Guild Wars 2

My rugged Norn Ranger.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think this post may be a valuable read: Mike O’Brien on Communication.

I take on board some well-expressed comments here. Quite honestly, I’m not sure how it would work to say “Yes, we’re aware of XYZ.” Those who say “We just want to know you’re aware” are terrific. But we all know that there are others for whom that wouldn’t be satisfactory. “We want to know you’re aware and we want to know what you’re going to do about it” can even become "We want to know you’re aware, we want to know what you’re going to do about it or [insert something here, from “I’m taking a break” to “I’ll never buy another gem,” to “I’m encouraging my entire gazillion-member guild to jump to Game Z].”

Please understand I’m not dismissing the desire for the first level of info, not at all! But can you see how the outcome can be unpredictable and how, no matter the question or request, there is no perfect answer? Further, can you see how “We’re aware of this and we plan to [whatever]” can become “Ok, you said you were aware of it three days ago, where’s the fix?”

I’m sort of writing to think, but I’d like to understand what truly reaches the point of “I’d like more info, but I’m satisfied with what you’ve been able to tell us right now.” Can you give me a few examples, where players would really like to know everything, but where there is a level of disclosure that meets the basic info request?

I usually try to avoid mentioning other games on this forum, out of respect, but because it’s integral to the example I’m going to talk about, I’m making an exception.

Once upon a time, I played the game Rift. I played it for a very long time. And although there were moments when the communication from Trion felt minimal, there was a driving force that made me love their communication style on the whole.

They had (and still have, as far as I know) a guy who was basically the one making a lot of the calls concerning the direction of the game and he was a straight shooter to the point that he actually joked once openly on the forums about how he attached pictures of cute animals to emails sent to his coworkers, so that they would be less likely to take offense to his blunt feedback.

Because he mostly knew about the direction of the game at any given moment and was so blunt about things, he would just say things sometimes, like, “We have no plans for X at this time.”

He wasn’t giving anything away most of the time. In fact, looking back on it, I don’t think he shared much more about real plans than you guys do. Probably about the same amount of information.

But because he was so blunt and honest about things that weren’t being worked on, or that the Rift team had no plans for, I feel it helped manage expectations in a lot of cases.

I’m certainly not expecting you to try to copy another company, but I do believe there are ways to sort of “give info” without actually sharing what all is in the works. One way is what my example talks about; essentially, giving information through negation, such that people can go, “Oh, they have no plans for X right now. [Or, oh, this isn’t something that they feel is in line with their goals for the game.] I feel like I know better where they stand on that issue.”

Just something to think about.

I miss the role sometimes, but I don’t miss it becoming an obligatory chore-role that someone has to fill, even when you’ve killed the same piece of content a thousand times over and absurdly outgear it.

Serophous.9085:

I finally got yo actually crafting the amber weapons, and thought of creating some insect look with my chart.

Note, I did want to use the ramparts head, but the broken eye just always got to me.

That is freakin awesome.

zenleto.6179:

Very nice, good work. I went with something for my cold-themed Norn elementalist. Same pants and boots as yours, with cultural shirt and gloves, Vigil shoulders and the starter blue forehead gem.

I don’t have any current daylight pics so I hope these come out alright.

I love the way the light plays in the first pic. Makes him look like some kind of frozen giant.

Esplen.3940:

Nearly every activity in the game (not actually “activity” since those don’t yield the same drops) gives a chance of looting a Black Lion Chest Key or Black Lion Chest.

Opening those also gives you a chance at getting charges.

If you don’t want to spend money to get charges, and don’t want to map complete to get charges, then maybe you really don’t want to transmute things.

I want to get money, and I don’t want to work. Does that mean I should complain about having to work to get money?

Lol, nearly every activity has a 0.0000000001% chance of dropping a Key, with the only remotely reasonable chance being, once again, map completion.

Anyway, arguments like yours are so hilariously missing the point. I’m not wasting my time going down strawman road this time.

Cool data, thanks for sharing.

Stars.2179:

Tsk tsk. Before April 15, you could only have one of that skin on one character. People pushes it, ANET let you now have as many copies of that skin as you want for transmutation charges. Now people want it for FREE. So demanding and entitlement. You bought it once. It’s already unlocked, and you have 1 free use of the skin. Just earn the transmutation charges. It’s not that hard to get. I’m sitting on a few hundreds by just playing.

