Guild Wars 2

Esprit Dumort.3109:

Has anyone looked into doing 3rd party logging via the in-game API as we see in the Event alert websites and Trading Post websites?

There has been at least one program that does some of what the combat log should do, but there was some controversy as to whether it was legal to use.

There was some mention by the devs several months ago about improving the combat log, but as usual, it’s all talk and no action.

There’s also the issue of people being frequently griefed by the “merge” option.

With the dangers of the party merging issue (and griefers using this), no one should be using the in-game LFG anyway.

Anet made a huge mistake when they decided to have bleed ticks subject to change after the bleed was applied (for example, if you apply a 10 second bleed and then get might 3 seconds into the bleed, then the rest of your 7 seconds will bleed for more damage per tick).

This forces communication between the bleeder and the server every single second. It also adds a ton of computations.

If Anet had done fire-and-forget bleeds, where the damage per tick is determined at the instant the bleed is applied, these computations, communications would have been avoided with no loss to the “flavor” of the game (why does might affect a bleed I’ve already placed on an opponent anyway?).

Blade Syphon.4325:

Mark my words, and I really wish I was wrong about this, but 2014 is going to be no different than 2013 in terms of Anet developing content. They’ll keep putting out more and more terrible updates, refuse and flat out ignore player feed back, and when December of 2014 rolls around, we’ll get the same pat on the back PR garbage we got from them in a developer feed about how 2014 for GW2 was an amazing year, and its still the best game you can play for free any time.

This. There’s been zero evidence that Anet has learned anything from last year’s Living Story experience. (I actually think the Living Story idea is good, but the implementation has been total fail.)

They’re just going to continue doing what they do best: talk big and then completely fail to deliver.

If the same people who wrote the previous chapters wrote the finale, there’s no chance it’ll be good.

But the real problem is that Anet actually thinks the story is great but that it hasn’t been delivered properly (and having story and game features in the same patch confuses players LOL!!).

If they can’t tell good stories from bad, there’s really no hope.

Lexandro.1456:

There is no point doing them any more than once each a day because of the chest limitations. So if you see an event fail its not because people don’t do them any more, its because the majority have already done it that day and wont bother with it till after reset.

This. Especially for the servers with a big reset zerg.

Nike.2631:

fellyn.5083:

stale.9785:

-increase armor on all mobs, increase their general damage output, and reduce the number of 1 hit kills that must be dodged. (This would be my preferred approach).

That would affect everyone who isn’t doing condition damage then. We’d have the same problem we have now only with condition gear sets.

Only if they overshoot. It IS possible to make adjustments with a screwdriver instead of a sledgehammer .

Haven’t you learned by now that Anet always overshoots when it comes to nerfing.

It’s there to make you play more to get Ascended gear. The more you play, the more chance you spend money at the gemstore (and the more regularly you play, the better — hence the timegating).

Of course, the alternate way to make you play more is to create fun and compelling content. But Anet has chosen the easier path.

Nerfing critical damage is going to hurt the average player much more than the elite dungeoneers. Perhaps we’ll see even more demand for selling dungeon runs.

Huge mistake by Anet, but that’s just business as usual.

Without legislation, it will definitely happen. That’s what happens when you have non-government monopolies.

Most likely poor programming practices. Probably the same reason you can’t change guild names.

If you think the Ascended grind is bad, just wait for the inevitable infusion slot grind. There’s no way Anet can resist increasing the infusion slot stats more and more. So even if you think the gear is not worth it at the moment (false, by the way), it will be.

So I’d recommend you get on the grind train now or be left behind.

Josh Davis.6015:

Very apt timing for this thread to appear as I’ve recently been enlisted by the WvW team.

What does this mean for you guys? I’ll be working closely with Devon and crew to act as the liaison between our development team and you – raising community concerns with the team, finding answers, being the good/bad guy, and whatever else!

For those wondering, I play engineer, I prefer to roam, I’m currently on JQ, and yes, I take bribes in the form of cookies.

I think it’d be a really good idea for this aspect of your job if you had an alt account that plays on a lower level tier — perhaps even 2 alts, one in tier 4 and another in tier 7 or 8.

Could it be a stealth update on the Ugly Stick (and maybe other items as well) instead of RNG?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Everything the OP says is right, but the biggest problem with LS is that Anet has convinced themselves into thinking it’s good. They think they’re in the same league as Game of Thrones!

