Guild Wars 2

DeanBB.4268:

It will also change the way I think about some things. Passing near a copper node? Heck yeah I’ll swing over and get it now!

That was me touring several maps last night. Yes, I needed some iron but I was hitting almost every other node I came across for the UM and considering their mats a bonus!

Mercure.5689:

I have no real issue with the new unlimited tools. I can get why somebody might be annoyed (to put it lightly) if they bought a set of unlimited tools just a week ago or so, but if you bought them months or even years ago, you probably got your money’s worth. And there’s still plenty of people who buy tools without bonuses – looks are also important, you know!

Actually, I bought unbreakable tools earlier in the season and no, I did not get my money’s worth from them. I bought them early enough that I could not get a refund (yes, I asked) but right after buying them I realized limited-charge UM tools were better. So basically I have a set of 3 tools that have nearly not been used that I can not do anything with. Not even send to an alt!

I would rather not see a gear treadmill at all. If someone wants a skin treadmill, fine, go on a legendary journey. As it is legendary=ascended and ascended is not a lot better than exotics. Some of my characters have ascended and some exotics but I would not want to feel I NEEDED to craft ascended for everyone to keep up with the Joneses (especially since I like to keep as many of their available weapons handy as possible).

Running numbers to decide if it is worth it. The UB I need to give ascended trinkets to all my characters minus my current stash of tools has me shy around 140-150 thousand UM. Given I have things to spend karma on an alternative to carrying around a bag of tools on everyone is a handy idea. Those animations though …. drool.

I just wish they had done a way to upgrading existing tools as I bought the vanilla ones when LS3 started and they have gotten nearly no use. With these they probably never will either.

It is fun. Once. After that just tome up and head to the TP.

Kumion.7580:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Two words for the OP:
Second account.

I concur. There are several benefits to having a second account and even to “starting fresh” again.

Beyond login rewards and a scratch pad for trying out ideas?

I keep a client with my second account’s credentials in a virtual machine. When dayend is coming up I launch it and collect whatever is the reward.

Danikat.8537:

I’ve never understood why they didn’t keep it to a multiple of 9 so people can have sets of each profession, or a multiple of 5 for sets of each race (I’m not sure which is more common).

I’ve also seen some people suggest 90 should be the cap, so it’s possible to make 1 of each race/gender/profession combination.

A multiple of 45 would make sense to accommodate the various ways of designing new characters. Sure, the game only has 2 genders now but plan for the future …

Anyway, I have 15 characters. Each race and armor class. That means some professions have 2 characters and some 1, however there will ALWAYS be some professions you like more than others.

Grimwolf.7163:

Psientist.6437:

Grimwolf.7163:

I have like 20 points left to go on my leatherworking that I can’t reasonably complete, because each item I craft costs roughly 20 gold. It would take about 200 gold to finish.
Most of them only sell back for ~6-8 gold, because idiots. And can take several days to do so due to low demand.

Could you expand more on the ‘because idiots’?

What would you call it when people craft something, and then sell it for less than it cost them to craft it?

The market rate?

It is odd. In RL adding labor to something increases the cost over that of the materials. The GW2 economy does the precise opposite of that. I am not sure how you would fix it at this point though.

serow.6524:

I prefer leveling the mastery system using generic EXP and not Mastery Points. It’s infinitely more understandable and allows me to play however/wherever I prefer.

Yes, I have little interest in doing more HOT content but was gated by the points. I never had trouble finding enough XP in either core or hot in a reasonable time. For example, with the most recent LS3 chapter I had all the needed xp before logging out that evening (without doing all of the story either) but had to scrounge other zones for more points.

Vayne.8563:

kdaddy.5431:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

While GW2’s (timer stuff) might not be as strenuous as those imposed in some other MMO’s, yes, that would be letting the game dictate what I do when…

What I find curious is that while core GW2 also has timed meta events, there’s one starting about every 15 minutes around the clock, so whenever someone logs in, s/he could do one if so inclined … In HoT, the zone meta comprises a much greater percentage of what there is to do than in core, and doing those metas often requires one to log in early and use the LFG work-around. That means that HoT is less friendly to drop-in gamers …

I’ve jumped through hoops in MMOs before too this is NOTHING like that. I only need to get on the full server if I absolutely want to do the meta. If I don’t care about the meta I just log in and play as I’ve said many times. There are still enough people in zones not doing the meta to do content.

On the other side of that coin, timers have been in this game for years, way before HOT ever was. So if you wanted to do the fire ele, how did you do it without using a timer? Or Tequatl? Or anything else?

