Guild Wars 2

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

SonOfJacob.7396:

I thought it would be cool if instead of dropping ascended rings, they dropped ascended TICKETS/TOKENS. That way, you can choose what you want, if you want to use them, and the tokens would STACK. Hell, even make it another type of currency in the wallet. Include accessories and amulets from the vendor. Elegant, permanent solution.

But doesn’t Pristine do just that?

Yeah, but I think SonOfJacob wants an “Ascended ring box” to drop rather than a ring itself. Wherein if the RNG deems you lucky enough to receive a box, you get to choose any ring (rather than having to save up 10 Pristine Fractal Relics.)

I, personally, think Pristine relics are a great compromise. After 10 sets of Fractals, you can choose whatever un-infused ring you want. (Or, if you get lucky and have your ring drop, you can convert them to regular fractal relics to help you afford the Gift of Ascension.)

Nick.6972:

Arena Net has already shown how much they care about the Fractals, might as well merchant them.

Well, Fractals are likely the only “dungeons” to ever get attention.

They’re getting their own Mastery line, for whatever that’s worth.
At least Masteries will be account-wide (yes, Ascended gear is now account-bound… but it’s still a hassle to trade gear between characters.)

I’m kind of hoping HoT brings other types of Legendary gear (as Colin had teased back in 2013…)

Legendary rings would basically make Ascended rings worthless… (Though, maybe they’ll do some crazy Mystic Forge recipe requiring you to have one of each Infused Ascended ring to make a Legendary ring.)

eithinan.9841:

No character in the game needs Ascended armor. They have the option of getting them.

This is likely why they haven’t announced any new dungeons/fractals for the expansion yet.

Higher stat gear only really becomes noticeable if you’ve got instanced content for a small group (like a group of 5 players)…

The more players, the less gearing is an issue. (Yes, if you’ve got an entire map wearing Ventari/Nomad gear… Then you probably won’t fare well against Vinewrath, but that’s not likely.)

I think open-world “raids” are the way that ArenaNet plans to design future content, which greatly diminishes the usefulness of Ascended’s stat boost. (It’s very nice to have the gear be account-bound, though.)

Draknar.5748:

Bernie.8674:

Draknar.5748:

The buy price according to GW2spidy is 2s5c. A year ago when I made my Ascended armor, I was putting in buy orders for 1s95c-2s….

How much silk is actually selling at that price? Were there 699,111 stagnant silk buy orders a year ago? The buy price doesn’t mean much in an environment where so many buyers are lining up to outbid you.

Check the link. It shows historical data on actual sales.

I hate to ruin the illusion, but they don’t have information on “actual sales”… Only John Smith has that data.

GW2Spidy (and other TP sites) only approximate sales by disappearing buy/sell orders.
(Which may be off… As I’d imagine people cancel buy orders if they’ve been heavily outbid. I don’t necessarily know how GW2Spidy handles that.)

The issue with this, in my opinion, is that Guild Wars 2 is setup entirely differently than GW1.

The fundamental differences (i.e. GW2 having live servers with mobs having respawn timers, rather than instanced servers) make “Vanquisher” stuff near impossible to implement without completely writing new code for Hard Mode.

Secondly, GW2 implemented scaling as a way to try to keep old zones relevant. (And Ascended crafting functions similarly, by still requiring low-level mats.) This isn’t the same as Hard Mode, obviously, but I think it greatly decreases the chances of it happening.

Last, but not least, Hard Mode in GW1 was fairly simple (code-wise) changes.
Buff all monsters to appropriate levels and armor. Give change the skill-bars of low-level monsters giving them elites.

TL;DR: What you’re asking (giving champs better moves, server-code changes) would require a lot of work. I don’t think it would pay off in the long run.

I, for one, would much rather just have ArenaNet work on more new zones like the Silverwastes while occasionally adding new event chains and such to old maps (and changing/improving them in other ways).

It seems clear that Beserker gear is the most useful stat combo in PvE for a variety of reasons. (None of which are very easy to fix: mob intelligence, mob attacks, server limits on conditions)

Therefore, I’d like to suggest a few minor additions:

• Healing Power: Add boon duration to this.
• Condition Damage: Add outgoing condition duration to this.
• Toughness: Reduce incoming condition duration (would synergize well with vitality)
• Vitality: Add increased endurance regen.

Note: I’m not suggesting massive boosts. Just very minor benefits to each (like a percentage point per 21 of each stat or something).

