Guild Wars 2

Jana.6831:

We had a great Teq loss the other day.
I have been the only commander, it was a last minute map, I failed to get another one. A lot of people were joining and leaving, so our map was maybe half full. The guys on the turrets did a great job and we failed the last phase because we didn’t do enough damage.
It was fun actually. And that was something we all agreed on afterwards because we were always hoping that we would still make it and it was a “Yeaaahh!! Naaahh… We could!! Nahhh…”
But then again, I have been around when Teq seemed unbeatable and when no one knew what to do – and I think that’s the key, people aren’t new to Teq fights, that’s why it rarely fails.

ETA: And please don’t underestimate what the zerg commander does – a good zerg commander can save a Teq fight, good turrets can save a Teq fight – 2 of them together and people knowing what to do at the batteries = a breeze.

I don’t underestimate what zerg commanders do, not at all! I have heard ‘I hate zerg duty’ before and I can sympathize. My point was if there are 10 people tagged up in the zerg I highly doubt all of them are actually commanding.

Hmm, it seems part of the problem is getting a team going. Once one person is in it there is still a struggle to get 5 but at least there is someone else that can call for more people. Maybe I should start 2 teams then once a second person joins split off and get the other going if nobody has taken that one yet.

I have had friends message me that they could not get on the map and their was an obvious failure (not enough people, not all the turrets manned, etc). I have disconnected in the middle of things and wound up on maps like that — not pretty.

So the reason it does fail for some people is most likely because a lot of people wind up on the same teq map as other times (same guilds, etc). If they rarely see it fail the first times they will assume that is normal and not realize they are only seeing their map. In reality they are seeing the most populated map (the one that filled up first) so the one that has the most chance of being more organized/having event vets.

It really is a scaling issue. It should be easier if there are only a few people there but harder if there are a lot.

I passed on the minis. Holding out for character slots and transmutation slots barring something returning that I am drooling over.

Sylum.1806:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

What’s the success rate for Triple Trouble? Does it vary between EU / NA and do the strategies vary as well? I’ve only been on a few but as yet not on a successful one.

If you’re on an NA server, catch the 1st, 4th, and 5th spawns of the day (counting from daily reset) with TTS. Download and install teamspeak and enter channel: ts.ttsgamers.com

Be in teamspeak 30 minutes before start of the event and you’ll have instructions on what to do and how to join the right map. Near 100% success rate.

Thanks, I have done Teq (and various other champs on the map while waiting) with TTS before (I think I have your teamspeak bookmarked in my TS client). It was a refreshing change for everyone to know that organization for any event was a good thing.

I try to find unorganized maps specifically to help organize them because that is where they need it, but it is like pulling teeth some days. Which is why I want them to see Teq fail now and then. If ‘please’ is not working maybe the real fear of the event failing will. Right now they take those of us saying we have seen completely unorganized maps get bone walls as a fairytale used to frighten young children.

One thing I find amusing is I am usually the only one with a commander tag on who is not in the zerg (I use it to point out where my team is). I will give them the benefit of the doubt that one out there is using it for targetting but most are doing it for vanity purposes and have no interest in actually doing anything to help.

Redenaz.8631:

If you want something more intense and difficult that fails frequently…

…why not do Triple Trouble instead of Tequatl?

You are completely missing the point. It is not about doing something that fails all the time for the sake of failing, everyone knows that TT is hard if done off-the-cuff so you need organization for it to succeed.

Right now the only reason that Teq is being a success is because the load is not shared equally. Those of us that do defense and turrets work our kitty-cats off and often die as a result. Meanwhile everyone else just goes through the mechanics and gets the same reward (subject to RNG) as we do. So not only that day, but now they have even less of an incentive to do more next time. The result being I now have to /whisper people directly rather than just /map chatting that such-and-such a team only has one person between the turrets and the champs that will spawn in 5 minutes.

BTW, some of the first FTP players (except for a few hardcores that are there already) should be reaching level 30 this week given the observed 90 min +/- 30 min rate of doing a level in PVE. I doubt we will see much of a problem when they gain access to /party as joining one (and not being kicked) has you constantly under the gun.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Can we all agree that allowing botters unrestricted access to /say and /map would be bad for ANet and bad for the community? Can we also agree that it’s also better for new players if they can ask for help easily?

And can we agree that whatever system ANet develops is going to favor one of those principles at the expense of the other?

The method I would suggest is to let them see (if they can not already) all chat methods: /map, /party, /squad. To do otherwise hurts PAID players as we can not organize things unless we friend everyone in sight and send them individual whispers. Which ones FTPs can speak to is another debate: map there is no question of not letting them talk to, squad is debatable, party is a definite.