You either used a timer, or you missed out….long before HOT had come along.

On that note, this is about mastery points, and there are very very very few mastery points specifically that I can’t get solo.

I’ll concede the mastery point thing, although there are some tied to meta events, which matter more if one also dislikes mini-games, but that’s also another topic.

Other than that, perhaps you did not read my post before you commented. I’ve culled out all but the relevant points, above.

But there are so many mastery points in the game, that you don’t need the ones tied to the meta events and seriously, you’re saying you can’t log in once to try a meta event once, because you’ve decided doing so is jumping through hoops?

I’ve done the AB meta more than a hundred times. The TD meta doesn’t succeed as often even though it’s actually easier, just less people know it.

Dragon Stand is one of my favorite meta’s in the game and the wait to start it is usually less than 5 minutes. I just don’t see the issue here…except perhaps people who don’t know what to do.

I have to disagree with you on this one. You usually make very valid points, even i can admit that even though ive done AB and DS meta events. I could of done them alot more and got all the mastery points and didnt want too.

I recently have become very busy and cant even log in every day and when i do i jump in to try and get 1-2 mastery points or WvW for 30 min and then i have to leave.

This person is calling themself the most casual of gamers. You cant ask them to watch for timers and sit around for a hour especially if they only have a hour to play and this meta event isnt what they want to do.

Your usual argument of this part of the game might not be for you could apply here, it just sucks since Anet was the casual MMO and after 4 years they come out with HOT and it really doesnt fall in line for alot of players.

The most casual gamer doesn’t need, nor should they expect to get 186 mastery levels. There are many many many points you can get without ever doing a meta. Ever.

There’s one in AB that requires gliding under three arches. There are many communes and strong boxes, there are tons of easy to get ones to get the masteries you need to play.

You can’t tailor an MMO for someone who doesn’t have time to play because then everyone who does will simply be bored and leave. There’s always a balance required.

You tailor an MMO for the middle ground.

Someone who refuses to go to a timer site, and refuses to go to LFG for whatever reason will get left behind and that’s okay.

Because your other option is to make only simply stuff and you lose a lot of other people. There’s no good way to balance it.

I think HoT, on launch, was horribly overtuned and I think it’s still a bit overturned, toward harder core players. I think Anet could have done more to make it more palatable to the most casual players.

But there are definitely people I know how don’t like core Tyria and love HoT because core Tyria is way too easy and those people are back playing again.

It’s always got to be somewhere in the middle and everyone’s middle is going to be different.

Exactly. I am not a completionist. I got the masteries I needed/wanted and …. meh. I hate the minigames and only did the HOT story part-way. My only reason to go to the HOT zones now is to farm keys for my home instance nodes.

I am pretty much biding my time until we get a new expansion. I log in, gather my home node stuff, and maybe run a LS3 zone.

A single song? I like to make up an iTunes playlist to fit the personality of each character. They vary widely — hard rock, classical, country, whatever. The one I made the day Prince died has a huge list of his songs (and one guess what hue I used for the armor).

Healix.5819:

Unofficially however, they could easily support fan subbing.

That would be interesting to include. In addition to having something for languages not currently included it would be great for dialects and when you are learning a language.

Blek Lynx.8695:

Sorry, that translator. I don’t live in EU and I don’t speak English.
But I have to write on it, while we are silent the game will not progress.

Translators are not the best, even for short sentences. I have a Sylvari elementalist I accidentally named ‘small metal disk’ by separately double-checking the Finnish translations of her first and last names.

Making up for getting rid of throwable turrets maybe?

Cascabel.5806:

What I enjoyed the most about this episode was having Taimi with me.

That is pretty much how I have felt all through S3. After the first two episodes all I really cared about in the story was getting to the new map but interactions with Taimi were the exception.

Seeing as nobody will possibly know until August ….

Labjax.2465:

I don’t know if it’s any worse than it used to be, but I recall making an argument a long time ago that people are going to have a bad attitude, whether their information is accurate or not. The main difference with a meter is that they can be a little more certain about who isn’t pulling their weight.

I would think that people who use it to trash talk were probably going to find a reason to trash talk, meter or no.

Unfortunately DPS meters give a false metric. Say you are playing 100% support and giving everyone great buffs. Should you then be kicked because you are not doing as much damage to the boss? If you get kicked that party will be wondering why it is not as effective on their next run.

That said, I have no problem with DPS meters being used in raid content only. The ONLY place they should be in LFG should be listings for raids. If you want to leave your meter on in other parts of the game, fine, but requiring it of others in a non-raid area would be a reportable offense.

