Guild Wars 2

[+] Arguments in favour:

• If ANet wanted people to sell dungeons, they would’ve made it a game mode.
• Dungeon sellers should be banned because asking money for playing the game is bad.
• Dungeon sellers are exploiting the game by soloing/duoing dungeons which were desinged for parties of 5 players.
• It is not fair that people solo dungeons and get more money for it than normal players.
• We cannot complete content because people are asking money for it.
• We cannot find a group because LFG is filled with path sellers.
• Dungeon sellers are scammers.
• We will join dungeon sellers in groups and kick them. We know we are right, and that way we’ll bring justice.

[-] Arguments against:

• Creating separate systems for every single aspect of player interaction is not cost-efficient. ANet has stated that dungeon selling is not against the rules:

Michael Henninger.7451:

Please understand that you are allowed to trade outside of the BLTP – but you will not receive replacements for lost items or gold. The same goes for selling dungeon runs. CS will not suspend or terminate you for selling runs.

• Dungeon sellers are providing you a service, and as any service, it has a price. This service is not fundamentally different from taxiing people through zones in other games. What dungeon sellers are actually doing is converting their time into gold, while if you buy a path, you’re saving your time by paying gold. It is a win-win deal where dungeon sellers can solo/duo a dungeon by using their skill and enjoy the game, and dungeon buyers get experience for low-level characters and tokens and save time to go and enjoy the game in a different place.
• There is no rule which says that you cannot solo content if you have enough skill, and as such, soloing cannot be considered an exploit. Dungeons are trivially easy for veteran players in organised groups, so for many, soloing is the only challenging content left in the game. If players do find an exploit in a dungeon and use it to solo content and sell paths, they can and should be reported. GMs are also logging into dungeons like Arah to check if the solo was legit, and real exploiters have been banned by ANet.
• If people have enough skill to solo a dungeon designed for 5 people, they deserve their reward. If you cannot, then you don’t and either complete in parties or buy paths. This is fair.
• Dungeon sellers are not blocking your progress. You can complete content since dungeon instances are completely independent from each other. Just go and post your own LFG with your own rules (including no rules at all).
• You’re drawing wrong conclusions from your observations. LFGs for casual runs fill in minutes, LFGs for popular runs fill in seconds – so obviously, you cannot see them because they’re already doing the dungeon, while dungeon sellers indeed have to wait for customers. Solution: post your own LFG.
• Any not officially supported player interaction has scam potential, it’s not limited to dungeon selling. If you have been scammed, you should report the person, and they will be suspended/banned, which will make the game a safer place for everyone.
• If you grieve legit dungeon sellers, you will be the one who is reported and suspended/banned. All players have the right to play the game how they want, but grieving others for their preferences will have consequences:

Michael Henninger.7451:

Basically, you steal, cheat, or be a general baddie and I’m coming with my Account-Focused Stun-Lock Cannon.

Michael Henninger.7451:

This is in regards to the recent increase in players joining a group in a pair; booting the legit players at a boss to troll or holding the party at ransom (Pay or we’ll kick). That’s a behavior we’re not cool with.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• Dungeon sellers are allowed to exist in the game. Actual scamming/exploiting/grieving from any side (seller/buyer) will result in suspension/ban. This policy has recently been enforced and will ensure that dungeon selling service is more secure for both sides.

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[~] Threads for reference:

• Marriage

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• Marriage contributes to roleplay.
• Marriage makes people more emotionally attached to their heroes. It helps to retain players.
• Marriage gives additional benefits.
• You can share stuff, trade without taxes and so on.

[-] Arguments against:

• GW2 is not that other game. It is a not a dating sim, it’s an RPG with a lot of combat, pretty linear story and very little roleplay.
• If you’re into roleplay, you don’t really need an official wedding system since it’s about feelings and not formal attributes.
• Fictional marriages are usually what teenagers require from each other, because those give recognition (lvl 80 is better than lvl 70, ascended is better than exotic, married is better than single). This also goes along with a lot of internet drama. Do we really need to bring more drama into the peaceful world of moderated Tyria?
• This game is child friendly. If you introduce marriage, where do you stop? What about interracial, same-sex relationships and other delicate matters? What about player housing (see above)? What about children? The absence of swimsuits is also a fact to consider.
• If marriage has additional benefits like more storage space, everyone will be married just for those benefits. It devalues the whole idea.
• There’s really too much potential for fraud in sharing items. There’s actually so much potential that even in fiction about RPGs marriage frauds are a known scenario.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “Marriage” threads are met with negativity, because this topic has been discussed quite a lot of times and people think it doesn’t belong here.

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[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• Capes are cool. A cape is a popular attribute of a hero in both medieval fantasy and modern fictional settings. GW1 had capes. Capes can be customized with guild emblems, upgraded to different styles and more. This gives people more stuff to do and more options to customize characters, especially for players in large guilds.
• Wings are cool. Wings are a popular attribute of a hero in magical fantasy settings. GW2 is about dragons, so wings decorations sounds fitting. Large wings are a good idea for legendary backpacks with special effects: angelic, demonic and more. The current options for wings are next to none, they have the same meshes and looks.
• School uniforms are cool. Obviously, Tyria should have some magical schools since magic is widely used by our heroes, and they should’ve learned to use it somewhere, and these schools can have outfits. School uniforms will contribute to roleplay part of the game. This game is a fantasy game rated as PEGI 12+, so there are more than enough players who would healthily wish for a school/university uniform for their hero/heroine. There already are real-world, non GW2-themed outfits in the gemstore (Jungle Explorer, Ninja…). School uniforms have been datamined – they are already created and in the game files, no extra work needed.
• Swimsuits are cool. The current underwear is ugly. There are hot places in Tyria, there are beaches, there is water – swimsuits make more sense than heavy armour there and are good for roleplay. GW2 has already touched sensitive subjects in the game (Kasmeer-Marjory), and swimsuits are more timid. People who want to troll others by running around in a swimsuit can already do it in underwear. Swimsuits can have countless options and will sell very good. Swimsuits are far less detrimental than various existing highly violent items (including Executioner’s outfit and Axe) and alcohol promotion (the whole Norn race, Belcher’s Bluff).

[-] Arguments against:

• Every game has its own aesthetics. GW2 is rather conservative (at least compared to many “Korean grinders”). As for GW1, it had a different game engine, and you cannot simply copy objects from one game to another.
• Capes are a common attribute of American-style superheroes and look silly. According to some info, clipping is the biggest problem with capes in GW2. The time invested into fixing capes can be instead put into fixing clipping on charr and asura armour. Drawing realistically moving cloth can lead to performance issues in zerg events.
• Wings are a common attribute of Japanese-style superheroes and look silly. Wings are immersion-breaking in GW2 – they will be percieved as real wings, not as a decoration. Large wings will contribute to visual clutter. GW2 already has several wing skins.
• People who want to see school uniforms and swimsuits have specific virtual preferences concerning girls which they should keep to themselves and not try to bring into a video game. Bringing these things into GW2 will make other people next to them feel uncomfortable.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• To each his own, and it’s still up to developers to decide what they want to see in the game. According to some info, some developers are working on it in their free time and can probably come up with something better than the Guild Banner Backpack.

