Guild Wars 2

Justin ODell.9517:

Shockwave.1230:

Did the company change their moto from “When it’s done™” to “coming out soon™”

I think it happened sometime after release. :P

So true. (And maybe unavoidable in software development.)

Could you (maybe) please disclose the dates when posts discussing further pvp aspects will come up in the current cycle of blog posts? This will help the short-tempered part of the community to relax a bit until they can see the full picture.

~MRA

Shockwave.1230:

Since healing is not a role in this game, and since dps and active defenses are the best way to support people, I’m confused as to why this trait is going to exist.

You serious? I assume this trait will be awesome in WvW team fights.

rhodoc.2381:

So what is the reasoning behind leaving the ele-self out of this healing.?

My guess: This trait is explicitly intended for the role as a group supporter, and not for self-sustain. Much like the guardians pre-release F1-F3 mechanic had been, before it was watered down.

~MRA

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Any character that was created before the feature pack build will be grandfathered into the system; meaning that they will have traits 1 through 12 of each line unlocked. The new 13 traits will need to be unlocked by everyone. Any character created after the build will be required to unlock all of their traits via content or purchasing trait guides.

Any chance you might reconsider this ruling? This means for each of my eight existing characters, all but mere 5 Grandmaster traits will be unlocked. In doing so, you essentially remove the opportunity for progression from my many low level alts (5 at level 10-30), and I certainly don’t intend to delete them just to start anew. And I assume I am not the only one in this situation.

Here is a proposal how you could grandfather every existing character while leaving room for progression for existing low-level characters: Unlock traits based on the current mastery level of an existing character. That is, if a character has unlocked the Grandmaster level, she will unlock traits 1-12, if she only unlocked the Master level, she will unlock 1-10, and if she merely unlocked the Adept level, she will receive 1-6. Existing characters that did not unlock any trait level will receive no traits.

In doing so, you wouldn’t force us to delete dear low-level characters just for the sake of experiencing the new progression system.

~MRA

ZudetGambeous.9573:

People want what other MMO’s offer.

Funny. And I particularly chose GW2 because of its promise to deliver something else than what every other MMO already offers …

~MRA

Skorm.4897:

Well i’ve dropped 1500+ hours into this game and im already bored.

Most funny statement I’ve read today.

For extra credits, don’t forget to ask ANet for a refund.

(edit:)

Slowpoke.2749:

What should we tell to those who spent 300 dollars in the gem store?

Actually, I’d politely encourage that person to reconsider his/her priorities in life.

~MRA

Just read “great-grandmother” as a sloppy term for “ancestor”. Don’t go looking for a conspiracy and try to prove that 100 years of Tyrian history have been invented by the powers that be, since it will only give you a headache.

~MRA

VideoGamermike.5813:

This is something I keep hearing, that the entire Development team all play warriors.

And where did you keep hearing this? Right, “on the Internet.” This should have given you a hint about the soundness of your information.

~MRA

Fuzzion.2504:

Simple solution, come to t1 and t2.

Wouldn’t this actually the most dumb and lame solution? It would mean abandoning your home server, and joining a server that already has more than enough active players. I don’t see this solving anything.

~MRA

DeWolfe.2174:

Thank you for this long and detailed post. The first response I can think of is, who’s overnight? Every minute of the day is another’s night time. I ask this because you keep using the term “overnight”.

This essentially already sums it up. Since GW2 is an international game, you will never see such a ruling implemented (for very good reason), regardless of how many times players will keep proposing “change stuff overnight” modifications.

There are already smarter approaches to fight “coverage wars” that do not depend on local time. The introduction of the bloodlust buff already introduced a source of war points that scales with “player activity” instead of just mere “time passing by”. This mechanic is scaling that way since if there is no enemy to stomp, then you gain nothing from having the buff, and it even allows skilled small teams to contribute significantly by stomping other teams more effectively.

I understand such game mechanics as step in the right direction, although ANet has been a little bit too reluctant to have it have a major impact on the war score. (Current impact is merely about 25%, see http://www.gw2score.com for a breakdown of current matches.) By improving the impact of the borderlands buff, and/or introducing further game mechanics along that line of thought, will help to fight the dominance of coverage in a more reasonable way.

~MRA

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In GW1, the lore was that the gods created humanity, and worlds, magic itself, created the bloodstones, and were pretty much general kittenes.

In GW2, we find out that their biggest achievements were lies. They didn’t create humanity, they just brought them to the world; they created nothing; they strengthened magic… via Zhaitan; the seers made the Bloodstone; etc. etc..

Yes, but that’s what progress is usually about. And it’s actually quite similar to developments that happened on Earth (see Age of Enlightenment). This transition is a part of the lore development that I like pretty much.

Actually, from my (polemic Asuran in-game) perspective, I always found it funny how much trust people still put into these “human gods” that put their backs on them. The way I understand it is that they are just little more than glorified-yet-powerful, magic-using beings, whose story has been over-exaggerated through the centuries by the humans. I further theorize that they fled from Tyria in such a haste because they are bat-kitten afraid of the elder dragons, and that they are not really a match for them. Think of it, as such powerful magical beings, you must look pretty yummy to beings that devour magic. Just look at what Jormag has done to poor Owl.