Gewd.8125:

I’m sure there’s more than a dozen people who bought a bunch of keys expecting the permanent hair stylist contract to be temporary.

This is really a bad thing for ANET to do to their customers. If they say something is going to be temporary, it should be temporary because it factors into purchasing decisions.

Now I expect everything that is “temporary” to always come back such as mystic conduits, greatsaws, and ghastly grinning shields.

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not…

Everything that’s put in the game should be expected to have a possibility of coming back.

The Escape from LA release should be a prime example of that. You could obtain the Molten Jetpack as a possible reward from it. People that were lucky enough to get it during Flame & Frost were furious, because they were told “once the dungeon’s gone, there’ll be no way to obtain this again.”

It simply doesn’t make sense from a gameplay (or sales, in the case of the hair stylist) perspective to severely limit the availability of a popular item.

What about all the players that are considering buying keys now?

If they want the hair stylist contract… That might actually make their decision to buy keys.

John Smith.4610:

1. Use a specifically non-random NG.

I like the idea behind NRNG, especially Wildstar’s. However, it seems that there are still quite a few issues with it.

As has been pointed out, not all gear of the same level is the same. A Ventari Ascended Longbow, for instance, is (mostly) worthless in comparison to a Zojja’s Ascended Longbow.

Likewise, I’m sure you’re very aware of the disparity in pricing amongst various precursors. A Dusk is much more greatly valued than the underwater weapons.

John Smith.4610:

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

This, in my mind, is similar to Mawdrey and Silky Sand.

Silky sand, as a drop, infuriates me… More often than not, you get nothing from it (or a single Geode). It’s wasted time and energy to click on an RNG box.

Mawdrey is a nice Bloodstone Dust sink… but it doesn’t really encourage me to go farming Bloodstone Dust for loot.

John Smith.4610:

2.5: “Add secondary reward mechanisms (ie. token based system) alongside the primary RNG system; allow progress to be made even when you don’t get the result you want.”

I very much like 2.5.

Have the tokens (and maybe also a Karma cost to give Karma a new use) grant you account-bound versions of drops. (i.e. Tequatl could drop Teq tokens that could be used to get account-bound loot from his loot table… Like the mini, Runes of the Sunless, aqua breathers, a Weapon of the Sunless, or even an account-bound Precursor if you get enough tokens and karma.)

I think everyone, generally, likes how dungeon tokens work. If the rest of the game worked similarly, I think it’d be better.

Edit: To clarify why I suggest account-bound for 2.5: This would allow the token system and existing RNG to better coexist as people couldn’t exchange tokens for valuable items to resell. Keeping the token & karma cost of items like Precursors high would, as a result, keep the value of Precursors high.

This is insanely annoying. Finally got to the goggles (on my level 80) in Dry Top to discover that I couldn’t use them.

This is absurd.

A simple level check would have sufficed. Why make a complex “unlock” mechanic?

“if (level > X) { allow use; }”

As Afya said, it’s not that Zerker is the problem. It’s just what happens to work best in the broken gameplay.

ANet set out to “abolish the trinity” and so there’s no tanking or healing. It’s an afterthought.

You’ll still go down in just a few hits from a boss, even if you have a full toughness/vitality build. The whole OHKO mechanic would have to change.

This renders tough/vit basically worthless from a gameplay perspective. You have to learn to dodge regardless.

What’s the difference in going down in 5-6 hits as opposed to 2-3?

There are far too many issues to list with conditions.

And heals are mostly self-centric. You only get one dedicated heal slot.

TL;DR:
I think toughness, vitality, and healing power need to be completely reworked to make them viable.
Toughness: Increases evasiveness/blocking chances (in addition to increasing armor).
Vitality: Increases dodge recharge (in addition to adding HP).
Healing Power: Tie it in with boon effectiveness and duration.
Condition Damage: Tie it with condition duration.

After seeing the recent patch notes about toning down the 7-Series Golem skill…

Have the Inquest golems also, mistakenly, been made more powerful as a result of the feature patch?

I’ve noticed the golems in Dry Top seem to hit significantly harder than before.

Since you now receive your elite at level 40, it seems like a lot of the woes caused by recent patches (like trait changes and the NPE) could be resolved by making the effective time to level from 1-40 resemble the time to leveling to 30 previously.

I realize that leveling up to 20 is now reduced, but it seems like leveling from 20 to 40 should be greatly reduced as well.

