Guild Wars 2

• Every time I enter the PvP lobby from another area in Tyria, after the loading screen is over and the map is loaded, my character appears invisible to me for several seconds (around 20 sec the last time I checked).
  If, during this time, I move the character, the camera doesn’t follow it: as soon as my character becomes visible, the camera “teleports” to it.

• I’m also experiencing a substantially lower framerate in the PvP lobby than what I was used to.
  This happens even if keep the camera settings as they were before the March 16th patch.

• The Watchwork Mining Pick now makes a weird sound after the last hit.

It crashed my client too the first time around, but the second time it worked

Unfortunately I can’t report this in game, since it requires a screenshot of the loading screens.

After the update, the loading screens appear like they were moved upwards:

Thanks for answering guys, I would assume the same.

Still, I would like to hear some official confirmation since those Divine Lucky Envelopes are so expensive…

Vayne.8563:

Think of it this way. When the game started, people were happy and excited, because it was new. They weren’t farming because they were busy exploring. But now, everyone has done most of the content at least once and some of us multiple times. It’s not new and exciting any more, so the real thing for people becomes whatever their pet projects happen to be.

I think you are hitting the nail right on the head, that’s exactly what I meant when I wrote that older maps don’t need a train to feel alive.
It’s completely normal for people to have their pet project, that’s why I dislike the PvE dailies, it’s like ANet is trying to “fight” something that is inevitable and doesn’t need fighting.

I know your answer was directed towards the “community deteriorating” part of my post, but you put into words something that I wanted to express too, and I couldn’t ignore it :-)

And yeah there is probably truth in what you say about people being less likely to be nice after the excitement is over.
But this kind of confirms my point about the new PvE dailies being bad for the community. If a group of people are “forced” (I use the quotation marks since no one is actually being forced) into grinding 4 events in a map they care nothing about, it’s not going to be good for them, and it’s not going to be good for newbies that see and interact with this bunch of potentially impatient players that just assume everyone knows what to do and how to behave at every event.

I think that obviously ANet has a lot of metrics and data that players don’t have.

I think that they wanted to give people an incentive to visit certain maps.
There are multiple ways to achieve this goal.

One way would be to add new contents to the old map, but we need to be realistic here: players would “consume” content at such a speed that the time and effort spent on developing it would hardly be justified.
I don’t mean to say that adding content is useless, but one thing is adding a whole new map, another thing is adding to something that already exists.
A few weeks ago I was doing the JP in the Silvewastes and thought “Man It would be beyond amazing if the old maps had something like this. Then I would definitely go back to them!”. But I quickly realized that the amount of effort needed to add a sense of verticality, wonder and novelty to the old maps would be hardly justified if compared to the actual time players would spend on them before moving on.

Then, another way to encourage players to revisit the old maps is what we currently have.
Which works but also doesn’t.
Players use the old maps, but as a train that melts mobs. So while the objective of populating an old map is attained, the quality of gaming and the enjoyment take a substantial dip for several people.

I already argued regarding which direction the dailies should take in my opinion, so I won’t repeat myself (the post is linked in my signature anyway).

What I’m saying here is that I’m aware that no decision at ANet is taken at random, and I also understand that the goal of populating an old map is reached way more efficiently this way, I really do.

But in my opinion quality of gameplay tops quantity of players in this scenario.
If some maps don’t see many veterans after 2 years, then so be it. New players will continue to keep the zones alive.
In my opinion, it’s better to see a smaller number of people that actually want to be there, rather than a train that is only concerned with doing the 4 events asap.

It’s normal that some older players don’t feel like visiting some maps, and frankly I don’t think low level maps need them. Let them be kept alive by the players that enter them to play and have fun, rather than by a train that has a checklist.

PS:

Vayne.8563:

Bran.7425:

Lazuli.2098:

One of the original appeals of GW2 was the fostering of cooperation between players and the friendly community. But that feeling of cooperation and friendliness has eroded somewhat with the changes to the game over the last year.

It started with trait unlocks that depended on events that were triggered by previous events failing and other players being at cross-purposes. And now the ruined pve daily tasks that herd everyone into the same maps all competing for the same events or boss.

It started well before that once the Farm/Fail to Complete and Champion Farming styles play started to get more popular the community started to go downhill from there.

Actually that fun, friendly community is still there. Only a small percentage of loud irritable people ruin it for everyone else…and it really is a small percentage. But it’s like the old addage.

If you add a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of sewerage, you get sewerage. If you add to a teaspoon of sewerage to a barrel of wine…you get sewerage. It’s much easier to tear something down than it is to build it in the first place.

