Guild Wars 2

Did you change the crops? nice!

What else made it into the feature pack?

Hi Leah,

Hope you’re having fun in the Guild Wars universe!

I suspect the “missing” personal story parts being reworked currently and added later on? As many have mentioned before, it is a mistake taking away those missions from the story both in context of those missions and the overall quantity of content.
It feels like thrown away capital.

Are you allowed to comment on this?

As far as the story goes, LS2 is an enormous improvement, more coherent and better paced within its’ story chapters

My biggest issue currently is the “2 weeks” format. The Living Story wants to deliver those great cliffhangers but they only make sense if the time to the next chapter is kept short enough in relation to the story.
Having the pale tree mortally wounded while nothing else happens over the course of months is a really bad idea. The time it took to organize the summit was more appropriate, compared to the pale tree now.
You could be more free with condensing or stretching the story where appropriate.

Mordy felt really threatening when it attacked several spots in the world at once, the build up with the vines was fantastic and created a very unique atmosphere I hadn’t experienced before in games.
Now it is just there?

What would be nice is identifying which chapters need what amount of time between them for the story to make sense. If you need more time to work on other releases, choose a different finale?

The story telling has been close to a TV series even though this makes little sense to me as the audience of a TV show doesn’t have the option to move around in that universe.

You also don’t need to include the entire framework of the story in the release. Instead of telling us that we were exploring a new map and suddenly caves opened up and we can descend to fight mordy, you could just release the map without anything in it and after 3-4 days have the map update to include those entrances.

I got the impression that I was following somebody who came before me and already explored everything for me, set up waypoints and the necessary amenities such as merchants.

I’ve had the idea of waypoints not yet being built and since they also function as progression markers, you could use them more like that. It makes exploring a bit more tedious but also more progressive and rewarding after those burdens have been taken away. I think this would be very nice for the beginning of the chapters, less so for the “farm status” latter part.

have a good one

Hi Gavian,

Thank you very much for the clarification and taking the time to post here, it is much appreciated.
I take it that a native mac client is not something that is being considered. Thank you for the transparency. It was to be expected lately, considering the time and effort that went into the cider port, I’m still a little confused why a statement couldn’t be made sooner.

I don’t know what you did with this update but I’m getting frame rates that almost match the windows version.
I’m happy for the foreseeable future with this performance, great job! I’m sure you know this isn’t yet the case for everybody yet but it sounds like you are working hard to fix the remaining bugs.

Especially with the UI turned off and zoomed in (thanks to the new camera?) I’m able to run high settings at around 20-25fps where I used to get 10-20 on low to medium.
Leveling a norn ranger and having a lot of fun.

Very happy to have a positive outlook for the future of the mac client.

Thanks again!

Spiderbite.8049:

the money isnt in alts.
the money is in the new players.

I’ve read similar stuff several times now and I don’t think it is true.
New players mean box sales and Anet plans on financing their game via gem shop for the most part.
They focus so much on new players who will soon become “veterans” and then stop buying stuff on the gem store because Anet focuses so strongly on new players. Also, the game has been on sale many times. Gem sales themselves never, I believe

My lvl 34 alt seems to have kept all his unlocks fortunately, so all is well there. If I want to level an alt I’ll at least have the option to jump to level 20. But with the skills in general being so few, limited and frankly dull after 2 years, I don’t want to imagine how tedious and incredibly boring it must be to level now. I’ll try it nonetheless as soon as I finished the Zhaitan fight and deleted that char…

Anet has strange priorities is all I’m saying. If they are so worried about player retention, maybe do something about it? Instead of dumbing down the game for new players who, until now, thought the game was too difficult to pick up? GW2? Too difficult to pick up?

First and foremost Anet should take care of the players who stayed for 2 years instead of trying to get the few potential customers they know nothing about their loyalty. Fans basically, maybe offer something for them.
And there has been. Many changes were made that add greatly to the experience but at the same time they limited other aspects and took away others.

There is a lot to do in GW2 and it was daunting at first but certainly not the combat or leveling.

Selno, your optimism is admirable and I don’t think you are wrong on the developement points your make.

There are several problems with the “GW2 Mac Community”

• People expected a Mac Client, not a Wrapper. To be fair, people also expected GW2 to revolutionize MMOs and were left a little confused about the highly iterative/evolutionary steps it took and is taking. Beta, I know.
• After every update the bugs came in all different shapes and colors, Beta I know.
• People have been ignored. Don’t be “fooled” by the presence of a mac specialist. Over a long time the pattern looked like this: Mac users complain, dev/mod/xy appears and promises to communicate more/take care of xy/forward our issues and then vanishes into thin air. This process repeats every other month. Appeasement at its worst.
• Anet advertises it as a beta client suggesting it is a client in developement even though it is more the wrapper that is in developement, not the client.
• Anet advertises the beta “client” to run well (well, well is well for everybody in a different way) on a number of systems. They do so on their store page, for people to buy GW2 and without proper warnings for the mac client.
• If we are supposed to be beta testers, there has been very little incentive to do so due to a lack of communication and no feedback has been given to the user that their reports and pleas were actually heard.
• Anet did realize they had bad communication with the player base in general. A small subsection like the mac client was “hit” even worse by this. At least this is my opinion.
• Anet introduced this draconian policy of not talking at all about anything remotely in developement, this alone makes/made it extremely hard contributing.
• We aren’t getting any loot, really where is the Mac Mini? :P

Really, go back a few pages/months if you really feel like it but the communication here has been horrendous and insulting how they stalled users and tried to appease the same way over and over again. Which is what it boils down to, Anets communication problem.