They do need some way of communicating with each other and paid players. Whether that takes the form of a channel or another forum is the only question.

So, sorry, but I do not agree with the premise. There is no reason at all why a system could not exist that would solve both sides of the issue.

Too bad we can not join EU servers.

Teq usually ends exactly in time to grab your loot and teleport to the shaman, but people in the zerg just THINK it was easy. They have never been in a turret or a defense team so they do not realize we are doing a lot of work to save their kitty-cats. I would collapse laughing if the only people who got rewards actually contributed more than just zerging. Fewer people so greater rewards. Tonight was a perfect example, if our team (all 2 of us) had died those champs would have had nothing between them and 3 of the turrets except for random people scrambling to deal with the situation as soon as the shock wore off.

Devata.6589:

Natto.5819:

Kevin Smith plays

Does he? He was very famous in 2000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYsTmIzjkw

All hail The Smith!

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Akamaru.7415:

Having a boss fail after wasting up to 2 hours waiting and 10 minutes fighting is just no good.

Do people really wait 2 hours for a particular boss? Do you mean, standing there at the boss location, waiting..? I’m not being sarcastic, just curious if that’s the case.

Yes, I usually arrive at Teq up to an hour early lately because I know a bunch will already be there running from the WP to the beach. I have even had people telling me they were there 2 hours early!

Even with that hour though, enough people will tell people that we do not need defense/turrets. Which is why bosses were coming down the hill and being fought right behind the turrets tonight. We simply could not afford to have a single defender out of action to swim back when you only have 1 or 2 people on each team!

People are getting complacent and letting the “Teq always succeeds, we do not need to organize” crowd speak for them. Tonight almost nobody could be cajoled to do a defense team so our team chose to defend turrets and only try fighting the champs if we were sure we would not get killed (which we almost did even trying to keep our distance with Krait pulling us in). This meant some of the champ fighting was taking place right behind the turrets.

I suppose our team could have tried to map hop. Let the people there see what bone walls look like. Maybe then they would have realized the only reason why they thought things were ‘easy’ is because we were 2 people doing the work of 5 (and at 2 we were the team with the most people).

Anet, can you PLEASE make Teq hard again?

As to which one I like more it all depends on what I want to do, even though other builds may be better at the task. For example, my warrior LOVES gathering expensive mats … even though she could hold her own against most mobs. It also varies over time, it used to be my first 4 characters getting more or less equal attention then it became my next two. Now it is my asura necro (leveling) and my human mesmer (Teq). Dailies are up for grabs by everyone but largely depend on what the RNG deities gave to us that day (‘oh, 4 in maguuma wastes, better switch to my charr ranger’).

YOUNGaz.5690:

I find human characters on screen fit the agile game play of thief better imo. Kind of like how I can’t do jumping puzzles on a charr for the life of me, even though I’m very good at them on a human lol. Weird how that works

Try to do JP or a vista on an asura. Sure, the camera angles are better but your jump height is bleah.

All of my characters are female. It looks like my medium armor norn (I am doing each race per armor class, so eventually 15 characters) will be some other profession then. Thanks.

Not that it makes any difference from a gaming point of view but my method of picking the race to use gives me an option of both. Does one ‘feel’ better than the other?

Come on character slots …

Whenever someone asks me which of my characters is a main I look at them funny. Alts are things like mules to me. If you asked, oh, “who is your main in the shiverpeaks” I would think, oh, that is easy, my asura engineer. Even asking which character I am “maining” that day is a bit odd as I can go through several in one session depending on what tasks I want to accomplish.

Maybe I am different than normal? I also give each of them a distinct personality too rather then have them all become some huge blend. If I took two characters of the same race and profession, with the exact same stats and build, to the same event it would feel slightly different and they would probably project that to others.

shadow.6174:

Kormeg.2469:

Totally ready for the noobs

Great initiative but if you are up to help new players it would be a good thing to not call them “noob” :P Some people doesn’t being called like that.

Btw, great initiative with this thread and it’s appreciated all effort to make new players feel welcome. But too bad F2P players won’t be able to answer here :P

The word noob has two meanings. To some, it is just short for newbie, ie, a new person/new player. Others use it as an insult.

I have even been called a noob at an event I have done countless times, usually running the show lately. Yes, I found that being hurled my way hilarious after coordinating things that day (and stressing which things were more important than others based on past experience) without being told the battle plan by other commanders.

To echo another thread we REALLY need a place where new players can post.

Debating if it is a trial or FTP would be something for the merged thread. What we are talking about is more specialized: how a vet saw it. IE, what is the NPE for FTP like for those of us who have not tried it.

