Guild Wars 2

I-I didn’t really want to be in your c-choir anyway.

Same here. So what’s the reward, just the chest and gift boxes?

Donari.5237:

On the other hand, I just tried variations of the pattern on Molten and Computer until it worked. A guildie pointed out the Flame and Frost symbolism on Molten. I still don’t quite know the logic to the computer solve.

I believe the logic is straightforward, albeit flawed. The Molten Alliance was part of “Flame and Frost”, which featured the Flame Legion and Dredge combining their abilities to forge new weapons (made of iron). So the proper combination is therefore Flame+Icicle+Iron.

Where I take issue with this solution, though, is that one of the other options for the second choice was snowflake. And a snowflake is closer to “frost” than a solid body of ice. It’s this kind of obtuseness that killed the old school adventure games that these puzzles were imitating. Though maybe that was also part of the imitation.

I understand the nature of the complaint, that the end reward for doing this content is essentially trivialized, but offer another perspective. One of the problems with the LS has been the soulcrushing grind required to stay up with one-time rewards, while at the same time many of those rewards have been less than fulfilling when it represented hours of unwanted work. Such as, for example, the plethora of one-time use back slot skins that actually do little other than take up an inventory slot for safekeeping. (How many backs does Anet think we have?) In this and the last (fractal) update, the meta end reward was not unique, it was just extra loot that you would normally get from additional grinding, but represented a more meaningful reward in the sense that you get things like ascended crafting materials that are actually useful. I personally see this as a good change, allowing players to keep up with the living story without requiring them to participate in the endless biweekly grind that this game had become since the LS started. Those who actually enjoy or are willing to go to the extra lengths of completing the meta will still get extra rewards for the effort, and those who’d rather skip the extended grind can respectfully decline and not miss the critical events and one-time novelty rewards of the LS. It’s a reasonable hedge against player disengagement. People have been burning out and leaving the game over the LS and this reward structure sets the bar closer to where it should be, where players don’t feel that they have to constantly log in on a tight schedule like a second job or be threatened with missing out on one-time events.

irrimn.3192:

they’re simply using the wrong options to complete the puzzles without any indication that they are wrong.

Sounds about right. Thanks Anet.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Shall we give Kits to all other professions so they can properly utilize Rune of the Engineer?

There were so many different ways to reply to this with biting sarcasm, that I just gave up and decided to leave this link here, and all I will say is mind the gap.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/A_Second_Profession

You will get a coupon for 20% off instant repair canister in the gem store. The funny thing is though, unless the community at large helps to turn this into a crapstorm for those who are affected, you won't even get that.

This is called rationalization. What you have said here can be applied to virtually anything in the game as an excuse to reverse progress.

• You’ve never done Tequatl as a 65? Ok, then everyone’s char level is being reset to 65 for the new Tequatl.
• You didn’t craft your stuff using the newer, stingier conversion recipes? Ok, then we are uncrafting your item and giving you the original materials back.
• You didn’t start playing WvW until all the recent reward systems were put into place? Don’t worry, we’re resetting everyone else’s WXP to make sure you’re all equal.

The difference here is that high-level fractals affects a relatively tiny population because that pursuit has such a terrible risk/reward that almost nobody does it. Yet at the same time, for those who did do it, it represents a massive investment and self-defined achievement. I would argue that reaching 50+ in fractals is a more significant milestone than obtaining a legendary. That is what Anet is taking away from those players. Try something of this magnitude with something that affects the lowest common denominator and see if the forums don’t explode with rage.

I’m somewhat optimistic that functional items may return as rare drops, like the recipes, but I don’t think we’ll see the cosmetic items again, except maybe in the gem store. OTOH, unless prices have moved drastically I don’t think it’s really necessary for the recipes to come back just yet. Most people aren’t even interested in food that isn’t +MF.

On the bright side, there is no longer any dispute about whether this game is a treadmill. Anet is literally moving people’s progress back to a previous position.