Again, a native client is what people expected when they announced a mac client and working on a wrapper for the whole time suggests a native client not being developed at all, not the other way around like you hope.

I have summarized the last few pages of this forum for you, ratio is aprox

• Users: “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “Can’t install sadface” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “Can’t install sadface” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “why do i get a black screen?” “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “why do i get a black screen?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again”

Approximately two months later:

• Anet: “We hear you, there will be improvements to somethingsomething and we will get a mac specialist”

• Users: “Great news!” “Thank you for acknowledging us” “Thank you” “Thank you, is there any news on a native client?” “can we get an update on the mac native client?” “hello?” “why do i get a black screen?” “Can’t install sadface” “Hey I’m late, thank you for answering, is there any news on a native client?” “hello?” …. “Can’t install sadface” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “here is a bug” “there is a bug” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “here is a bug too” “this is how you deal with that” “Sorry your mac can’t run the beta client” “why do i get a black screen?” “when is the tp working again?” “I’m using windows until mac works again” “when is the tp working again?” “when is the tp working again?” “can we get an update on the mac client?” “Can’t install sadface” “here is a bug too” “I’m using windows until mac works again”

You can now copy paste this 6 times for a total of one year.

Trying not to be overly cynical but this is very close to the truth.

same for me, feels better on higher settings

Only thing we’ve got so far, afaik.

Mind you, he has only asked for an update, no promises have been made and looking at past records it is more likely that we won’t hear a word for a month or two.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Blind Jimmy.1634:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

ananda.5946:

Chris, since you are actively posting in this about communication, can you tell us if the Mac client is being looked at? It crashes all the time in large events and there is no active support in the mac support forum.

If you don’t mind i will get back to you on this on Tuesday.

Chris

Hi Chris!

First of all thanks for all thanks for all the work you are doing on your personal time on this thread.

Now that Tuesday’s update information has been released, and the “Performance Updates” section is presumably what you were waiting for, did you have additional information on what this means for the mac client in particular that you can provide? Are you able to confirm that the crashes the mac beta client users were seeing were performance related, and if so that the performance updates mentioned today have been tested on the mac client and in fact reduce, if not eliminate, the problems?

And in order to stay on topic, would it be possible for this information to be communicated in the mac tech support forum where it best belongs instead of buried deep inside this thread? We would love any updates you are allowed to give, or even acknowledgement that ArenaNet is aware of and working on the issues with the mac client.

Hi Jimmy,

I have asked that we give an update on the mac client.

Chris

gonna comment & post pics later, just tried to get on top of the head and I found you can just walk up one of the beams on the left (I remembered you saying left :P ), it’s the last beam believe.

did you wait for the lightning or does it strike often there? 3rd & 5th I’m gonna steal the perspective hehe

@zenleto
I totally missed the jade weapons :/ Is that aetherblade hammer & armor? I’m trying to go for heavy armor sci-fi -esq with Edah

@valento, just crank up all settings before you take the screenshot, your computer can still render most settings but don’t expect more than 3-5fps :P

@lazuli
you gotta show me how to get up there, looks really good! is the shot of the watchwork knight from atop there?
check out the upper floor of Logans’ office next time you’re there, the throne room has few spots that work as well

some textures…I can kind of understand why Anet prefers the pov not enabled…

I already hate Orr (again)

pov has flames now!

and I still feel uneasy close to bunnies…

insaneshadow.1654:

Michael Walker.8150:

some pov fakes with box of chocolate

Were you using /sleep during these screenshots or was this from vistas?

No, I was using the box of chocolate, a gem store item for costume brawl and/or making your character bigger or smaller, it can get quite ridiculous with the biggest Norn and the smallest Asura.
The biggest advantage however is that it removes “ghost mode”. If you stand against a wall and rotate the camera you usually get this translucent effect on your character but if you shrink yourself you won’t.
/sleep has the same effect I found, so just stand close up against a wall, /sleep and rotate the camera.

I think it was 200gems?

On the tree: Small asura body and shrinking chocolate

@lazuli
oh right, the jumping puzzles, my list is getting longer…

some pov fakes with box of chocolate

Start with removing one big piece of debris in kessex hills every month and add one single finished house in LA every month and before you know it you have a living world.

These changes could be a little project of love by whoever devs “feels like it” = has enough time besides their current project.

Would this be difficult to achieve? If you’d focus efforts on cosmetic changes you could limit the need for a full team working closely together and once you decide that you’d like to add some mechanics (or remove), the assets would be already there?

A completely revamped map including new mechanics, audio and graphics puts a lot of stress on (too) many people and ultimately relies on (too) many different parts to work together in a short time. This style of adding content might be better suited for bigger updates like an expansion.

And a slightly different topic….
My favorite part of the current living story was breaking out of the dry top map to the now accessible caverns, completely empty. It was one of those very rare feelings you get exploring a digital world.
So, in addition to those smaller changes I suggest bigger maps with full access from the beginning. Then you can add one or two events every other week and see how they work out and balance. Add some wildlife and some mobs from the beginning though?

