for the development of the game. It is not floating around in GW2’s market.

I had the same experience as the OP did today. After two years I finally got my brother convinced to try the game and… lets just say he was entirely lost on what to do after clearing the level 2-5 hearts. Before at that point you could run a few PS instances to get up to 7/8 range and go on to those hearts, now we have to travel to another starter area to level up so we are equal to the next hearts. We could craft, but he hasn’t even harvested a node yet by level 5 and I could give him the mats if I bothered saving any instead of selling them since I’m a casual and that is my best way to get gold.

I was embarrassed by the disconnect he had with the NPE compared to how I felt when I first played the game (I enjoyed their novel way of unlocking skills, it taught me them since I used them). He got bored after an hour because, as he said, he was tired of interacting with things. I honestly can’t blame him. I watched him playing and it reminded me about the first time I played Daggerfall. I had no idea what was going on because I was too young to bother reading the story. The difference here is there isn’t any story until level 10 now.

We both enjoyed GW1 for the story, and he would probably enjoy GW2 for its story (even with the slower/amateurish bits). I know if he had been able to go into a Personal Story instance (only got to 7 today) he probably would have been more interested with the game because it would have had SOME feeling of progress. It felt like grinding to me, definitely not what I felt back when I started playing nearly three years ago because the story was already there when I left the recovery structure after the battle of Shaemoor.

Without the traditional quest dynamic GW2 just feels empty at low levels now and I suddenly realized how much I missed the PS missions at level 3/4/6/etc… because that gave something that drove me forward. Now there’s ‘unlocks’ which you have no idea what is coming up next unless you’ve gone through it before.

I’m having this issue a lot lately as well and ran their diagnostic tips. Lost/Sent packet ratios look good until my ISP begins sending them towards NCsoft and suddenly I have 100% losses:

4 11ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% be-20-sur03.saltlakecity.ut.utah.comcast.net [162.151.9.165]
1/ 25 = 4% |
5 11ms 1/ 25 = 4% 0/ 25 = 0% he-0-11-0-0-ar04.saltlakecity.ut.utah.comcast.net [162.151.49.141]
1/ 25 = 4% |
6 25ms 2/ 25 = 8% 0/ 25 = 0% he-0-1-0-0-cr01.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.225]
5/ 25 = 20% |
7 —- 25/ 25 =100% 18/ 25 = 72% ae14.edge3.Denver1.Level3.net [4.68.127.129]
0/ 25 = 0% |
8 —- 25/ 25 =100% 18/ 25 = 72% ae-2-70.edge6.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.74]
0/ 25 = 0% |
9 —- 25/ 25 =100% 18/ 25 = 72% ae-2-70.edge6.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.74]
0/ 25 = 0% |
10 146ms 7/ 25 = 28% 0/ 25 = 0% 195.16.161.58
1/ 25 = 4% |
11 —- 25/ 25 =100% 17/ 25 = 68% 206-127-157-86.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.86]
0/ 25 = 0% |
12 153ms 8/ 25 = 32% 0/ 25 = 0% 206-127-158-1.ncsoft.com [206.127.158.1]

I doubt this is an issue on my end, or my ISPs, but on NCsoft. It would be appreciated if we could get word on this issue. I’m sorta getting frustrated with the game because I can’t play without several interruptions per hour. I’m going to try repairing my client and rerunning the diagnostic to see if that fixes anything.

List numbers to back up your ‘facts’, if you don’t they’re just theories.

Tell us what your system specs are, and we can work from that towards resolving your issue. Ignorance isn’t insulting unless you choose to remain ignorant, fill in those missing gaps of information that a number of the people here have already asked of you but you have refused to give them.

Right now you’re saying ‘my car has a problem fix it’ without letting us look at it before expecting us to fix it. This is a failure to communicate that frustrates both parties. A doctor cannot prescribe medication based on the symptoms you list alone because you may miss one that he/she would find during an exam.

Since it freezes while booting GW2, I’m going with your processor isn’t up to snuff. My brother, who as it turned out didn’t even have a video card in his system, could even play GW2 because his processor was a little above what GW2 requires (dual core 2.0 ghz). Again I could be wrong because you have not specifically listed what your processor is.

This isn’t a MAC client only thing, it’s been doing this to me for two days now on the PC side as well. A lot of people who wanted the wings had this issue as well and have now missed out on them (that forum is in the account/technical forum, though it should be here since this is a bug).

I’m really surprised that this hasn’t been fixed- or even addressed by a staff member- since, right now, it is GW2’s primary source of income until HoT is released.

I only bring this up because I hate PvP, but decided to join up with a friend and run a few games.

I’m bad at it, and naturally we were put against a PvP guild (all five members from the same guild) running in unranked, why they were in Unranked is beyond me since none of us could bring them down reliably.

Okay, fine, I’m having a goodish (goodish is closer to un-enjoyable because I don’t enjoy PvP even when I’m winning because of the emotions it elicits from me) time with a friend but then one of them decides to use /say to communicate to his team after I’m down. Why /say you might wonder? To rub salt in a wound, no other reason. They didn’t say anything cruel or vulgar, so to speak, but the directions they gave to their team mate would have been perfectly acceptable in /team instead so I couldn’t hear them and I would have never known and- thereby- possibly spent more time playing PvP.