Every run is now guaranteed as 4 fractals, and additionally you are guaranteed to get a mix of the harder/longer fractals now that they are categorized as such. Unless drop rates have been significantly increased (as in, high enough to virtually guarantee a drop within a few runs), IMO this is going to make fractals less rewarding than before. The Molten and Aetherblade bosses were also much more difficult than Jade Maw, and presumably they now have agony mechanics as well, raising the bar for pugs, many more of which will now fail.

All told, unless Anet has seriously nerfed these encounters, sped them up, and/or improved the rate of non-trash rewards, the right thing to do would have been to reduce the runs to 2 normal fractals plus the boss, not force people to run 3 normal (including guaranteed long) fractals and then, more likely than not, bosses of higher difficulty at the end of the run that has a non-trivial chance of invalidating all the work that was put into getting there. Though at higher levels I think you’ll see more outright failures at fractal 3 because of cliffside/grawl, one of which is now practically guaranteed to show up.

Keeping in mind that fractals has been pretty quiet even with the possibility of getting 4 fast fractals, and knowing how Anet handles RNG rewards, I don’t see how this update is likely to present much of an improvement over the current fractals, let alone overturn the Queensdale endgame. Can we at least MF the trash pinks now or are they still just 5 silver at the vendor?

Hamfisted goldsink is all it is. Just an excuse to have no waypoints and charge twice as much instead. Don’t give it any more credit by asking why.

Xae Isareth.1364:

It’s doesnt work like that I don’t think. For a start, why isn’t every sylvari born equal then? Scarlet is clearly more intellectually superior to most sylvari. They are only given the basics like language and the ability to walk, they learn the rest on their own.

Sentience has no correlation with equality one way or the other. Not all robots or computers are created equal either, and the reasons can be similar.

Not that too many people would care at this point, but I confirm getting the achievement using zhaitaffy.

Do you remember when Halloween farming was fun?

Guild Wars 1 remembers.

Vayne.8563:

It’s just that some people only want to focus on what isn’t right.

Which is exactly what the article points out as being the only useful feedback.

I was going to post a link to it myself because, like I’m sure so many others felt as they were reading it, it was perfectly applicable to GW2. Almost as if Mr. Koster was addressing Anet directly. (He’s also an MMO dev.)

Over the past couple of months my personal opinion of the game has plummeted. I used to be the type of player doing dailies every day and finishing monthlies in the first week, and now I find it a struggle to want to log in (last month I’m not sure I got any of the monthly achievements). I’m 2/10 on the Twilight Assault one, after 2 weeks. It’s just not worth it anymore to keep up. The idea of having to earn BiS gear through one of the worst parts of the game (crafting) utterly disgusts me. And meanwhile Anet continues to push temporary content/events/achievements over letting players approach the game on their own schedule, while continuing to decrease the rewards for playing. Each new ‘reward’ in fact feels like a penalty as it’s something that you either have to keep paying to use (transmutation) or to keep in storage (bank slots). They even nerfed karma which was already next to useless, and at the same time they continually introduce new item-based currencies. This game does not respect my time or inventory space. This is why I stopped playing other MMOs. Sad to see GW degenerating into just another one.

Just made one, still broken.

Is this really what we should come to expect from the game updates? That content is either temporary or must cause other permanent content to be removed? Even the last update which was only supposed to “improve” Tequatl effectively made him inaccessible content for the majority of worlds, requiring people to guest, fail, or just not play. These kinds of changes are certainly not what players asked for when they said they wanted more permanent updates.

Anet’s bad at sequels

The Eternal Grace.3157:

You’re right, I haven’t been able to beat him yet because I am apart from MY server.

You didn’t beat him yet because you didn’t have a chance to get carried by Blackgate’s guilds.

You personally have done nothing, and will do nothing, to earn a victory over Tequatl. So you can wait for your chance to get carried like everyone else.

Lexandro.1456:

That is exactly what I was referring to. The damage is what is multiplied not the actual time. The time is constant and unchanging. It is 15 seconds, no more no less. Which is what I said specifically there is a destinction between the two.

There is a distinction between the two figures you are comparing, neither of which gives you the figure that the other posters are discussing, which requires all three units to be multiplied in some expression. Expressing the final figure as a product of man-hours is no less correct than the intermediate units you are using.