I have 15 characters: all 3 armor classes for the 5 races. I never understood the concept of mains vs alts (well, things like keyrunners I guess) but while some I use everywhere in PVE some are less-than-ideal (like the charr guardian I created early on …. talk about a character that looks slow).

Arden.7480:

“Deus ex machina” means the unsolvable problem who suddenly is solved by situation, person etc.

Appearing of Balthazar was not “Deus ex machina” in the meaning of this term. (from wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina). Balthazar didn’t resolve any problem, he just appeared and stole Taimi’s Machine.

Stop using the term if you don’t know the meaning. More ancient greek culture would heal your brain from idiocies.

Actually it seems you missed the joke ….. ‘(a) god in the machine’. I have not heard it mean ‘unsolvable problem’ ….. more a situation solved in a way that is more what you would get from a lazy writer. For example, the short story I once wrote solved a problem with the universe exploding and I titled it in latin as being an infinitely absurd god in the machine.

Crinn.7864:

Honestly there should be a “salvage all Legendries and below”

Trolling for hate emails?

I use LB/GS on my power ranger and find it to be a handy mix of ranged and melee.

Exactly, the majority of rangers are running the same pet as each other. Hands up any level 80 ranger whose primary pet when out and about is not a drake or a wyvern. Collecting all pets is almost pointless except as a collection itself.

Depending on your approach to things you can do quite fine in this game without other people. Not counting spontaneous random groups to do something I rarely intentionally team up with people in GW2. Close to zero if you discount guildies. Then again, I tend to be a loner personality.

It is not as much JPs that annoy me as I rarely do them. With me it is vistas. Gliding made some frustrating ones easier but it also made some medium-difficulty ones want to make me smash my monitor.

Zackie.8923:

Can we have an option to salvage all below rare when we right click the salvage kit? like instead of masterwork and below, we have rare and below.

What is the use case other than speed at the cost of gold? For master/below your best bet is copperfed. For rares it is a mystic or a silverfed.

Ookamikun.6472:

Amaimon.7823:

Ookamikun.6472:

The tube near the Mariner WP only goes to the south, but most of the action happens at the eastern area of the Savage area.

ye, but there’s another thermal tube just up the hill. you can tell from the map I linked a few posts up

Huh, didn’t realize there was a tube there.

That one is handy. Enter the map and you get the first WP. Make your way up to the heart and hop in the tube. Quickly run north so the mob does not get you and claim the upper WP. Then it is a short distance on the upper level and you can drop down near the middle WP. That does not give you 100% completion, but now you have all the WPs in your first few minutes.

What, an altoholic who is used to running that route now? Where?

I set a goal and go for that. Toss what gung-hoers consider complete. I have not completed a LS story since the first two and just aim to get to the new zone and randomly explore now. I keep a worksheet tracking my progress for this year’s goal (ascended trinkets for all my characters with at least one ascended weapon for each). Not sure what I will do next year but by then I am sure I will hit on something.

Mahou.3924:

As a great Taimi fan, I love it that she’s been a permantent stable member of the ragtag guild.

I was over the moon when we were able to buy a Taimi mini in the new zone. Much as I have hated parts of this story the fact that she was constantly in it kept me going.

(smoothes pantsuit) The state of our game is strong.

It seems anet has heard pretty strongly that things like the content hole that surrounded the HOT release were not exactly appreciated and we will hopefully not get it again. Right now we just had the 5th of 6 releases in season 3, each came with its own map and stuff. Not only that, right after 6 we will go to expansion 2 as if it were another episode, which means if it keeps to the same pace we could even see it in November.

Different people were gated by different things. WHile some claim xp was the gate I never had a problem with that. With myself and others the gate was the points. I would have no trouble with, oh, earning a point each time you leveled. Find the points easy to get and you can go faster but do not gate everyone else in the process.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

It feels like a very intrusive waste of time — like the “buy now now now” adverts you get in free to play games — to have the bouncy, wiggly, distracting chest down there, and worse that I have to click through a dialog afterwards.

Interesting you should mention that. Even if the account is not FTP they do that on non-HOT accounts to try and convince you to buy it.

No anet, I am not buying the expansion for an alt account that just logs in to get login rewards.

Endless Soul.5178:

I’m all for toggles and choices.

However, it amazes me that I, an ageing gamer with sometimes hard to control hands and fingers, have never had a problem with gliders in jumping puzzles, and there are so many younger (presumably) , and healthier (also presumably) people who do have problems.