However, what really bugs me (from my outside observer perspective) is that so many times people are arguing about lore using arguments like “no, you are wrong, we already know X because Y said so” or “this cannot be since it was written in text Z…” This is potentially fallible argumentation, and people should just stop doing this. When you study history or lore, you have to question every of your sources. They might be mistaken, they might be lying. They are influenced by the mindset of their epoch and their culture. And they are always just reporting it how they remember it, not how it has happened. The best you can get from these sources are more or less reliable hints or indicators in one or another direction, but you can never be sure, and cannot take them as facts. (Maybe the only thing that I understand as to be taken for granted is what the player character experiences first-hand. But even then, in this fictional environment, it might be an illusion, influence of drugs, a Quaggan conspiracy, or whatever.)

tl;dr: I wish people would show a little bit more of a critical distance to lore reporting sources when they are theorizing in this game.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

They basically said “we don’t know how to turn human-centric lore to being multiracial, so we’ll just make them false information.”

From a technical (game development) standpoint you might be right, but such situations are quite frequent in fictional writing. At least, we didn’t have our Rurik in the the shower moment yet (and I don’t assume we will), and the developed lore is still largely within the boundaries set by GW1.

~MRA

Nicca.3057:

But, the reason for it not being implemented is because it has not been tested? If I am wrong in my understanding please feel free to recalibrate my logic.

Crytal Reid stated that “the code changes were too risky to get checked in and tested properly” which means that the fix has already been implemented (most likely “locally” in a programmers development environment), but it has not been integrated in the code of the live production servers (“checked in” for the new build of today) since it has not been tested thoroughly.

Changes to a software system always bear the risk of creating unforeseen problems in other (and seemingly unrelated) components of the system. Hence, if ANet didn’t have the time to test the fix properly, then they are doing the right thing in pushing the changes back to the next release build.

~MRA

There is no way I can find the time to skim through all 12 pages in order check if this proposal has already been made, so please forgive me if this has come up before. However, for me, the following point (as cosmetic as it may seem) is still the major point holding me back from playing my ranger, so I hope this can be addressed some day:

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Make ranger pets remember their name persistently (instead of resetting them to a generic term like “juvenile teacup pig” when swapping them out)

Goal of Proposal
We rangers care for our pets, so let us bond with them.

This may sound like just a small QoL improvement, but the fact that pets loose their names has been bugging me since release. Maybe this is merely an RP thing, but names give the pet character. This is not a mere “juvenile hyena” by my side, this is Chukk, a true friend, that hunts with me since the days when I was fighting ghosts in the ruins of Ascalon. For me, collecting and naming the pets is a very important part of a ranger’s progression.

Proposal Functionality
Maybe I am crazy, but as a ranger, I care for each and every of my pets. And I don’t want to disrespect my pets by giving them a placeholder name. Hence, I do in fact have a handwritten list next to my PC of all the individual names I have given them, and I reenter the names whenever I switch out pet. I’d like to make the plea to spare me from this tedious work and to allow us (RPish) rangers to give our unique profession mechanic a proper name that sticks with it.

Associated Risks
Beside blowing up the space needed to store pet names from something like 4x 40 bytes to something like 45x 40 bytes per ranger character I cannot foresee any risks associated with this proposal.

~MRA

PS: As a comic relief, and although it is about a DnD sorcerer and not about a GW2 ranger, I want to link this web cartoon that depicts exactly the situation I want to avoid (tl;dr: 1st panel in 3rd row): http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0154.html

Shiren.9532:

A surprising death for this story wouldn’t be to kill Marjory, Kasmeer or Taimi, it would be to kill Logan.

This would truly be a surprise, and I also assume it will never happen.

Every day new players start playing the game, and Logan may be part of their personal storyline. Killing him in the Living World would create an inconsistency of their experience with the experience of everybody else which I don’t assume ANet willing to create. In fact, I understand the creation of the ‘biconics’ as an opportunity to have characters that may die, evolve, or whatever without harming the personal story or other existing content in the game.

So, unless some there is some technique to resolve PS/LW/dungeon path inconsistencies I’d say the members of DE, Queen Jenna, Lord Faren, and many many more characters are pretty much bullet proof.

~MRA

I have always been pretty convinced that the myterious ‘E’ is in fact … (dramatic pause) … Evon Gnashblade. Yes, he is a greedy kitten who loves nothing more than his profits, but I assume that he is also the most clever person in LA and that he is well aware that there is no commerce in total apocalyptic chaos. So he is pulling some strings in the dark to keep his monopolistic enterprise running smoothly, even if this means helping out some ludicrous do-gooders.

The point that Marjory was not noticing that it was a Charr holding her with his arm speaks of course against this theory, but I am willing to ignore this.

~MRA

JackDaniels.1697:

in order for the conclusion of the Living Story to be a hit?

I think you can still have a climactic ending without the need of someone dying.

Plus, isn’t that what we all expect? For someone to die. I know Anet is all about being creative and surprising us, and that would not surprise me if it happened, because I am already expecting it to happen.

I don’t think someone needs to die, and I don’t think someone should die (seriously, grow up, folkz), but we already know that someone WILL die since this has already been revealed by Angel McCoy during the year one anniversary bash panel.