Granted, I think trait changes could also be alleviated by giving you a trait point every 5 levels (as opposed to 6) starting at level 10 (rather than 30).

It’s a very dangerous thing in my opinion (especially with the current state of Ascended crafting).

All Ascended armors require lots of Damask (3 per insignia, at the very least).

This will keep silk at a premium. (It’s 100 silk per Damask, while it’s only 50 thick leather per Elonian leather)

Reducing silk drops to just light armor wearers is a very bad decision.

Even if it’s just “pre-80”, that still means that light armor professions will have a much easier time leveling than others. (As their gear will be worth more, especially once salvaged.) This results in an imbalance of wealth to light armor wearers.

I definitely agree, this could be very harmful for medium armor classes.

Leather is basically worthless.

Meanwhile, light armor classes would benefit from all the silk (which is much more costly).

Damask (and therefore Silk, etc.) is REQUIRED for all Ascended armor.

John Smith.4610:

The gem pool expands when players trade in gems for gold. If you assume two stockpiles of currency, it works pretty much exactly like you would expect.

You have mentioned in the past (if I recall correctly) that the Gem/Gold ratio isn’t purely based on the exchange, though.

Are there restrictions in place to prevent the rate from dropping too low?
(i.e. Let’s say a group of people collaborated to buy millions of gems and trade them for gold in an attempt to drastically reduce the ratio of Gold to Gems.)

If they all hit “Exchange” at once while the rate was very favorable, they could amass a large amount of gold prior to the rate dropping.

If, say, 100 Gems then dropped from being worth 10g to 1g… They could easily buy back gems and, in effect, cheat the system.

Are there restrictions in place to prevent this?

To be honest, I’ve been having lag issues as well.

I’m using AT&T.

Just did a speed test. I have a 32 ms ping with 15 Mbps down.

I’m fairly certain the issue is server-side.

For the past day, I’ve had unbearable lag along with random disconnects.

Is it just me?

I think it’s just server-wide lag.

I’ve been experiencing the same.

And the irony of it all is that you have to buy the gathering nodes separately…
800 gems for 3 trees.
800 gems for 3 mining nodes.
900 gems for ONE home instance stone to split between all characters.

I thought about it… And I’d be more than willing to shell out $10 (or maybe even $15) for 30-days worth of added bonuses:
- Unlimited hair style changes.
- Unlimited transmutation charges.
- Mystic Forge from anywhere. (if you want to throw away items… why not be able to do it anywhere?)
- Banking from anywhere.
- Ability to summon a Black Lion merchant anywhere.
- Unlimited mining, lumber chopping, and harvesting for all characters.
- Easy transit to home instance.
- Home instance boosts (i.e. trees, mine nodes, and a garden).
- Magic Find boost. (But who’s kidding… it’s broken anyway.)

Other pay-to-play games already have many of these conveniences.

They’re all also already implemented in Guild Wars 2.
I’d just request a specific UI for this “prestige”… So that we don’t have to juggle silly items around on various characters.

In my opinion, this would greatly boost Gem Store profits and make the game all the more enjoyable.

None of the benefits are necessarily game breaking nor do they provide any sort of strategic advantage over people without this.

Just implement it in a way that all these benefits are provided for a time-limited period. That would be the hardest part. (And precisely why I think it’d be worth implementing a special UI for all this.)

AlphaNeonic.1925:

The goal is to get people to end up spending 20-40 dollars on one black lion weapon skin.

No one in their right mind would pay that much upfront, but when you obfuscate the cost behind all the hoops you have to jump through to get the black lion claim ticket, people don’t realize it and keep buying those keys.

Exactly. They’re basically tricking people into spending more money. (Like casinos, etc.)
I will note, Apple and Google have come under scrutiny for apps that do this very thing.

AlphaNeonic.1925:

It’s a shame it went this route to be honest. It leaves some players who want to support the game without a viable avenue to do so.

Agreed. I gladly bought $50 worth of Gems during the “Scruffy mini & Quaggan backpack” promotion to show my appreciation for the final parts of LS1.

Unfortunately, for me currently… There’s not much that I want to buy with Gems.

It’s sad, because Gem purchases benefit the game in multiple ways.
Gold to Gem purchases benefit the economy by way of a gold sink.
Cash to Gem purchases obviously benefit ArenaNet by way of actual cashflow.

The ley line weapons are decent skins that I’m sure many people would buy outright.

As they are now, RNG weapons are really just a horrible attempt at monetization.