Everyone is in the same league as Game of Thrones. Every league has its Houston Texans and Cleveland Browns after all

I’d say Game of Thrones is in MLB while LS is somewhere at the bottom of the minors… or maybe NFL vs Pop Warner?

lordkrall.7241:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has talked up their content over and over again. They have failed to deliver over and over again. What makes you think this time will be different?

Because it is not ArenaNet that is talking it up this time, but rather press that have been shown the content?

The Eurogamer quote says they were told what was in the patch. They did not see. Again it’s a case of talking big, which Anet always does — nothing different from before.

Solstice.1097:

Yea I have gotten poisoned at water camp from a treb and was still in combat and poisoned by the time I reached NE camp. And I’m a warrior whose condi removal is cleansing ire and apparently burst skills don’t clear condis if you’re OOC.

Can you be OOC if you have conditions on you?

It’s the AI. What’s your armor rating?

Wanze.8410:

To be honest, Anet made more effort to incorporate GvGs in the last 6 months than i expected, they decreased the bloodlust boni and got us the arena in OS. Even though that arena gets trolled (during some matchups) it is a good addition.

The only reason they created the OS arena was because of that massive debacle of the Anet dev griefing a GvG.

They decreased the bloodlust bonus because it was too OP for the server with the better coverage.

Anet has talked up their content over and over again. They have failed to deliver over and over again. What makes you think this time will be different?

Everything the OP says is right, but the biggest problem with LS is that Anet has convinced themselves into thinking it’s good. They think they’re in the same league as Game of Thrones!

Look at their excuse for why it’s failed: feature and story patches confuse the players. As long as they believe they’re doing a good job and that it’s technical reasons that are pushing players away from the LS, there’s really no hope for improvement.

When they start the infusion slot grind (+5 stats now, +7 next, then +10, etc.) you’re going to have to have them as only Ascended gear has infusion slots.

CEDWYN.5392:

Wxp account bound – mentioned by Devon that it will be done… 2 months ago (before league 1 ended), and we still have nothing to show for this.

IMO, anet just says things to get people to shut up and stop asking. “Oh yea, and just keep playing the game and buying gems every 2 weeks and you’ve eventually see this stuff you have been asking for.”

This. For example, we’ve been strung along with the precursor business for, what, a year now? First with “precursor scavenger hunt” and now with precursor crafting.

Sounds like way more work than Anet’s willing to put in.

Something that takes just about zero effort to implement is more up their alley:
Add weekly achievements. Each week, a different zone is chosen where you have to do a bunch of events, kill a bunch of mobs/champs, view a bunch of vistas, etc.

This way Anet gets people back into deserted zones and can keep their dev team mainly focussed on the gem store.

They have this system already. If you kill the mob, you get an extra reward: loot.

The real problem is that the loot that normally skipped mobs drop are of really poor quality.

We’re definitely not there (yet). But this is getting dangerously close to pay-to-win territory.

Samhayn.2385:

Euro gamer had an interview with Anet, it was said they will now split features updates and LS updates. So I wouldn’t hold my breath on seeing any changes to wvw (maybe not even classes really) until after the march 4th update.

I really don’t know how I feel about this.

Actually, I believe they said they’d take a break after the March 4 update and the next would be in the summer. Doesn’t seem like the right move considering a new MMO is coming out in early April.

Yes. I think it’s safe to say that Anet would have put Scarlet as the major factor behind the fall of Abbadon. They LOVE the Scarlet character almost as much as the community hates her. They want to put her in EVERYTHING.

The OP is pretty much all baseless speculation and wishful thinking. For example:

TonyL.6478:

The living story over the past year is leading up to something big.

Not even close. The Living Story has been moving along at the steady pace of boring.

killcannon.2576:

More marketing talk. I wouldn’t look too far into it, not a single concrete thing was said, just the same old stuff.

Hype train just keeps on a rolling.

This. If you read carefully, he’s saying that we’ll have the same amount of content (or lack of content) as last year, just spaced out differently.

Likely grinding for Ascended gear has made mindless zombies of everyone on your sever.

Not a design flaw. If Anet wanted you to kill all mobs, they’d force you to do it before letting you pass to the next part of the path.

Instead, you get a choice of how you wish to play — wipe all mobs or skip them. Having a choice is always better.

If you want to wipe all mobs make your own LFG stating exactly that instead of asking the devs to force others to play the way you want.