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[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and used it.
• Adding it won’t hurt anyone, only help people who do not want to waste money on TP tax.
• Direct trading will make people happier because the RNG factor of rare items will be a bit offset by easier acquisition.
• Spamming should not be a problem: ANet can create a “trading” channel in chat to deal with spam.

[-] Arguments against:

• That other game also has massive trading spam and out-of-whack economy.
• It will hurt everyone. Gold sink is what keeps inflation low in game economies where gold is generated out of thin air; the Trading Post tax is that major gold sink. Remove the gold sink, and you’ll be the one crying about how everything is getting more and more expensive.
• Any system which can be ignored, will be ignored. People will turn off the trading channel because of the WTB/WTS spam, and people will keep spamming in map/say/whisper chat. No matter what you do, real players will be hurt more than spammers (message suppression is already bad enough at organised world events).
• The TP tax encourages you to play for your items yourself instead of buying them. It is good for the game community.
• You are not disallowed to trade via mail – you’re just doing it at your own risk; mail trade frauds will be reviewed by Support and scammers will be suspended/banned, but the items/gold won’t be returned.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• There is a considerable amount of people who think that player to player trading will hurt more than help.

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[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• Doing stuff with more people is fun. This also applies to large guilds which want to do stuff more epic than 5-man dungeons (which can be soloed).
• Veteran hardcore gamers need more challenging stuff to do, since PvE is widely considered to be too easy. Raids can fill that niche and make veteran players interested in the game again.

[-] Arguments against:

• That other game is more competitive and oriented towards hardcore gamers.
• Not everyone shares the opinion that more people = more fun; more people can also mean more frustration to both find and coordinate; Twisted Marionette, Escape from LA are examples of such frustrating events from GW2’s history.
• The game caters to casual players a lot, and you can see it from the Personal Story and the Living Story instances. Veteran hardcore players may indeed want raids; but are there actually enough veteran hardcore players in GW2 to justify spending resources on designing missions which only they will play?
• GW2 lacks tools for organising and coordinating people.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• The “raids” threads are usually met positively, though there are concerns whether there are enough players which can benefit from those.

Commander tags have been slightly improved, guild raids were discussed in the CDI, and ANet was hiring a person with experience in designing raids. I think there’s a rather high probability we will see raids in the future – or at least some content which is similar to those, even if it’s open world and not limited to guilds.

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[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• My guild would like a place to meet and call ours. We’ve invested a lot of time and effort into building our community, and a guild hall would cement it.
• As a solo player, I would like my own place in Tyria to personalize and call mine. Home instances are too lacklustre.
• Any kind of personalisation further ties the player into the world of an MMO. It is good for retaining players.
• Guild halls and player housing are great for roleplaying.
• You can use guild halls for GvG.

[-] Arguments against:

• That other game must have been designed to be a sandbox hosting player housing on vast empty territories. And even if it was, there’s a high chance it was a failure as hitting it at the “just right!” point is extremely difficult. GW2 was not designed for it at all, and pushing it into current maps with megaservers in mind would make very little sense game-wise. Creating extra maps is hard to justify from the lore/stroy point of view.
• Hosting user-combined content is rather resource-consuming. For a game with no subscription fee, that is a problem.
• Hosting user-uploaded content requires both machine resources and human resources (moderation is very strict in GW2 due to its family-friendly policy, and filtering all the inappropriate stuff will require a lot, a lot of extra staff). For a game with no subscription fee, that is a problem.
• We already have home instances. They might have had some better customizability, but see above.
• With megaservers, guilds have a lot of freedom on where and how to meet in Tyria. A separate instance will actually cut you off from other players, and other players from you – is it really good for an MMO?
• Creating customizable player housing is like creating a game within a game. This is not a must-have feature for MMORPGs, so is it really worth it spending that many resources on player housing instead of actual gameplay content?

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “Guild halls” have been discussed frequently, many active guild players are in favour of the idea, others don’t really care. “Player housing” is usually not met that positively.

Guild halls have been discussed in one of the CDIs. There is a probability that guild halls will be added; there is a very low probability they will be open-world, though. I think that player housing is unlikely to be added; some improvements (aside from gathering nodes) might come to “home instances” some day, but no one knows if they really will.

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[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• GW1 had it. GW2 is a successor of GW1, so GW2 having GvG would make a lot of sense.
• This game is called “Guild Wars”, so it should really have guild wars.

[-] Arguments against:

• GW2 is not that other game, and currently it has WvW which more or less provides similar functionality which people can use.
• GW2 is not GW1. The game engine is completely different, and you can’t just put an old plane propeller onto a jet fighter because you liked that one better.
• “Guild Wars” is a reference to the lore, a series of conflicts between Tyrian guilds which led to decline of humanity and allowing the charr to invade Ascalon (see here). “Guild Wars 2” is a sequel, and as many sequels, it may not even have anything to do with the original title (like a “The Bourne…” movie without Jason Bourne, or “Lord of The Rings” without the Lord himself, or a “Final Fantasy [insert number]” which doesn’t look like a final one after all).

[=] Current state of affairs:

• Most “GvG” threads are met with “This has been discussed multiple times, but let’s do it again since something might have changed in Dev’s domain”.

GvG is on the CDI (Collaborative Development Initiative) list, and there is a probability GvG will be added in the future.

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[~] Threads for reference:

• Why we can`t use DPS meter?

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and it was very useful.
• We want to be more efficient. A DPS meter will help us measure the DPS and make according changes to builds.
• We want to theorycraft more efficiently. A DPS meter will help with theorycrafting by making calculations easier.
• We want to bugtest the game. A DPS meter will help catching the bugs people rarely notice.
• We want to play only with people who are worthy. A gearcheck will help us identify players who we do not want to see in our parties.