Personally I think (unfounded speculation ahead)Ellen Kiel will die bravely while defending the city that put so much trust in her, and Evon Gnashblade (who will eventually be revealed as the mysterious 'E' benefactor of the heroes) will succeed in her position. Meanwhile, Scarlet will not die but get seriously transformed and will return as a Mega Boss event in some of the new upcoming maps. But this is just me pulling ideas out of my kitten, so take this as the speculation it is.

~MRA

Anen.1742:

Stop calling it a “queue” because it is obviously not a queue..

You wanna pick nits? Ok.

I’d say you should differentiate between the abstract FIFO collection data type (often commonly referred to as “queue” like that thing we know from our supermarket or post office) the WvW queuing system aims for, and the actual implementation of the concrete data structure. As you are most likely aware of, the vanilla FIFO collection contract only demands for an ‘enqueue’ and ‘dequeue’ (and maybe also a ‘peek’) operation, and not for a “position of element x” operation. So it is fair to assume that ANet is not using your usual textbook implementation of a FIFO collection, but a special implementation that also allows for efficient “approximate position of element x” queries. It may even be possible that the implementation may not always fulfill the usual enqueue and dequeue contract by the book but is also just an approximation for the sake of a faster implementation.

Having said that, we don’t have the slightest clue what implementation is actually at work here. But assuming that “a queue is exactly that thing on the picture on this website” is very very shortsighted.

Also, I’d say the Wikipedia lemma you linked is very superficial on its topic.

~MRA

Tamasan.6457:

I’m boggled as to why something so simple like a queue can be turned into a complex system with approximations and the possibility of misleading displays.

This is actually quite standard. Especially in highly dynamic scenarios computing the precise position in the queue may require too much computation for such a relatively irrelevant statistical information. Approximate positions however may be more easily to obtain, and they suffice for the informational purpose they fulfill. (Or do you really, really care whether you are nr. 42 or nr. 43 in line?)

Also, for all your observations with the queue position, you should have in mind that there is most likely an asynchronous update interval for each player’s client. So if you and your guildie seem to share the same position in the queue at one point, then this might be just because of the asynchronous information you got.

“Thanks” to a fair number of disconnects during our reset WvW raid yesterday I also had the chance to have a close look at the numbers (with some guildies in parallel) and I’d say that the queue is actually working quite nicely. There is no doubt that this feature should have been in place at release, but better now than never.

~MRA

Can someone please explain why the repair procedure should be done outside of the Program Files or Program Files(x86) folders? Will the repair fail if the Guild Wars 2 folder is not moved accordingly?

Many thanks in advance.

~MRA

Meehael.8240:

So, would you pay $10 a month for the game if the Gem Store ceases to exist, no need to buy bag and bank slots, expand this, expand that. Pay for boosters of various kind. Buy unlimited mining picks. What not…
That would probably also include less time gating, maybe a bit higher drop rates… You name it!

I most definitely wouldn’t. I already bought the game, why should I keep paying? And I pay regardless whether I play the game or not??? Honestly, I can’t understand how this has ever become an accepted business model.

Also, even if anything from the gem shop would be necessary to play GW2 to its full extent (which fortunately isn’t the case) I still want the liberty to chose whether I pay for new content or not.

Meehael.8240:

That would probably also include less time gating, maybe a bit higher drop rates… You name it!

I fear you are wrong in this point, I come to the complete opposite conjecture. The subscription-based games are the ones that rely heavily on time gateing, not normally bought games. More precisely: The profit of subscription-based games comes largely from deliberately wasting your time to keep you playing indefinitely longer. Only a subscription-free game like GW2 has the liberty to not enforce time gating, and lets you play the game at your own pacing.

Meehael.8240:

In short, you get a full service for $10 a month. I’d say if the game’s good, I’d pay that money.

I’d also encourage everybody to to have a careful look at what business model other subscription-bases games currently try to implement: First they sell you a full-prize game, then they demand a subscription for the privilege to keep playing a game you already bought (as is often claimed “to fund the ongoing development content”), and then let you pay a third time for this new content in the form of (traditional) add-ons or (modern) in-game shops.

TotalBiscuit had once rightfully claimed something along the lines: “If you are paying a subscription to essentially fund the extension and support of a game, then EVERYTHING developed has to be delivered free of charge as part of the service you are already paying for.” I think this observation is spot on, but the parts of the industry that want to enforce subscription fees are moving more and more in the opposite direction.

We as consumers should rather wish that subscription-based games will go the way of the dodo. The sooner, the better.

~MRA

Cormac.3871:

I spent five minutes staring at the code trying to find the word “mordremoth”, which should be identifiable as it has 3 letters that repeat themselves. I found something that could be “mordremath” (2nd line of that two line phrase) but that was the best I could do.

:) I’d assume you misread and the actual message you saw was “murder math” but it was in fact just your subconscious speaking to you. (sorry, couldn’t resist)

TaCktiX.6729:

I think she wouldn’t pop in to say “+1” if it was wild speculation with absolutely no basis.

Oh, I very much assume she would!