Downscaling has been a complete disaster. Your build can behave completely differently when downscaled (especially if you rely on crits to proc traits/food/etc.). Of course, that’s negated by the fact that you’re basically one-shotting everything in lower levels. In any case, these two make lower level play completely unfun.

Perhaps Anet should just convert everything to level 80 and have lower level players upleveled in every area (not a great solution, but easy to implement).

I think Anet has forgotten about that plot point.

And if not, they’ve done a terrible job with it because it was a big mystery when E first appeared and by now, with not even small forward progress with (or even reminders of) that plot line it’ll look stupid when it’s brought back.

That there are many non-zerker viable builds in WvW means that the problem is in poor mob design.

Despite the universal panning of the Scarlet arc, Anet still seems to like it. They are unable to tell good stories from bad and thus it’s very unlikely we’ll be seeing good stories for the foreseeable future.

Time gating is there to ensure you log in every day so that doing so becomes a habit. It has zero gameplay value.

Tree.3916:

Montgomery.1986:

Uh, you forgot the part about getting them to level 21

Why does getting to level 21 matter? You make a level 1 character. Finish the beginning story. Go to WvW. Exit through the LA portal. Walk to the JP.

Because the loot you get from these chests depends on your level.

We’re going to see more and more of threads like this one, asking for profession changes or race changes. The game’s gotten so grindy with Ascended gear that people just aren’t going to want to start over with an alt.

Lots promised before and after release; very little delivered. Lots of interesting ideas (e.g., Living Story); terrible implementation. Also, extremely grindy.

killcannon.2576:

Lord Kuru.3685:

killcannon.2576:

Lord Kuru.3685:

As far as I know, the server population level is determined by how many people are on at that instant. That’s why sometimes servers are “very high” and sometimes “high”.

How many people make it “high” and how many people make it “very high” no one but Anet knows so they are free to manipulate as they wish.

It has been confirmed by the developers that server population is based upon how many accounts are at “home” on a server.

Not how many are active.

Common knowledge by now, look it up.

Then how is it possible a single server can sometimes be High pop and sometimes low pop?

Anet or whoever is in charge of server administration can change server caps at will without notice. For all I know they may be automated by now to adjust server caps.

Why they would do this I will leave to others to imagine.

Interesting. So the caps are changing and not the populations and that’s why servers can change from “very high” to “high”.

Absolutely not. The loot is really really bad. You can look up the probabilities for the different items on the wiki (gotten from player research) and determine how many gifts you need to farm per hour in order to be comparable to, say, champ farming.

I remember doing a quick estimate and 100 gifts was equivalent to roughly 2 gold. But this was when the ugly wool sweater/socks/hats were worth a LOT more than they’re worth now.

You can check how fast gifts can be farmed on the JP (I’m not running the JP this year so I have no idea), but my guess is that it won’t be close to enough.

In short: As usual: champ farm and use the proceeds to buy whatever it is you want.

killcannon.2576:

Lord Kuru.3685:

As far as I know, the server population level is determined by how many people are on at that instant. That’s why sometimes servers are “very high” and sometimes “high”.

How many people make it “high” and how many people make it “very high” no one but Anet knows so they are free to manipulate as they wish.

It has been confirmed by the developers that server population is based upon how many accounts are at “home” on a server.

Not how many are active.

Common knowledge by now, look it up.

Then how is it possible a single server can sometimes be High pop and sometimes low pop?

sPvP is in a bad state. Very few players. And only a single game mode.

The way Anet has designed this game, the way to play is to farm gold and use that gold to buy what you want off the TP. Drop rates are so poor that farming for items is generally not recommended.

As far as I know, the server population level is determined by how many people are on at that instant. That’s why sometimes servers are “very high” and sometimes “high”.

How many people make it “high” and how many people make it “very high” no one but Anet knows so they are free to manipulate as they wish.

PvE: Are there any plans to make condition builds more viable in PvE?
”Yes you should see some creatures targeted around weakness to condition in some of the early builds next year.” ~Isaiah Cartwright

So bosses with tons of toughness who spam weakness and have low vitality.

Anyway, does he mean open world or dungeons? If open world, who cares: it’s all faceroll content anyway. If dungeons: are they really going to touch dungeon content again?

Report him. Use the “support” link in the upper left of this page. At the linked page, hit the “submit a request” link at the top right.

It’s amazing that we still don’t have trait templates. It’s amazing that we have a UI that’s pretty much uncustomizable. GW1 had both.