[-] Arguments against:

• GW2 is not that other game. That other game most likely has the Holy Trinity as a fundamental concept, while GW2 does not. In GW2, (nearly) any class can play (nearly) any role, and the success of a dungeon run comes from class synergy, not from knowing how much damage that person deals.
• DPS =/= efficiency. Only seeing DPS and nothing else will be very misleading. Will the high DPS numbers help you if you wipe while stacking for AC Spider Queen? Will they tell you to get an ele and use Ice Bow 5 before she spits her poison? Will they tell you to get a thief for skipping time-consuming trash in Arah? Will they tell you to get a mesmer for portal in CoF p1 and p2, to solo Magg and to pull those 3 annoying flamethrower guys together into a wall for fast burn? Will they tell you that that block, reflect, interrupt or water attunement just saved you from a wipe? Will they tell you that those 12 stacks of long-lasting might plus fury from ele shared by a mesmer’s Signet of Inspiration followed by a Time Warp right after mesmer’s sword auto stripped the Protection boon and ranger with Spotter stacked Vulnerability and casted traited Frost Spirit… that this all contributed to party’s success a lot more than your selfish DPS? A DPS meter in amateur’s hands will hurt more than help. And because of the Dunning-Kruger effect, those who are least competent will use it most.
• People who wish to theorycraft can already do it by analyzing the combat log, even if it takes more time. And there they can also find a lot of other useful information… because if you want a DPS meter, then you also need a Buff Meter, a Cleanse Meter, a Dodge Meter, a Block Meter, an Interrupt Meter, a Pull Meter and so on for the first one to make sense.
• People who wish to bugtest can already do it by analyzing the combat log, even if it takes more time. Bugs should not exist in the first place, so introducing a tool which can be widely misused for several people to use in an activity which is not even part of the game makes no sense.
• A personal DPS meter being misused against yourself is your own problem. A group DPS meter being misused against party members is an eternal source of blaming and shaming and offensive behaviour which is not tolerated in GW2. The easiest solution to this problem is not to give the grenade to the monkey in the first place.
• In GW2, there is no gear treadmill and exotics are easy to obtain, which means that there’s no need to check if the player’s gear level is good enough for some new content. The game is very easy and failproof, it never punishes you for attempting and failing like some other games. Gearcheck/inspect is an eternal source of blaming and shaming and offensive behaviour which is not tolerated in GW2. You do have the right to play with the type of people you want in your party, but your party members also have the right to be judged by their skill and not by their gear.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “DPS meter” threads are met with negativity by the many people who have seen the signs of “elitism” in GW2. There are concerns that the whole cooperative and casual friendly concept of GW2 would suffer if such community segregating features get introduced.

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[~] Threads for reference:

• CDI- Character Progression- Vertical
• Understanding Gear Progression
• Endless treadmill of gear.
• Vertical and Horizontal Progression
• Google search

• Level cap: if increased, what are the impacts?
• When do u expect the lvl cap be raise?
• Will level cap raise?
• Should Level Cap Increase in Xpacs?
• On increasing the level cap
• Google search

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• A game without progression is pointless. We cannot feel good if we’re not progressing in the game, gear progression and level cap increase will refresh the game and bring people back.

[-] Arguments against:

• This game is about horizontal progression, not vertical progression. Primarily: skins. That’s why it’s nicknamed Fashion Wars (not Gear Grind Wars), and many people like it for that very reason. Other games squeeze out your money by introducing an obligatory new stat level with every patch; GW2 is honest with you: you paid once and you’re done, you won’t be artificially pushed to pay for the game to “keep up with others”. This is a thing a lot of people start appreciating at some point.
• Apart from players who simply enjoy challenges which come with gear progression, there is a considerable amount of players who need gear progression to establish psychological superiority (see also Open-world PvP and Dueling). These players are focused on infinite progression because they can use online video games as a compensation for unsatisfied offline desires (being “better” by comparing oneself to “noobs”). The above usually goes along with offensive behaviour (with as far as death threat whispers), which is not tolerated in GW2. To discourage this kind of players from joining the community, GW2 instead encourages players to work on horizontal progression (looks) or towards the minor long-term vertical goals like ascended and/or legendary gear, fractals personal reward level and PvP/WvW ranks. A considerable amount of players like GW2 for this “casual” atmosphere and would prefer to have as little unhealthy competition among players as possible.
• It contradicts the GW2’s concept of “pay once, come back when you want”. Casual-type players, unlike hardcore, do not like to be overwhelmed and left behind when they come back, they can as well drop the game altogether. Ascended rarity has already caused an uproar (and according to some claims, lead to many players leaving), while it is rather achievable for an active player and the stat difference can be outweighed by skill. Another level of rarity will split the community even more, possibly resulting in an exodus of players with buyer’s remorse.
• Challenge can be increased by giving new mechanics to enemies and by increasing their stats without raising the level cap. We can already see it done in zones like Silverwastes.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “Gear progression” threads are met with negativity by those who bought the advertised casual “no gear treadmill” game, and with positivity from players from other games who are naturally used to gear progression and view it as an incentive to play. The negative approach is considerable.

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[+] Arguments in favour:

• More variety is always good. New classes can bring back people who tried everything but didn’t find anything they really liked.
• The game is becoming stale with no new skills. New skills can revitalize the whole game by adding new strategies to older content.
• Adding existing weapon types to existing professions is a way of introducing a lot of new skills without worrying about designing new items.
• Completely new weapons bring both new skills and new visuals into the game. Acquiring the weapons themselves will give an incentive to redo older content.

[-] Arguments against:

• Variety is a balancing nightmare. It is twice a balancing nightmare since ANet insists on not splitting skills for PvP and PvE. It leads to some classes being nerfed from a PvP point and becoming frustrating and unrewarding to play in PvE. Imagine what will become with balancing if new skills and weapons are constantly added? This might be too much to handle for a game with no subscription fee – two years into the game, old classes, old weapons and old skills are still being balanced.
• Not all people like variety that much. Ever wondered why so many people bought iPhones? Answer: because variety is confusing and overwhelming. For casual players (and GW2 is aiming towards casuals with its B2P model), taking it to the extreme, 10 rows of 12 skills can pretty much mean “No thank you, I’ll go play an Android game instead (of learning all that stuff only no-lifers can handle)”.
• People coming back to the game (and they’re supposed to since it’s “pay once, play whenever you want”) will feel left behind if they have to adapt “too much”. Changing traits and utility skills to play in a new map is one thing, recrafting gear for new stats and weapon types is another thing.
• Not everyone likes to change the build they have invested time and gold into with every update. Some people prefer stability to novelty.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “New skills and weapons” threads are usually met with enthusiasm, but there’s little point in discussing the topic aside from the sheer fun of speculation. Some specific and thought-out ideas might, though, be noticed by developers and noted for future use.

I think that new skills and/or weapons will be added some day, but most likely in low quantities – not to overwhelm casual players and not to kill the class balance department, and far later in the game’s existence. New GM traits are far more likely to be added more or less regularly, though. I also think that there’s a rather low chance to see new classes in the foreseeable future – too much in the game has been balanced with the current ones only in mind, and remember that all content in GW2 can be played by level 80s and will not be replaced by expansions.