Yet, still an absolutely fun topic. Regardless if there is a message to find or not, I hope the devs realize that if they just give us such small pieces of enigma once in a while then there will totally be people willing to spent their time solving the riddle, as far stretched as it may seem.

~MRA

What a fun topic.

I don’t have any meaningful solution to this puzzle (and, frankly, I kind of tend to believe these patterns have just been there for the sake of “looking cool”) but I want to leave a small pointer that there is also a cryptographic technique called visual cryptography. In a nutshell, the idea behind this technique is that if you lay two seemingly random patterns atop of each other, then the combination of both patterns (or, in a sense, their difference) reveal a hidden message.

I cannot see that this technique is used in the case at hand, but it would certainly be a really cool way to hide something in plain sight, and maybe this view can spawn some ideas on how to decipher the code.

~MRA

Palador.2170:

snip

Thanks for the clarification.

~MRA

Hi.

We pretty much all know the portentous sight of the broken Asura gates near the end of the ‘Our Story So Far’ trailer (see attachment). Most people seem to take this as an implication of an imminent attack on LA. While I am not against the hypothesis that LA is in danger (the evidence Scarlet’s lairs seems to point in a similar direction) I am still not convinced that the Asura gates we have seen in the video are actually the ones from the Great Hub Plaza.

I spent some time near the gate hub in and it seems to me that the positioning of these gates do not match the gates depicted in the video. The broken gates in video seem to be more or less parallel to each other, while gates in LA are at a slightly shifted angle.

So, has actually someone positively identified where in the game these gates are, if they are currently present at all? A screenshot reproducing the picture from the video is highly appreciated.

~MRA

Just some brief remarks:

Palador.2170:

Well, here’s your answer. She’s been accessing lands within the mists. We’ll have to forgive the fact that this means she’s (once again) able to do something nobody else can do by freely creating access to new lands within the mists. In this case, it’s one more bit of Mary Sue-ness that actually works to fill a gaping plot hole.

Well actually, there are pretty obvious, existing portals in Fort Mariner and at the Claw Island Portage that are used for the exact same purpose. I’d say using portal technology to reach the Mists is far from being “something nobody else can do.”

Question since I am no native English speaker: Since when and to what end is “Mary Sue” used as an adjective?

Darmikau.9413:

Because WvW, PvP, and PvE have absolutely nothing to do with each other. WvW and PvP only exist in the abstract canon as part of the mists.

Please talk to the Mist Warrior recruiter guy in LA to learn that you are wrong with respect to this point. I am not saying that the Mist War is introduced in a great way, or that we know much lore on the Mist War, but it is obviously a part of the world(s).

~MRA

Nick.6972:

Hey Josh, just wondering, what software are you using to make word cloud?

Try wordle .

~MRA

Questions about WvW

1) In the current “fast cap” meta of WvW the standard tactic when attacking objectives seems to be: Either be fast and cap the objective in less than two or three minutes before any defenders arrive at the scene, or otherwise cancel the attack and try to find a different undefended target elsewhere. And since nowadays gold is so plenty in the game, the attacker often brings one or two or twenty omega golems along to speed up the process. True siege battles (that have been quite frequent in the time after release) have become the rare exception, especially on the Borderland maps. Are you happy with the direction the WvW meta is heading, or will you try to do something against this development?

2) It is a well established observation that the “victory” of a match up (i.e., having the lead in war score) is mainly determined by the coverage a server can bring to the battlefield during the off hours (like “at night” or “during usual work hours”). With the release of the Bloodlust buff you introduced a second source of war score points that is strongly correlated to “player activity” during the prime time hours and quite useless during the off hours (although its influence on the victory of a match-up is way smaller than the influence of the still dominating coverage advantage). Will we see further steps to let the total war score scale more with “player activity” and less with pure “coverage in the off hours”?

3) Since release of the game, guild squads (mis-)use the “call target” function to create some kind of poor-man’s-commander-icon for their WvW guild raids. Do you find this a satisfying solution for a guild’s WvW raid? Why don’t you implement a “guild commander” feature that provides a commander symbol that is only visible for guild members?

Keep up the good work, and many thanks for your time.

~MRA

GuzziHero.2467:

As many other players, I feel a little let down that the choices which I made during my personal story mean absolutely nothing. I mean, apart from being able to buy T3 cultural armours and order armours, there is no advantage to choosing one way or another.

Anet built the system intentionally this way. They didn’t want people minmaxing story decisions for the sake of getting something like a skill, or having people rue their decisions when they missed some game element from a different path.

Story decisions and character background choices are by design bound to only affect story and character, and not the game’s mechanics.

A wise decision in my eyes.

~MRA

PS: But I agree that past decisions could and should have more impact. Who knows, this might be something to be picked up in an upcoming story chapter?

Devata.6589:

I think that are some important RP-elements for horizontal progression that also many casual players will love."

Proposal:
[…]
Make pet taming more dynamic and interesting so people can go into the world and find rare pets to collect and tame.
[…]

Please allow me to add one suggestion to the pet proposal:

Make ranger pets remember their name persistently (instead of resetting them to a generic term like “juvenile teacup pig” when swapping them out)

This may sound like just a small QoL improvement, but the fact that pets loose their names has been bugging me since release. Maybe this is merely a RP thing, but names give the pet character. This is not a mere “juvenile hyena” by my side, this is Chukk, a true friend, that is with me since the days when I was fighting ghosts in the ruins of Ascalon. For me, this is a very important part of a ranger’s horizontal progression.