The system is fine as is.

Lol you mean by doing lots of map completion? That’s the only way I can think of that “just playing” yields charges.

I would settle for Kodan. I can bearly wait to see a race like them in action.

Upon looking into the Tengu and GW2, I can see why so many mention them in race discussions. Apparently, they were under consideration for a GW2 race, but didn’t quite make the cut.

I’m assuming from what I read that they would be the most logistically easy to add.

I do really love the idea of playing as a Skritt for some reason. Only problem I see is that lorewise, I believe they get dumber when there are less of them around (or something to that effect). Kind of like a hive mind.

So if Anet keeps to their “canon” I’m not sure the idea of an individual Skritt hero would work too well. I spose they could always break their own rules though.

I think it’s cool that some of them are different sizes. Some of us may have different tastes, even at different times, concerning what size mini we enjoy following us around.

I would make a thread in tech support, if I were you.

samo.1054:

Yes, I absolutely agree with both of you – right now they have to tread carefully on this matter, but still step in the direction that the community is showing them and trusting their guts at the same time.

Any way you look at this tho, it’s quite clear that current system is unacceptable for the big majority of us. It’s like an abortion of all the alts that we ever wanted to make. :P

And let’s not even talk about how this system effects new players. It’s pure torture.

Oh man, yeah, I understand. I came in after the changes.

samo.1054:

So many well well-written posts here… Seriously, can Anet just for once admit that what they did was wrong and listen to the people here?!?!

Well to be fair, they are now in a position where any changes they make to the trait system is going to be put under the harshest microscope available. They have a reputation at this point (from a lot of players’ perspectives) for mangling the trait system. If they don’t revise carefully, they risk repeating what happened last time, only worse for them this time because people will feel like Anet can’t get it right at all.

So the revisions will require careful consideration and time, unfortunately for us.

I’m a bit of a dev at heart with some time to kill, so I’ll give it a go.

First of all, it’s difficult to say with confidence which traits are “underwhelming in performance.” It’s kind of a shifting-goalposts problem to address. Opinions are going to vary on the usefulness and “fun factor” of certain traits. I would need a lot of time/information to get acquainted with the various traits, or at least a list of which ones to improve.

What do you determine is fun? Fun is unfortunately highly subjective. I would say usefulness of some kind is going to be a strong indicator that a trait has the potential for fun. But I cannot predict all of the ways that a trait is going to be used.

What factors determines the quality? At the core of game designing and improving the base of your game, what is the ultimate factor of quality? I’d say quality in this context is largely measured in usefulness to the player and keeping in line with baseline goals for the class. Fun helps too, but because the design of traits is so mathematical (for lack of a better word) it’s largely going to come down to what kind of purpose the trait is serving for the class’s capabilities and whether that purpose is in line with where we want the class to be.

I would be happy to play dev with a list of specific traits if you give me one, but I would need a lot of time to come up with a list of my own, without more information.

ofLegends.9853:

Ugh I do that all the time with sylvari. I get all the way done, enter the name and go, and then it’s like……. forgot to choose a glow color.
I wish I were one of those people who, at that point, could just look at their character, shrug, and say, “meh, glow looks fine” and move on.

Haha, I know, right? I’ve already used a makeover kit on a human female toon because I couldn’t get over how barbie she ended looking. It was like looking at a doll, for real.

And the norn faces… gah. I have so much trouble with their hair/face combinations.

Guilty as charged.

…that moment when you spend half an hour perfecting a look and then realize after creation that you never checked the look with the lighting turned off and now your skin tone just doesn’t look right at all.

I wish they would tell me what the undertones are for each skin color option LOL. It is a chore sometimes trying to figure out what I’m working with.

They should just add a checkbox in settings that makes engi kits invisible when it’s checked.

Boom. Problem solved.

Brujeria.7536:

It depends. Playing on EU servers I come across this issue sometimes, the funny thing is its most likely not insulting or bashing the direct way. People asking normal questions in spanish or french or whatever just because its easier for them usually isnt a problem, however if it gets “too much” the other languages start talking as well, not because they generally have to communicate or because they have a question, just for the sake of speaking in their language to show kinda “we are here”. Feels like a “cold war” situation to me.

For what it’s worth, maybe those people are just proud of their language/culture. I probably would be if I was playing a mostly [other language] speaking game.

