Guild Wars 2

if you look closely, the water spout is simply a miniaturized version of healing spring…
i find that kinda disappointing.

Behellagh.1468:

Well it’s obvious looking at the ecto market that something has changed since the patch went live Tuesday. Buy orders went from 17.7s to nearly 23s as supply fell sharply.

So the question is why did supply fall? Were items pulled and not reposted? Or did a steady flow of new “for sale” listings slow to a crawl? Why did it slow to a crawl? Are players now using them? hording them? or simply no longer creating them through salvage?

He’s peeling an onion here. Datamine to eliminate all the potentially normal reasons and what you have left is less ectos being created though salvage. Once you prove that then you can get a programmer scheduled to look into what might have happened in the code.

We, as players, need to use the TP to guesstimate the availability of ectos… but Anet should have all ecto info at their fingertips.

.. not saying that it’s easy to find the problem… but it shouldn’t be as much guesswork as it may seem.

Niyo.5920:

Lord Kuru.3685:

I don’t believe green mines hurt the player at all under any circumstances.

You can try to find out.
I think I was hurt by one when I hit it, but maybe Canach activated it again. Don’t exactly know.
But they WILL hurt Canach and that’s the goal of the instance.

I just tried it.. green mines will not hurt you… you can touch them all you like.

Lots of people mention silk scraps — but at least they are worth a minimum of 7 copper (at the npc merchants). BLTC however can’t be sold at merchants, so you have to TP them at 3-4 copper. There must be drops in the starter areas that are worth less (I assume) but I can’t think of anything in the higher level areas that are so worthless.

I don’t believe green mines hurt the player at all under any circumstances.

I feel differently… I say get rid of all messages and just have visible, obvious animations for boss actions. Players should learn the animations and react when they see them — much more immersive and fun this way (imho).

don’t try to memorize all the mines when you scan… when you scan, quickly look through the icons for a single explosive mine — go to that mine and use skill #2 to turn it green and lead Canach to it. Then scan again, and repeat. Don’t worry about the other mines as the explosive ones are real damage dealers anyway.

Of course this is assuming nothing bugs out.

Niyo.5920:

No it’s only another way. Kiel tells you that you can detonate the mines when you use the wrong skill on them. But the other way with the green mines is easier.

Oh! I assumed when Kiel talks about using the wrong skill she’s helping you not blow yourself up rather than helping you blow Canach up.

and yeah.. making them green has got to be much easier.

JustTrogdor.7892:

How would deleting your BLCs be a protest? No one would notice or care but you.

I figure Anet keeps statistics about what’s done with what items so they know what items people want/don’t want/salvage/don’t salvage, etc… and more generally, how their customers play the game.

… so my (small) contribution would be +250 trashed BLC’s in their stats. … just a small this-is-how-I-value-BLC’s to Anet.

All I did was make the mines green (only the explosive one does any significant damage), then walked over and past them … Canach would follow and when he stepped on the green mine, it would automatically explode … what’s this about manually detonating the mine? Did they change the mechanics?

So what’s the worst drop (that can be sold) in the game? What’s the drop that you hate getting the most?

Personally, I hate getting black lion chests. With a sell price of 4 and a buy price of 3 on the TP, they’re practically worthless. In fact, are they literally the worst drop that can be sold? Is there anything else that drops – that you can sell – that’s worth less?

In fact, I’m thinking of deleting all my BLC’s in protest once I get 250 of them

Also: putrid essences — when you see you got a yellow item and it turns out to be a putrid essence .. that’s pure disappointment!

Force.2841:

So some of you hate the new chests because it doesn’t reward you enough to do WvW? I seriously can’t understand that logic. I do WvW to pvp and to fight enemies, to enjoy skirmishes and big battles, not to go kill for a reward and expect 100% to get a precursor which seems to be the case with a lot of you lot making these kinds of threads. I get the feeling you guys are the same guys who posted in forums from other MMO’s after you got PKED and your gear dropped, but when YOU got an item for a player it was great because you got rewarded. Some of you are just unbelievable.

My feeling is that a lot of PvE players don’t even try out WvW because they hear of the crappy rewards… the more/better the rewards, the more people we’ll have in WvW — which is great for the lower tiers.

nice change to the floating retaliation icon Anet! Much better than the previous symbol that looked like a jellyfish.