Yid.3024:

While I agree there could be more rewards, I think GW2 right now is dangerously close to being all about rewards and not as much as about fun(like any ohter mmos out there, which makes me a sad panda). One of the reasons I like SAB is that it’s mainly a fun-oriented content, as opposed to reward-oriented content(Jennah and Scarlet definitely tipped the game to this side a bit too much). And yes, playerbase shares half the guilt on this trend, but we should keep trying.

The fun factor of any content decays exponentially on repeated playthroughs. There is nothing that can be done from a design standpoint that will ever change this. The player base gravitates toward rewards because everything becomes a grind once you do it enough times. Fun and reward are not mutually exclusive and there is no need to counterbalance them. All content should be as fun as possible and as rewarding as possible within the context of the game’s overall progression rate. There is no reason to do anything less.

marnick.4305:

AlietteFaye.7316:

Also, if they want testing, they should have TEST SERVERS. As has been suggested since forever.

There is a test server. Your ignorance doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

They meant a public server, so that, you know, things can be tested in a test environment that is confidently similar to live, instead of a server that only has 100 or so dev/QA people on it which requires them to then beta test on live. Among about a hundred other reasons why PTR is a good idea.

Your ignorance of context doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Sparrowsong.4238:

Isn’t memorizing where the traps are to avoid them a skill in itself?

Yes, but not related to gameplay.

If you can accomplish the same thing (trap avoidance) by e.g. following a guide, then it’s not testing your skill as a player, as that information can be gained more efficiently in other ways.

I personally don’t think jumping from rock to rock is skill. Jumping around a corner landing on the edge of a cliff to avoid instant death from invisible spikes is.

Ordinary jumps are a trivial skill, sure, but they still require the player to perform the action, and not everyone can do it easily. A guide will not do the jump for you.

Jumping is gameplay, memorization is not.

Online interactions not rated by ESRB. Standard disclaimer, there is no way to rate stuff that is generated by other players, which is why Spore had kitten monsters despite kid friendly rating, and I believe it was Forza or one of those other racing games that had the Hitler mobile.

A graphic bleeding animation is 100% created by the developer and does impact ESRB which could push the game to M as a result.

It is supposed to work like a slide input where you jump first and then immediately dodge. In my experience though, timing them is not reliable at all, and pressing both buttons simultaneously has a better chance of producing the move. If the dodge registers first, then you’ll fail, but if you’re fairly close with your presses, you’ll have ~50% chance to succeed or fail which is better than trying to time the jump to happen first because an intentional delay is almost always going to be too long.

terminustechnicus.9617:

Tequatle testing was only an assumption true, but a few days before the scarlet invasion release the same stuff happens. So it’s likely they test this stuff on main.

Even if the 2 examples of disconnections constituted a pattern of some sort, I don’t see how that leads to your conclusions. Why does testing on a live server result in disconnections? Since there aren’t reports of every player being disconnected, why does it disconnect you specifically? You say only Anet’s servers give you bad ping times, but what were your ping times to the other servers you tried? What geographical area are you in? Who is your ISP and what is your service level?

An optimized 64-bit client would indeed have advantages over an optimized 32-bit client. The problem right now is that we have neither, so it’s an entirely moot point. Merely switching over to 64-bit compilation does not automatically grant you any benefits other than the possibility of increased RAM use, but it’s been well-documented that RAM use is not the biggest issue that Gw2.exe is facing. Regardless of whether the client is 32- or 64-bit, Anet would have to perform essentially the same task to make it work the way we want and expect it to. Thus, asking for 64-bit client as the first step to performance improvement is pointless, and would only serve to drop support for the people who don’t have 64-bit systems.

terminustechnicus.9617:

Before someone asks: I traced that ServerIP and the Problem is located at ANets.

What did you trace exactly and how did you determine that the problem is Anet’s just from their server IP?

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s how all games work and when you get punished hard for not knowing what to do (yet) or not being able to do it, it’s called difficulty.