I think it is sad that you design great content like the sand giant but since you don’t have a PTR, there is no way for you to guess which events will be chosen to be played in the end and for which reasons.

Tl;dr:

• tiny cosmetic changes like one rebuilt house in LA every other week
• more “empty” areas which get filled with mobs and mechanics later. a few mobs here and there wouldn’t hurt.

Nageth.5648:

Yes, please comment on this. Every time in the past that the BLTC was changed the mac client lost the functionality for an extended period of time.

Well….you kind of answered your own question and I really hope Lacey doesn’t promise anything that would be very difficult to keep.
Let’s face it, it’s probably gonna mess up not just the BLTP but cause some new exciting new issues, perhaps an AsuraMotion error /bad joke

We have almost gotten the Devs to make the first statement about the mac client since a year ago? ever? Let’s wait for this and place our complaints and issues in that thread, it’s the mac technical support forum and we seem to be read outside of the forum as well now.

I prepared Windows for the patch and informed a friend to be ready to buy/sell stuff for me.
I’m also waiting for the CDIs and dev comments on the mac client to decide my direction with the game.

I also bought one of those scream jars

Hi Brandon,

lately I’ve started taking screenshots but I had to use some tricks to get the right angles. Using the box of chocolate to shrink works great for fake first person.

Being able to zoom in and out more would help a lot. If you don’t want to implement a true first person view, could you consider turning the player character completely invisible when zooming in real close? The ghost face we have now is a bit strange.

The shifted position of the camera works well when zoomed in but it is barely noticeable from afar.

It might be nice to increase the individual steps one can zoom, maybe 1/3 more. It shouldn’t make much of a difference when zooming fast but could help adjusting the angle when you’ve got more time.

The Dragon fights and LS boss encounters feel so good because it is one of the few times the player gets to see what I would consider a very nice viewing distance for much of the open world content, it’s a liberating experience, almost.

picture 1 – left/right positioned camera works great when zoomed in, although I had to force the camera on top of the pedestal there to get the right distance. regular zoom was too far or too close, I moved the character instead.

picture 2 – needed to get the camera on top of a surface right in front of me to get this close but I think this could be the max zoom? maybe a bit further out to guarantee great visuals

picture 3 – chocolate that shrinks you, how anti chocolate but still great

picture 4 + 5 – with chocolate shrinking and without

picture 6 – when closing in on the water surface, the camera zooms in rapidly, do you think you could lower that hit box? Camera position left/right neglectable.

Would be nice if the camera shift was more noticeable when zoomed out. Also move the camera up or down as mentioned by others.

Crazy idea though…why not let the camera go underwater? could you elaborate on how the camera change from land to underwater happens? It’s a great animation and has this “wow” effect when the underwater world pops in.

I can’t participate in the tech talk, just wanted to add what issues I encountered.

I believe that enhancing the camera would go a long way in enhancing the overall Guild Wars 2 experience since it is the main feature that carries all visuals.

thank you!

@op
do you have this config?

• NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.4GHz and 2.53GHz configurations; or 512MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.66GHz configuration
• Intel HD Graphics with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory <- can’t find a 288mb config but users posting this on other boards?

from

http://support.apple.com/kb/SP582

gw2 mac beta requires a 320m (1gb) at least, which would be double vram than the 330m has on the higher config.
maybe if you install windows you’d be more lucky?

also take a look here
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4110
maybe your macbook isn’t switching between the cards properly, I had this problem as well with a new model, works now.

good luck

@Wanze
I think it got across the wrong way, I’m more interested in the effect the trans charges have on mats coming from armor

John Smith.4610:

I’m not sure I entirely understand what you’re asking. Could you elaborate or rephrase the question so I know I’m answering the right thing?

• Before the wardrobe the player fused two matching armor pieces, selecting skin, stats and sigil of either one. by doing so, one gets deleted.
  http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/b/b0/Transmutation_Stone_Example.jpg/800px-Transmutation_Stone_Example.jpg
  Now the player just salvages the armor and by doing so gets the skin and materials.
  In case of light armor for instance this could be expensive mats, I’m asking if this had any significant/positive effect on those markets.

• The total amount of armor saved from oblivion would be the amount of transmutations done since the release of the wardrobe but since it is part of the gem store so you probably can’t answer.

• Concerning the price, one transmutation charge equals one transmutation crystal (lvl 80) or 3 transmutation stones (for lvl 1-79).
  In the new wardrobe, all transmutations cost one crystal or would have in the old system. This seems expensive, even more so because equipment changes a lot while leveling.
  I was asking if you think this is working as intended or maybe fewer charges have been sold since then.

thank you for answering!

Since the introduction of transmutation charges, has there been a significant increase in mats coming from lvl 1-79 armor?
How many armors have been saved from oblivion in the past 4 months?

Do you think the price for lower level transmutation is adequate? Considering my problem of out-leveling those skins very quickly and the fact that new players might not want to afford 15g for a complete armor change.

Vayne.8563:

Look my point stands. People come into these threads, with no real knowledge of the company, how it works, various challenges and they give management advice. It’s worth about as much in most cases as a newspaper horoscope.

I don’t think most forum posters, including myself, are qualified to tell someone how to run a business, or what they can afford or can’t afford.