Niyo.5920:

But the storytelling we had was very good. I really like the text about Canach from the blog. Would love to get more like this about Canach and what hes gone through the last six months.

Having to read a blog post to get the bulk of the story in a video game is like having to watch DVD extras to get the bulk of the story for a movie. If there was a good story here (I didn’t read the blog stories) it should have been in game with blog short stories as supplements.

As I’m on a server with serious WvW population issues (NSP), I was hoping the chests would have better/more loot so that more PvE’ers would be encouraged to try out WvW. I guess that’s not going to happen.

By the way, with the addition of these chests (and the badges in them) — I say we get rid of badges as rewards for the JP’s.

Some guy who’s doing good but going about it in a bad way… that’s pretty much it to the story. It’s just one step above the some-guy-who’s-doing-evil-because-he’s-evil in simplicity.

Of course, in the end, it’s how you tell the story — after all a lot of good stories have very simple core plotlines. In this case though, there was only very minimal storytelling so the story was simply: some buy who’s doing good, but going about it in a bad way.

I couple problems I had with the storytelling:

It’s been 7 months since Lost Shores. I believe I met Canach during that event, but at this point, I didn’t remember him at all. Noll was bugged out on my server and I never met him at all. Serial TV shows often open with a quick review events relevant to the current episode; this was needed here (as mentioned above, perhaps in your initial conversation with Kiel).

I basically lost all interest in the “mystery” after seeing the spoilers in the achievement list and then the backpiece flavor-text. Achievements that couldn’t be gotten shouldn’t have been displayed and the backpiece flavor-text should have appeared only after the event was over.

Also, am I the only one who didn’t like the whole idea of the settler contracts and how destroying them would free the settlers? Seems VERY simplistic — it kinda reminds me of when Prince changed his name in an attempt to void contracts he signed. Furthermore, the whole idea of contracts, to me, seems a bit out of place in this world. Plus, how many people in this world can read/write, I wonder? All of these small things put together become, for me, completely immersion breaking.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

to be fair: I wouldn’t compare the story mission with a dungeon, but instead with a story mission in F&F like the Braham-Mission in Cragstead. We got a few new events and get a Meta-Event chain, don’t forget that. Plus a Minigame.

It’s Anet who’s advertising what’s actually a solo instance as a dungeon.. if they hadn’t called it a “brand new story dungeon,” we wouldn’t be comparing it with dungeons.

I personally don’t believe there is any double teaming of the sort where people from different servers are actively conspiring to beat on the third server.

Anet has put us in a position where it’s more natural to see (GoM + DR) vs NSP or (GoM + NSP) vs DR than (DR + NSP) vs GoM. The population disparity between GoM and both DR and NSP is enormous. It’s simply easier for DR and NSP to take each other’s towers than to take GoM’s as both servers have similar coverage and populations. Now if DR and NSP were truly shooting for first place, then GoM would more likely be the target for both — but neither are going for first because GoM is just too big. Short of an actual alliance between DR and NSP (which would never work anyway) GoM is gonna win.

Anet screwed up big time in allowing server populations get to the point where they are now — it’s like a football league where some teams field 11 men, some field 6, and some only 2. It’s not going to be fun for anyone, even the ones with a full 11 person team.

Imagine if all servers had more or less the same population and coverage. If you win, it’d be because you’re awesome, not because you’re much bigger; and if you lose, it’s because you suck not because you’re outmanned all the time. Furthermore, we could reasonably have a round robin system for the match-ups. A different match-up every week would solve a lot of the staleness issues that WvW is seeing now.

Of course the geniuses at Anet seem to think the main problem is not with population/coverage but with the ratings system.

… so basically WvW is screwed — unless PvE’ers love the idea of the rank chests so much that they flood into WvW making all servers the same size (not gonna happen).

any stealth changes in this patch? because there always has to be some, you know.

Besides server population/coverage parity, what WvW really needs right now are new maps. Even just one new BL map would help a great deal as we’d see a different map each week.