I don’t really get the excuses for being bothered by a German guy speaking German in English chat (or whatever other language). Chat that is frequent and therefore hard to follow is already something that can happen in English-speaking chat by English-speaking people.

I would think it’d actually be easier to pick out your own conversation amidst a bunch of foreign letters, than it is trying to follow a quickly moving conversation with input from numerous people in your own language.

samo.1054:

there’s plenty of them running around wtih lvl 70 characters and only like 5 traits unlocked. These poor guys hardly know anything about the trait system.

Sad but true. I actively read guides and stuff, but any time I get a character to level 80, I just look up builds and find the most essentially useful traits that people are recommending for what I want to do. Then I either buy or unlock those few and leave the rest alone.

I’ve really given it a try a couple times. Going on an unlocking spree. But staggeringly quickly, I’m hit with the realization that even some of the lowest level traits can be really time-consuming to go track down. And then I’m supposed to do that for 5 different types and 3 tiers? And on top of that, I have to do it over and over for any alts.

I could probably grind the gold and skillpoints to buy them much faster than completing the tasks, if the system gave me any reasons to actually bother.

Ironically, one of the easiest unlocks is a grandmaster trait – Karka Queen – who is on an observable rotation and gets killed regularly. I mean, you can get that one just from following the world boss train one time at level 80.

Of course, Anet doesn’t always know which events/bosses are going to be farmed the most, which is part of the problem. It really should have been more generalized from the get-go (e.g. complete X type of activity and get a trait book that you exchange at the trainer for a trait of your choice).

The laser-point specificity of the objectives combined with the importance of traits for most builds happens to have been the perfect blend of annoying.

I take it you’re talking about that annoying thing where you go to sell to a buy order and it says it failed? (I guess cause someone just sold to that buy order).

And rather than just saying your sale failed, it then puts your item up for sale at the price that it would have sold instantly at otherwise…

Usually when this happens to me, the item sells quickly anyway (cause it’s a product with high turnover – main reason it occurs at all, I think).

But yeah, I would rather it just calls it an error and refreshes the page, so I can see if I want to sell to the next buy order. Putting it up for sale when that happens is just confusing and is contradictory to selling instantly.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

GW2’s aggro system is an nontransparent mess. I’ve never understood it. First strike clearly affects aggro. But toughness seems to be a far greater source of aggro than damage is, which makes no sense. It also defeats the purpose of having toughness: You have more defense, so you take more damage…. HUH?!

If that’s true, they were probably trying to make it possible to do pseudo-tanking – guy with toughness gear taking the big hits.

Tim.6450:

Sankekur.9182:

Or, how about more in-game armour at all?
Seriously, except for the ascended set, there were no new armor sets added to the game, safe for the gem store ones, which i don’t count because… well… they’re from the gem store.

Gem store armor sets are still cheaper then a full t3 cultural set, especially when they are on sale.

Not by much though. At roughly 13 gold for 100 gems rate (last time I checked) that makes gem set roughly ~103 gold for the more expensive ones vs. 119 gold for cultural.

Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the conversion rate continues to rise over time, eventually making them about even. Would only need to rise about 2 more gold for 100.

Although it sounds a little silly on the surface, I honestly don’t see why not. They could probably restrict it so that you need to have at least one level 80 character before you can access it (that’s the only real concern I can see).

If it’s such a big deal to hit cap instantly, just make it level 60 instead. I mean, honestly, it’s already not that hard to get to 80. Giving another method to speed up the process for people who want to have different alt 80s to play isn’t going to killing the game.

As long as the main content pieces are free (e.g. maps and such). The rest of it can be $60 for all I care.

I am interested to see what they could do with an expansion budget.

The fact that most “quests” (e.g. optional hearts and events) so greatly encourage cooperation and don’t have people fighting for some special item or mob to spawn (for the most part) is huge for me. I tried Archeage during the open beta and it bugged the heck of me that it was back to the old, “Compete with other players who are trying to complete the same quest.”

Same thing with dynamic events and optional hearts, versus “go here, go there, quest hub” nonsense. I’m amazed that more games haven’t taken after such an amazing QOL design choice.

I’m tired of being yanked out of any immersion by games that insist on using the same old “John Doe has 3 quests for you. Go do them halfway across the map and then come back, where he will have 3 more for you that you couldn’t do before. The next 3 are also halfway across the map. Have fun!”