Maybe I am crazy, but as a ranger, I care for each and every of my pets. And I don’t want to disrespect my pets by giving them a placeholder name. Hence, I do in fact have a handwritten list next to my PC of all the individual names I have given them, and I reenter the names whenever necessary. I’d like to make a plea to Anet to spare me from this tedious work and to allow us (RPish) rangers to give our unique profession mechanic a proper name that sticks with it.

~MRA

PS: As a comic relief, and although it is about a DnD sorcerer and not about a GW2 ranger, I want to link this web cartoon that depicts exactly the situation I want to avoid (tl;dr: 1st panel in 3rd row): http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0154.html

(Back on topic) I am also interested in an answer to the following question:

Players have come up with every sort of speculation on the lore and on (possible and impossible) upcoming story bits of GW2. What has been so far the most interesting/funny/inspiring/elaborate/crazy hypotheses you have heard that has absolutely nothing to do with the direction the lore/story of the game is actually heading?

~MRA

Of course you are free to have your own opinions on the game’s mechanic and its lore (as enervating it may be for everyone else when you throw them in so bluntly in a completely unrelated discussion), but you should understand that lore and gameplay are handled by two completely different departments of a rather large company, so there is actually no reason why Anet shouldn’t address both fields at the same time.

~MRA

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Shakkara.2641:

WE DONT WANT SUBCLASSES!

I just want to point out that this is not a particularly collaborative or useful post. Please however don’t take this personally.

While I agree with your position that no one should argue like she is speaking for everybody else, I’d like to encourage you to not discard the problematic points addressed by Shakkara so lightly. I, for one, am also not thrilled at the thought of a subclass specialization system for GW2.

There are very valid arguments in Shakkara’s post:

• A subclass makes you follow the template provided by a game designer, instead of helping the player to invent original builds for her character.
• Subclass exclusive content in very inefficient to build since, say, 23 out of 3*8=24 players would not benefit from that content. You should recognize this argument, since this was the exact same reason Anet stated for dropping the idea of profession exclusive skill challenges.
• The “tasks of acquisition” do bear the risk of being fun for the first or second time, but might end up becoming a chore or grind, eventually.

I still haven’t seen a single proposal of a subclass specialization system that actually helps to improve build diversity. From what I have seen it might be far more likely that such a system rather fences you in and forces you to take particular roles. (“hey, bro, if you’re a ranger/druid then you have to make a toughness/healing power build, everything else is just plain stupid!!!1!”)

I still think that the “no trinity” approach of GW2 is one of the greatest improvements that the game has brought to the genre. And we are still not completely there: Way over a year after launch some specs still gravely outperform other specs of the same class, thereby already kind of forcing a fixed role on a particular class. And you should know how hard the balance team is working to solve this problem. My fear is that subclassing would just further escalate the situation: Would it really be possible to balance for viable damage, support, and control builds for each and every class/subclass combination? In my opinion, subclassing fits more to a classical trinity based game system, and not to GW2.

Hence, I would rather like to see a form of horizontal progression that helps to generate more viable spec combinations for all classes, instead of a system that might lock you into a fixed and/or preconceived role.

~MRA

My personal lore question: Why does the mountain that houses the Durmand Priory headquarters (at least to me) looks so strikingly like an Elder Dragon that turned to stone some ages ago? Mystery, coincidence, or vivid imagination?

Also: What’s that swirly thing that marks the heart of the Priory (the Skill Challenge)?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

• Final Question: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen tengu?

Do you mean a Canthan tengu or a Tyrian tengu?

~MRA

Alukah.2063:

This game is not developed based on your or OP’s vision of a what a game should be and you will have to live with that, design your own game if it bothers you that much.

Oh, man. I don’t even know how to start answering to this, so I better just don’t. I will just leave you the following link for your information, and maybe you will someday become aware of the irony within your statement:

• Ever wondered on what vision the original game design of GW2 is based?

And don’t worry, I am not a game designer for GW2, and I am not here to take away any of your dear toys.

~MRA

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am confused. I read on the forums that almost all the servers were dead. How is it possible to have so many overflows?

Is this so? I don’t have any numbers, either. Maybe one half of the servers is constantly guesting on the other half, thereby producing constant overflows on the one half and leaving the other half deserted?

~MRA

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

We have the karka queen, and guess what? Yup, the boss train rolls from Taco to the karka queen causing overflows for that map too, and the people who get stuck there can’t get that kill either.

Oh go ahead, revamp the Shatterer and watch the overflows just keep on rolling.

I am not talking about “2 or 3 events to choose from”, I am more talking about “one mega boss per explorable area (maybe minus the starter zones)”.

If there are enough boss events to choose from, why don’t the 60+ waiting people just form a second “boss train” at the other end of the world?

~MRA

Smooth Penguin.5294:

1) If you don’t want to know when a World Boss spawns, do not visit an API using website that tells you so.
2) Turn off your in game clock.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

If the OP want’s to immerse themselves, they only need not visit a website that uses the API.