Yes, it’s certainly really hard to design a good map, but the game has been out for a long time now .. nobody at Anet thought that we might get a bit bored with the same maps every single week? Yes, sometimes we change colors and thus positions in EB… but BL’s remain exactly the same week after week after week after week.

It’s not too late Anet (though I’d say it’s close) … make us a new BL map to rotate in every other week! At this point, you should know what we like and dislike in a map so your job should be a bit easier.

Perhaps we can give Anet some ideas for a new map… for example, I know a lot of people hate the lake in BL as well as all the unused areas in the NW and NE.

Stealth changes breed conspiracy theories.

Every time we have an update people insist that this or that has been nerfed. Sometimes we’re right sometimes we’re wrong, but regardless, this is bad for the game; it causes confusion and mistrust.

I’m not saying that Anet must include every minor change in the update notes, but by this point in time, Anet should know which changes we would like to see listed and which changes we don’t really care about.

Let’s think of tiers in terms major and minor leagues in baseball. Baseball is organized in tiers. We have the major leagues (tier 1), and minor leagues: AAA (tier 2), AA (tier 3), etc. Anet seems to think the problem is that some AAA teams should be in the majors and perhaps some should be in AA and that the current ranking system takes to long to move teams between tiers. They want the new ranking system to put teams in the right tier more quickly.

But the real problem is that as you go down the tiers, teams have fewer and fewer players! If you’re a AA team with only 5 players on your whole team versus, say 10 in AAA and 25 in the majors, there’s no point in being matched up — ever.

If you want fun competition, you’re gonna need teams that field roughly the same number of players.

Many in this thread think that the underdog will have fun trying to beat the odds to score more than the rankings say they “should.” In other words: “Let’s try to lose by 190k instead of 200k!” or “Let’s try to hold two camps in our BL week!” Have you ever been on a sports team where you know you’re going to be completely owned? Did you say: “Let’s go team, let’s try to lose by only 50 points today!” It’s really morale breaking — especially if you’re just a casual player.

Snowreap.5174:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

This is a valid argument.

I propose an easy fix: Arenanet needs to force you to move to a different server, and they need to lock your account so that you can only play during periods of the day when your new server has low coverage.

If Arenanet does this for enough players, the problem will be solved.

If you don’t think this is a good solution, I invite you to propose an alternative that doesn’t involve forcing players to switch servers or what time of day they want to play.

-ken

Whether you or I can or can’t think of a way to even out coverage is irrelevant. The fact is that Anet has addressed the wrong issue and they’re certainly not going to fix anything by addressing the wrong issue.

And in response to your purposely ridiculous suggestion: it’s easy to think of ideas to even out servers and are much more reasonable. Instead of forcing people to do things, give them incentive to do so. Every player has a “price” (anything between discounted/free transfers all the way to the totally ridiculous free precursor) for which he/she will be willing to switch servers. Most players have a price somewhere in between. If Anet pays that price for enough players then we will have server population parity.

To be honest, if Anet simply acknowledged the problem and carefully explained to players why we need server population/coverage parity, if Anet let us know which servers need population at which timezones (Anet definitely has the stats and knows this info), I’d bet lots of people would be willing to transfer without further incentive.

And yes, some people will sometimes play “off-schedule” .. but that’s fine. We don’t need exactly the same number of people to be on each server at all times; if populations are roughly even, it’ll still be fun.
Anyway, most people live pretty regimented lives and can reliably estimate when they will usually be on — small deviations will be irrelevant.

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

Currently, each server only has a couple other servers that match up similarly coverage/populationwise. So currently, the ideal matchups would be between these evenly populated servers — which leads to the same match every week: more or less what we have now.

Different matchups, however, will only see huge population imbalances. And even if a matchup does happen to have servers with comparable populations during primetime,
we’d see terrible imbalances outside of primetime. Whatever you do during primetime will be meaningless — one hour after primetime, the whole map will be green; not due to superior skill, but simply due to one server having overwhelming numbers.

The real solution is to fix the root issue: even out coverage/population. The stale matchup problem then fixes itself: we could just have randomized match-ups (or round-robin). If you lose a match, at least it’s a fair loss — it’s because you suck, not because they have 10 times more population that you.

Anet needs to address the root of the problem but what we’re seeing is a band-aid fix.

