Guild Wars 2

The real issue is that ArenaNet has not implemented any new uses for ecto.

Yes, you could make Sentinel’s armor and weapons now. But that’s like 10 ecto for an Exotic armor set, right? Hardly a drain on the economy. Especially considering most people disregard Vitality & Toughness for pure DPS anyway.

(Yes, Vit/Tough have their uses… But in the horribly flawed combat system, their benefits are greatly diminished. Even if you stack Toughness and Vitality… You’ll only get like one or two extra hits before you’re Downed. Dodging is the name of the game.)

I could have seen this coming after the Laurel vendor update. I mean, they introduce new Ascended amulets… but they’re not crafted. You can’t even craft Utility Infusions with additional Agony Resistance (and Utility Infusions are the big benefit to having an amulet).

Then the Guild Missions update… Yes, the Laurel vendor requires Laurels AND Ecto for the Ascended Accessories, but unless you’re interested in grinding the high level Fractals, I see no need for those. You could also join a HUGE guild and participate in their Guild Missions and get them for just 5g after collecting enough tokens.

And more recently, all of the weapons skins that have been introduced are Gem Store based.

ArenaNet wants money coming in, so they put weapon skins on the Gem Store…

This is the real problem with Ecto. Most long-term players (the ones with gold) will have already acquired the armor pieces and weapons that they need.

With nothing new to craft, there’s no real need for ecto. Most newbies are probably uninterested in crafting Ascendeds, since they’re probably busy doing things besides grinding the Fractals.

AlietteFaye.7316:

John Smith.4610:

Gasoline.2570:

Let’s see what the average will be

Statistically inaccurate

Surveying forums leads to massive biases including Sample Bias and Response Bias. In this case there are at least 3 other biases not being accounted for off the top of my head.

So why don’t you guys just release the “accurate” statistics, then? Stop people from having to guess and make these kinds of threads in the first place.

Probably because actually knowing the rates of return would make most reasonable people not even attempt getting one.

If you knew the rate was 1/100 (for example), would you take your chances at getting a Fused weapon? Or would you decide that buying 100 keys for just a 63% chance of getting one would be ridiculous?

It’s the same reason casino’s don’t readily publish your odds of winning. (Although, strangely enough, I think laws regulating contests require them to post your odds. See: Pretty much every contest ever. McDonald’s monopoly states this. Every online contest I’ve ever seen says “Odds are determined by number of contestants that enter.”)

If gamblers knew how much the odds were against them (and in favor of the house), then perhaps the reasonable person would stop gambling. (But this is, of course, assuming that gamblers are reasonable people, which is a faulty assumption in and of itself.)

Firebaall.5127:

800 for $10 = 0% bonus
1600 for $20 = 5% bonus
2800 for $35 = 10% bonus
4000 for $50 = 15% bonus
8000 for $100 = 20% bonus

This is common place in online games with purchased in game currency.

Anet should be giving something back (extra) to those that support the game on a higher level. With the higher option, we are doing nothing but saving Anet the transaction fees of multiple lower denomination purchases.

Crying about hosing players that can’t (or won’t) pay for the large purchase is baloney. What difference does it make to you, if player xxxxxx has an extra set of bunny ears or a few more character slots?

…..that’s right. None.

The issue with this is that you would then be able to convert it to gold and receive 20% more gold.

I’m certain the Gem/Gold conversion rate is where it is for a reason.

If there was no possibility of buying Gold, I’d agree with this wholeheartedly.

The point is to try NOT breaking the economy. (Assuming it is still in decent condition.)

Firebaall.5127:

We should all resolve to buy the $10 option (multiple times), to arrive at the amount you intended to purchase.

At worst, your CC bill will look a bit messy. At best, maybe the transaction fees will get Anet to reconsider the fact that when we buy larger amounts, they make more money. At very best, they might understand that it’s a good thing to offer bonus gems for high paying orders.

More Profit, More Gems…..happy customers, happy Anet.

ArenaNet/NCSoft may very well have a deal with the credit card companies to not have per-transaction fees and just pay an overall 2.5% or whatever.

Even if they had per-transaction fees, I’d imagine NCSoft/ArenaNet accountants would just be sitting around laughing about how much real cash they made off of fake currency.

I doubt “losing” an extra $1 here and there (on money they didn’t have to begin with) will make them lose any sleep at night.

Keep in mind, once they’ve “developed” the artwork and such for Gem Store purchases, it’s all pure profit.

We could debate about how much it actually costs to develop the Gem Store items, but I’d assume they pull in far more than they paid the artists and developers to implement said items.

UrScrewed.6183:

The new dyes are ok, but nothing special. To me nothing can beat black and white unless we get particle effect dye’s, transparent (ghostly), or shiney matallic dyes (juggernaut look). Not just another dyes who’s color is 1 shade off a dye thats worth 1s, eventhough these are RARE, who can tell that on an armor? They arn’t eye catching enough to justify the price. If i pay alot it must be cool. Please make awsome new dyes EYECATCHING and AMAZING.