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[~] Threads for reference:

• No Expansion
• There is ‘probably’ no expansion, its a myth
• Gw2 Expansion {Disscussion}
• When is gw2 expansion coming out? {Merged}
• Expansion wont satisfy me
• Expansion or end of franchise?
• is it why NO expansion?
• Google search

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• Living Story is not content, it’s short and not everyone likes it. Without content, people leave and games die.
• Expansions make people return. More people = more money = more expansions.
• Expansions means hype, they bring hope to veteran players and motivate new players.
• Bigger is always better, so an expansion feels better than small bits of content from time to time.
• Paid expansions can give money to ANet and help with the funding problem which arises from the initial B2P model of the game.

[-] Arguments against:

• That other game also has a subscription fee which drains money to fund expansions, as well as gear treadmill which makes sure that players continue to spend money to fund more expansions.
• Living Story is not content, it is a method of delivering content. LS means investigating a new threat signs of which can be seen across the whole world and advancing to a new zone with your hero squad after gathering the leaders of all races, instead of “Hey, players, a new map to farm stuff in, here’s the portal!” LS means an Antitoxin Spray healing skill will be developed to help heroes in the Tower of Nightmares, instead of a new Maim The Disillusioned GM trait which comes out of nowhere. Having LS doesn’t mean that you never get new PvE maps (Soutshun, Dry Top, Silverwastes), or WvW maps (EoTM), or Fractals/Dungeons (Thaumanova, Molten, Aetherblade), or PvP maps (datamined and yet to be released); it simply means that content will be released in due time and tied to the story, that’s all.
• LS being “short” is a question of perception. How much do you play? Have you really played all classes, all races and every bit of content, or you only play what you like? Will an expansion in one year be objectively longer than the sum of all LS releases?
• If LS is not up to your liking, it’s doesn’t mean that that content doesn’t exist: it simply means that it was released for someone else. Exactly the same thing can happen with an expansion.
• Large expansions make some people return while letting others jump off the hook between releases. For GW2, a B2P game with Gemstore with limited seasonal stuff, constant attention to the game is far more important, and it is achieved through smaller, but more frequent updates of Living Story episodes (and even daily log-in rewards). Returning after a long break is hard from a psychological point of view, it’s like “Well, since I stopped playing and lost the grip anyway, maybe I shouldn’t waste more time in that game…”; returning in a couple of weeks to check out the new episode is a lot easier.
• Living Story with its trailers and (relatively) frequent releases means lower, but constant hype. Instead of a giant hype wave and then a prolonged lull, we have a lot of smaller waves. We cannot tell which one is better as long as you don’t have ANet’s data.
• “How do you eat an elephant? Piece by piece.” A casual player who has his own life and his own problems tends to be overwhelmed with large hunks of new information; he may consider it too bothersome to grasp (=“not fun”) and ignore/leave. That’s why delivering content in small chunks is better if your game is not targeting the hardcore gamers who are dead set on mastering all new content.
• Paid expansions can fracture the community, which is bad for GW2 business model of “buy once, return anytime (and hopefully buy something nice with real money)”. In casual gaming communities, unlike hardcore, the motivation is different, “I will play as long as I find it fun, I’ll just leave if I am forced”, so selling an expansion is not that different from convincing people to buy another game.
• GW2 has been released in China not so long ago, it might be too early for an expansion anyway.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “Expansion” threads are controversial. People agree that they want more content, but the expansion method is considered unsuitable for GW2 by some while desirable for others, probably since they are used to it and have seen its efficiency.

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[~] Threads for reference:

• Holy Trinity Is Called “Holy” For A Reason
• In my view, the Trinity Needs to Come Back
• No Holy Trinity = Boring?
• The Holy Trinity… is missed.
• Holy Trinity Contradiction
• Holy trinity of mmo
• Combat roles, no trinity…
• Lack of trinity makes this game boring I think

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• No Holy Trinity means no dedicated roles. No roles means no distinct place for you in the world and no way to master your role, which in turns means boring gameplay.
• Absence of dedicated roles leads to issues with gear diversity, such as “zerk meta”.
• Trinity provides easier ways to create new encounters, including challenging ones.

[-] Arguments against:

• That other game also has the frustration of waiting for a certain type of player, gear treadmill, open-world PvP and other things which spice up the life for some players while annoying other players. GW2 is a different game which caters to less competitive players: you can play what you want and how you want (and complete it at your own pace) – which is what makes GW2 loved by many people who bought the original “revolutionary” MMO.
• As easy as it seems, combat in GW2 is rather deep and has a lot of room for self-improvement and “fun”. Further reading: GW2: official Blogpost about the Holy Trinity – the philosophy behind no holy trinity explained by developers. Dungeon speedclear videos can tell you about tactics, guides – about builds and rotations which provide best class synergy; sPvP has variety of builds, team compositions and map tactics and tricks are very important there; WvW roaming is unique – all this requires different sets of skills, traits, weapons and tactics which become better if you’re in the right party, even if there’s no trinity.
• Constraints are fun for some; freedom is fun for others. You can be a healing WvW thief, a buffing DPS ele, an unkillable Nomad troll warrior – your role is up to you to decide, but you will still be able to complete content because the game doesn’t pigeonhole you into a single role.
• Instead of one gear meta for all players, there will be one meta for each trinity class – and nothing will really change.
• Absence of holy trinity is refreshing. It also allows to bring new types of encounters which benefit from non-trinity mechanics.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “Holy Trinity” threads are often met with negativity because players are already enjoying the game the way it is and do not see a reason to scrap the old established system which is fairly unique in favour of a generic one. Minor changes to things like condition caps or mob AI sound like better ways of gameplay improvements.

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[~] Threads for reference:

• PvE Dueling
• Will open world PVP servers be considered?
• Suggestion: open world pvp PVE
• World PvP server social experiment
• Open world PvP server
• Open world pvp
• Why no open world PvP?
• True open world PvP
• Open World Free for All Server?
• Lets Discuss: Factions

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• We want competition. We can’t live without competition in games, a game without competition is boring and is not worth staying in.
• We invested time/money in our gear, so we want our gear to matter. We do not like equalized stats in sPvP and we do not like zergs in WvW.
• Separate PvP servers with PvE maps can be added to give PvP/PvE-focused people a choice.
• Factions add a lot to both lore and gameplay.

