Guild Wars 2

If you’re asking “Why am I doing this?” regarding entertainment, rather than objective, then GW2 probably isn’t the game for you. You sound like me trying to play a sports game.

/propelballwithfoot

As far as sigils go, while experimenting I’ll use a major instead of superior. Major sigil of force is around 2 silver while superior goes for 10+ gold. As stated before, the superior is only that expensive because there are enough players willing to pay through the nose to have that tiny advantage RIGHT NOW.

Good, Fast, Cheap – choose any two.

/blingblong

I think many folks here have gotten at least $50 worth of entertainment just from playing Guild Forums.

But seriously, it is odd that MMOs in general seem to be held to a different standard – especially in GW2’s case where a sizable portion of new content is provided free of charge.

>OLD CS1

• REWIND CASSETTE TAPE CS1
  THEN PRESS ENTER

• PRESS CASSETTE PLAY CS1
  THEN PRESS ENTER

• READING

/ifeelold

I have three shared inventory slots – Copper Fed, Silver Fed, and Mystic Forge Conduit. Copper salvage whites and blues, forge greens, and Silver salvage or TP rares. It’s not about efficiency – it’s about saving TIME, something that all of us with full-time jobs and families can appreciate.

/doesn’tdrive10milestosave2centspergallon

Doggie.3184:

Because there’s shortbows and longbows IRL. Ones faster and more suited for active combat while the other snipes from long distance. If you used both you’d probably find the longbow more uncomfortable to use because of its size and it’s not as easy to pull back.

Also… so there’s 2 different bars of bow skills. IMO Thief and Ranger shoulda both started with access to both weapons on GW2 release. It was a rather common Assassin weapon in GW1.

A guildmate of mine in GW1 had an Assassin/Ranger that used longbow to GREAT effect, exploiting critical strikes and barrage. I do miss the secondary profession synergy.

I’m thinking the gemstore outfits, skins, etc. are created well in advance, and released periodically as the decision-making suits see fit.

On a side note, it would be very helpful if someone in the know shared whether or not the legendary weapon skins are complete/mostly complete, and the devs were just hung up on the collections, hunts, lore etc.

/notbitterjustjaded

Wait for it, on April 1st they’ll add a bunch of updrafts in Core Tyria, including one juuust out of reach by the Wizard’s tower

Guild Wars 1 had an excellent solution for the endgame.

/daretodream

Identical base luck for all accounts makes sense. However, I’m confident that Anet’s RNG is more complex than a single percentage roll.

Will they admit to it or tell us exactly what hidden variables and calculations there are? Of course not, because someone out there will use that info to exploit the system.

/powergamerseverywhere

I see this as a perfect opportunity for a PvE/PvP skill split (gasp!)

- Introduce a new mastery line for race-specific skills, increasing their efficacy with each rank ala the Factions allegiance, Nightfall promotion, and EotN reputation skills
- Add a new racial-only skill slot in PvE only beside the elite
- Each race would gain mastery XP in their home territory
- And some final mechanism to allow all races to use all racial skills once every racial mastery is maxed. Sounds strange, but remember GW1 Humans had no problem using the animal totems and Asura tech skills in EotN

I get that Anet wants no one race to be mechanically superior to another, but this seems like a good way to utilize a very large untapped aspect of the game, as well as revitalize core Tyria.

/ramblingonandon
/loopycoldmedicinehead

I’d like an optional private message whitelist.

Are you in my friends list? My guild? My list of OK-to-pm-me-accounts? If not, then incoming private messages are automatically blocked.

Serophous.9085:

Think of a game as a one of those rubber band balls people make. Now, one of the bands breaks on the inside.

Go into that ball and replace the band

BTW, don’t mess with the other rubber bands and don’t break the other rubber bands while you do so, cause that can mess up the whole ball then

Or think of the game’s code as a gigantic Jenga tower, assembled by one group, partially disassembled and reassembled on a daily basis by another group, now being remade into a larger, slightly differently shaped tower by yet another group, with notes kept by the first two groups as their guide to keep the entire thing from collapsing.

Debugging code you haven’t personally written can be extremely annoying.

Edits: Random thought: Just noticed that the forum filter does NOT extend to the URL.

The mesmer CAN do cool things with energy and illusion magic, it’s just a non-issue against open world trash mobs. Yes, the revenant is faster at popping bubblewrap.. but your utility shines versus elites and champs – enemies that hit back hard enough to make a difference. And if you have HoT, your party will ADORE having a competent chronomancer in the mix.

All I want for Wintersday is..

Personal instanced explorable zone + upgraded mobs + new achievement track = VANQUISHER.

Perhaps gliding ‘safe spots’ could be chosen, similar to the existing diving locations.

Let the raiders have their raids, and let everyone else enjoy the content they enjoy.
On topic, I think it’s great that there’s now another way to acquire uber-rare items like Giant Eyes. Rotating the choice items will keep core maps alive with players doing events.

Agemnon.4608:

Samnang.1879:

If you have real money, anything (not account bound) can be obtained.

You’d need $300 or so real life US dollars for some legendaries so it isn’t realistic, at least in one fell swoop ($20 every other week over long periods of time though is viable). Why would I spend that just for a virtual sword when I can put that towards hardware upgrades?