And therein lies the issue with having 400+ dyes.

I like this dye system a whole lot more than GW1’s, in that I don’t have to try mixing different combos of 4 of like 10 colors (where you could use one color multiple times for differing effect) for each armor set.

However, the character bound nature of it seems purely to be a money-grab, as ArenaNet stated (during early days of beta) how amazing the dye system is and that once you unlocked a dye, it’d be available for ALL characters. (Account bound)

I don’t see the point to paying crazy prices for dyes, especially considering it’s not like people spend much time looking at your armor. Most “prestige” stuff has been relegated to back pieces and weapons (neither of which can be dyed).

I’m a level 17 Guardian and I was downleveled in Metrica Province for the Aquamint Dynamic Event, where the Krait invade the camp.

Everything was going well, when out of the blue I go from full health to nothing. (And all the NPCs around me were wiped out at the same time.)

The krait seem to have crazy AoE (and I thought the point of balancing was to make AoE not as strong as single-targeted attacks).

On my Ele, I remember doing a storyline quest with Krait and it being more difficult than it probably should have (especially considering that I was downleveled.)

Either there’s an issue with non-80s being downleveled or the Krait being too strong, or both.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I did not rally off of killing one of the Krait, either.

Aeonblade.8709:

Yea, I meant skins that people can get without real money. Should of been clear on that. 60$ is more than enough, unless they come out with some really amazing skins I doubt I’ll spend more money any time soon, sans possibly inventory upgrades. I haven’t had a space problem yet though.

I’m with you there. Though, I’ve bought several character slots and a few bank upgrades.

IMHO, they should have given us a Flame & Frost weapon ticket for completing Braham and Rox’s storylines.

That way everyone could get one weapon of their choice for free. (I’m sure there’d still be plenty of people willing to gamble their money away for more weapon skins.)

Some sort of good-will gesture from the developers would have gone a long way.

Instead, we complete the events and get silly titles that are trivial to get.

Whereas, if we had a weapon, we could be like “Yeah, I was a part of the Frost & Flame war. I lead the Charr and Norn to victory over the invaders.”

I haven’t even bothered with the story events yet… I’m overall disappointed with the Living Story. It’s still a huge improvement from the miserable Karka event.

Wiser with Age.3714:

Minos.5168:

The issue here is that Ascended gear was never planned from the beginning.

We perfectly agree on that subject. Yet the Karka Shell ring was also Unique, so it’s not just the Ascended stuff. Though to my knowledge, all of this Unique stuff didn’t exist under that massive game update that released the karka and Fractal content. So with that in mind, it’s still pretty half-baked.

The Karka Shell came during the horrible weekend event that launched Ascended gear.

IMHO, they introduced the Karka shell as a pseudo-Ascended. It’s kind of like the accessory version of the “Triforge Amulet.”

Aeonblade.8709:

Eh, I’m on the side of the fence that thinks there are too many armor sets and not enough unique weapon graphics.

I mean, half the level 80 weapons still use the same level 1 weapon graphic. That’s just…wrong.

See: Flame & Frost weapons, Wintersday weapons (both Gem Store and toy skins), Halloween weapons (both BLC and pseudo-Legendary), Consortium weapons, etc.

ArenaNet’s been introducing new weapon skins. They just want you to gamble REAL money for them.

Oh, right. They did give us the hideous Guild weapons for “free” if you are willing to join a large-enough guild.

PlagueParade.7942:

Or better yet, just make it where we can transmute the armor skins of all armors to any class we want. More variety less time consuming in making new armor skins right now instead of improving on other things like new dungeons, more maps and events, etc. (Mind you I mean just the skins NOT THE STATS of the armor).

I never really understood the point to removing profession-specific armor AND the so-called-trinity, but keeping three distinct classes of armor.

Aside from the fact that it mimics the structure of the leading MMO. (like crafting professions)

The issue with introducing new armor skins has been addressed by ArenaNet developers already:
They have to design 3 different “classes” for each armor set.
From there, they have to design for all 5 races (although, I’d argue that only the Charr and Asura need race-specific tweaking).

So that’s 15 (or 9, depending on how you want to look at it) skins for one particular armor set. Each one of those would need 6 different pieces of armor, so 90 pieces of armor for each set.

They claim this when responding to why they keep introducing new weapons and backpacks, but no new armor. They can spend a lot of time tweaking a backpack to make it look just right, whereas an armor set would require 90 pieces of armor.

Additionally, I think they’ve realized that a lot of their armor set designs are undesirable, so they’re possibly trying to come up with designs that people would want to grind/pay for.

I think they should let us wear town clothes over our existing armor. Like GW1. You have to buy town clothes in the Gem Store… So it’s not like they’d be losing out on Gem purchases (from the transmutation stones).