This division you make between supposedly “mechanical difficulty” and “real difficulty” is imaginary.

It’s subjective, not imaginary. For example, to protect yourself from the absurd knockback physics, you can learn to conduct battles in more advantageous locations, and put your back to a wall. At this point, though, it certainly feels like you’re fighting the design more than you’re fighting the enemy, who is otherwise not so threatening.

Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, people are able to perceive the causes of difficulty differently, because in fact the causes are different. You are seriously underestimating players if you think we can’t tell the difference between something that is hard because the enemies are hard and something that is hard because gameplay is broken.

This existed all along in World 1 also, but that content was, overall, easy enough that the bugs and other problems could be overlooked. That’s no longer the case in World 2, which uses any excuse to throw you off a cliff. Even Ninja Gaiden was not this blatant, and like all of the good classics, that game had a variety of powerful weapons that served to both balance the gameplay and add fun factor. Even Mario could spam fireballs.

It seems to me that this indie-driven interpretation of the genre is not so much trying to recreate the feel of the classics so much as they are trying to one-up each other in seeing who can distill the entirety of the gameplay experience into difficulty and nothing more. On the other hand you have modern games that do higher difficulty the right way, like Demon’s Souls or the perennial shmups whose gameplay principles have not changed in the last two decades – games that keep the fun factor high even as they turn up the difficulty. Instead of daring people to play the game just so they can say they finished it. Which is precisely the area where World 2 and TM have gone.

And why not skill? Is it not skill to learn how to adapat fast and perform a series of difficult, precise tasks in a row without failing? Don’t you think that people who are less good at this will have a harder time and will thus give up easier or not finish it?

Sure, but what you just described need not involve a game in any fashion. You could just as easily test your skills in basket weaving in such a way. When you are using video games as a medium, the expectation is for it to have solid gameplay mechanics first, and then worry about difficulty after.

I’m pleased and proud that I’m now a better ‘jumper’ than I was before and that I’m getting more yellow skins than the next one for being good at it. I’m sorry, but you can’t take that away from me.

And if we could take it away from you, would you still be playing?

Phalanix.7542:

I’m surprised not more people have voiced this nor any reponses from devs.

Why would more people voice it if it isn’t happening to them?

The first response in this thread is from a dev.

0/10

Turtle.4130:

hiroscho.7230:

I don’t think that you can call TM hard, it’s more the “try-die-remember-next-time”-mode.

For the baddies who NEEDED the Infinite Coin to do it while some people did it without using it, sure. Anyone can do it just by dying and remembering.

…he said, as he attached YouTube evidence of his perfect first playthrough.

owait

AppleHack.7340:

The problem here is that they also nerfed Trib mode thus making the skins “worth” less than they were before. No one is complaining about the normal mode nerfs and i’m sure that most of us think that those normal mode nerfs were justified, just leave the Trib mode alone.

To make up for this, and to cater to these players in the future, I think the gem store should offer Limited Edition Fedoras. Only 1,000 of each model will be sold. Get yours before it’s cool!!

Adamantium.3682:

Just because it works for you does not mean it is not bugged

True, and the corollary: Just because it doesn’t work for you does not mean it is 100% bugged. Thread started with sensational exaggeration and unsurprisingly went downhill from there.

I noticed that there are more assassins.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I value all feedback. We do have several layers of testing that go on throughout the process. We have alphas all over the world who give us forum feedback, we have regular design reviews with Mike Z, Izzy, Colin, etc. There were several revision they requested to knock the difficulty back in several areas, which we did. But apparently we made them 5 easier when they should have been 20 easier.

I personally watched a lot of people play through their first time, but apparently those folks were better than average. Also, we did a fix to the waterspouts late in the process that ended up making a worst bug (getting KB when they go down) so I didn’t get to see people play through that till it was too late. But We’ll get a hot fix in to address the difficult sections soon.

I know you’ve said that the rewards aren’t your department, but I hope that risk v. reward is included in such discussions because that’s part of the reason I think people are a bit underwhelmed with World 2. This release not only made things more difficult, but also retroactively nerfed bauble and skin farming, and while it added new skins to Moto it also removed material reward options such as Obsidian Shards for people who don’t necessarily want skins.