You both miss my point (or I fail to make it clear) that this problem is not about knowing what time it is, it is about willingly disconnecting boss events from the dynamic of the world for the sake of “schedulability”.

And no, this is not a “personal problem” as some disparaging comments above tried to imply, this is a matter of game design.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

I don’t get immersed in video games.

Yes, I understand that, and this is the reason why I came to the conclusion that both demands can probably not be satisfies at the same time. (Well, of course not just because of your opinion, but since there are a large number of MMO players that share your point of view.) This is a design conflict which will most likely leave one of two different demographics unhappy.

~MRA

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Nothing needs changed. People don’t want to wait that long for someting to spawn. Maw and Claw are bad enough.

There seems to be a conflict of interest here. If I understand correctly, the OP (and I dare to say myself, too) seems to argue from the perspective of someone who understands the game as tool for to seeking an adventure. He doesn’t want to know in advance what is happening, he rather wants to learn what the world will throw at him while playing. You, on the other hand, seem to argue of from the perceptive of someone who (please excuse the blunt exaggeration; no offense intended, its just for the sake of making my point) wants to manage a work schedule, most likely since you are working towards some goal.

And I am not sure whether these to interests can be satisfies at the same time. Take the Tequatl event as an example. The way this boss event placed into the world is actually the total opposite of immersion, or the idea of dynamic events. There is almost no “cause and effect”, no “cascading out in a chain of events”, no true dynamic. Just one Tequatl event on a simple, completely predictable, timed loop, over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new Tequatls fight itself, it’s actually pretty great. But it is completely disconnected from the world (or the map) it takes place in. “It doesn’t care that I am there.” Having either fishheads or no fishheads isn’t exactly my understanding of making a difference. And this ruins the illusion of immersion, for the sake of making the event farmable. You never ponder “Hmmm … I wonder what’s currently going on the Splintered Coast”, since you pretty much already know.

I am not saying that one approach of enjoying the content is better than the other. But I would argue not having a “schedulable” world was the one great feature that GW2 aimed for in the beginning, and it was certainly the one aspect that made me excited for the game. (Well, that, and throwing fireballs from my hand at giant boss monsters while running and dodging around.) Having boss events happen dynamically was, from my understanding, a part of that original design. On the other hand, there are already enough games out there that do this time table & checklist approach to MMO gaming, so the world really didn’t need another one of those. And thus, from a design standpoint, it is kind of sad that GW2 is here just doing what everybody else is already doing.

~MRA

Gatharin.2674:

tl:dr fire shaman -> sb -> dwayna -> etc. is NOT good and completely ruins the nature of the world-events. Randomize the timers and kill the world-event map zergs.

I understand your point of view, and I agree that the timer based farming zergs do really spoil the fun in many zones. Although I wouldn’t argue that a randomized timer would necessarily be the best solution to fix this.

Instead, I would advise Anet to regain their trust in the one feature that made Guild Wars 2 truly original in the first place: the dynamic event system. Events should not be “random” in the sense that they happen on a randomized timer. They should be “dynamic” in the sense that their state depends on a complex system of interdependencies that are not obvious to the first time player. From my understanding, this was the initial design goal anyways.

Unfortunately, shortly after launch, the many bugs, glitches, and problems of the implementation became evident. Many events were stuck for no apparent reason, and hundreds of thousands of players made bugs appear that no QA or beta testing in the world could have found. The situation was quite dire for some months until the worst problems had been fixed, but there are even today still examples of events in the game that do not work as intended. (Seriously, has anyone ever seen the save the merchants event chain running from start to end, ever?)

I fear the launch experience has led Anet to loose their trust in their dynamic event system. After all, the experience has proven why nobody in the industry has done such a system before: Because old-school checklist questing and timer based, scripted events are way more easy to implement and way less error prone. Hence, they switched more and more to traditional timer based spawn mechanics (see Scarlet’s invasions, or Tequatl) and disregarded the dynamic of the event system for the most part. And once the farming-minded people recognized this, the farming zergs went on a 24/7 rampage cycle, and we have the problem we see nowadays.

I still hope that Anet will not abandon the dynamic event system. I really hope they will one day revisit the system and fix it. After all, they even fixed player culling what essentially nobody deemed to be possible! I understand that it is more likely that they will keep doing the easier-yet-not-as-awesome way to please the crowd, but I am still hoping for a better (i.e., dynamic) world.

~MRA

Some observation I made regarding this bug in the past weeks:

• Toggling mini map rotation mode often helps to reset the mini map pan feature to the normal behavior.
• However, sometimes, toggling map rotation will not work, and the toggle button in the mini map will become grayed out. In this case, the mini map pan feature will stay broken.
• Switching to the World Map and back again usually resets the mini map pan feature to the normal behavior (but not always).

And yes, I am also desperately waiting for a fix of that because I rely on the pan feature in WvW. Thanks for your efforts.

~MRA

The player limit is fine, what the game needs are additional open world boss events on par with the Tequatl event to choose from, such that the map will not always hit the player limit during prime time.

~MRA

skullmount.1758:

Gw3 (or GW2 expansion) : Fight space dragons in Asura spaceships/fighters.