I agree that it’s okay for rare items to be rare (except for the rare tier since ectos are a vital part of high end crafting) but rarity should mostly stem from skill not random drops. Like the Glorious Hero armor set, if you see someone with it you know they’re a great player because you need to get a good PvP tournament rank to acquire it. I want that armor set but know I don’t quite deserve it (yet?) so I’m going to practice sparring with some guild members in the Guild Hall with 1v1 and 1v2ing with my ele (we’ll take turns being the 1 so we all get that 1v2 experience) and guardian, especially if they’re popular meta classes. Even if we don’t make it far enough others would simply be better and therefore more deserving of earning the armor set.

This is exactly why I appreciate a player decked in full Luminescent armor (Account bound, player personally earned it) more than one flailing Eternity around (Did I steal daddy’s credit card? You don’t know!)
Fortunately, HoT legendaries are going to be account bound and maintain some level of prestige.

My globetrotting Engineer often completes daily events in PvE using only racial skills.. mixing it up can be amusing.

No need to worry, there will not be swarms of players with horns and halos after the weekend. If anything, the 450 bloom transaction should also reward you with the “No Job, Family, or Social Obligations” title.

#brutallyhonest

These tweaks would drastically increase event participation:

ALL waypoints contested for 30 minutes – putting vets and newbies on a similar playing field.

SW-style wiggle chest upon event completion, based on participation – reducing the impact of disconnects and giving a greater sense of accomplishment.

Short-lived gathering node spawned upon event completion – discouraging tag-and-run tactics. Maybe a stacking speed/vigor buff?

I run a PvE ele that enjoys (exploits) Ice Storm and Deep Freeze, and to me the Frost Bow is like a CD with only two good songs – set them to repeat and ignore the rest. Ice Storm alone justifies the skill slot, but I’d much rather have it tweaked down somewhat and have the other weapon skills be as useful.

#press4thenignore

Even if the stats were 1 point higher than ascended, it would lead to the neurotic minmaxers demanding ‘full leg ping gear or kick’. Legendaries are fine as they are.

In the time it takes to gather enough materials and resources to craft a full set of ascended, you should have gained enough skill to make the increased stats insignificant. (outside of high level fractals or world-class PvP)

Any content that’s stomping you in full exotic won’t suddenly become a cakewalk in ascended gear.. it’s ‘win more’ not ‘lose less’.

On a little tangent here, it’s really not too difficult to find players that don’t care about speedruns or min-maxing. I don’t have a teenager’s reflexes or twitch anymore, and usually mix it up with some defensive gear to help absorb the hits that I will occasionally take. Fortunately I’ve ran with plenty of other players that feel the same way and don’t care about running with gear that allows a more relaxed experience, despite being mathematically inferior.

Reminds me of this.

I’m afraid that any experiment like this conducted by players will never give conclusive results. As Rhyse said, we don’t have access to the source code – and it’s VERY unlikely that drop rates as a whole are limited to a single percentage check. For all we know the calculations go like this..

Damage threshold met? TRUE
Phase of the moon? WAXING GIBBOUS
-> Number of Hylek defeated today is prime? TRUE
-> -> Probability of an exotic warhorn drop +0.1%

One could say that it’s not worthwhile for the devs to implement such a convoluted scheme for calculating droprates, but if I were a particularly sadistic programmer, it would absolutely be so.

tl;dr
It’s probably too complex for us to figure out without their secret formula.
They won’t tell us about the secret formula because we’d immediately try to find a way to exploit it.

Omnom cream only gives you the MF boost if you have a boon.

Going out on a limb here, but hopefully they will also include a build saver. If the traits are going to be trimmed down and better organized, being able to instantly recall a silver bullet build or hard counter on demand will be very helpful..

Using elementalist as an example:

General Combat, Fire/Air/Tempest for the big numbers.
Vs. Attrition, Earth/Water/Arcane for survivability.
New heavy armored foes? Fire/Earth/Water for the burns, bleeds, vuln etc.

Cautiously optimistic here that the new slimmed down specializations will still allow us to do All The Things, just not all at once. Teamwork is good, right?

Calling it now – Precursor crafting will use Essences of Luck in large numbers.

Possible solution – A ‘whitelist’ chat tab that checks against a list of users stored client-side.. since the check will be done on the user’s machine, it shouldn’t increase server load.

Summary..
1: We need a minipet-preview option.
2: I want a mini pet rock.. that only rolls when you’re not facing it.

“Awesome! I finally looted a… …Zorp?”

Doubtful that the shield will only give two additional skills.. keeping in mind that the specialization will change some mechanics of mesmer, something like this will probably happen:

Goodbye Shatters, hello Chronomastery!

F1: Subspace
Shield 4: Time slowing something-or-other skill
Shield 5: Potent time slowing skill
F2: Realspace
Shield 4: Reflect, aoe pull/knockback, etc.
Shield 5: Some kind of Matrix style evade bubble
F3: Hyperspace
Shield 4: Some kind of self-haste aura
Shield 5: Allied haste aoe

..with a new trait tree that will augment the shield skills with delicious time warping goodness. Perhaps this is overly optimistic, but it seems VERY unlikely that mes will only get two weapon skills and done.