Upper middle age with epilepsy here so prob not a good assumption.

Anyway, there are multiple things that can affect when you see a jump on a screen and when the glider deploys (and the delta between them). For example, just the network between you and the server is enough to make a difference,

Justine.6351:

Tap the jump key, don’t mash it.

You do realize that is going against learned behaviour in EVERY jumping game since the 80s right? That is about as helpful as saying ‘get gud’ when someone reports an accessibility problem with an easy fix. Plus it is not always mashing, it can come down to your internet connection.

Yes, if I had to choose buying the node or farming (but not both) I would go for the node. Except for berries, most of the mats you get in a LS3 zone are from hearts and dailies rather than farming. The home instance may take more days for the same number of mats but it is much less time each day too.

Buy the home instance node. A guaranteed 3 a day. No, that is not fast but that is over 1,000 per year.

Rasimir.6239:

All I can say is the average in my houshold is around 80, consisting of my main account at 186, my secondary account around 125, daughter #1 who only plays wvw at 3 mastery points, and daughter #2 (who only does jps on leveling toons and is too chicken to go anywhere there’s a chance of fighting) at 2 mastery points . Both kids play regularly, just not in content/with levels that gain mastery experience, and thus neatly average out my own (pve-heavy) accounts.

Notice you are the only one pulling up the 2.5 point average. I am guessing your daughters are closer to typical of average casual players (although on the low side).

I am also heavily into PVE. My bare minimum for just daily maintenance/gathering stuff is 30 minutes but my average is more like 2-3+ hours a day. I just never felt the need to max out mastery skills I would probably use once to justify having them to myself.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

I haven’t bought a single teleport scroll, because I know they’d use way too much space. A teleport book or folder, where we can “store” all our teleport scrolls would solve this problem.

A solution if you only plan to go to the zone with a single character but if you are an altoholic and can be in the new zone with any of them on a given day. Well, unless you particularly like grinding the initial instance over a dozen times ….

Faaris.8013:

OP must be talking about ascended armor:

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/48085-Zojja's-Guise

That costs about 100 gold to craft at the moment, but only because it’s medium armor. If you get heavy it costs 78 gold and light 87 gold.

And I agree with the others here, ascended =! casual

Fremtid.3528:

So for 3 1/2 hours over 3 days (which is what a few usually means) you would make approx 63 gold (I applied your math for the champ bags to the champ bags from frostgorge sound) and some t6 mats (which vary depending on week the powerful blood, charged lodestone, and giant eyes week is unusually high in profit and only once every eight weeks which is why ppl save their pact supply map rewards for 8 weeks for it) which is a far cry from 100g. So yeah I guess it’s easier to complain than be real when you yourself say a few days of casual play doesn’t even net 100g.

Maybe people should actually turn everything they get into gold for a week, to see how much they really get. I for example put everything I farm right into the material storage, so I don’t know exactly how much gold I make per day. If you casually get 45 iron ore while running around doing events, that’s 1 gold. If you get 10 hardened leather sections, that’s almost 3 gold. Small amounts add up, without forcing anyone to actively farm. Just take the few seconds to stop at a node while playing the game. There could also be a Maguuma Lily hidden in a plant, that makes you 9 or 10 gold.

I do a mix. Depositing most things (then selling them a stack at a time when my bank fills up) and selling things I know will net me a good profit (assuming I have time, if not it gets deposited to sell/use later). After leveling crafting I suspect a lot of people are trying to either sell there blue/greens as-is (why? just why?) or depositing the salvaged mats which they will never use.

Look at the map for episode 3. You see events all over, not just ones you are right next to. Hopefully that is a sign of things to come.

Vayne.8563:

Doam.8305:

To add to all of this some people simply don’t like HoT and I mean they’ve never set foot back into the HoT maps after beating the story.

I know people who have core Tyria Mastery and the ancient magics mastery but regarding HoT they only have the basic points needed to complete the campaign. I have 181 but 181 isn’t something I usually see outside of HoT maps.

In fact I agree with the 99 average as that would indeed be the number you’d be seeing with someone who beat HoT then never returned. Typically vets who already have enough core Tyria points unlocked through achievements gotten prior to launch and only need the exp.

In addition a person who quit because of HoT but returned for Season 3 wouldn’t necessarily go back into HoT and grind it out but rather grind out the new maps and the old ones they enjoyed before. So midway will probably remain the average even going into the next expac as I know there are some HoT masteries namely the adventure gold ones that I’m never going to actual bother to get around too.