Deal! Where can I pre-order?

~MRA

kimeekat.2548:

Seems like Scarlet’s taking some dragon power into herself?

No, I assume we will learn that it was Scarlett who was behind those Elder Dragons all the time …

(sorry, couldn’t resist.)

kimeekat.2548:

I’M SO EXCITED.

And yeah, actually, so am I.

~MRA

Mindtrick.5190:

Any home servers towers / keeps are auto t3 with waypoint when captured back.

I don’t think this would be healthy for the game. After all, upgrading keeps and towers, securing supply lines, and such are great and important parts of the game. A free “go to T3” card would ruin this. I’d say it would make mindless offensive play even more predominant, since people would care even less about their home assets.

Also, I don’t necessarily agree with your claim that Anza on Eternals is impossible to keep at T3. Yes, it is most likely the most difficult far tower to defend in the game. But if your server is dedicated to keep it, it is well possible to do so. (I should know, having done so myself multiple times. Mind that you can defend Anza not only from Anza, but also from Red Keep and Mendons, and the running distance from Red Keep is also pretty small. Plus, treb spots in SM directed against Anza can be effectively countered from outside SM.)

However, I agree with the (implied) observation that the current “fast cap meta” (which is predominant for such a long time and couldn’t be stopped by arrow cart buffs or whatever) needs to be slowed down. Towers — even the T3 ones — usually fall within one or two minutes due to a quick full force attack with no defenders around, while IMHO it should be more about defending and attacking armies fighting, and battles waging back and forth. Thus, I would rather propose the following changes:

- Reduce the damage done by players hitting doors/walls to zero. And I really mean zero, null, nada, nothing at all, such that the PvD damage scales in no way with the size of the zerg and only with the quality of the siege the attackers lay. This should give defensive forces more time to arrive at the scene, and the role of the offensive zerg should be to guard their siege instead of blindly banging their head at a door.

- Effectively limit the number of rams that can be placed at a door to a maximum of two (or even one). Force the attacker to be more “colorful” in their sieges, such as the need of placing 2 rams and 2 catapults if you want to speed up thing, or maybe even support your rams by a treb. Also, I am sick of seeing 5 superior rams at a door resulting in an insta-cap.

- In return, make siege equipment (maybe except arrow carts and ballistae) harder to be cleaved down in zerg fights, to make it actually worth fighting for your siege instead of instantly giving up once the defenders arrive.

- With the influx of so much gold to GW2 the following point has become a real problem and needs to be addressed: Find a way to limit the effectiveness of stacking golems. In the early days, we were alarmed because they had “ONE golem” with them. Nowadays, since gold is so plenty and Omega golems are no longer a serious investment, the question is rather “How many Omegas are they bringing?” This makes it possible to speed crash keeps in about two minutes, which is a shame. My proposal would be: Have each active golem induce one stack (Omegas: two or three stacks) of, say, “Etherfluxural Interference” on all other golems within earshot. “Etherfluxural Interference” would have the following effect: “For each stack of Etherfluxural Interferrence, outgoing damage of the golem is decreased by 10%, and incoming damage is increased by 5%”. (Numbers just given for discussion.) With such a system, one has to be more careful about the numbers of golems to use in one location.

- Also, as always, make the pot of oil a viable defense weapon, instead of a “only matters for 20 seconds until the oil pot and the poor kitten dumb enough to man it has been AoEed down” weapon.

Mindtrick.5190:

Edit: achievements are child’s play

True.

~MRA

Aeonblade.8709:

That is the purest definition of P2W.

Highly doubtful. Let’s inspect the “very definition” referenced by the OP:

thefinnster.7105:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pay-to-win

pay-to-win
(A) Games that let you buy better gear

There is no “better gear” exclusive to the gem shop, neither as a direct offer nor indirect through other means. Max-stat items in GW2 are available in all areas of the game. So this clause of the definition evaluates to false.

(B) or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate

I do not necessarily agree with this part of the definition given by the “Urban Dictionary”. I would agree with “allow you to make better items then everyone else” being p2w, but relaxing this property to also include items obtained “at a faster rate”, although they can otherwise be obtained at a normal rate, is highly dubious. The only version of this definition I would agree with would be the case of “practically unobtainable” items, but this isn’t the case here, either.

But for the sake of argumentation, let’s play along and accept this definition. Then I’d say: yes, this clause evaluates to true, since the gem shop items allow you to speed up acquisition of infused gear.

( C ) and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.

This, however, clearly evaluates to false, since the areas of the game that are subject to balancing issues (PvP and WvW) are not influenced by the item infusion. Also, as has been discusses above, since only the “when” and not the “if” of the acquisition is influenced by the gem shop, it is impossible to induce any imbalance in the long run.

To sum up, we have A = false, B = true, and C = false. Now, the definition is not clear of the precedence of the “and” and “or” operations it uses, but it doesn’t matter since in this case, “(A or B ) and C” as well as “A or (B and C)” both evaluate to false.

Hence, we can conclude that the scenario in question is not pay-to-win. q.e.d.

~MRA

phys.7689:

but this is war, imagine your villages fate was partially determined by the number of people willing to fight for it.