In all, there seems to be much less of a reason to keep playing past the achievements (or in some cases even for the achievements) due to the high ratio of difficulty to reward, and slightly tweaking difficulty downward won’t do much to change this. In the last SAB I farmed enough that I kept a stack of BB in anticipation that rewards might be even better this time, however I find that there is now a lack of things to spend the BB on (other than self-serving Continue Coins) and I certainly won’t be making any additional effort to farm them since they are now so limited in quantity this time around. What incentive is left to replay SAB when open world farming is easier and more profitable than ever? SAB rewards by comparison are just a huge time and money sink. I think whoever did design the rewards for this release took the SAB’s popularity for granted, and thought the player base would jump (no pun intended) at the opportunity just to play and the rewards be kitten ed.

I think people would be more accepting of the current difficulty level if there were more meaningful rewards to show for it. But to make the content this difficult while nerfing rewards across the board seems to me the primary problem with this release. I don’t mind so much the difficulty itself, but if anything World 2 should have better rewards than the last release because of that difficulty. Somehow we ended up with both higher difficulty and fewer rewards, and that has thrown the entire proposition off-balance because the SAB wasn’t very profitable in the first place, lucky drops notwithstanding. Anyway, thanks for reading and I do hope the situation improves in whatever way possible.

Mirta.5029:

most of the time (like I think the last flower jump in World 2 Zone 1, right before the boss) you don’t have a choice. The only place to land is past the second flower, however there’s not enough space there, so you’ll be landing right next to the second one.

Did you try it? Please take a screenshot and show us where you think you must land.

Mirta.5029:

Leablo.2651:

Are you sure you’re supposed to land on the 2nd flower?

(You died 10 times for failing to observe. The flowers are not set up to kill you unless you want them to.)

you can actually get stuck in a loop landing next to a flower, however computer still thinking that you landed on it and sending you to your death.

Hand-holding activated: You do not need to land anywhere near enough to the flower to get caught in it as a result of lag or any other non-gameplay issue.

Slushey.8236:

Argument #1: People are complaining that they weren’t around for the first release of the Super Adventure Box and is therefore unfair that they cannot obtain the item any more. My response to this is quite simply that some items are supposed to stay exclusive in this game. It shows that players were there for a part of Guild Wars 2 history. The same deal goes with many other items in the game.

Argument #2: Other people are complaining that they didn’t get the time to obtain this skin during the last release of the Super Adventure Box because of other obligations both in real life and in game. This is what I’m going to focus on in this thread.

Argument #1 – I was here for April’s SAB. I had 100% achievements.
Argument #2 – I farmed several hundred BB in April, I still have a reserve stack of 250.

Nobody told us in April that some skins would be one-time only and that we had to get them then or never be able to again. Even if I had spent all my BB on SAB skins, there was no way to know it was the Backpack, specifically, that would become exclusive to that event. I could have spent all my BB on weapon skins and ended up in the same boat. Especially as I main engi, backpack would be at the bottom of my list, I’d equip my alts with weapon skins before getting a backpack that wouldn’t even show up on my character most of the time.

So, seeing as to how I was there for the event and have more than enough ability to purchase the skin, why is it that I can’t? Your argument has no logic to it other than “I’m a hipster, I got a backpack before it was cool.”

Note, I’m saying this as somebody who happens to actually not care about skins, but if I did, I would easily be part of the crowd that was unjustly left out without any warning and would have plenty good reason to be kitten ed off about it.

Gilgamesh.5796:

I literally died 10 times in infantile mode at those 2 flowers. First you get shot to the second flower who instantly shoots you away when you haven’t even got the chance to turn around.

Are you sure you’re supposed to land on the 2nd flower?

(You died 10 times for failing to observe. The flowers are not set up to kill you unless you want them to.)

ChaosKirin.1328:

The definition of Pay-to-Win is ’you have to spend real money, or you absolutely cannot pass this point.