If you think otherwise, that’s great. Someone in this thread seems to think Anet has all these millions of dollars that went into programming minipets instead of dungeons. I’m thinking that’s probably not quite how it works.

You can argue all the details you want, but I’m looking at the bigger picture here.

You really don’t need to know how a product is made to tell the company what the product is lacking and what improvements should be made. If it’s more for the same price, fine, make bigger bottles with 50% free extra. Not many people would be excited if your favorite beverage now had 2.3% more content or the same content and double the packaging.

Unless somebody says hire x and do y in z amount of time I don’t think you can see it as a critique of anet’s management.

Not arguing with you on users, me included, thinking they know development times. while they only thing we actually do is compare other games’ content with GW2, which doesn’t help all that much considering the game is built quite differently.

@op
While not being unhappy with the game itself I can see why so many hit some wall in the game but that has been the same for me with GW1.

Anet did say they’d be delivering expansion worth of content but what is accessible in the game at the moment is perhaps 1/4-1/8 of what people hoped for or expected, me included.

It is about uncertainty. Seems like there are plenty of posts claiming that Anet is working on something big behind the scenes but their policy of not telling anybody has made it increasingly difficult for players to be excited for future updates. The volume of content we saw might be standard for what to expect with this development model but it seems to be less than what many people deem to be possible.

It boils down to GW2 not being the holy grail of MMO while showing potential to become something much greater I think.

I’m not complaining too much though, the game is for free and looks beautiful.

For anybody who would like to play the game 5-6h+ a day, I don’t think there is enough to do.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

It is nighttime, yet it is super bright.
We’re looking at the skybox, which shows ugly 2D clouds and an uninteresting night sky.
Guildwars 2 can be pretty. But the night and especially the skybox is not.

how do you like the glowing sand storm at night?

there are some insane skyboxes at night though like the one in rata sum.
one should be more likely to see those kinds of stars when in remote areas of tyria instead of one of the brightest places of tyria though.

cough

@op
I spent a lot of my time last few weeks running around with the UI turned off, started to find safe spots and turn up the graphic settings and super sample to take some screenshots few days ago, it’s a lot of fun actually, more than anticipated.

and since you are playing with 2-3fps you really have to take your time

does anybody know how to remove that stupid aegis on a guardian? otherwise I might just roll a warrior asura…

notice, I don’t include the feet because textures that close (the mac wine wrapper only supports medium quality) don’t hold up

you can also fake first person by swimming and pointing up while keeping a nice distance it seems. see Louveepine.7630 images above

often it helps to stand behind a ledge or something so you force the camera to zoom in more when looking up…ah this one is hard to explain.
tl;dr camera is very clunky

these are from the last few days and reference some of the stuff mentioned above, guess I found a new gameplay for myself – posing – very much helping in fights.
not all screenshots have AA and supersampling enabled

I’m finding it easier to flip actually, feels like stuff happens faster than a year ago, including rising & falling prices.

And you said it yourself, you thought you could, which more often than not tends not to work out if you try to flip one.single.item.

Or just put it up for the price you want to sell and wait?

Also, look at graphs like this for motivation and try flipping more than 0.00(0)1% (?) of available items. www.gw2tp.com www.gw2spidy.com. https://www.goldwars2.com/ is free now? Never used it but I’ll check it out

Try something like this maybe?

http://www.gw2tp.com/item/12396-plate-of-coriander-crusted-meat-dinner

or an all time classic like

http://www.gw2tp.com/item/13155-mithril-helmet-casing

Mostly to boost your confidence and trust in your trading skills, just buy order a stack, re-list it for a competitive price (might be above current lowest sale offer) and wait for a week or two.

Don’t just flip every item you read about on forums without thinking about it.

Beldin.5498:

Just trash these master tools .. if it are those green ones that you get sometimes
from questing. I believe they are bound to the level of where you got them, but
you simply can’t see it on them.

That’s it, tested it on some lvl 60-80 maps, ruined fibers, gonna trash, issue resolved

thank you beldin!

I can keep the black lion ones though?

No, unfortunately this is not the case. I went to the little garden in dry top close to the vine bridge and tried with and without traits. all other nodes there work fine, cactus gives me 100% ruined fiber.
it can still give me hidden caches etc
tested with 2 characters

I was out of combat

thank you for the input though, didn’t know that fact

I have the infinite tools, they work fine but I’m currently using up the black lion and master gathering tools to make some room.

when I try to harvest a cactus it gives me ruined plant fibers

the master gathering tools should be the highest grade or did I miss some changes to this?

Submitting a ticket now

thank you very much

//edit

this answered it completely

SKATE.1394:

There are multiple tiers of “Master Harvesting Sickle” given as rewards for completing level 15, 35, and 60 personal story instances.

They are the equivalent of Steel, Mithril, and Orichalcum in that order. Cacti are a level 80 node that requires Orichalcum quality tools.

Hover over your tool to see the listed level requirement, if it is the 15 or 35 version that is why you are getting ruined plant fibers from Cacti nodes.

It’s normal for the “rare” drops such as gems from ore nodes and caches from trees etc. to still proc when using low level tools that result in ruined materials.

thank you

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Michael Walker.8150:

I’ve got the gamma one, get it every time i alt tab, change graphic settings or relog or anything else really.
Gamma slider stays on 1.0 but if you move the slider the gamma goes back to normal

also on a side note, i’m having my favorite dyes resetting, is this a mac thing?