So yeah, that aspect has spoiled me for sure. Traditional questing is just hard to stomach now. It feels so technical and dull.

kokiman.2364:

Well yeah that was my question what is A.Net’s job here? Should they explain all the basics of RPGs? In this case.. good luck this will take a while. And will eat up a lot of ressources. I mean jesus.. what’s so wrong about figuring stuff out on your own.

It’s a bit of a game in itself is the thing. Some of the first game designers didn’t have to care a whole lot about player retention because there were few titles to begin with, so if you wanted to play games, you had to choose from one of the few titles available.

But now the market is absolutely flooded with options and companies are trying to pull in the crowd that used to stay away from games, in part because of the learning curve.

So now, they want players to not feel stupid trying to figure things out, while being surrounded by so many experienced gamers. But they also can’t spoonfeed everything or people will feel like they’re taking a class. It’s certainly not an exact science, but a lot of it is rooted in usability design; the customer who feels stupid and confused isn’t as likely to return as the customer who feels like the systems are intuitive and easy to grasp.

That’s where some people get confused about difficulty: Designers generally want games to be hard to master (it gives players a reason to stick around and keep trying) but it’s also ideal if the game is easy to learn. Otherwise, people may not stick around to master it at all.

So in answer to your thing about “figuring stuff out,” I think the key there is that people should get to discover the complexities on their own (such as the people who devise rotations for optimal damage output). It can be harmful to retention, however, if the basics are obscure at all.

Fishae.2503:

Labjax.2465:

An “appear offline” function would be nice for such needs and would probably solve your issue.

there is, next to your name in “Friends”, drop down list – invisible.
not sure how well it works though

Learn something new every day. Had no idea that was there. Good to know, thanks.

Gonna look into what it actually does.

Edit: From what I could find, looks like, “It shows you as offline, you cannot read guild chat and when people try to whisper you they will get the msg that you are offline (even though you can whisper them when invis).”

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1w1i82/sometimes_i_just_really_wish_i_could_login_and_be/cexsio6

So that may be just what you’re looking for, Dyne.

Jski.6180:

Timing and split sec reaction much like a fighter game to where it becomes a reflex and not something you think about. That is the major different between the stander mmorpg combat (more clunky and unintuitive) vs what GW2 has (what seems more like a fluid motions.)

I agree for the most part. Some MMOs have combat that is more “intellectual” (more based on making informed decisions over an extended period of time, like a slightly sped-up turn-based game). GW2 is, imo, closer to an FPS than classic MMO combat.

I still wouldn’t say it’s easy if you don’t also know how to manage your abilities, but considering that entire attacks can be evaded with dodge, or negated with aegis, and dodge is on a relatively short cooldown, a lot of it comes down to timing that dodge button. Or just positioning yourself well.

I define skill and expertise a bit differently, too. I would consider an expert of this game to be someone who is skilled in all areas (dodge, positioning, abilities, combos, etc.). While to be skilled, I would say all you need is to be good at the more FPS-like parts of combat. Because really, outside of the more challenging content, being good at twitch combat is largely all you need to get by.

I’m pretty sure the follower system isn’t much different than most games though. I thought a lot of them were set up where you can add someone to your friends list and see when they are online, even if they haven’t added you back.

That said, I sympathize because I play this game in a similar way. An “appear offline” function would be nice for such needs and would probably solve your issue.

kokiman.2364:

Labjax.2465:

Not every mistake needs to be a lesson. Like you said, it’s a game. It isn’t a school classroom.

Yes it does or else people will keep doing the same mistake, contact the support and waste everyone’s time.

Yes, let’s try to “fix” grown, adult humans, rather than focus on what we can control (the software).

Attitudes like yours are mystifying to me. Even in the face of the realization that there are other, more practical ways to address the problem, you still insist that it is the imperfect beings that we must “correct.”

In a different context, perhaps I would agree with you. Perhaps if the context was more grave.

Paradox.1380:

The design philosophy seems pretty forgiving to me. Yes everyone makes mistakes. I’ve done it myself a long time ago I bought a full set of Armor from the guy outside of Arah thinking it was all the same stats.

Boy was I sad about that, but I didn’t take the forums up in arms begging to be compensated. I wore the armor until I made enough karma to get it back.