Honestly, I too have the feeling the community is deteriorating.
It’s probably just something subjective, I don’t know, but people seemed nicer at the beginning. I didn’t see rude behaviour until I reached Orr, and now it feels like it’s more common.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just a feeling.

What happens to the Divine Lucky Envelopes still around (in inventories, banks, the tp) after the festival?

Will it still be possible to open them, and in that case will they drop the same stuff?

I really wish there were separate queues for different gamemodes.

Already if Courtyard gets picked insults start to fly around right at the beginning of the match. I don’t see it being somehow different with Stronghold.

Normally people play to have fun, having the game pick the gamemode for you doesn’t make much sense to me, honestly.
I’m sure you guys have your reasons, but it feels like the kind of direction that ignores feedback; yes, we haven’t tried Conquest, but we have tried a system in which two game modes share the queue, so people’s concerns over this seem valid.

I had a lot of fun in the Labyrinthine Cliffs during the Festival of the Four Winds, I would definitely like to play in that area again.

The Crown Pavillion was fun too, I had just started playing GW2 at the time so probably now I’d be better at it. :-)

BobbyStein.2315:

I just wanted to provide an update since it’s been a while.

• We are currently working to restore the Greatest Fear storyline to the live game. I can’t provide a release date at this point.
• In addition to restoring the Personal Story steps to their original order we’re making some minor improvements where possible (e.g. recording new VO or updating certain conversations, etc.).

We’ll provide additional details closer to release. Thanks much for your patience.

That’s great news!

Thank you for the update!

Ayrilana.1396:

Maxwell.7843:

Precursor crafting being linked to collections is old news.
My understanding was there will be a separate collection for each precursor, old and new.

What’s your source on the collection being only one?

Not only one. I read somewhere that it was one per weapon type but I may have mixed up an article with someone’s speculation. I haven’t cared enough about precursors to follow closely.

I was asking OP since he was talking about there being one single collection, I should have quoted his message but when I wrote my post no one had answered yet.

Precursor crafting being linked to collections is old news.
My understanding was there will be a separate collection for each precursor, old and new.

What’s your source on the collection being only one?

Sorel, you can preview the backpack to see if it fits your own Asura ;-)

If the skin not on the bank wardrobe (I haven’t checked), just use the preview option from the trading post.

Ascended cooking?

Have you seen the effects of feeding people (or Grawls) with Bloodstone dust …?

I have some additional thoughts that I think are on topic.

As we know, Mastery points will be also awarded retroactively if some content has already been completed.
We also know that Mastery progression is account bound.

As far as Traits are concerned, we do know they are separate from Masteries, but that they are related in the sense that they are both a form of “building” your character.
It’s been stated clearly that the new direction is in making character progression “more respectful of player’s time” (not my words, I’m quoting the IGN article).
Colin also told us that the new system will more more simple.

In light of all this, I see it possible that not only traits unlocks will be account bound (hypothesis already made by several people, me included), they might also be retroactively awarded.

I’ll make an example of what I think could be a possibility. Let’s say that completely exploring Ascalon unlocks a Mastery point. Since it’s possible to track that kind of progression, maybe something similar, on a smaller scale, could happen with Traits.
The game already tracks how many mobs of each type we slaughter, how many players we have killed, which JPs we have done, which areas we have explored, etc etc.
It does seem to fit very well on the idea of a simpler unlocking system.

Obviously this is all speculation, but it’s not a hypothesis I’ve read yet.

guardian.6489:

Hey guys I have this crazy idea. What if there was some sort of…. box that the fractal weapons dropped in, where you got to pick which weapon you actually wanted. Just thinking out loud here. :P

I like this idea, would allow people to actually use what they get.

Draknar.5748:

At the very least, perhaps when you finish the fractal frequenter achievement (500 fractals I wanna say?) you get to choose a skin.

I’m in favour of this one too.

I think it’d be nice if both of them were implemented. The first ones makes loot more rewarding (since you don’t end up getting stuff you can’t use), the second one is a nice prize to perseverance.

I think some of the major turnoffs have already been listed.

• The majority of the shoulderpieces are too bulky and make the character appear disproportionate. There are definitely enough exceptions to have some variety.
• There’s just a couple of heavy helmets that look good on a Charr. Even the awesome T3 cultural removes your hair. Of course that happens with the other races too, but with Charr is more apparent because their hair is also on the “neck”.
• Tail clipping with most armours. You do get used to it though.