Favourite dyes are server side, so it shouldn’t be a mac thing. Maybe file a bug report or support ticket :S

Yeah and it’s not a complete reset, it only resets the favorites to some specific time, my guardian always has 1 favorite for instance. I have submitted a ticket and opened a thread in the bug sub forum, gonna wait for ticket response though if there is any
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Favorite-Dyes-reset-get-erased-when-relogging/first#post4325328
Didn’t post it here because I got the same issue on windows (you never know with mac right? :P )

Nageth.5648:

Hm, I was doing some searching and found this thread Is that related at all?

Well, for me the only thing I can reproduce is changing resolution, it messes with the gamma every time.

opening tp or just pressing options does it sometimes as well but can’t be reproduced properly.
Right now it happened upon starting the game, when I alt tab to write this, it happens as well.

What is interesting is, that when you alt tab, the gamma will stay for a second perhaps, then it changes to darker. if you alt tab back and forth maybe you guys can reproduce this. I don’t know what this means…

I’ve got the gamma one, get it every time i alt tab, change graphic settings or relog or anything else really.
Gamma slider stays on 1.0 but if you move the slider the gamma goes back to normal

also on a side note, i’m having my favorite dyes resetting, is this a mac thing?

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I believe it was the process evolution before the fractal cdi. Could be wrong.

it was suggested there up until the second to last page but the only thing I found was this

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Inculpatas,

Regarding the discussion about one thread at a time. The advantage for us currently is that the team could concentrate on one topic at a time rather than having three threads to keep up with and therefore have more time to get involved. It would also allow me to enter the discussion of the threads in different areas. Note i am still undecided about this particular discussion. I to am very worried about the time it would take to rotate between topics and for this reason alone that could be a big enough con to not move forward with the above proposal.

Chris

gotta run, thx Lilith

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Having the CDIs in their own sub-forums was suggested in previous CDIs. I don’t believe it was thought to be a good idea. I can’t remember why. I’m sure you can read about it is the pertinent CDI, though. =)

oh, I only actively read and two and posted in one, my bad, which one was it? to read his wording. if it was listed in the summary I can just check them all quickly.

and good morning to Anet

Let’s not forget that she is here for the forums, not for the mac client, even though we would have wanted somebody for this reason. The forums only needed work because they had been neglected for a year.

Lacey Hiteshue.4082:

Now that things are starting to slow down with my regular job duties, I should have some dedicated free time to get in here and work on the forums. You may not see a ton of changes at first, but I am hoping to get this place cleaned up and a bit more organized.

Anyhow, that’s really all I have for now. I will pop in here as time permits to work on organizing the sticky posts a bit as well as answer some of your questions.

also

Michael Walker.8150:

ananda.5946:

Maybe they will have some good news for us on tuesday.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/page/16#post4329274

Second this, I think we might be heard in the CDIs

being reminded over and over again of Anet’s policy of not talking about what is in development also sparked a tiny little hope, not sure how you guys feel.

ananda.5946:

Maybe they will have some good news for us on tuesday.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/page/16#post4329274

Second this, I think we might be heard in the CDIs

being reminded over and over again of Anet’s policy of not talking about what is in development also sparked a tiny little hope, not sure how you guys feel.

Palador.2170:

Suggestion: When you do the next CDI, don’t make it a thread.

Make it a sub-forum.

Wow, now that is an obvious enough idea for it to should have appeared on page one O.o

+1

oh and one could just leave the sub-forum open, if users can’t create threads there and mods close the finished ones

Option 1

An Error Prevented Saving:

Message Body length must at least be 15.

There was one incident, a big one, about legendaries and their acquisition. they have explained that after some research they decided it would not be a good idea to continue on the path they were on and that is completely reasonable. the reactions that followed weren’t reasonable what so ever.

Saying that people would give you equal amount of bs if you’d talk about minor changes is just weird however.

Yoh.8469:

If your goal with this policy was to avoid toxicity, then you have failed, completely and utterly. All you have done with breed wild speculation, confusion, anger and resentment. Because we don’t know WTF is going on because you will not tell us!

this pretty much sums it up.

The other option is not telling us anything and then surprising everybody with lots of great content.

Just reevaluate that kitten policy so it doesn’t apply to everything.

Or just make one, very clear statement that no dev will ever talk about anything. People will stop asking and complain more after a half baked feature releases but since you wouldn’t be communicating you’d also have the freedom to not read the forums and just ignore any feedback.
You better use that additional time to create more content though…

Big big thanks and respect to both Chris, Regina, Colin & co for taking the time and reply on a weekend!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Thanks for the feedback Michael. Note your step plan is roughly how i have run my CDIs in the past. Some good ideas there.

Chris

hey chris,

I’ll put this on top

Do you think it would be possible to get written or numeric feedback from a wider player base ingame? With the forums only representing a small portion of the player base, do you think it’s a good enough average of opinion?

I did notice your CDIs following this structure, roughly. Not asking for this exact workflow but I didn’t feel like there was a clear enough structure or optimized for time spent, which might just be the forums structure. The developement of the CDI happened very naturally, which might not be the best case.
The meat of the discussion would be the time after you have made your statements/summary of issues. I felt like there was too much time spent on gathering ideas and not so much on finding out what the best compromise between player wishes and your schedule and effort would be.
I also think you spent a bit too much time on interacting, I love that presence but you already said it’s a chore.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Sorry that should say: “Our company policy is not to talk about what’s in development”.