[-] Arguments against:

• GW2 is not that other game. GW2 is a cooperative game, not a competitive game: you don’t compete over loot, nodes and such. For competition, we have two options: sPvP and WvW. If current PvP/WvW game modes are not enough, you can always suggest new ones, but in the boundaries of competitive areas.
• Open world PvP is detrimental. Different kinds of players exist: those who prefer fair and healthy competition, and those who prefer fierce and unhealthy competition. The first are usually peaceful non-hardcore teenagers and casual grown-up players (which turn out to be the target audience for which GW2 was actually designed in the first place, with all the timidness of content, failproofness and cooperativeness in mind), and the latter are usually aggressive teenagers who are using online games as a sublimation for unsatisfied offline desires of being “better” than others, while not being constrained by offline moral and law limits. This usually leads to offensive behaviour, which can already be seen in both PvP and WvW (with as far as death threat whispers); such things are not tolerated in GW2. Open world PvP attracts the second type of players, and since many mature players already live a moderately risky life, they see their games as a comfort zone to rest in, and not a war zone similar to life, and want GW2 to stay as is.
• In GW2, not gear, but skill is what matters – even if it is the skill of finding the best team composition or the skill of using Skyhammer’s features in the cheesiest possible way. You cannot really buy ultimate superiority for money in this game. The most you can do is buy gems, convert to gold, get full ascended with infusions, eat the most expensive food, buy all gemstore buffs and go roaming in WvW, hoping that the slight boost in stats will outweigh the skill of your opponent.
• Even on a separate server, you cannot simply turn a PvE map into a PvP map: it was not designed with it in mind. Furthermore, it will thin down and fracture the community, which contradicts with the Megaservers idea.
• Factions are too hard to implement at this point of the game’s life when the basics have already been put in place. Factions are too hard to add with the current lore in mind.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• A lot of people feel that GW2 is a casual friendly cooperative game which was not designed to have open world PvP, and they want it to remain that way. For competition, sPvP and WvW modes were included in the game. New PvP/WvW game modes, including GvG, with separate large maps, are discussed as valid options.
• Comment from October 2012:

CC Dalmarus.8397:

Anything is possible in the future, but I would be sure to not hold my breath waiting.

Back to CONTENTS

[~] Threads for reference:

• Why is there still no dueling?
• PvE Dueling
• Why is there No Dueling and no Trading
• Really need a dueling menu

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• Dueling is for fun, not for leaderboards.
• Dueling is a great way to pass time, while waiting either for a queue or other things.
• Dueling is a way to get to know someone, without them even speaking.
• Dueling allows players to get to know themselves, as well as their builds.
• Custom arenas are unintuitive and cost money.
• We want our gear to matter in duels because we worked for it.
• To deal with duel harassment, make duels voluntary, give an option to hide/ignore duel requests.

[-] Arguments against:

• GW2 is not that other game. Dueling in GW2 is like that eternal fight between a whale and an elephant, because GW2 was designed with class synergy in mind: different classes with different damage, control and utility skills, combo fields, AoE sharing (and stripping) boons and conditions. That’s why PvP has the 5v5 structure, and the objective is to hold points, and not kill each other.
• Since dueling is not a supported game mode, it is natural that the available method to duel (custom arena) has inconveniences.
• Your gear stats will be normalized, as the design behind GW2 says that sports-like competition is about skills and not credit cards.
• No matter how you hide it through options, people will always find a way to annoy you in say chat, map chat and even whispers (like they do in WvW). The best way to prevent this is not to have dueling at all.
• Dueling would cause either a class balance disaster or a community disaster. There are already more than enough community complaints about mesmers and thiefs which caused them to be nerfed so hard because of PvP that playing in PvE became meh, and making it even worse because of a game mode which wasn’t designed to exist in the first place would feel wrong for players maining these classes.
• People who duel have a negative attitude towards everyone else. We do not want to see dueling in a PvE environment as it will bring uneasiness and unsafety, which contradicts the philosophy of GW2’s PvE.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• “Dueling” threads are often met with negativity, both because this is a sensitive topic and because it has been discussed countless times. Still, new “dueling” threads appear every now and then, showing that there are players who are actively wanting to discuss the addition of dueling.

Back to CONTENTS

[~] Threads for reference:

• Mounts Megathread – main “mounts” topic, merged by Gaile Grey from 7 threads
• Suggestion: Mounts?
• Mounts {12}
• Mounts {2}, Mounts {8}, Mounts {10}, Mounts {11}, Mounts {13}
• Incoming Mounts??
• What Would Mounts do for this Game?
• No Mounts?

[+] Arguments in favour:

• That other game has it; we’ve seen it done there and enjoyed it.
• Aesthetics: mounts are cool. Riding a mount is another pleasant experience which a videogame can give to a player who lives in real life. You can use existing animals and even create new ones – that’s a base for new content.
• Speed: you can travel faster. You can use waypoints if you like, or mounts if you like the experience.
• Progression: buying and upgrading mounts gives you stuff to do, and more stuff to do is what this game needs.
• Flying mounts are even more fun then terrestrial mounts. Flying mounts will make exploring Tyria easier and more enjoyable. Flying mounts will let you look at Tyria from a new angle.
• Since underwater combat exists in GW2 (same z-axis gameplay) and Tengu are still to make their move, a map with flying mounts makes sense.
• Mounts could be constrained to a single map, similar to Dry Top, or exist as a PvP-style activity.

[-] Arguments against:

• GW2 is not that other game and was not designed with mounts in mind. That’s why we feel mounts do not belong here, and adding them will feel forced (“added because others have it”, not “added because we needed them”).
• Aesthetics: mounts will look silly with GW2 races and animals (giant norn on a pink moa). Mounts will make GW2 even less serious and more visually annoying than Moot, Quip and pink unicorn bows. Mounts will contribute to visual clutter.
• We already have cosmetic mounts: broom, carpet, sonic device. We already have a minor speed “mount”: the Dry Top kites.
• Speed: waypoints are superior in terms of traveling. Maps are small enough to even travel by foot. We already have mobility skills and speed boosters for that.
• Progression: the game was advertised as having (next to no) gear grind, and people love it for that reason. Introducing mounts as an obligatory item (“grind for it or you lose”) will cause the same uproar as ascended armour.
• Like jumping would ruin a game designed with no jumping in mind, flying mounts will ruin GW2 maps (for example, think about jumping puzzles, or vistas on mountains, or easily traversing areas which are supposed to be filled with foes). Furthermore, maps were designed to look cool from the ground, not from above; you can see how many problems flying mounts will bring into map design by googling off-map videos and looking at the map attentively.
• Things like mounts will require a lot of development resources to adapt to all races and body types; clipping will be a very serious issue, too. These resources could be spent elsewhere.