I’d go as far to say that there are nearly as many people who only play HoT stuff and maybe Fractals, but aren’t interested in a Legendary Weapon and those people don’t necessary bother with Legendary Mastery.

In fact, I recurrent theme I’m hearing in my guild is that returning players have no trouble leveling their HoT masteries, but tend to find it hard to get enough core tyria mastery points to finish leveling core Tyria mastery.

Anyone who doesn’t do fractals, has no reason to level Fractal mastery.

The only thing everyone seems to want from core Tyria masteries is true autolooting.

Yes, I have only done fractals once or twice over the years and it was not my idea. I also have no plans to craft a legendary any time soon. Autoloot was nice though. I am not sure we will get more lines in core, if not it is perplexing 2 of the 3 probably hold no interest for most casuals.

I was getting HOT points all over the place. I still had to pick and choose but most of the ones I did without I did not have much use for.

An average of 99 sounds high. Is that only the people who have used gw2efficiency? Which will be a population slanted more towards people that are highly active. I have been playing since HOT came out and my mastery rank is 67. The MPs gated me and I just did not see more than bragging rights and niche uses for most of the higher-level ones.

The way I understood it any prior expansion to whatever expansion we were on would be part of the base game. Although I may have misunderstood what they meant.

People have been asking for this and it would be nice. I used shared inv slots but now they have more chapters than slots I was dedicating to it. Oh well, for the rare times I go to Bloodstone or Doric I can just WP.

Sephas.8793:

Menadena.7482:

Masteries that will make your life easier:
gliding (no ley lines I have spotted but you will likely want advanced and updrafts)
mushroom hopping
advanced magicks from chapter 2

There are ley lines to glide on. Specifically, west of the middle WP.

Thanks for the correction, I had not spotted them. So far it looks like nothing major is gated behind them though, which is good. On some maps it has actually been a hindrance to have that mastery so I skipped it.

dagrdagaz.4913:

“100g you earn in a few days of casual play.”
That is utter kitten.

“100G is indeed a few days of playing the game.”
Perhaps, but not with casual play.

Yes, when people say that I know what they mean. Doing things like berry runs in 5 minutes without pausing to help people with the mobs. Then cycling through a dozen characters in rapid succession and saying it only took an hour to get about 1000 berries. Not my idea of ‘casual’ playing at all, that is pretty much min/maxing.

I have not priced it recently but have you looked for armor on the trading post. Another way, assuming you are level 70+ and have karma you have no other use for, is to buy it with karma in orr.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There are a couple of ways that it could still be a year before we hear of an expansion date:

• LS3 ends, we have 2 months of ‘current events’ and LS 4 begins.
• LS3 ends, we have 10 months of ‘current events’
• LS3 ends, we have another content drought.

I prefer waiting for ANet to say whatever they are going to say rather than tie myself into knots trying to figure out their plans.

Fortunately none of those 3 are likely. The plan I saw them state (I think it was in their AMA) was LS4 would be after the expansion. I am guessing they also learned another content drought would pretty much be the end of GW2. I fully expect an announcement with a firm date at (or maybe even a release at) the game cons that fall in the late summer.

The WP next to the merchant gets unlocked the first time the sub brings you into the map. I admit I have only used the scroll so far but if you can not WP it is a bug and should be reported. It might be it just is not showing up …. try another layer on the map.

It is frustrating as I hate gating but they have been choosing to do this all season long. Once you do the first instance (alone or with LFG) you will have the first WP. Immediately buy the portal scroll for 1000 UM so any alts have access (if not, at least that account can get in until you do). If you can get the other 2 waypoints the first day so much the better but at least you will have access to continue things in the future.

Masteries that will make your life easier:
gliding (no ley lines I have spotted but you will likely want advanced and updrafts)
mushroom hopping
advanced magicks from chapter 2

You will probably get enough XP your first day for the new mastery, which is VERY handy on that map, it is 5 points (some you can get there without it).

Aww …..

I used a tp-to-friend for it yesterday and had no qualms about doing so. I HATE HATE HATE jumping puzzles. If people want to do them, fine, but if you pretty much have to do them (ie, for a mastery point) then they are fare game for a teleport.

If your argument is the chest, ok. Do not give the chest if you do not have the checkpoints but still give the MP. Those things are usually 2 blues and a green anyway.

What I found REALLY odd was that she recognized B right away after the reveal. It was not like she expected one of her gods was going to make a cameo. Think about various deities and heroes. With few exceptions generally they have been depicted in various different ways by different artists.

Or has she met B before?