That said, your mileage may vary wildly with everything else.
Personally, since the upper part tends to appear more bulky, I had some trouble finding the right balance. I tend to dislike big shoulder pieces (like the Vigil one) and the pants style leggings: that’s the opposite of Azrael’s preference, because it’s really just a matter of personal taste.
I like T3 leggings because they don’t make your legs look tiny. Some other people might dislike them for the same reason.

Boots can also be an issue.

A lot of players settle on heavy cultural T3 not so much for lack of imagination, but because it is a very cohesive look with shines for the lack of the defects that a lot of the other armours share.

If you have an empty character slot, I definitely suggest creating mr. “Heavycharrtest” and try out on the bank wardrobe the various looks.

EDIT: That said, it’s definitely possible to make an awesome looking Charr, so don’t be discouraged. This is not a “negative” post, I felt I needed to clarify that.
I think that humans are the only race that can look flawless no matter the armour set. This doesn’t mean the other races can’t look cool, you just need to find a look that works with the different proportions of your race of choice.

The rewards number 7, 17, 27 and 37 are a token loot box that contains 60 tokens.

So in total at the end of the track you get 3 weapon boxes, 1 armour box and 240 tokens (enough for one of the cheap pieces of armour).

Provided one picks chest, leggings and shoulders from the armour box, the track needs to be completed three times and at the end, after purchasing helm, gloves and boots, you also have 180 tokens to spare.

They are not hard to avoid if you are sufficiently fast and know where to run. I think part of the reason you got killed is that it was a new encounter for you.

But yeah the 10 stacks of bleeding from the trap hurt a lot if you can’t cleanse them; if you do engage the Aetherblades in a fight I can agree on it being potentially harder than some Silverwastes encounters.
If you are alone defending a Silverwastes fort the situation can get pretty hairy too.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Maxwell.7843:

Gaile, are you able at this time to confirm or deny whether Masteries will substitute Traits? Please?

Before this new discussion was born I was pretty sure the answer to the question would have been “no, Traits !=Masteries”, but as I said I’m a bit confused now…

I was pointing to all the recent revelations about Guild Wars 2 and Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns that were related to character progression. I’d consider traits and masteries to be two elements of character progression, but I did not mean to say they were allied or intermingled.

I edited my original post to make that a bit clearer. It is intended simply as, “Here are some new resources about GW2 and character progression that you might like to read.”

Thank you (and the others who commented) for pointing out any confusion with the post. I think it’s clearer now.

Thank you for clarifying!

Your post and Tobias’s perspective have been both very useful to me.
As I wrote in my previous post, after reading Colin’s post and the blog post, I had assumed that Traits and Masteries were two different aspects of what the character can do.
Thank you for confirming that’s the case, when I wrote my previous post I was starting to think that maybe I had completely misunderstood the Mastery post.

As far as Masteries are concerned, in my mind I imagine an example of a combat Mastery being something like “Though bark on mordrems mitigates the damage I do less and less as I progress in the track”.

It seems more and more likely that Traits will be account bound.
The part about the system becoming more “simple” is intriguing, since it could hint at completely different unlocking requirements.

I am a bit confused. Discussig Traits and Masteries in a single thread suggests they are closely related, but from reading Colin’s post and the Masteries post I didn’t get that impression.
Traits are a part of the character’s build.
Masteries from what I understand will be a progressions system exclusive for players who own the expansion.

The only thing in common between Traits and Masteries I can think of is the “account boundedness”.

But I thought that a change to Traits would interest all players, so I assumed that the Trait revamp would come with a feature patch, not the expansion.

I’m… confused.
I know that the standard answer is “you’ll have to wait and see”, it’s just that after reading the Mastery I thought it was quite insightful, but now if I have to take Traits into account too, the same information becomes confusing..

Gaile, are you able at this time to confirm or deny whether Masteries will substitute Traits? Please?
Before this new discussion was born I was pretty sure the answer to the question would have been “no, Traits !=Masteries”, but as I said I’m a bit confused now…

When it does come back, please make it an armour (not an outfit), so we can mix and match! :-)

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Maxwell.7843:

Rich Fuel.7253:

as we all remember the part with the bandits in silverwastes, u take a buff and you apear hostile to players(they can atk you but you cant attack back)

What’s that?

There was a bug where, if you paid the bandit woman to enter the area, it made all the bandits friendly to you. However . . . if you left that area, it made you red to all the players.

It wasn’t pretty.

That sounds… kinda awesome.

Thank you for clarifying.