[=] Current state of affairs:

• Most “mount” threads are met with negativity (and a gif of a jokey beating a dead horse), because this topic has been discussed countless times. Still, new “mount” threads appear every now and then, showing that there are players who are actively wanting to discuss the addition of mounts.
• New “mount” threads are known to be closed with the reasoning of numerous threads on the subject already existing:

Moderator.1462:

This suggestion has already been made. Please refer to the threads in the suggestions subforum on this topic for the discussion. Thanks for yout understanding. This thread is closed

CC Eva.6742:

This topic has been widely discussed here already and there are still threads popping out in the Suggestion subforum from time to time so we would kindly request you to search for them and contribute with your thoughts there in order to avoid duplicates of the same topic.

CC Danicia.1394:

As numerous threads regarding this topic have already been linked, we’ll close this thread and request that you point your discussions over to them.

Moderator.8539:

Hey there, as others pointed out, there are quite a number of threads on mounts already. Please use one of these existing ones to add to the discussion.

Moderator.8539:

Since there is a number of threads on the subject already, this one is now closed.

Back to CONTENTS

To discourage unintended farming, more and more events now have awards which are given on completion and put into containers. Unfortunately, that even further discourages investing into Magic Find, as well as punishes loyal players who have been in the game for a long time.

I see several possible solutions to this problem:

1. Make all containers which are already account bound affected by MF. AFAIK, only PvP containers are currently affected by generic MF (Silverwastes chests are affected by stacks of Preservance).

• Pro:
  • People are rewarded for investing time/gold in MF regardless of what type of content they play.
  • Minimal changes to code.

• Con:
  • This is a semi-measure which doesn’t solve the whole problem.

2. Make all containers affected by MF.

• Pro:
  • People are rewarded for investing time/gold in MF regardless of what type of content they play.
  • Can potentially decrease inflation by increasing TP gold sink.
  • Minimal changes to code.

• Con:
  • I assume that the main reason containers are not affected by MF is the market speculation it may cause: people with high MF buying out containers, opening and selling too much stuff; frustration caused by this from people who feel they should pass containers to others to open those, or lose money by opening themselves; guilds devoted to this, potential fraud and so on.
  • Can potentially destabilize economy due to speculation.
  • Containers may be harder to balance game-wide, to the extent of nerfing them to the ground for non-speculators to offset the influx from speculation.

3. Make all containers account bound, but affected by MF.

• Pro:
  • People are rewarded for investing time/gold in MF regardless of what type of content they play.
  • Minimal changes to code.

• Con:
  • Can increase inflation by decreasing TP gold sink.
  • Taking markets away from players can cause an uproar.
  • Dealing with containers already on TP will be a problem.

4. Make all containers have “personalized” status (which activates MF) until they are put onto TP. The lucky clover MF icon overlay can even be used to indicate that MF will be applied.

• Pro:
  • People are rewarded for investing time/gold in MF regardless of what type of content they play.
  • People are rewarded for playing the game itself, not the market.
  • The current container market is not destroyed, containers can still be traded.
  • No potential to exploit the MF mechanic and/or fraud players.
  • Nothing has to be done to the items on the TP.

• Con:
  • Requires extra initial coding.
  • Resource consuming: every type of container will require an extra flag in the database.
  • Containers of different types will not stack.

I personally believe that MF should finally be applied to containers, especially with the design of new content in mind, and that the last option is optimal. Thoughts?

FrizzFreston.5290:

Or he forgot to put the bag into the tea after drinking the hot water as is?

No, he buys a cup with a cover, gets to his office, opens it and sees that it’s just plain water. Oops, the lunch brake is over!

FrizzFreston.5290:

Basically any argument made here is because the content isn’t as straight forward anymore, and has become slightly more difficult which shows that the mesmer is harder to play than other professions.

“High risk, high return” is fine. “High risk, same return” is not.

Karizee.8076:

That sir, is a grind.

That is not grind, that is WoW. Or -insert title of another competitive MMO for teenagers with an urge to publicly dominate others-.

Thaddeus.4891:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Thaddeus.4891:

I don’t think they changed the way you can get the shoulders.

You can no longer get the shoulders by replaying the story with alts, see here.

That’s stupid. Now I’m super glad I got my 3 shoulders before that change lol.

Ehhr… My bad, you cannot get the gloves the same way as the shoulders – by replaying the story. AFAIK you can still get the shoulders.

Thaddeus.4891:

I don’t think they changed the way you can get the shoulders.

You can no longer get the shoulders gloves by replaying the story with alts, see here.

Check out this subforum for multiple threads on the subject: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2

TLDR:

Yes, many people are unhappy with the amount of grind required for acquiring all pieces (approximately 6 days of 8-hour grinding according to my calculations).

No, the megaserver system will always have at least one map running with enough people to get the crests.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Clearly a case of: “forgets the key -> blame the keymaker”

No, a case of "Forgets to separately buy the teabag after buying a cup of “tea” with hot water inside, blames the cunning cafeteria manager."

szygum.2607:

If the issues you ask here were the reason you left, don’t bother coming back.
Game is stale since april and all the changes are either cosmetic or harmful for players.
More and more people are leaving. Especially veterans. New players are… well… new and positive but after they complete their first 80 and see there’s nothing to look for after this, they’ll join The Train of Disappointment.

Got a birthday gift on another character the other day. Bought a character slot for the 8th profession to level to 80 today. What am I doing wrong? Not playing 365/24/7 for 2 years for 50 dollars, probably.

Nurgle.6597:

if they kick the player who opened the instance everyone if thrown out, if you have problems with being kicked just make sure that you’re the one who opens the instance and you’re safe

Guys, turn off “Auto-play” and read patch notes which are linked from the launcher with every new major patch…

Looks like they’re looking into it slowly:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ogre-Wars-1/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ogre-Wars-in-new-game-update

I find Thief less negative compared to Assassin. Probably they simply needed another name to make GW2 different, but it makes sense too.

I think ANet should really stick with only one of those. It’s pretty obvious that going with both at the same time won’t do the game any good, all it does is waters down the community’s view on the perspective of the game.

Vote. Srsly, it should of been that way since lunch.

Valento.9852:

Now, mesmers, STOP COMPLAINING! Thank you.

You’ll find it amusing that the author of these videos is the same person who is “complaining” in the other thread.

The only thing that these videos show is that it is doable. The problem with the recent mesmer gameplay, though, is that it is slow, frustrating and not enjoyable.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Rather fix PvE condition caps which are broken.

Well it is a kind of a fix to that imbedded in that “fix”.

How exactly is it helping with power necros overwriting condi necro’s stacks in groups? Or with a zerg of randoms mindlessly capping 25 bleeds with their weak condi spam on some tough bark Husk instead of leaving it to the condi team?

Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Rather fix PvE condition caps which are broken.