But, well, it isn’t. There is a cap on each map, and once this magic number of between 60 and 100 fighters have entered the war, no new fighters are allowed. As such, it is a war between “the first” fighters on the field, and not between the most rich, smart, skilled, or whatever (as I tried to point out by my analogy).

And no, I don’t understand WvW as “structured PvP”, either. But I certainly understand WvW as “social PvP”, where a community develops organizational structures, strategies, and tactics that allows them to perform well in WvW. If you add an unproportionally high influx of new players to the mix, that either don’t know or just don’t care about the community effort, and who are directed by harmful incentives, then you might easily destroy what has been build up in months.

Also, in the light of your war analogy, I find the situation even more disturbing. When has someone ever heard of a war where the defending fighters decided “Aw, they are attacking our homeland again? Nah, I don’t care, let them butcher those dumb kittens who unreasonably stayed behind to defend it, and let them take it. Then we can retake it in 5 minutes once the lord buff is gone, and let it fall again. This is a way more efficient rotation to farm my achievements, anyways.”

Alvain.7364:

So, yeah, the rewards are unacceptable.

Then just don’t accept the rewards, destroy them. No one forces you to take the rewards.

~MRA

UltraFlyingTaco.7452:

how do you think rangers fare in wvw, roaming or otherwise?

I am no ranger player so this is second hand:

I have seen roaming rangers doing awesome things that haunt me at night. I would say that, if played well, they excel in roaming more than any other class in the game.

In zerg fights, I heard that rangers have some problems due to the low survivability of their pets. However, in a predominantly “tab targeting” world, pets may end up mitigating a lot of damage that was intended for the players. Rangers are perfect water field providers due to their Healing Spring. They can also be a pain in the kitten due to the Entangle skill. Also, rangers are one of the two classes (besides elementalists) that can clear defensive siege weaponry from a tower’s/keep’s wall, which is quite important.

I would argue that in the end, in GW2, success always depends on the skill level of the player, and whether you are comfortable with your class or not. (I, personally, don’t “get” how to play a thief, and maybe I never will.) If your opponent is good with her profession, she will kill you with any profession.

~MRA

NargofWoV.4267:

When is having TOO many people wanting to participate in your game ever a BAD idea?

It is, if success in your game relies on training and building up strategies and tactics that (almost) every player knows and adheres.

Just imagine a soccer game (or this American kind of football thing where balls are carried with hands, if your prefer) where, during the finals, not the competing teams are sent on the field to earn the cup, but for every side the first 11 people in the stadium that happen to enter the field once the gates open. And then mix in an achievement mechanism that only rewards the player that is holding the ball. This surely must turn out to be high-quality skillful game-play, indeed.

~MRA

MithranArkanere.8957:

The reward was the dolyak miniature.

The rest was just fluff. They are fine as they are for this season.

The Season 1 meta achievement didn’t promote WvW.

It promoted players to take up WvW slots to grind some numbers.

The achievements weren’t like “Take or defend X towers” they were only “take”, so people who wanted to take towers would left towers unguarded on purpose, as a tower near your base is easier to take again that a tower further away, and there was no point on defending it. Ruins? Instead “take bloodlust for your world X times” is “capture X ruins”. Captring ruins doesn’t help your world unless you do take bloodlust.

WvW achievements should have been only for things that count towards WvW score.
Kill enemies? No. Stomp enemies under Bloodlust.
Take camps, kill dolyaks? No. Take and maintain supply lines.
Take towers? No. Take AND defend towers, so they score.
Break gates and walls? Kill guards? No. Break gates and walls and kill guards of locations that get captured.

The next season, if they make achievements that actually promote WvW, and if they address other of the issues affecting WvW, then, and only then, they could add more meaningful rewards.

Why can I up-vote a post so full of wisdom an truth within an ocean of entitlement and ignorance only once?

But you should mind that most of the shortcomings you point out are due to the underlying system GW2 uses. A reward for “Take and maintain supply lines” would be more than just awesome, by the game engine doesn’t support the notification of such instances on a per player basis. Just recall that ANet has been unable to fix the missing “Defend your supply caravan” event rewards since launch, since they have no reliable “success notification” for such events.

However, in the absence of a meaningful reward system, I would choose “no reward” anytime over “rewards that encourage strategically dumb play”. I just hope that ANet will recognize their mistake and will learn from the wrong incentives they put in place with the achievements in this season.

~MRA

Righteous.4307:

WvW Season One Rewards Are Unacceptable

I still have tears in my eyes from laughing when I was reading this topic. If the rewards are truly so “unacceptable”, I suggest you don’t accept them, either by not opening the chest (I assume it is too late for that), or by destroying it’s content, and/or by donating tradeable items to the poor.

PS: The only thing that I found “unacceptable” with respect to the WvW Season rewards was the fact that, for seven weeks, people were willing to let towers and keeps fall into enemy hands just because they were busy farming achievements to get their precious, precious WvW reward chest.

~MRA

Silent Shino.7239:

This matchup in a nutshell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj11Pj2T7Bw

Hmmm, something seems odd with that analogy.

The legend of Leonidas and his 300 was about a small but very skilled fighting force that was capable of stalling a way larger army. Can’t see a connection to this match-up here.

~MRA