Currently the skins are around 50g each. Only taking 7.5g out of the economy when they’re sold. (with the 15% tax)

By comparison:
Kasmeer’s staff skin was 600 Gems.

Assuming 13g to buy 100 Gems, each skin would take 78g out of the economy (thus providing a very nice gold sink for people with loads of gold.)

That’s 10x more gold taken out of the economy PER SKIN.

Conversely, it would also encourage sensible people to actually buy Gems. (Any reasonable person should acknowledge that Black Lion Keys are a waste of cash.)

Currently, you can (on a good day) get 10g per 100 Gems. That’s just 500 Gems (or $6) per skin. (Less total cash in ANet’s pocket than simply selling the skins at 600 Gems each.)

TL;DR:
BLC drop rates are pathetic (like real-life gambling)
The game’s economy and ArenaNet’s coffers would be better served by simply selling skins.

Siobhan.6027:

I was disappointed as well. The same thing can be said about the kitten scavenger hunt for the backpiece.

Perhaps, once again, they should take a look back at this awesome game called Guild Wars. There was this really cool scavenger hunt once.

Linsey Murdock was primarily responsible for the Moa Chick scavenger hunt, if I remember correctly.

She was also supposedly working on a “precursor hunt”, but we wound up with the horrid Ascended weapon crafting instead.

My only ascended weapon has come from a chest in WvW. No plans on crafting any.

Rytlock, Eir, and Logan may be well known and influential…

But they’re still not recognized as the “leader” of their respective races.

The Pact’s already been aware of Mordremoth and have been taking action and planning. (Hence Traeherne’s letter that he’ll be there.)

We have to meet at the Grove, because I don’t think the Pale Tree can make her avatar appear elsewhere.

I’ve done Bria’s event before…

I liked it for the whole “Hansel & Gretel” type of feel to the event.
It’s like a real ghost/witch story to scare little Charr cubs into being good kits.

Was any of the post-event dialog new? I don’t remember it, but it’s probably been over a year since I did the event before.

The ultimate secret? Both Magdaer and Sohothin together are required to break the curse.

My prediction: Eir will deliver the re-forged Magdaer to Logan. Once Rytlock returns, the two bro-tastic characters will be required to work together to break the curse.

Maybe it’ll be part of the stipulation of the big summit.

(Though, I strongly suspect the summit will be interrupted. Much like the Queen’s speech.)

It’s nice to have a visual confirmation that nothing’s left to be done in certain instances (the ones that don’t have the big “reward” pop-up at the end of them), though.

Perhaps adding an option to the main menu would be best?

I liked the “follow” in that he wouldn’t stop in the middle of a group and start attacking.

You could completely ignore the air elementals because of this.

It seems very much like the promised, but ultimately not implemented, Companion system.

I’d very much like them to fully implement the Companion system (with a decent UI, which would probably be the hardest part).

Let us take one of Destiny’s Orphans with us into Dungeons.

Wanze.8410:

Mikei The Mighty.8690:

I also can see as someone 28 risen priest of balthazar mini’s, that the ability to forge them would drastically lower the value of other mini exotics. Would u ever consider changing the rarity of an item?

Just to chip in on this one, this actually already happened. There was a seasonal mini, which initially had a “rare” rarity but quite a high droprate and a low price on the tp. Iirc, it was the Mini Holographic Risen Knight, which dropped from Dragon Coffers during last years Dragon Bash. People started mass forging them, which basically crashed the price of exotic mini´s. A couple of days into Dragon´s Bash, they patched its rarity down to Masterwork.

Edit: Found the patch note post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-11th-2013/first#post2207230
Changed the rarity of the Mini Holographic Risen Knight from Rare to Masterwork to reflect the actual value of the item.

The argument could be made that this could also provide a decent karma sink.

At an estimated 1% chance for a Mini Risen Priest… That’s an average of 455000 karma for each one. Nearly 2 million karma for a single random exotic mini?

In total honesty, there seem to be much better karma-to-gold methods out there.

Edit: Granted, I also fail to take into account the other drops of the Lost Orrian box.

John Smith.4610:

Lord Kuru.3685:

John Smith.4610:

3. Halloween 2 candy corn sinks. There was an insane amount of candy corn in the world (10’s of billions) and we underestimated the distribution of those materials and cranked up the sinks too high. This made it very difficult to interact with those sinks at all and it didn’t feel good.