I can even say that my mistake was more devastating to me then than it would be now, being that back then Karma was a very rare resource.

Furthermore, I am allowed as everyone else is to have an opinion on a discussion board. Just because my opinion doesn’t align with yours, doesn’t mean that it is any less valid.

And yes, I believe that every mistake is a learnable moment. Regardless of outcome (and I even said I wouldn’t condemn them if they were compensated) that they learn from it and know better next time.

Well I guess the important question is, do you feel vindicated now that you’ve told the guy how dumb he is for making a mistake?

I didn’t know I had the power to make someone’s opinion invalid though. That’s pretty cool.

Paradox.1380:

That may be true for that… but this is a kitten game that gives you a WARNING that you cannot use it on the class you are buying it on. It’s not in the same place as the buy button so haphazardly clicking won’t over ride it either.

I’m just saying that, the person made a mistake, and they should learn something from said mistake. It’s not ANets fault, and if they feel they can reimburse the items that’s good and a “whew” moment. But, ANet doesn’t HAVE to and it doesn’t give the user the rights to complain about it either. They put measures in place to try and ensure it doesn’t happen.

Your opinion vs. having a design philosophy that is forgiving/understanding of the human condition where we make mistakes.

I know which one I choose.

Not every mistake needs to be a lesson. Like you said, it’s a game. It isn’t a school classroom.

felessan.9587:

Ooohh, yes. I agree. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat there and triple-checked purchases just to be absolutely sure I’m going to click the right buttons. It’s like when you make airline and hotel reservations – “Did I cover the days correctly or not? No going back once I hit this button!”

Haha, I know the feeling. Even with the double and triple-checking mindset, I still sometimes click the wrong stuff.

felessan.9587:

Wait, what? Do you mean usability as in a character can or cannot use something in game? Because I see that warning box all the time, especially for rare and exotic equipment purchases…

Nah, usability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability

From the wiki page (part of the definition):

Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?

In this case, the only way to “recover” from the error is to contact support, so it’s a usability pitfall.

I forget sometimes that it’s not a commonly used term, unless you’ve been exposed to software development in some way.

Paradox.1380:

How did you accidentally buy Karma Armor of a different weight class than your own? You cannot accidentally buy it anymore because as soon as you click “Buy” it gives you a second dialog pop up that says “Your class cannot use this item are you sure you want to purchase it?”

Honestly, it was YOUR fault for not reading the warning dialog that pops up in a Different spot from the buy buy button on the UI. Its not even in the same play you literally have to move your mouse to accept the dialog.

This is NOT an ANet problem, its yours and your lack of reading, I am sorry but I don’t feel bad for you. Live and learn my friend.

That’s not how usability works, buddy.

Another game I played had a feature for most items where you could sell it back at full price within a short time frame of buying it (obviously using it at all canceled that ability).

A feature like that would be awesome for misclicked purchases and would probably free up some ticket work for support.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

The problem is the bad change in all of those situations you mentioned. Yes the longer it goes on the worse it gets but I have never seen a company revert a change and fix something later. With out anyone ever actually doing that there is no way of knowing how people will really react. Yes of course people will talk crap about that bad change for years but they would do that anyways. Because it was a bad change. In my opinion its better to suck it up and later is better than never. I think the real reason we do not see changes like roll backs is because some people are stubborn. Especially in the corporate sector. Many people would rather go down with the ship rather than admit they were wrong. It doesn’t make sense but that is what I have seen in my life experiences. It is also backed up by watching all the crap in the news where CEOs run companies in to the ground and walk away with millions. To them they never made any mistakes. They made millions. It doesn’t matter that the company failed.

I don’t think it needs demonstration to see what the horrible consequences would be. It’s easy to say, “They should just try it and see what happens” when you’re not the one whose job it is to keep a company afloat.

Ohoni.6057:

Because that’s how art works. It’s a reflection of the real world in which things are changed when there is reason to change them, and left alone when there’s no reason to change them. Fantasy means that anything can happen, not that everything should.

But again, there’s a good reason not to, in that every armor model added to the game represents a lot of work on their part, so they want some reasonable expectation that people will wear them. If ten people actually want to wear them and ninety people “support them” then that gives ANet the impression that 100 people want to wear the armor, and then they make it, and only ten people wear it, making it a waste of time for all involved that they could have spent working on something else. Advocate the things you want to use, let other people advocate the things they want to use.