Here’re a couple of videos on how to do the achies on a mesmer: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2/Spoiler-LS-achievements-in-one-go-on-mesmer/first#post4570878

Aside from that, yes, mesmer is generally a bad class for PvE as it gets balanced around PvP goals which have nothing to do with what the new LS is about.

Bubi.7942:

Okay, let’s go into a little detail here.

I will assume that OP is using the build posted in his signiature. Full zerk.

His suggestion is to make illus/clones immune to damage.

Wow. I mean, by god wow. Sure, why not, summon your 3 illusions then go /sleep in the corner.

Did you know that the downside of going full damage is low survivability? Did you also know that phantasms/clones inherit the caster stats? Does that explain why maybe your clones die such a horrible death?

Counter method#1: Don’t go full zerk. Never go full zerk man.
Counter method#2: Use traits that increase the health of clones/illusions (yes, trait change is free, try it)
Counter method #3: Use Signet of the something that increases illusions health

Don’t want to counter casue, by gawd, changing gear/traits for once is too hard? Rather roll with the tide?

Roll tide method#1: Summon phantasm, let phantasm attack, press f1
Roll tide method#2: Think and not spam. gasp Use your phantasms when they can actually do damage, and not while, for instance huge Aoe is up at champ Terragriff
Roll tide method#3: Actually gonna cheat here cause this yet again, needs trait swap. Get Debilating Dissipation so you even benefit, when your clones die, and are not shattered.

So hard.

Secret note: Every mesmer has access to shatter, you don’t need to be a “shatter mesmer”.

Sounds a lot like the logic of the class balance department. Everything sounds awesome on paper, but in reality you slowly autoattack from range with the same efficiency as using tons of acrobatics which do not really make a difference. Or just roll another class and start actually playing PvE.

Ohoni.6057:

The story should be for every player, every build.

Why? Because “play how I want”?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think people don’t play eles and don’t even realize that you can’t change weapons as an ele. Only way to switch to a ranged weapon is to redo the instance.

1. Let the boss kill you. It’s not a problem if you understood you had the wrong weapon at 95% boss HP.
2. Change the weapon.
3. Win.

Underdark.3726:

That was not Caithe. My 2 cents.

That was Caithe. My 2 cents

I’ve always liked the darker side of sylvari – Scarlett, Faolin… and Caithe has her own secrets, too. It looks like they know more and are sure in what they have to do. This kind of motivation is much more appealing to me than whiny blondies, overgrown lonely kids and unsatisfied mommies with whom we are forced to fight against the force which can wipe out the whole Tyria.

I’m maining a mesmer and I’m doing everything on my mesmer as it is my “canon” story character. Sadly, since the Dry Top instances I’m thinking more and more of dropping that story stuff on mesmer and switching to guardian and ele. Hordes of hard-hitting trashmobs which kill illusions in seconds and require massive AoE, bosses immune to mesmer mechanics… I’m really getting sick of it. The game is becoming more and more frustrating, not “fun”.

At least we got the purple GS laser beam which is not a projectile and hits instantly. All hail ranged pew-pew!

Bubi.7942:

I heard a rumor that is possible to shatter clones using the f1-f4 buttons.

Shatter mesmer in PvE? Ha-ha, good one!

I would like to see an option to trade the ascended trinkets we get for completing all the achievements for pieces of carapace armour.

• Unlike shoulders, gloves can no longer be obtained by playing the story with an alt.
• Obtaining all weights requires a lot of grinding: assuming all 6 armour pieces cost only 1000 crests (and not some 3000 for chest), even under circumstances of doing all events in the map and getting 250 crests per hour by tagging multiple events, that is 4×2×6=48 hours of grinding Silverwastes – 6 days of 8-hour grinding of a single map extra to the time spent on the story itself.
• Sinister ascended trinkets are useless to me – I’m not into WvW roaming or condi necro husk cleaning.
• You can now get the previous ascended trinket from the merchant anyway, and I’m sure you will be able to get the current trinket with the next chapter.

Michael Henninger.7451:

All of us (GMs) have character names starting with GM (GM Proheals, for example). We are online 24/7 and responding to reports sent by you via the in-game reporting system. 98% of the time we’re invisible clearing bots and the like.

To remove someone using hacks (teleports, speed, etc) we have to witness the act in game so you must use the in-game reporting tool. The only exception is if you can point us to chat where the player cheating has said they are using a 3rd party program.

Hope this helps, I’ll check in later for questions.

Would like to point out that according to a dev’s response earlier, the names follow the generic capitalization procedure and are actually “Gm”, not “GM”.

This thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2/Mists-Stone-for-1000-Badges-of-Honor/ has plenty of good advices on how to deal with the problems you may run into while trying to obtain the Mists Stone (entitlement excluded).

You know you’ve been reading GW2 forum too much when…
…you can tell it’s Friday by looking at the thread titles in the general subforum.

You know you’ve been playing PvE too much when…
…you read AC as “Ascalonian Catacombs”, and not “air conditioning” or “alternating current”.

You know you’ve been playing WvW too much when…
…you read AC as “arrow cart”, and not “Ascalonian Catacombs”.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Or is it the 15th just titled ‘Mounts’? That must be it.

Yes, it means that this is the 15th thread titled exactly “Mounts”.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Lishtenbird.2814:

On topic: No. This is not WoW.

Best argumentation ever:
X is not Y, so Z shouldn’t be happening. Yeah….

As you can conclude from the number in the URL, why exactly it should not be like WoW has been discussed countless, countless times.

On topic: No. This is not WoW.

Off topic: I love these “mount” threads for one thing: the moment when you look at the URL and see /forum/game/gw2/Mounts-15/.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

Where’s the guy who always posts the giff of the dead horse being beat by a jockey?

He was probably away – 29 posts and still no gif:

Wanze.8410:

It would also lower the population in sub level 80 maps, which isnt desirable for new players that level their first character.

It would also lead to more lvl 80 being created, more most expensive armour and weapons being bought, more bag slot extensions, more harvesting tools, and last but not least, more cool gemstore skins which can’t be all put onto a single character without making it look like a clown.

Cross.6437:

In the time it took me to get some of those things the first time, I’d already leveled seven other characters to 80. Great idea, but far too expensive.

I would also prefer it to be less expensive, but it can be done within the concept. Still, it largely depends on your playstyle; I spent most of my time perfecting my main until I started making alts, and I definitely accumulated enough of that stuff by the time I was ready to create alts.

Orpheal.8263:

There is so much more potential for Karma to become more useful, if designed and thought out well enough.

Unfortunately, we already have Karmic Converter – which is a money grab. Apart from that, you can still convert karma to linen.

Nope, this is not a conspiracy theory – this is a result of a bug-feature introduced with the new TP. If you sell 100 ectos instantly for the 250 buy orders, but 150 buy orders are already filled by the moment you press the button, you will get a partial sell error and have 50 ectos listed as a sell offer. Which is very annoying.