-CJ

Colin,

Do you think it would be too much effort or to expensive for you guys to create a framework within you could talk about concepts without giving out specific enough information to crash markets?

This policy feels very very restrictive, telling developers they cannot talk about what they develop. While it actually makes sense in some cases like precursor crafting, I don’t think this secrecy helps with things like the commander tag changes.

Keeping everything top secret also often suggests bigger changes than what will end up in game and you get called out on hyping things beyond their actual scope, which could be prevented. You put all changes into the same “top secret” category.

Behind the scenes material often helps creating a nicer environment also, besides being incredibly interesting, is this an idea to run parallel the the customer relations changes that are incoming? At one point.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is actually much less frustrating to just say it like i see it. I hope though that this approach is taken in the spirit it is intended and not in a negative way.I tend to be like this on CDIs.
Chris

With the chance of assuming too much, that’s pretty much how the internet works no? If you’re being upfront honest people can feel it and will
1. give you less sarcastsic bs or more honest bs (it’s still bs)
2. organize themselves and their feedback in an equally honest way.

People on the internets are very very very used to the marketing lingo, over hyping and stalling by talking nice and when they/me perceive something as purely hype or marketing mumbo jumo, they’ll react in an “appropriate” way.

Chris, reading from your posts it seems like the biggest problem of CDI’s is time. Which translates into the amount of words you have to read, mostly.

Here are some suggestions for better organizing those threads. Key would be to heavily involve the community to tackle the chores in the initial phases of the CDI so you could focus on feedback from streamlined summaries.

• Get 1-2 MVPs per CDI. Regina mentioned DigitalKirin and Lilith Ajit, ask those kind of players for help and many would offer their assistance.
• Create several CDI’s per topic to keep things tight. Or clarify stages within the CDI.
• Create one for initial feedback that gets sorted & analyzed by mvps. Try to get similar wordings or buzzwords for topics and ideas that appear the most. This way you can easily gauge quantity.
• After you closed the first, open another one for reiteration, basically summaries from mvps and revised feedback from anybody else. based on all the other ideas that came after ones initial one. Here is where devs jump in more frequently. Players leave out information not essential to keep posts short.
• In the final thread you’d start with the issues you have found to be addressed best/first and possibly could explain why. So players get a feel of what areas might need improved but cannot due to time restraints or technical issues.

Thank you for taking your time, a CDI for creating great CDIs sounds like a great plan.

Do you think it would be possible to get written or numeric feedback from a wider player base ingame? With the forums only representing a small portion of the player base, do you think it’s a good enough average of opinion?

Have a great sunday!

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Simpler suggestion:

1) Turn it on.
2) Trust players to be able to zoom out if they can’t see properly.

It’s not about seeing properly and more about skills and effects not being displayed the right way. You could also examine every texture up close and their visuals are optimized for a certain viewing distance, I suppose. This wouldn’t change for instance even if you run up close to a wall, the camera would still be behind the invisible you (only in the screenshot of course, the character never disappears in game).

what you have suggested is pretty much what players have been saying the last 2 years, I figured I take a different approach.

Hamfast.8719:

The simplest solutions are usually the best!

Thank you, I agree. Using a true first person perspective and subsequent changes to skills and effects would be lots of work, phasing the player out for screenshot would not.

Every time I log into the game, my favorite dyes get reset. This happens on both mac and windows, for all characters. It only resets them to a specific time, not erase them completely. For instance, my guardian will always have 1 favorite dye, I can add some but when I log out it doesn’t save this information it seems.

It’s quite annoying and I wanted to ask if anybody else has the same problem.

I can apply dyes to armor without a problem. I have reinstalled gw2 several times over the last weeks o windows and mac.

I have submitted a ticket but wanted to ask if somebody know about an easy fix.

thank you!

Hi,

Could you consider giving us an option to phase out the player character when taking screenshots?

pros:

• Since we’d see the results only outside of the game it wouldn’t break immersion within the game like a toggle fpp option would be.
• Lets you compose while seeing the character and it would also take a regular screenshot.
• No camera height adjustment for the different races, since the camera stays in place
• No new/adjusted animations
• Usable only out of combat, outside of dialog & not available during personal or living story, one can always revisit those places (some) for screenshots.
  -> Since fighting always indicates a direct interaction with the world originating from the player, the 3rd person perspective is justified I believe
• You could make it an item, like a camera or a turtle sitting in a cloud. Charge for it and create overpriced hipster bundles. Or a dedicated key, like stereoscopic screenshots
• Enables us to create screenshots for an audience to project their own ideas instead of forcing associations with the character displayed.

cons:

• Can be mistaken for official screenshots?
• People could say you are charging for something that is free. Easy fix -> don’t charge

I’d also like to ask you to revisit the decision made two years ago regardless of this proposition. I’m sure you had a more comprehensive list of pros and cons and if possible could you re-examine those if it is feasible to do so.
If you come to the same conclusion with additional/new reasons, can you communicate those with the players?