Yes, there is a danger of gold sellers using it but people that want help will soon learn to keep repeating the question.

Ferguson.2157:

As an old fart who spent his life in the army I’d say put the game on hold for two weeks, study like a madman and get good grades, resume playtime only when it won’t negatively affect your real life. Two weeks without a game never killed anyone.

Just 2 cents from a graduate of the school of hard knocks.

Good luck with your exams!

Pretty much this. A degree will help your job prospects. Which means more discretionary income. Which means more gold if you decide to get it via gems. So why would you want to not miss GW2 for 2 weeks? The login rewards?

Maybe an easy (and dynamic) filter is being used? Like not allowing them to buy/sell anything over a silver?

It would impact anyone selling gathered/salvaged T1 mats but would hit characters who have at least one character getting T2 and above much less. Which are the vast majority of paid players.

Thanks Thor, that would settle it as right now there is a lot of confusion. Saying “they can not use /map” is fine if it means they can not send to it (for obvious reasons). Saying commanders can not use it to communicate instructions cripples paid players.

Thaddeus.4891:

The no map chat things is a kittene. They don’t want troll and seller on those, but in the same time like you said, it’s usually a good source of info for new players. I don’t think there is a perfect solution to that problem.

Sure there is. Allow them to see chats but not reply.

When I say we need people on, say, the north hill, I do not need a reply from every individual player. It would be nice if the defense party said how many people they need, but if not I will run by, /map what I see, and urge someone to correct me if I was wrong.

(apologies in advance if this is a dup)

We know they can see /say and /whisper if they are mutual friends. Can they see /map, /squad, and /party though, even if they are not able to respond?

All 3 channels are vital to paid players (especially commanders) to give information that will benefit the entire group.

Lambent.6375:

My point was having high level players who can’t use map chat wouldn’t just be annoying to them, it would be annoying to account paid players as well.

The people who only pvp, wvw, or do dungeons probably wouldn’t care about this, but in open world it can become annoying to

-have people start/run events and not be able to announce them, or they’really athe teq or something and need to let people know N battery. Eeds. Ore people, but can’t.

They could also add limits similar to what they have done with whisper.

Yikes! I would certainly hope (or at least beg them to add) allowing them to see /map /party and /squad … even with them not sending to them. I use all 3 for organizing and it would REALLY be a pain to paid members if we could not communicate with ftp members unless we were near them or randomly friended everyone we saw.

Oh, as to more people in Ore …. does that mean more undead from next door in Orr or does it mean stone elementals? I agree though, it is already a pain to get people to do anything other than AFK and/or zerg at an Teq (or any event) so I do NOT need people there I can not /map to ask for more to do a turret or defense.

Sylent.3165:

They do not need map chat. They can still use say and talk to people in the area

Unfortunately that presents a problem. While I have plenty of 80s I am almost always leveling some character or other (I started an asura necro Friday so was doing the “NPE” the same time as the early FTP folks). To get xp I need to be out and about … sometimes on initial maps, other times on more advanced ones. I would love some sort or a cross-map solution. Maybe going ugh outside the game to an irc or a teamspeak? A forum like players helping players would be a great option as it could have in-depth answers, but it could not answer immediate problems.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Welcome newcomers!

Every starting map is filled with veteran players eager to help you!

Feel free to ask any of us let it be camera settings, loot and XP gaining, combo mechanism, skills or utilities!

I personally spend a few hours running around with new saplings and I met loads of other helpful veterans!

Welcome to Tyria!

You can identify us in starter areas by often having some sort of colored icon over us (right now upside-down triangles but in late october there will be a different icon as well). Those of us wearing them in starter zones are probably there to help so feel free to ask us questions. Beyond identifying people you can talk to the only other reason to wear them in starter zones is to identify events, so they will most likely be friendly anyway.

BTW, often we will be doing the same things as you in order to level up another character we are starting. Given we have done the event plenty of times before we are a GREAT source of advice about it!

McViolin.8547:

Shouldn’t we be speaking Brazilian if we’re welcoming the new F2P players?

I thought the language was Portuguese?

Seriously though, in Second Life us mentors used to use various HUDs that would use google’s translate API. True to form google took it away (well, monetized it) so that was no longer an option. I suppose you could use their website but it would be slow: I seem to remember the GW2 chat window did not allow copy/paste?

What FTP accounts can do on the TP right now is the majority of the worries that are out there. Nobody outside of anet really knows. I suspect that information will filter out eventually but in the meantime …

Every once in awhile I will /map that I need a good AO. It is pretty easy to tell who has used second life when I say that (where AO means ‘animation override’).