Listed as 69. Character-independent keybindings. in my list of QoL features 7 months ago, and requested earlier too. So yes, it’s a feature (some? many?) people would like to see.

Ayrilana.1396:

Farming something to the point that prices drop to vendor prices isn’t good as people will just sell to vendor and avoid the gold sink. That’s one of the points you made and I do agree with. When I read the rest, it came off as you were saying that all farming was bad as the items had the potential to hit vendor prices if farmed excessively. I was asking for clarification to make sure what your stance was and if this assumption was correct.

How many people actually do vendor items instead of putting them into a gigantic pile on the TP, like the 13’911’063 supply for thick leather? Honestly, it took me some time to realize that some things are better vendored than sold; and IIRC, just until recently you could actually sell at vendor price on TP and lose money on fees.

shion.2084:

Take a look at the halloween model and extrapolate what would happen if that was left up year round. Then understand what farming “also” does in addition to create this helpful supply.

= “Take a look at Christmas and extrapolate what would happen if that was left up year round. People would spend all their money on presents and dinners and entertainment and die from starvation. That is why Christmas is bad.” That’s why this content is seasonal and limited; just like Wintersday, Bazaar of the Four Winds and Crown Pavillion/Gauntlet, it is a controlled farm introduced to make changes to economy – check out this post for some maniacal laughter from John Smith.

tigirius.9014:

I’d much rather reach a goal through currency like marks than buy an item from another player who just happened to be lucky enough to get the lottery ticket.

See this thread.

Djinn.9245:

But not only is it a shame that this beautiful and creative game has become nothing more than numbers on a graph to a lot of people, it is also a shame that those who actually play the game are not rewarded MORE for doing so than those who treat the game as nothing but a system to be “worked”.

Looking at Notre Dame de Paris and saying it’s cool is easy. Learning art, architecture and math to understand why Notre Dame de Paris is cool is hard. But when you’re done learning art and architecture, you don’t actually lose the ability to see that it’s cool.

Deamhan.9538:

OP misses the fact that these farmers, while creating an increase in supply for certain items, also increase demand for other items. Items they want/need but don’t get by the particular farming spot.

A demand backed by the higher than typical income of raw gold (game currency) brought in by the same farming spot. This compounds inflation for such items.

…which comes from exactly where? From those 50 copper mobs occasionally drop? Even if they drop 1 silver, you still have to kill 520 money-dropping mobs per hour to break even with the average CoF p1+p2 and AC p1+p2 which influxes raw 5g20s into the economy – excluding the coins dropped by mobs in the dungeon itself.

Jana.6831:

About a third of the people was downed by the Abomination, Balthazar was at 10% health when someone demanded that we stop attacking Balthazar because they would get more loot if also killing the Abomination.
The event fails 95% of the times, I (and others) get a trait for completing it, people who need obsidian shards need it (except for farmers who farmed the silverwastes). I’m not really convinced I like this overwhelming farming mentality – it’s okay if all of you farm but please just learn to not always get your way.

I have a different experience. It usually takes several days to get a trait in this event, as it is already done (most of the time, so obsi shards are available) or no one is doing it because it’s wrong time of day/wrong instance; when I stumble upon a decent try with enough people, I never see people asking to kill the champ instead of completing this event. It may fail, yes, but not because people farm it, but because people are noobs and don’t know where to focus.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I’m curious about what you have in mind with this suggestion, so thanks for the details.

I’ve worked out the following concept some time ago and have had a link in my signature since then:

Lishtenbird.2814:

This idea has been brought up at some point in the past, but I decided to rework it a bit and review again with the new leveling changes in mind, both NPE restrictions and different (not cost-efficient) leveling items. I’ve recently finished leveling the 4th character to 80, and I can say that the best way to level a character for me at the moment despite all the XP and Killstreak boosters is… playing PvP on another character and getting Tomes of Knowledge.

So, what is an Experience Accumulator?

An item which, when activated for the first time, gives you a buff and consumes the levels your character gets, and when activated on another character for the second time, returns the levels at a 3:2 ratio (so, you receive 2 levels for each 3 accumulated levels; extra levels are preserved inside the accumulator). The “level”, not “experience”, functionality is required to deal with uneven experience required for different levels.

Experience Accumulator can be forged in the Mystic Forge and requires:

• 1x Gift of Exploration
• 1x Gift of Battle
• 1x Gift of Competition – can be acquired free of charge upon reaching rank 20 in PvP.
• 1x Gift of Experience, requires:
  • 1x Vision Crystal
  • 1x Mists Stone
  • 1x Crown of Laurels, can be acquired for 10 Laurels and 100’000 karma by a level 80 character only. The amount of Crown of Laurels required can be discussed, but with all the other stuff in the recipe in mind, I believe that a single one is enough. Can be accompanied in some way by a completed Personal Story requirement.
  • 1x Gift of Dungeon Offerings. Ideally, I would prefer Gift of Dungeon Offerings to be replaced by Gift of Gauntlet which is granted upon beating all bosses and Liadri in a dedicated Gauntlet instance, but I see that it would require a lot of extra coding; however, it would be more skill- than grind-or-get-carried-or-buy-a-path-based as in the dungeon case. Alternatively, Gift of Gauntlet can replace Crown of Laurels. Gift of Dungeon Offerings requires:
    • 1x Offering of Baelfire
    • 1x Offering of the Sanctuary
    • 1x Offering of Knowledge
    • 1x Offering of Zhaitan

On the other hand, this looks like something to forge a precursor or a commander tag…

Why Experience Accumulator should exist?

• Because many people think that, despite ANet’s initial intentions, the real game starts at 80, not at character creation. Everything else is a drag – you can’t have your skills, your traits, your gear/runes/sigils, your looks for a long time, and you have to do things you’ve done several times already over and over again.
• Because you can already get Tomes of Knowledge and (skill point Scrolls) for PvPing (and PvEing depending on the current LS rewards) on another character.
• Because you can already level significantly by crafting, which is something that requires no skill but a lot of gold to buy mats and a browser to open gw2crafts.net.
• Because you do not need a month of camping a character to learn how to play it because
  • you know how to read and simply study Wiki and guides,
  • you’ve been seeing what other classes do since you first started playing,
  • most skills aren’t that different between classes apart from the looks and names,
  • you understand that there’s little point in “learning” something that is available for several levels but you won’t be using at level 80 – which is very often the case with the trait changes in mind,
  • you understand that the only way to learn playing a level 80 character efficiently is playing a level 80 character.
• It has an initial time/material sink, especially the Gift of Exploration sink tied to the most expensive items in the game.
• It’s optional.