Can we infer from this that a large number of people quit the game between Halloween 1 and Halloween 2, essentially taking those billions of candy corn out of the economy (without literally doing so)? Or something else?

I wouldn’t infer a smoking gun, rather a series of different possibilities that all add up.

The issue I have with the “10s of billions” remark is a simple mathematical one.

We know that by the end of 2012, 3 million copies of GW2 had been sold.

1 billion = 1,000 million.

I fail to see how it made any sense to make candy corn cobs cost 1,000 candy corn (same with the other Halloween materials).

So “10s of billions of candy corn” is actually more like “10 cobs per player.”

I know that personally, I was saving my candy corn with the goal of eventually crafting the shortbow. I, honestly, gave up on that goal (and didn’t even play Halloween last year) because of the massive spike in materials required.

From the Wiki, I saw that there were other decent items that could be purchased with cobs (i.e. sinks). In my opinion, it should have probably been more of a 250:1 rather than 1000:1 conversion.

EvanTeicheira.3962:

• What game client are you using? (Windows / Mac)
• What are your current graphics settings?
• Are you playing in full screen or windowed mode?
• Is your inventory full or maxed out?
• Do you play with bags displayed or hidden?

• Windows
• Low
• Full-screen
• Have 20-slot bags in filling all standard slots. At least 1/2 full all the time.
• Bags are hidden.

Additionally, I try to keep my inventory window large enough to have 10 columns and display all the rows.

This may occasionally be as large as the screen (perhaps that impacts the “shrinkage”) if I’m not using an external monitor with my Surface.

I think the biggest issue here is that we’re left with questions.

If this had been an expansion (or the original Personal Story), we’d just continue with the next story and be fine.

The key issue here is that the story writers seem to want the Sylvari to end up being scapegoats this season.

Everyone will start blaming the Sylvari, up until the final showdown with Mordremoth and then miraculously the Pale Tree will sacrifice herself to take him down and save all of Tyria from utter desertification. Thus redeeming the entire race of Sylvari for their individual faults.

I’m almost certain you’ll be able to pry it from her cold, dead hands in the next release.

And then Marjory will beg you for it as a memento of her sister’s sacrifice.

Seriously, sending Belinda off by herself to Fort Salma when there’s all these new dangers afoot?

And then we’ll get Marjory blaming herself for half of the season and Kasmeer reassuring her “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known that the thorns or Triad would get her.”

Exosferatu.2961:

I think Arena Net should include a medium difficulty jumping puzzle in the future Elder Dragon fights like Mordremoth. Which means… there has to be a phase where we have to ride on the Elder Dragon before it flies, and while it is flying we have to climb it and get to its head/wings/weak spot to attack it. When an elder dragon is barrel-rolling (slow because of its mass) we have to climb its sides to avoid falling off to death.

What do you think? Personally, I think Arena Net should pick up on this. Most raid/boss fights in MMORPGs require you to look at the telegraphed attack on the ground – always, so why not add something new, right?

I’ll reiterate prior sentiments about this feeling too much like a certain other MMO’s multi-segment boss.

And time-based jumping puzzles suck on many levels. Especially if you have any lag.

I’d much rather the Zephryites turn us into an Aspect of Glint (or us riding Glint’s offspring into battle: everyone wanted mounts) and giving us an entirely new skill set for an air battle with the dragon. (Ultimately resulting with a ground battle, which again, might resemble another MMO but what can you do…)

Granted, air combat would probably be disliked much like underwater combat.

Mattus.1345:

I hope, there will be more than 1 zone added to the world map on July 1st, but ONLY the first will be available. The other could be unlocked as the LS goes on…
I hope the new one will be available to player who completed personal story only – just to keep the concept of story journal

That wouldn’t make any sense, though.

You can go to Fort Trinity and Orr without doing any of the personal story.

Also, what’s the point to locking the zones via story? You lock zone 1, and no one would be able to go to any zones that branch off from it unless they had that story.

Danikat.8537:

Lost Shores wasn’t actually part of Season 1 (although Secrets of Southsun did tie the two together). It was a strand-alone release.

But it was the first content release after the game’s launch.
With that and the teaser image for S2, I’m expecting a new zone in July (whether the first or second update).

Danikat.8537:

Season 1 started with us investigating the sudden tide of refugees coming into Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel from the north, trying to find out what drove them south. (It was the dredge and the flame legion, teaming up under Scarlet.)