There are two ideas clashing I believeo

• the world being persistent and existing regardless of the presence of the player character and thus should be possible to be viewed “naturally” without the schizophrenic nature of the 3rd person perspective
• and two, the idea that within Guild Wars 2, the player character is the most valuable asset and/or best feature in the game and should be displayed at all times.

Tl;dr

give camera or option to create fpp screenshot, doesn’t change angle/perspective, compose with character in picture, save 2 screenshots with/out pc, prevents immersion breaking fpp toggle option, hipster bundle, it’s not that long go read it plz

Please not all devs at once, your presence in the forums is obnoxious!

Thank you and have a great weekend and anniversary!

1. What I could see is some sort of affection mechanic between PC and DE2.0 to resolve sometime in the next 2-3 months? Perhaps starting now, to determine what 2 character will join you most likely at point x to fight y?

• I’m thinking about choosing between Rox and Braham to find the caravan.

• How about most of the time when you gather your party before venturing forth, one of them would be unavailable and you’d have to chose between two of the remaining 4? (5 if anybody else believes frostbite & PC are enough to tackle even the most daunting foes)

• Include other NPCs like Smodur, Anise & Phlunt

2. Additional to this, the group could be split up more often during missions in order to coordinate across a map to reach their goals. Make it actual missions with fake progress bars so replayablility is a core aspect of LS2+

• Since you would be travelling with one companion only, you can use these missions and 1on1 with the commander to further flesh out their personality while giving the missions a unique feel and flavor for everybody to chose from.

• If you like sneaking, you could do the infiltration/assassination mission together with Jory. Meanwhile Braham is protecting Taimi who is building bigger lasers while Kas and Rox distract the enemy.

One of the drawbacks of the Personal Story is, that you chose one order, go with their plans but it is not communicated well enough that there are 2 other equally important orders doing their own thing in order to reach the same goal.

This might work better in a small group like DE2.0.

The PC used to be a commander of an army, now he might find special forces more efficient in battling an asymmetric war with an eluding enemy such as Mordy.

There have been some nice choices to make, such as the caravan example, I think this is the better way than options that stretch over more than one release and would have to be considered in upcoming releases. It seems like a lot of work for little gain.

John Smith.4610:

1. We prototyped several ideas, but ended up going pretty basic. I really like the idea of charity sinks that have a larger visual affect on the world or help surrounding people.

2. I’ve been meaning to check up on Heal-o-tron. That money should have been used properly, but I did see him recently with what appeared to be a very expensive fur coat, definitely need to follow up on that.

3. It never occurred to me to think about it, I have no idea.

4. Identifying exploiters early in the game had a lot of very hard decisions involved.

1. nice to hear

2. “winter is coming joke” – quite the journey for a robot though, looking forward to seeing him in action again soon. I’d love to hear his position also, before judging fine clothing. capes.

3. ok

4. Identifying exploiters or defining “exploiters”? Decisions made for systems to be put in place for finding them or the decision where to draw the line?

Hey John, thank you for answering the questions here and talking to the community in general, it’s appreciated.

1. When you came up with voluntary/charity gold sinks, how far did you take it in concept and did you turn down the idea of more visually impactful donations? Such as speeding up reconstruction of certain parts of Lions Arch or rewarding donors with a name/donor’s plaque, depending on how generous donations were.
   Did the money that went to Heal-o-tron actually had an impact on reconstructing Lions Arch?
   If the Asura ever decide to crowd found a biggest-mega-laser, I’d be happy to speed up construction and fuel corruption.
2. Why does a bottle of Elonian Wine cost 25s 4c instead of a flat 25s or 24.99s?
3. What was the hardest decision you had to make since Launch?

I have searched through your messages by highlighting “hobo” and “heal” but I didn’t find anything. Didn’t look for the other questions.

Have a great weekend

Hi Mike,

Thank you for taking the time to post in the forums, it means a lot.

I’m afraid you did not elaborate on Anet’s position, this information has been stated before and nobody doubts you guys wanting to create great content.

The past has shown that many decision were made that seemed like obvious mistakes, such as temporary content, the atlas, short stories/lore outside of the game or most recent the commander tags.

What happened after the announcement that a legendary scavenger hunt is being looked at, is unfortunate. The resulting policy of not giving speculative information because you don’t want anybody to suffer only makes sense to me if it is in the context of individual features. I don’t think that you can equate the scavenger hunt with the commander tags for instance. Doing so feels like overreacting to me.

If you don’t talk about small features before adding them, some of those will receive a large amount of negative feedback which then will cause you to allocate precious time to fixing those things, that could have been prevented in the first place.

Arenanet has a lot of very intelligent people, based on the product I can play. But it sometimes feels like you work under too much regulation created by yourselves. Also, dev testing doesn’t show flaws in the system as well as some sort of public testing. No Dev could ever play nearly as much as some users.
Which is great, as this means there is more work put into the game. It also means that there might be unnecessary work put into the game.
Everybody wants a different better game but if you can find the common interests of the enthusiast player base, that has improve your workflow somehow.

There have been changes made in how the teams work on the Living Story, maybe it is worth revisiting your policies once a year and reevaluate them as one year is a lot of time online.
What people here also want to tell you is that they believe it would help you create a better game for everybody. The CDI threads have shown that constructive feedback is readily available.