When did I ever suggest anything remotely along the lines of removing existing armors from the game?

I didn’t say you advocated for removing armors. I’m saying you’re pushing for having armor that fits your cultural ideas of “what is realistic,” i.e. you’re pushing it on other people. You are not saying, “I want armors that look realistic.” You’re saying, “All armors should reflect the way people dress in my culture.”

Anyway, unless you want to strip away the political nonsense and be honest about your personal opinions on the matter, I am done talking to you. It’s just not worth my time stripping away your smoke and mirrors, so that you can deflect and deny what your real motivations are.

I would really like to hear from a dev how this is actually supposed to work. Cause it’s really hard to gauge through observation. We can look at trends, sure, but on a larger scale, it’s hard to check.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Maybe that’s the reason so many MMOs fail or go into life support mode after the first couple of years. So the devs should stop being stubborn and leave the egos at the door. Then admit they were wrong and start giving the players what they want and not what the devs want us to want.

If you really want to go there, then no. That’s not why MMOs fail. Reverting a major change months later is more likely to be a death knell than the other way around.

The main reason it’s so bad is because it sets a precedent that says, “We’re unable to stand against player criticism. If you criticize enough over time, then eventually we’ll cave.” It’s roughly equivalent to a parent refusing a cookie to a child and then relenting after the child whines for an hour straight; it sends the message that the kid just has to whine enough and he will get what he wants.

I’m not saying we’re all whining children, mind you – many of us are far from that. But the point is, the last thing any company needs is for consumers to think that they will always cave under pressure. Then it becomes a game of who can scream the loudest and longest.

Reverting changes shortly after they have happened is a different story and sometimes it’s ok because the company can save face at that point by saying that they are adjusting to what players want. But even then, usually what happens is that the company makes some kind of adjustment to the changes to make them more palatable.

Bottom line is, the longer a company waits, the more harm it’s going to do to revert something major. And they have long passed the threshold of “significant harm to their reputation if they were to revert.”

Ohoni.6057:

Sigh. Look, let’s compare like-to-like here. Let’s leave out winter fashions where both sides tend to cover up. In business attire, men still tend to wear full body suits, women sometimes do as well, but more often wear some sort of skirt and/or a lower neckline. In beach attire, men do tend to go fully topless more often than women, but their shorts are almost always more covering than female equivalents. In casual clothing, men wear pants, women wear capris. Men wear knee-length shorts, women wear booty shorts. Men wear tank tops, women wear belly shirts. Yes, some women do wear clothing that shows no more skin than men, but the plenty who don’t wear noticeably less.

I can see why some would want that, I just don’t see why they should get it? Why should the game conform to your skewed view of how the world “should” be, rather than reflecting how it is?

The better question is, why the kitten not? I mean, seriously? Where in “this is a fantasy world where murder is an expected part of existing and everybody can come back from dying infinite number of times” does the brain think, “This is supposed to reflect reality.”

Ohoni.6057:

That’s kind of the problem, you aren’t even asking for something you yourself see a need for, you’re asking for something that you assume other people need, when in fact they might not care. You’re much better off pushing for things where at least you have a need for them. If a large enough mass of players really want to use these options then it would be a good idea for ANet to provide them, but people who do not care to use these options either way just confuse the issue.

Since when do you need to be personally invested in wanting something to support it? Some of us just like the idea of people having fair/equal options. We’re not saying, “Delete all other types of dress,” unlike you and your “realistic dress” that you’re pushing on other people.

Belzebu.3912:

How the game would know if the rune is “expensive” or not?
Rune of strength, for example, a time ago was almost worthless, now is expensive as hell.

It wouldn’t know.

As far as gear that comes with Runes goes, if that is a concern, I think those Runes could just be removed from the gear, period. Some of them are a straight-up misfit anyway, such as the Runes of Grenth on Berserker Karma gear.

Illysharia.7286:

Gaile, with all do respect (and I do appreciate that you are just a middle-person in these communications) all the feedback required is already contained in this thread. People have simply been repeating themselves for a couple of months now, and trying to get changes made. All the data that is needed is already possessed by Jon as well: he has a list of the Traits and the requirements that each one needs. He simply has to read his spreadsheet and see if they are level appropriate, and if the task is disproportionate to what is being gained. It really is no more than a weekend’s work, at most, of cross referencing to spot those.