I knew I was dead, its what happens in PvP when you go into downed state when you’re ganked. There was no call for what they said which, given the circumstances, amounted to ‘neener neener, the three of us killed you’ (two bunker warriors and a turret engineer against my elementalist) that they were able to do since we’re allowed to use local chat in PvP.

Unfortunately, this is another reason why I don’t enjoy PvP. Gloaters aren’t as bad as those who flat out insult/demoralize but are still enough to sour my mood for my play session.

It affects the economy by lowering the price of the black lion skins. If you double the rate key farmers get their black lion ticket scraps I’d be surprised if the rarer skins (those that can still be bought for 5 tickets) didn’t double in price.

Overall, it has no real impact on the game since it does not really give useful benefits besides the ability to obtain BL skins and the occasional unidentified dye pack or permanent account feature. After earning the key, the key farmer’s income is RNG based because they have to convert those keys into weapon skins where there are more reliable- slightly slower- ways to make gold.

Since a few months after release I have never gotten a single key drop from a mob. About 1/5 exploration awards is a key where the 4 others are transmutation charges, but I’ve not seen a key actually drop.

Pockets.3201:

Palleon.1657:

Chiros.6724:

I just realized how rarely I do jumping puzzles these days. And I love jumping puzzles! Back when they were in the rotation for dailies I had an extra excuse to leave WvW or farming world bosses and go jump around for a bit. I feel that bringing jp dailies back into the rotation for the pve category would be a great thing. Right now I doubt that many new players are seeking out jumping puzzles as much as if there was occasionally a daily incentive.

Yes, I find I dont do nearly as many as I used to now

Tbh, Id be surprised if new players had even heard of them since the death of the Daily.

Jumping puzzles are too confusing for new players.

I know they are, I’ve recently helped 2 new players through the Lion’s Arch jump puzzles. One was level 40 the other was level 80 and neither of them even knew jump puzzles existed in the game despite the NPE ‘telling’ you about them. A daily jump puzzle every now and then would be nice since it would actually bring a new players attention to the fact they even exist. Not to mention, bring players back to an aspect of the game that is no generally left unexplored because the chest at the end just isn’t enough incentive to do them when you can get 20x the amount of stuff in Silverwastes in the same time frame.

PS, both of them thoroughly enjoyed the puzzles (including the troll’s end) while being frustrated at the same time. Sad that they didn’t have a daily to introduce them, the only reason why I did is because they couldn’t figure out how to get the Vista at the Shark’s Maw jump puzzle because they had no fore knowledge that you could find hidden places by jumping on things.

So, today I ran in WvW after the dailies posted and got my AP after about 30-60 minutes of playing and thought to myself… gee, I sure wish I could slowly get my daily AP by eating away at the achievements with my usual play in PvE instead of having a disjointed play session of hopping around zones.

I should check those private PvP rooms sometime, Vayne, sounds like it is a lot more enjoyable than the PvP I did to get the back piece.

Why does less clothing = objectification though?

I dressed up in a full three piece suit as a prank at work because a coworker thought I looked like a gangster with my fedora and every single coworker of the female gender said I looked good (some even went so far as to touch my shoulder or back when they never have before. That sort of attentions was entirely unwanted by me yet for some strange reason they felt like they were suddenly allowed to invade my personal space because I dressed up). But, somehow, this doesn’t equal objectification because I wasn’t bare chested? What the kitteny kittens kitten!

I’ve never looked at a woman and thought of her as an object, no matter what she was wearing or even doing at the time. Did I find some outfits more visually appealing to me than others, yes. Did I also recognize them as a human being and not some doll for my personal viewing pleasure, yes!

Ultimately if a woman is being objectified it won’t matter what she’s wearing. The man is in charge of his thoughts and actions, not the woman. Vice versa and any other arrangement in between, too. Getting rid of skimpy armor in a game because it ‘objectifies’ women feels kinda like the victim blamers are winning to me.

I agree, there should be more skin in the male armor as well (c’mon, Conan is a warrior and is shirtless 99% of the time). The problem, however, is (looking at WoW and the Burning Crusade which killed WoW’s skimpy options) those armors tend to degenerate into dominatrix fetish styles instead of styles that can take themselves seriously. That just isn’t my thing nor something that I feel would fit with the artistic styles of GW1 and GW2. That’s just a fear of mine, but I bet GW2 could pull off the barbarian-esque styles for male armors.

If you press ‘h’ it pulls up a hero panel. On the left hand side there are a bunch of tabs to click, one of these is the Achievement Point panel. This panel has a bunch of other tabs to open (things like ‘daily’ or ‘general’). Those tabs have all of the achievements you can obtain and a brief description of how to go about getting them.

You didn’t mislead, I was unclear with my explanation.

The link you gave says it is blocked by rocks that can be destroyed to gain access (and by your screenshot it looks your character is at the correct location).

The mechanic has bugged since then so that the path is blocked when the rocks are not there. However, it has also bugged so that you can go through the rocks when they are there (I recently swam through them on my ranger). I have no clue what the respawn is for the rocks however.

Illusion walls are walls you can walk through (the pirate puzzle in Lion’s Arch and the Aetherblade jump puzzle in Gendarran Fields are the only places I recall them existing, there may be more), I’ve never come across a wall that simply was not there (except in Fireheart Rise if you try climbing a mountain to make a short cut and one in a jump puzzle in Malchor’s Reach I suspect both of these are collision bugs). Even ‘invisble’ walls typically have some inquest/asuran looking device around to indicate their existence.