Rich Fuel.7253:

as we all remember the part with the bandits in silverwastes, u take a buff and you apear hostile to players(they can atk you but you cant attack back)

What’s that?

My reasoning is that if the ascended chest is supposed to be greatly desirable and rewarding, then your sense of accomplishment when getting it shouldn’t be diminished by the need to spend a ton of gold on an insignia to get stats that you can use.
If I’m going to get good loot once every blue moon, let it be actually good, no strings attached.

I’d like to see all ascended chests existing in game become of the kind you get from the Bioluminescence achievement (minus the transmutations charges, of course). That would make the most sense for me. You double click, and pick the stats of the chest inside the chest.
A cheap mystic forge recipe can be a good compromise, but I maintain that getting loot shouldn’t feel punishing.

Also, this wouldn’t diminish the rarity of Ascended gear. Unless you meant “rare” in the sense that Ascended needs be exclusively for people who can afford to buy/craft an insignia, but in that case I’d have to disagree.

Melanie, your colour palette matches the Avatar of the Tree, but I think Zoberraz wanted to match the tree itself.

This is the best image of the tree I could find on google, unfortunately the aerial perspective changes the colours a bit.

Instead of an insigna, which is very expensive, I’d put a certain quantity of the respective T5 material (or a tiny quantity of the T6).

insanemaniac.2456:

all of these people that say you should buy or craft your rabid gear are completely uninformed about how reward tracks work in pvp. do an appropriate dungeon track and earn tokens, weapons, and armor. once youve completed the track a couple times you will have a full weapon set and a few pieces of armor (and tokens to buy the rest) and you do not have to spend a copper.

That’s literally the first advice we gave OP.
So no, not completely uninformed.

Brother Grimm.5176:

HOW is the crafted armor that cheap when the Rabid insignia cost 1.7 ea? How are those getting crafted and listed on the TP at ALL?

I guess people craft rabid gear to level up their crafting discipline to 500.
The tutorials for leveling armorsmithing/leatherworking/tailoring from 400 to 500 on gw2crafts at the moment all contemplate making some Rabid exotic armour.

Also, gw2tp shows that the supply is quite higher than the demand.

I admire that you actually went and did the spreadsheet thing.

Also I agree with your suggestions, especially what you say about adding real tutorials and removing the level gating to the personal story.

But since op wants Rabid, no point in wasting gold on WvW non-salvageable-rune-eating gear…

If he had a warrior and he wanted a Berserker set with Rage runes to get started with dungeons, then it’d be a totally different conversation, and non salvageable gear could be an option.

The easy solution would be to make WvW and temple armour salvageable in the sense that it gives you back the rune, but no other materials.

Upgrade extractors would still retain their main function of removing an upgrade without destroying the armour/weapon.

In the post it is stated that the Mastery training bar replaces the experience bar in PvE.

The ability to train Masteries is unlocked at level 80 for all players that own Heart of Thorns. When this ability is unlocked, your character’s experience bar will change to become a Mastery training bar while in PvE zones.

Keep also in mind that at the moment, nothing leads to believe that you stop getting skill points from doing WvW…

What we know so far is that Masteries will progress only in PvE.

IMHO you guys are on the wrong mind set when you say “let’s hope that the expansion fixes the Trait system”.

It’s way more logical that the Trait system would get revamped before/when/after HoT comes out, not as part of the expansion but as a feature patch or something of the kind.

Masteries will be the new lvl80 progression system linked to HoT; the Traits are not a progression system and they are part of the core game. It wouldn’t make sense for the Trait revamp to be so deeply intertwined with Masteries that if you don’t own HoT the system breaks.

The blog post makes it clear that Masteries are somewhat similar to WvW abilities, so I don’t think it makes much sense to try and look for hidden meanings concerning Traits when discussing Masteries.

Since Masteries are account bound, we can hope something similar happens to Trait unlocks, but that’s as far as we can go with the amount of information we have.

I do wish they would give us some information concerning Traits. It’s nice to know more about the expansion, but since it’s something that’s still months away, I’d also like to know about how the gameplay is going to improve in the more immediate future.

Fumo.8735:

The problem with the red is that most of the red at the midsection is the result of my character’s skin. Sylvari armor does this not me. No matter what dye I put on the middle and bottom, there will always be red at the midsection.

I didn’t realize that. In that case, definitely go with what you like best! :-D
Both of the colour combinations are nice, and as I previoulsy stated, I like the idea of a fiery theme on your sylvari.

The greatsword Volcanus and the hellfire gloves definitely contribute to the theme!