They’ve already acknowledged that S1 started out way too slow with too little in terms of story and explanation. It was nice to “speculate” about what was going on, but ultimately they kind of ruined it with too little tie-ins leading up to Scarlet’s big (and, IMO, lackluster) reveal.

Danikat.8537:

Only downside to my theory is it doesn’t leave much room for changes to the existing maps, since we’d be going to the dragon rather than waiting for their corruption to reach us. But I suspect that wouldn’t bother most people.

The map already shows potential dragon corruption within the Maguuma Wastes.
Everyone heard “something” when the dragon awoke. (And I thought the team was clear on it being a dragon during the Epilogue, but that seems to have been retconned.)

My thinking is that Marjory’s sister will go missing and we’ll help her investigate, only to discover some dragon corruption along the way.

I think that they’ve done a decent job developing festivals and holidays in S1.

Dragon Bash to kick off season 2 when it’s now clearly re-focused on the dragons is a great idea.

I’d honestly prefer monthly LS updates (so that they can polish each one more) with a different festival taking place simultaneously.

Festival content would, of course, still be temporal and could be tied in with each release.

Imagine, DEv2 visits Dragon Bash in awe of Lion’s Arch’s resilience when they Marjory receives a report that her sister has gone missing and so she and Kasmeer go off to investigate while Braham, Rox, and Taimi stick around in Lion’s Arch to have some fun.

Each story quest doesn’t need the WHOLE team.

eekzie.5640:

The biggest fear Anet has is that their park will become too big to fill up the rides nicely… but as long as they are special/fun enough people will continue to do them.
And that is the biggest fear I have. Looking at the quality of the past LS, a lot of it felt subpar. It was nice and fun, because every 2-4 weeks new stuff is thrown at you. But it didn’t leave me longing back to many of the occurances.

I think this is primarily why they focused on the Feature Pack after the end of Living Story Season 1.

Megaservers will serve to ensure that all areas stay relatively populated at all times. Even if a region isn’t popular, then hopefully there’s still enough to moderately populate the map.

Around September of last year, I gave up on the Living Story.

I was tired of the sub-par bi-weekly updates that force me to rush through content in the hopes of accomplishing everything.

I didn’t come back until January. The final four LS updates were much better story-wise but I was disappointed by the lack of permanent content.

Why couldn’t a permanent dungeon have been added to Lion’s Arch?

We can do the final story dungeon and kill Zhaitan as many times as we want (but, honestly, it’s too long and dull)… Why can’t we do the same with Scarlet?

They could have taken the opportunity to make the massive zerg-fest into a dungeon instance of Lion’s Arch and give us new armor and dungeon tokens to grind for.

They should have focused on developing technology to have it be like Vizunah Square in GW1, with 3 different “teams” that enter the instance at one time.

Scarlet’s armor could have been a nice skin to grind for. (Granted, they sold it on the Gem Store… but I think they should be more focused on retaining players.)

TL;DR:
Battle for Lion’s Arch should have been a dungeon instance added permanently to Lion’s Arch.

Granted it was a very low chance, but it’s the only thing confirmed to drop the Permanent Hairstyle Contract

Shifu.4321:

Cloth is used by all armor crafting disciplines, not just for tailoring.

Also the reason why it’s high is because of damask, which is used in a LOT of things. All the ascended armor uses it, and some back pieces as well. In comparison, the ascended leather is used on medium ascended only (and ascended back pieces that require 15 types).

You can compare the number of recipes yourself:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bolt_of_Damask
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elonian_Leather_Square

IMO heavy armor should require leather + ingots instead, since that makes more sense.

I’d agree about the heavy armor…

But Ascended insignias still require 3 Bolts of Damask each… Which is 3 per piece of Ascended armor.

By comparison, most medium or heavy armor “linings” only need 1 Damask (except for head armor which needs 2).

I don’t think Ascended crafting was all that well thought out aside from “WE NEED A MASSIVE MATERIAL SINK!”

We could have a certain maniacal Sylvari show up and steal Tixx’s airship.

Shortly before Scarlet’s devastating invasion of Lion’s Arch, she began experimenting with time travel.

She was modifying her twisted clockwork portal device to allow her to be in multiple places at once. During testing, she randomly appeared aboard an airship.

She knocked out Tixx and reprogrammed Toxx whilst stealing the airship (and along with it, all of the toys destined for the homeless children in Lion’s Arch.)