Read the description on them, they do not stack. If they did before for you it was a bug that they fixed.

Err … unless you got a personal tour of a guild hall how do you know it is too small? It is part of HOT.

Look and see if they appear at the point new accounts enter the game (which is not right at a gate or WP). That will only eliminate alts entering the zone, but if they look a bit confused the odds are they are new. For example, I was used to something that uses the arrow keys for left/right when I joined …. so was moving rather oddly until I remapped things.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Menadena.7482:

A huge part of the problem is there are still things yet unresolved, the biggest being the TP. As much as I enjoy helping new players I do not want prices in the TP to crash where it is not worth harvesting/farming/crafting. So what you are probably seeing is people reacting out of those concerns.

Bots and gold sellers are not an immediate concern. If they start to be a problem that will be a different story.

Wouldn’t prices crash so it’s not worth harvesting/farming/crafting if there were the same number of new players but they had bought the game? Or are you just objecting to lots of new players in general?

Yes, they would. Before there is a barrier to entry though, no matter how small. If I had no strong feelings about it why should I buy it?

For example, I am a vegan, why on earth would I waste my money to buy meat at the grocery store. To watch it rot?

Now there is no such barrier to the game. Theoretically everyone with a computer and a fast enough connection could get an account.

Go for rares like beaded.

Arioso.8519:

Menadena.7482:

BTW, does PUG refer to people not in the guild doing something or people who are just in another guild?

PUG is an acronym for “Pick-Up Group” It doesn’t necessarily refer to guilds.
It generally refers to random players that have never met each other before making a group together, rather than friends or guildmates.

Thanks, I always thought that was one of the draws of GW2 actually. That if there was an event you very probably will have help running to it from all over.

It is the main reason why I hate any sort of PVP. I prefer to think of all GW2 players as potential allies, not enemies.

A huge part of the problem is there are still things yet unresolved, the biggest being the TP. As much as I enjoy helping new players I do not want prices in the TP to crash where it is not worth harvesting/farming/crafting. So what you are probably seeing is people reacting out of those concerns.

Bots and gold sellers are not an immediate concern. If they start to be a problem that will be a different story.

The timing was fun too … I just started leveling a necro Friday. This meant I had a bit of a head start on FTPs (especially her being my 7th character so I knew the fastest way to do things) but was struggling with starter areas at the same time they were.

I could not find the party in Queensdale today but my necro will probably do Caledon Forest for a change after I get lunch.

As to SB, if anyone was on my map a bit ago I was announcing a pre and the main event at 20 mins and 2 mins.

It looks nice but I will probably wait a bit before using it much. It will be like the dragon minis where everyone will be using it soon.

BTW, does PUG refer to people not in the guild doing something or people who are just in another guild?

My first was an elementalist, followed shortly by a guardian, engineer, and ranger (at the same time). My next two were a warrion and mesmer, Right now I am leveling a necro. How many empty slots do you have? I would suggest a wide a variety as possible to see what you like.

I have not been watching /map as much, only sending waypoints to events on it. If anyplace was toxic though it is probably here as there are a lot of unanswered questions, like how this will affect the TP.

Huh? How does that go to the ‘play like you want’ goal?

I play around 50 hrs/week and am leveling my 7th 80 right now (I have out to #15 planned out by race and profession). About the most time you can do with a FT job and sleep. The hardcores would still call me ‘casual’ though because I play it to have fun not to try and take on world bosses by myself single-handedly.

Can low level FTPs see when the commander says something or just that they can not talk on the channel? I was logging off for a bit and saw a couple people in my squad in PVE (probably FTPs since I was saying where lots of events were and times on low level maps, things anyone here for longer than a week would know). Anyway, I sent a message when I was leaving. Would they have seen that message?

The term “extended trial”, while a bit of an oxymoron, would imply severe limits. For example, look at the limits on wow’s free version: max level and so on. For some things in GW2, like leveling, you can do them as much as everyone else. So it is not a trial by any means.

Mustafa.7684:

Is there anyway we can get this limit increased or removed for verified players. Yes i know this is to prevent people from spamming and what not but if we are able to verify out account and if you are able to prevent spammers to spam then why not.

If you meant the FTP it is simple to remove. Have them buy the game.

I do agree the restrictions are a pain in the neck if you are in a party or such and want to distribute some item you will need.

So, have there been a lot of new players? It is commander tags as far as the eye can see.

There is no digital deluxe available for purchase.

This is a HUGE source of the concerns people have. If we could see the list we could identify if it is okay or point out possible flaws that anet can resolve.

[Please do not merge this as it will just get buried in a fast-moving thread and should be its own topic for discussing scenarios and hopefully allay concerns.]