WvW armour still costs gold: since it’s not salvageable, imho there’s not much of a point in buying it instead of temple (karma) armour.

OP says that at maximum he’s only ever had 30g, so I’m not sure spending 5g44s for non salvageable armour would be a good deal for him…

No reason to be scared and no need to justify the way you enjoy playing :-)

You can buy exotic gear from dungeon vendors.

The dungeons whose tokens let you buy rabid gear are Caudecus’s Manor, Twilight Arbour, Honor of the Waves and The Ruined City of Arah.

Keep in mind that you get a piece of armour at the end of that dungeon’s reward track, so you don’t really have to run dungeons if you want the armour.

Another reward track that gives exotic armour is the Glorious Reward Track.

I’m only listing salvageable armour, since the Superior Rune of Perplexity is very expensive and you definitely don’t want it stuck inside some karma armour.

If I were you I’d give PvE a shot by the way, you are missing out ;-)

I like the idea and the end result isn’t bad, but yeah I would like it a lot more with a bit less red.

Maybe switch one of those oranges with a colour from the yellow spectrum, and use a much darker red so that there’s more contrast between highlights and the darker spots.

Devildoc.6721:

They could take the repair anvils out of the beginning of the dungeon I suppose

So bad pugs just give up…?

No. I don’t need that anvil, but some players definitely would miss it dearly, especially those that tackle with dungeons for the first times.

This is a public service announcement to any player that wants to pay for amour repairs.

If you have that much gold lying around that you find yourself longing for a new gold sink, please send that unwanted gold to me.
I will put it to good use.

If I remember correctly, Gaile had said that we’ll start knowing more in early February, so I think we won’t have to wait much longer. ;-)

By the way, I too agree with Vayne, even if the hall occupies a place in the open world, it has to be instanced, like player homes.

I think that the way it is now is perfectly fine.

Having to spend money would be too punishing, while having no consequences (unbreakable amour) not punishing enough.
If you die 6 times in a row I think it’s fair that you start “loosing” stats.

Lazaar.9123:

Wut?

/15charrsbouncing

He put a bow instead of a blade.

It’s one of the starting headpieces for the elementalist.

Vayne.8563:

They’re working on a system for this already.

Such a feature would be great.
Is that official? When was this announced?

naiasonod.9265:

Maxwell.7843:

Can’t argue with maths.
But not all players have disposable income (students, young adults, etc). Moreover, the parallel is bit flawed because playing is something people do in their free time, working has timetables: you can’t phone your boss at 3am and say “hey boss, imma work 1hour now, send me 15€, kthanks gnite”.
So “time is better spent working rather than farming” is not an absolute rule, because the time you spend farming cannot be always converted in time spent working.

Some people can find farming relaxing or fun: in that case it makes sense to do it.

Absolute rule? Naw. I was giving a digestible example of how much it might cost me, in terms of time as valued by my salary, to do the thing.

An awful lot of people don’t seem to think of their time as being valuable or as a form of currency. The (to me) bizarre trend in MMOs is staggeringly in favor of people often apparently thinking that if it doesn’t cost real money, it’s free.

[…]

Yeah, you make a sensible point and I understand what you mean, I was just adding my thought to yours. :-)

My alts are all on standby too, I only did the Apatia storyline before the NPE, and I don’t want to miss out on the other two storylines.

I believe it will be fixed since they stated that the removal was not intentional, but i wish they could tell us more… I mean, how does it happen that a whole chapter just ceases to exist?

Sube Dai.8496:

Personally, I like a bit of meat with my salad.

Signed

Charr

That’s what Asuras are for.

Faux.1937:

But playing normally is dependent on the person, My normally is dungeon/fotm tours I make 30g a day without trying to make gold, it just what I play. If I try to make gold there are times I make 60-70g a day.

I made 900g in 5 days last week, I bought the Emperor title, some gem store items and that Pact Fleet Pack.

My point is Normal play isnt the problem, the Problem is some parts of the game has almost no rewards where other parts have to much rewards.

[…]

“Normal” is subjective, you are right.
I should have said casual. My point was that most casual players don’t come even close to those numbers.
Casual players cannot do a dungeon in 4 minutes, not even SE P1. Not to mention fractals.
They don’t play the tp, don’t use buy orders and either sell to the highest bidder, or undercut by a random amount.

By “normal” I meant “normal playing experience for the vast majority of the playerbase”.

PS: Sorry but the part about some aspects being too rewarding is a bit confusing to me. I don’t understand what it is that you think is too rewarding, and what isn’t…