Cue a dungeon instance to retake Tixx’s Infinarium from Scarlet and the Aetherblades and save Christmas.

(Of course, after we retake the airship, Scarlet would re-activate her device which would return her to the past. With even more vengeance to exact on Lion’s Arch.)

I get that it’s “just +2 to all stats” but still…

I thought the point to infusing my rings was that they’d be more beneficial, not less.

I think it’s in large part due to the trait changes, as has been mentioned before.

Downscaling on a level 30 character is far more detrimental than downscaling on a level 80.

My infused Lunaria and Solaria only grant +44 to each stat.

According to the Wiki, it is higher for the uninfused version.

I’ve had these rings since before the Fractured release, if that helps diagnose the issue at all.

I think that this new stance of silence is from the backlash they’ve gotten from responding.

Used to they’d respond more often, and it’d just elicit more complaints.

Theftwind.8976:

I do not believe if ANET has ever confirmed what form of random number generator they are using. Some are sad to say less random than others especially if they used a fixed “seed” number. Over time a fixed seed will return a repeating set of numbers as explained here part way down the page under the heading “Setting Seeds”.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/28548/Pitfalls-in-Random-Number-Generation

This. So much this.

We all remember the Final Rest fiasco, right?

I’m inclined to believe that ANet devs don’t even fully understand how their RNG works. (Which would explain a lot, honestly.)

This is one of the key issues I have with this whole “free content” Living Story style release structure.

It’s not free. I’ve easily paid several times what the game “costs” for Gems.

Sure, people that have plenty of time to sit around and farm gold for hours on-end can convert that gold to Gems… But the point is that Gems are, generally, more convenient to buy with cash.

If we had traditional-style expansions instead of the Gem Store, they’d have to put new Dyes, Armor, and Weapons in it to make it worth the cost.

They honestly probably make more off of Gem Store content for less work. If you can sell a SINGLE outfit for $10 (compared to however many new skins and such they’d have to come up with for an expansion)…

Heck, now they’re selling outfits piece-meal with the Lawless skins being 300 Gems each. (Yes, it comes with one free application and now can be applied infinitely after that with Transmutation Charges, but still.)

That’s 1800 Gems for a full outfit. Or $22.50 in cold, hard cash. Compare that with kitten expansion that would require a lot more work than just one outfit.

sternenstaub.8763:

I might be wrong here, but I thought you can craft it even now.
You just need the recipes that are only available during Halloween. Still, I just checked the mats yesterday and they are expensive.

Will check the complete crafting cost at the weekend and come back here, because I think I have those recipes enabled, just never had the money to buy the mats before.

Yeah, you can craft it, but the recipe for the Gift of Souls is currently 300g with only 4 listed:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/36071

The Gift of Souls then costs 70g to craft… (And then you need 20 Superior Sigils of the Night…)

With the new Wardrobe, I’d be surprised if they didn’t re-release all sorts of skins.

I’m fully expecting the Bazaar to make a come-back soon, with its back skins and helms. (Probably new stuff too.) And the SAB probably in August/September (another “back-to-school” promotion).

Likewise, I’d expect the Halloween stuff to make a comeback.

It gives people more stuff to work towards.

I think ANet has finally acknowledged that they should return to their GW1 roots with horizontal progression.

They said that the Megaserver groups you based on your language option.

Additionally, I still consider the RP argument very weak considering they probably have each other in Friends Lists (or they should add each other now that the Megaserver is in-place) or they’re probably in an RP guild.

You get grouped based on people in your Friends List and guild first.

Server identity was already faltering. I’m on Tarnished Coast, which is/was a “Full” NA server.

I’d rarely see people outside of DR, LA, or Queensdale. Even when I was in those places, I’d often get put in overflow which killed server identity more than anything else. (And when I did see people in other areas, they tended to be doing solo stuff like I was.)

Now, the Megaserver makes the game feel alive again.

Rata Sum is now packed (which it never really was before). It’s like the early days of GW2 all over again.

If anything, perhaps ArenaNet should add language distinctions to Map chat. (Like an option to specify a German-specific one.)

I’d imagine that the “soft caps” are probably in-place on these Megaserver maps.
Say a map has a hard cap of 150, then the Megaserver probably stops putting randoms in there at 100. Leaving 50 slots for friends/guildies of the other players should they go to the same map.

TL;DR: If you join a server with a specific language, you’ll be grouped with those people before random English-speaking players. If you RP, add your friends and you should be placed on a Megaserver with them.