Unrelated to most but, I’d just like to add that the treatment the mac community has been getting regarding a mac native client is downright offending. It is not ok. We are paying customers and we are being completely and utterly ignored for the longest time. Please have somebody look into this. I’m not exaggerating if I say the strongest feeling towards this kind of treatment is disgust and disbelieve at the fact that this kind of treatment still exists. The negative impact seems to be way bigger than the benefit you are getting from falsely advertising the game for more than windows. There are users from other language forums trying to reach somebody because their situation is even worse.

Thanks again for taking your time.

hey roamer

can you double click again and just give it 15 minutes? I know, sounds stupid but there has been a case I read, where the combination of “installation hung up” + “wait for a little while” came up. if the forums’ search function worked at all, I’m sure I could have double checked this info -_-
hope it works for you soon, with or without esoteric remedies.

just open a support ticket anyway so anet has it documented, the forums and mac community is largely being ignored or tried to appease to without any tangible results, unfortunately.

Snowman.9762:

Are you kidding? Your described steps did not help in my case. It is the awfullest dissappoint in my game life. I have spent more then 5 hours to fix it, and now I just want to refund my money for game which I have owned. Please inform me about steps which are necessary to get refund.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/27697743-Refunds

if you don’t have a windows system running you can hopefully get a refund, good luck

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If someone you care about got hurt, would you go rub their face with mascara, because that’s basically what tending to the avatar is doing.

New karma vendor item: MordyFixx "mighty* magical mending mascara against anything** corrupt*** – cures stage 1-3**** dragon corruption, gut punches, headaches, crits and viny rashes*****. "

and for the avatar being a nexus for communication with others one could also argue that it might be easier to focus healing on the most receptive spot.
Since it doesn’t matter where they heal the pale tree, they could chose the relative safety of world leaders and the commander of the pact united. (we are THE commander now again? whatever, that’s something else). This way they could also tend to the other victims of the attack in this vicinity if need be.

We also don’t see if others are down below, healing closer to the roots.

The world summit itself was rather boring. “we got our own problems” “yeah, for two years now, in the starter areas, u wouldn’t understand, dragon is more urgent, let’s unite” “mmh kay”

nice “the feels” afterwards

NSKL.3174:

Hi guys and hopefully ANet (<3)
I’d love to be able to run GW2 in Windowed Fullscreen on my iMac as I use my iPad as a 2nd display and would like to use it for displaying TS and what not. I think this would really improve my PvP performance and my gaming experience in general.

As Windowed Fullscreen is already an option in the Windows client I hope it will be possible to implement for us on OSX.

Best regards

hey,

There is no dedicated windowed full screen or fake fullscreen option in the settings. The only thing you can do is tick the window box and then go to window -> full screen on the menu bar on top.

Doesn’t improve fps for me though but it might do the trick for the second monitor? The window option box stays selected after switching to fullscreen again like this.

If I get it right though, this would mean that it is a real fullscreen on mac os side with a windowed screen on the client side but the mac os x settings override the wrapper?

let me know

cheers

You just killed a quaggan, congrats

edit
hason.4786 there is no post showing, if for whatever reason you see text

Did you check the windows support forum as well?

It was patch day so problems can be expected, especially for the mac client. I’m having the client quit “randomly” as well but only when I use high graphics settings (with high I mean medium to high on 1280) .
I haven’t had crashes with low settings but I also haven’t played for that long (max 1.5h).
I’ll just be using windows until they fixed it, maybe the lowering of settings helps you?

I’m not even gonna bother with the crashes this time around…
If you would like to try some things though, this thread might help

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Basic-Mac-Beta-Client-Troubleshooting/first#post2480238

Can you post your specs as well? Makes it easier for other users and the devs to see which machines are hurt this time.

Enjoy the patch though, cheers

what OS version are you running?

Todd.8162:

Adesia.5138:

No one here is confused about what beta means; it’s been two years, we want an answer if ArenaNet is going to work on creating a native client or not. It has nothing to do with commitment and everything to do with just wanting an honest answer about what the future holds for those of us using Macs to play GW2. :P

Easy. I can answer that for you: None of your business. No money-making company is going to shoot it’s mouth off about what products it plans to create. That would be stupid to reveal that to competitors.

You also DON’T know what “beta software” means if you think there’s some sort of timeline attached to it or suggestion of some magical “native” software in the future.

it is in their store though, available for purchase, this is pretty much a product created. if you paid money for a product that is advertised as running well on certain machines and if it turns out this is not the case, it sure is ones business.
perpetual betas are a thing but since the game itself is feature complete, the only thing left is performance optimization but this is limited due to the wrapper not being able to use more than 3gb ram (2gb on 32bit, 3gb on wrap?) and gw2 can be quite taxing

Todd.8162:

What the heck is the matter with you people? It’s BETA software. It’s always been beta software. Arena Net has always been up-front honest that it’s beta software.

Where’s the expectation that it’s ever going to be something more than beta software? Do you people even know what beta software is or means ??

the beta tag suggests that the software is past development and in a testing phase, but in reality it’s the windows client (not a beta) running in an emulated windows environment (not beta).
when they announced gw2 was coming to mac, people expected/hoped for a native client. the expectation of it ever going to be more than beta comes from the word beta I guess?

mostly I’m a bit annoyed that nobody even bothers to comment on the development/existence of a native client.

few months ago I was wishing/wanting/asking for a native client, now I’d really just like to know what is going on.