That’s not at all what P2W means. Most episodes and expansions require additional payment if you want to progress past existing content.

P2W means you pay to beat somebody who didn’t pay. There’s really no such thing as P2W when you are talking about PvE.

On the other hand, if a company is nickel and diming customers for content, that’s all it is, nickel and diming. Not everything has to be P2W just because it involves payment.

> beelave
> Back to School

kahzee.6042:

than quit away my friend. crafting should be like this. if it’s not than what’s the point of crafting

Did you play GW1? That is how crafting should be. You do the work of gathering materials, then you take them to an NPC who will craft the item for you. No crafting leveling grind needed. No pretense that player characters are also expert artisans in addition to being god-tier fighters. The whole idea that you can have a player economy for crafting when every single person in the world has one of the same eight jobs is a definitive trope of MMO game design. It is objectively stupid and it only works this way because people have gotten used to it being the same way in every MMO. Now with account bound crafting Anet is pretty much admitting that the crafting economy is broken, but they still want people to goldsink their way to 500 before they can get their gear. Crafting is one of the biggest backwards steps that GW2 took that made it more like WoW and the other dregs of the industry. GW2 had the courage to dismantle the trinity, but somehow regressed in its crafting system. It’s frankly perplexing that Anet did this.

You could actually replace GW2’s crafting level system with Mystic Forging for consumable progression unlocks and it’d be the same thing. As in, you’re a T1 leatherworker, so put in 250 rawhide, 250 jute, 500 fine T1 materials, get a consumable book that makes you T2 leatherworker. More or less the same thing as leveling now, without having to ‘discover’ items you don’t want and having to dump all the excess. Or being forced to play the market for your own items in order to recover your investment.

>not attaching images to the post

insanemaniac.2456:

why cant content that rewards you in its own special way be fun without also needing to reward you with generic currency

Why can’t fun content also be rewarding? Why do you think a video game has to put limits on enjoyment?

A Massive Headache.1879:

Uhh, I don’t know what you did with your time in there if you didn’t make any money, the rare skin drops from that were worth quite a lot and if you wanted a skin for yourself baubles were not hard to get for the green version. In otherwords, the drop rewards could be the same format and you could profit immensely from it

Did you even play SAB? The thing about rare skins is that they’re rare, so it’s easy to spend hours farming and have nothing to show for it. SAB farming is gambling.

OP didn’t mention wanting skins, and the green version costs money so is the opposite of what he was asking for.

Edward Stryder.5706:

From what I can tell there is no possible way that all 13 maps will rotate at the following UTC times: 1, 2, 7, 14, 15, and 19. Because there have been duplicate events that have spawned during that time block. There are only 13 effective days and 13 maps in the rotation so any duplicates would prevent that hour block from being able to rotate through all 13 maps.

Can you explain why there are only 13 effective days? There are 14 days between patches +/- time of day when patch occurs. There will be 1 duplicate zone in each time slot.

Elbegast.6970:

So, what was the ‘big revelation’?

There wasn’t one. That was part of the ruse.

There’s basically no stats on infusion slots anyway, so it makes sense to allow MF there. Even if you wanted to be ‘selfish’ in fractals by not equipping AR and end up dying a lot, the other players can tell you don’t have it and can kick you out.

thefinnster.7105:

personaly i realy dont like that these acheivments are comeing back coz it feel like you are be-littleing my past acheivments i put in the work when it was around and got all those acheivments when i was suposed to if others missed out coz they droped the ball or just plain couldnt be botherd first time round they don’t deserve a second chance now that acheivment points are actualy worth something

there are certain acheivments i didnt get and will never have the chance to get again and i can live with that but if your gona bring these ones back to give others a chance why not do it with all the past acheivments

of course we all know that will never happen so why do it this one time i say no exceptions you snooze you lose you dont deserve a second chance to get past AP you missed out on

That post reeks of desperation to distinguish oneself. I have all the SAB 1 achievements and would like nothing better than for new players to receive the same opportunity to challenge themselves with this content.

Buying the game first does not make you a better player or person; achievement points should reflect your progress and ability, not when you bought or played the game.