Truga.5897:

This would have to be client-side (because tracing rays is expensive CPU work) and thus would be easily hackable.

No.

As for the OP, names need to stay. In a lot of cases I can only see the name, and not the model, when things get zergy.

Ray tracing is being done already, whether client or server-side. Not including the name tags in the ray tracing computations would be equally or less computationally intensive, no?

By the way, do you think the decision to render or not to render is being done server-side currently?

I think story stuff like this should be in game… giving the story to NPCs to tell (split it amongst several to make it easier reads) would be more immersive. Put the NPCs in different parts of the world with trails of hints from one to the next to make it more fun (of course the story would have to be interesting).

here’s what I think would be great:

enemy names appear only if you can see some part of their body.
If someone’s whole body is behind a tree, then the name doesn’t appear. I’m pretty sure this could be implemented without having to write too much code or using more network resources.

Beta Sprite.4169:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If you have stability (in other words, are not playing a Necro.. but that’s an issue for another post).

Necros can get 3s stability on Death Shroud activation with Foot in the Grave.

Engineers and thieves are the ones that lack reliable stability.

ah yes… I was actually completely wrong .. necros don’t even need to change traits.
There’s Lich Form and Plague Form .. you can’t jump, but I just realized you can pop in and out since all you want is the stability.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If you have multiple opponents, does each opponent have his own clock to calculate ticks from your damage or are the ticks calculated from a single clock (your clock)?

As far as my personal testing has revealed, each opponent has their own internal clock for condition ticks. Those clocks also don’t start the first time you apply a condition that ticks onto them, they start when anyone applies a condition that ticks onto them.

That’s interesting.. so we can’t control the ticks as attackers.

Now I wonder whether the clock is running all the time, or whether only once you enter combat with it resetting when out of combat. (I expect the latter, since I’ve never noticed extra ticks from my initial attack.)

If it is the latter, then I guess it’s always advantageous to reset combat as much as possible so that conditions put on you have less chance to get an extra tick?
Though one extra tick isn’t going to make much difference — except maybe when fighting necros who are using fear and terror.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If you have multiple opponents, does each opponent have his own clock to calculate ticks from your damage or are the ticks calculated from a single clock (your clock)?

As far as my personal testing has revealed, each opponent has their own internal clock for condition ticks. Those clocks also don’t start the first time you apply a condition that ticks onto them, they start when anyone applies a condition that ticks onto them.

That’s interesting.. so we can’t control the ticks as attackers.

Now I wonder whether the clock is running all the time, or whether only once you enter combat with it resetting when out of combat. (I expect the latter, since I’ve never noticed extra ticks from my initial attack.)

If it is the latter, then I guess it’s always advantageous to reset combat as much as possible so that conditions put on you have less chance to get an extra tick?
Though one extra tick isn’t going to make much difference — except maybe for necros with fear and terror.

Something I just learned about condition damage, and then a question:

So condition damage is applied at ticks that are one second apart. When these ticks begin depends on the first condition you’ve applied…

So apparently, something like this:

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

simple scenario:

I begin attacking an enemy with a 1.5 second burn. At:
0.0 seconds, the condition damage clock starts when the burn is applied;
1.0 seconds, the enemy receives one hit of burn;
1.5 seconds, the burn expires;
2.0 seconds, the enemy has no burning on him so takes no burn damage.

in total, the enemy gets 1 hit of burn from a 1.5 second burn.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

more complicated scenario (let’s only calculate burn damage):

I begin attacking an enemy with a bleed. At:
0.00 seconds, the clock starts when the bleed is applied;
0.75 seconds, I apply a 1.5 second burn to the enemy;
1.00 seconds, enemy receives one hit of burn, the burn still has 1.25 seconds left.
2.00 seconds, enemy receives one hit of burn, the burn has 0.25 seconds left.
2.25 seconds, burn expires, no further damage from the burn.

In total the enemy gets 2 hits of burn from a 1.5 second burn.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

(Personally, I think the way Anet chose to calculate condition damage is a bit lame because of the inconsistency)

anyway, here’s the question:

If you have multiple opponents, does each opponent have his own clock to calculate ticks from your damage or are the ticks calculated from a single clock (your clock)?