How he fixes them is another matter, but spotting them doesn’t take months and months and a continual influx of repetitive community feedback. Frankly, we’re a week and a bit away from hitting the 6 month mark on this thread, and reiterating that more feedback is needed is staggeringly disingenuous.

I think somewhere along the line, someone in upper management over there forgot that we’re the customers that keep your lights on. Rather, we’re treated with, imho, a dishearteningly large amount of disrespect. This is in regards to communication, or lack thereof, how we as customers are perceived, and consequently the attitude directed our way. To keep on track with this thread and not over-generalize, I feel that there has been almost half a year’s effort to stall and entertain this community when we’ve put in so much communal effort to 1) get basic acknowledgement and 2) institute the changes needed for a broken system.

Gaile, again, you are a Community liaison and I appreciate that you have been making efforts. I also understand you have to maintain neutrality, and can only report and relay so much. My comments aren’t about you, it’s about how this Trait thread has been, and continues to be, mismanaged.

As we are approaching the 6 month mark and it appears that little to nothing is being done, I simply have to assume that nothing meaningful will be done. Certainly nothing on the scale of what needs to be done to fix a system that was perfectly fine in its originality. My hands are in the air at this point. In the words of Donald Trump, “ANET, you’re fired!”.

I think the point of her doing that was to make sure those who haven’t been following the thread closely know that there is some dev interaction/acknowledgement on the subject.

I know what you mean though. It doesn’t look quite how we’d like.

The problem: If you put expensive Runes on Karma-bought or WvW-bought gear, the only way to get them back is by using the Gem Store’s Upgrade Extractor.

Although that tool is a nice solution if you have lots of real money to spend, it isn’t worth the Gold-to-Gem conversion for most Runes.

The solution: Flag Karma and WvW gear specially (for less confusion, this could be done to only level 80 Karma and WvW gear). The flag would mean – You can now salvage these items, but when you do, you only have a chance of getting any Runes back, depending on % chance your Kit has. No materials would drop from salvaging the item.

To avoid confusion: Salvaging these items would give a special confirmation prompt. Something like: “Warning: Salvaging this item will not yield any materials. Doing so only has a chance to return any Runes on the item, at a rate dependent on the Salvage Kit used.”

I feel like this would be a good way to alleviate the “lost Rune” issue, without interfering with other game systems. Considering that this issue isn’t present with other types of gear (such as Crafted) I think it’s only fair to even the playing field for people who obtain their gear through the “special” avenues in question.

Let me know what you think!

Tachenon.5270:

Please: just put it back the way it was.

“Alright fine, since you begged enough we’ll revert an entire game system months later.”

- Said no game company ever

I dislike the system probably as much as you do, Tach, but let’s try to be realistic here: They’re willing to revise the system and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re working on it here and there as we speak, but they’re not going to simply revert it.

Siphaed.9235:

The key word when you buy items in-game is…

UNIQUE

If you see that, just as in any MMORPG, or RPG, it means that you can only have one equipped and no more.

You’d be amazed how easily people can confuse themselves. I haven’t fallen victim to this issue, but in spirit, I almost have. I was looking at rings on a laurel merchant at one point, considering buying a couple for the future, and my thought process went something like this:

“I could buy two of those zerker rings. Wait, they say unique. Isn’t that a thing I’ve seen in other games that means you can only have one equipped? But why would they have that on a special vendor? Why would they limit you like that?

And Distinguished Circle of Logic is listed as unique, yet it’s an amulet, so you can only ever equip one anyway…"

I think that had I been buying at the time, I would have erred on the side of caution and looked for two different ones. But the point is, even knowing what unique usually means, it still didn’t completely click.

It doesn’t help that I’ve only seen “unique” on ascended laurel trinkets, meaning there’s also the possibility of someone thinking, “Oh, unique means that it’s a special ascended ring. Unique as in specially made.”

fellyn.5083:

Labjax.2465:

Hey now, let’s not make this personal just because we disagree.

Who is making it personal?

We’re not here to talk about how things should stay the same. We’re here to talk about making the game better.

Saying that we should either deal with it or forget they exist helps no one.

That was in reference to another post or two that presumably got deleted. Now it just looks random and out of context lol.

Hey now, let’s not make this personal just because we disagree.