In other words, if I’m fighting two guys and apply bleed to one opponent, then burning to both, do the ticks begin for opponent 1 when I apply the bleed and for opponent 2 when I apply the burn… or do the ticks for both opponents begin when I apply the bleed?

anyone tested this?

Since this last patch that supposedly fixed minion aggro AI, my minions — when summoned — just stand around doing nothing until I use #1.

For example, when I use staff marks #2-#5 immediately after summoning a minion, that minion does nothing until I autoattack — and in fact I believe does nothing until the autoattack hits (VERY slow on a staff).

Everyone else seeing this as a problem also?

what about this: minions will immediately aggro…

IF (you use an offensive skill when you have a target) THEN (minion attacks that target)
ELSE IF (you use an offensive skill that “hits” a foe) THEN (minion attacks that foe, with priority given to nearest foe)

the “else” part is primarily for when you AOE when you don’t have a target (which happens A LOT since it’s so easy to lose your target in this game.. but that’s a story for another post) .. and by “hit” I include blocks and evades.

I think this would help alleviate the standing around issue.

Prepare to be utterly disappointed.

If you have stability (in other words, are not playing a Necro.. but that’s an issue for another post), you can jump pretty far on the geysers while the rocks are not up:

stop as far as you can on a geyser that’s higher than its neighbor.

then wait at the edge of that geyser and pop stability before the rocks go up on your geyser. Stability means you won’t get knocked to the ground so that you can jump on the rocks of its adjacent geyser and continue the puzzle.

Do mobs have real skill cooldown? In other words, chill is supposed to increase skill cooldown by 66% .. but does this actually work on mobs?

Do monsters’ skills even have cooldown, or do their skills have zero cooldown and they are simply programmed to use the skills every X seconds? Just from playing (no serious testing), I get the feeling it’s the former — which would mean that chill is far less effective than it should be.

anyone done any testing?

Logan Thackeray, Trahearne, and Rurik (GW1) are a few examples of major characters that I’m pretty sure Anet intended for players to like; however, they are all universally derided. (Perhaps Kormir (GW1) too? .. not sure what most people thought of her)

What is it that Anet keeps doing wrong?

Why not sigil of seeking (inquest slaying) for SE p1? It should be better than sigil of the night.

I definitely miss mob packs from GW1 .. but since GW2 is essentially a soloer’s game, I don’t think we’ll be seeing packs of mobs composed of multiple professions.

Man, killing those packs with double healer dolyak riders outside of Sorrow’s Furnace was a pain, but you really felt accomplishment when you interrupted their Orison of Healing at exactly the right time. And for some reason I really remember those Heket packs from Nightfall. The Heket were much cooler than the Hylek!

Here is the answer to all this gambling stuff:

• chests drop two types of tokens: a “regular token” and a “super token”.
• Guarantee a regular token in every chest.
• 100 (or some other very large number) regular tokens can be turned in for a weapon skin of your choice. (You need a large number to prevent these weapons from being too common because that makes them less desirable.)
• chests have a small chance to drop a super ticket that can immediately be turned in for a weapon skin of your choice.

This way:

• Players can always get what they want (customers happy).
• Players are induced to gamble for that super ticket (Anet happy).
• Players who are lucky obtain their skin at a cheaper price (customer really happy).
• Even if a player gets a super ticket, he/she will have many regular tickets from opening all the chests before getting the super ticket. He/she will feel all these regular tickets are wasted if not used, and thus will spend more on tickets to get a second skin (Anet happy).

You’re welcome Anet, the bill is in the mail.

I just noticed that the guardian trait Renewed Justice (virtue of justice is renewed when you kill a foe) does not proc when you defeat a southsun settler (the ones that turn green when defeated instead of dying).

I don’t believe you get stacks with “on kill” sigils from these guys either.

of course, we’re not actually killing anyone, but these people do drop loot. So it seems different from other situations where foes turn green when defeated (for example with skill challenges).

Vayne.8563:

I mean for years, cereal packets have random prices in them. Collect all the toys. Collect all the stickers. We’ve seen McDonalds have a monopoly game where you have to get different pieces to get a chance to win.

Gambling? Nah, not really. But it’s still annoying as hell. lol

With cereal packets and McDonalds’ monopoly, if you pay close attention to the commercials, they ALWAYS say that no purchase is necessary to play: you can always write in to get free “tickets” .. I believe they do this exactly to avoid the gambling issue.

the OP may be right.. when you ascend the karka shell, the main stat becomes healing while toughness and condition damage are the secondaries.

wow… so many threads about this. I actually had to ask on map chat why Levvi refused to give me a second gun. Since we normally expect environmental weapons to either disappear forever, or show up on the ground when dropped, perhaps this one should have been handled differently to avoid all the confusion?

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Second questions:
Will the trap spring even if:
A) the person walking over it isn’t stealthed, or
B) the person walking over it doesn’t have any supply?

Answer:
Yes, any “Enemy Player” can trigger the traps. This means that pets, clones, Npc’s, and ambient creatures CANNOT trigger the traps. This design was set so players wouldn’t put traps (especially the supply trap) on supply holds. Image if your zerg/small party didn’t have supply and went to restock at supply hold that had a few supply remove traps. As soon as the team has supply BOOM “Trapified” your supply is gone.

(My bold.) The funny thing is this is exactly what thieves are doing now, right when the zerg/small party is in the process of resupplying.

for Guild Wars, Anet got a lot of inspiration from Magic the Gathering (too bad they weren’t bold enough to follow it more closely, but thats a post for a different time).

One thing Magic developers realized was that players find it unfun when he/she doesn’t get to play his/her cards.. that’s why they got rid of a lot of their land control cards. Anet should realize that multiple seconds of control is, in the same way, not fun because the player can only sit there helpless while his/her skill bar is blacked out.

The purpose of the thermal core section (where you are being used as a test subject) was to teach you the mechanics of the dungeon .. and in particular the mechanics of the final boss(es). I thought that was a really good feature of the dungeon since a lot of people just expect to faceroll their way through everything.

Maybe that tutorial wasn’t challenging enough so the mechanics weren’t learned?

The Flame and Frost dungeon has been regularly moving entrances.
My question is, does the dungeon itself change, or only the entrances?

sinzer.4018:

As far as im aware there hasn’t been any mention.

As a bit of speculation, i think it may be more difficult for Anet to do than a character name change. What leads me to this conclusion is the incidents of people creating guild names that are in breach of the ToS and the guild being deleted while character names in breach result in a forced name change. This makes me think there’s a fundamental difference between guild names and character names that makes it far trickier for a guild’s name to be changed than a character’s name.

Theoretically, every guild should just have a unique serial number and its name should just be part of a “guild” data structure. A name change would be super easy this way.

Of course, Anet seems to have some really awful programming practices, so your argument makes a lot of sense. (For example, it seems every time a skill changes, Anet has to manually change all the info in the tooltip — which they often seem to screw up… shouldn’t most of the relevant info in the tooltip be pulled from the “skill” data structure?)

foofad.5162:

Lord Kuru.3685:

foofad.5162:

Because it would be overpowered. Two handed weapons have a much higher innate damage range than one handed weapons. That’s the short version.

Is this true (has someone calculated DPS numbers?) .. and if true, with a one-handed weapon, your offhand provides some DPS as well.. for example the guardian’s torch seems to have pretty good DPS.

In any case, some weapon sets having 2 sigil slots and some having 1 means it’s harder to balance… with Anet having always struggled with balance (hence the drastic decline in skill choice between GW1 and GW2), it seems they’ve just made their lives more difficult.

There’s nothing to calculate. Look at an 80 exotic two handed weapon’s damage range, and then look at an 80 exotic one handed weapon’s damage range. The two hander has a higher average damage. Specifically, 1048 and 952 respectively. Two handed weapons do exactly 10% more damage (base) than one handed weapons.

Secondly, off hand weapons do not contribute to your overall damage. The damage listed for an off-hand only applies to that weapon’s skills. In other words, focii and shields and torches do less damage with their skills comparatively speaking than standard one handed weapons. Obviously this doesn’t apply to classes that can off-hand one handed weapons.

So it seems the loss of a sigil slot is worth 10% more base damage.
Personally, I’d prefer the customizability of a second sigil slot.