GW1 had just 5 armor pieces in a set. (No shoulders) And each armor set had a profession-specific set, but only one race. So that was just 50 pieces in a set…

Even if you assume that humans, norn, and sylvari can all wear the same skin with minimal tweaking… (I’d imagine that Tengu would be based around the Charr skin [what, with their feet being talons and all])
That’s still 64 pieces.

They’ve determined that backpacks are an easy sell. And they can have a uniform design regardless of class. Thus, to maximize profits… Selling backpacks makes more sense than paying artists to come up with cool, new armor sets.

TL;DR: I’m not so sure ArenaNet artists can provide us with amazing armor sets. GW2 was in development for over 5 years, and none of the armor has an incredible “WOW”-factor to it.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Spamming knockback, silly respawn rates. This is not a good idea, even on paper. The only thing good about these things will be when the Living Story progresses and they are permanently removed from the game.

Exactly. Reminds me of how everyone loved the introduction of Karka island. Nothing to do, difficult enemies…

Oh, wait. That’s why no one goes there unless they’re explicitly looking for a challenge.

And, hence, with the end of Frost and Flame, ArenaNet can hopefully solve both of these issues. (Removal of periscopes and proper placement of NPCs/quests in Southsun Cove.)

Tyber Valens.5148:

I know that fan boys will start frothing at the mouth towards any criticism of the anointed GW2. Just remember that players criticize games they like and want to improve.

Quoted for truth.

If ArenaNet doesn’t improve the game, then it’ll continue bleeding players.

Keep in mind, that those of us that “complain” on the forums are probably just a small fraction of those unhappy with the game.

My guild rarely gets on anymore. We attempted Guild Missions, but decided they weren’t really designed for our small guild. We can generally manage to get around 15 people on the weekends.

I have no desire to hunt out a HUGE guild simply to participate in a portion of the game that should be accessible by all.

I recently had an in-game chat with someone that said his guild was about to completely leave GW2.

Killing small guilds (by providing rewards that are geared towards much larger guilds) is not the way to save this game. It’ll just help sink the ship that much faster.

TL;DR: If ArenaNet wants to make money on the Gem Store, then they should be focused on keeping players and bringing them back. The more players they have, the more potential fools you have willing to gamble their money away.

After much consideration, they’d probably make VASTLY more money if they simply added them to the existing unidentified dye drops.

Just make them rarer than existing rare dyes and you’ll end up with dyes more expensive than Abyss Dye (currently 20g on the TP) if they’re desirable enough.

It’ll keep the price of unidentified dyes high while decreasing the price of more common dyes. (The wealthy will likely buy up and open thousands of unidentified dyes in hopes of getting the new dyes… Thus resulting in plenty of blue and green dyes.)

It’d be beneficial for the game’s economy as a whole.

Adjust the rarities as such:
Gray – Trash/vendor (should now include existing White gear)
White – Basic Gear/Items (should be on par with existing Blue)
Blue – Magic Items (should be on par with existing Green)
Purple – Rare
Gold – Exotic
Green – Legendaries/Ascended

Simplifies EVERYTHING.

Wiser with Age.3714:

This subject always comes up and my response is always the same. ArenaNet has intentionally trained their player base to not look for the Unique tag since it only appears on a small number of lvl 80 items. If ArenaNet actually wanted to teach people about game mechanics like this, then they would have introduced some Unique items in the lower level areas of the game. Most people will mess themselves up when they initially encounter Unique items. It would have been far kinder to have people learn things the hard way when they’re lower level and still rapidly leveling, which would help to negate much of the impact of their mistake and it would still provide a valuable learning experience.

The issue here is that Ascended gear was never planned from the beginning.

ArenaNet simply noticed that a massive amount of players from other MMOs bought GW2… And then got bored.

In a failed attempt to “fix” this, they introduced Ascended gear (and with it gear-progression).

So they introduced an item rarity that was never supposed to exist and felt the need to be “cool” and add “Unique” to them.

I’m sure the discussion went like this:
“What about making these Ascended rings unique, like WoW’s high-end trinkets?”
“Oh, yeah, man! That’d be cool.”

Shademehr.1397:

I have no previous MMO experience so I have no idea how the word “unique” applies to every other game on the face of the planet, nor should I. In fact, my last PC game experience was Diablo 2. In that game (since we’re talking about previous experiences), you could equip two SOJ’s or 2 BK’s or 2 Nagelrings or whatever. Those were unique items where you could have two equipped.

But again, just add a bit more description. It couldn’t possibly hurt anyone to have more info.

I’d agree. Maybe text on hover… Or a confirmation prompt that states “You may only equip ONE [insert-Ascended-name-here]. Do you still want to purchase this?”

Seriously… ONE prompt when buying Ascended gear, informing people of their options wouldn’t be any more bothersome for people that know what Unique means in traditional MMO terminology.

And GW1 was developed by former-Blizzard employees that worked on Diablo 2, Starcraft, and Battle.Net. Hence why GW1’s uniques were similar to D2 uniques where it was simply a notation about “rarity” not about equippable status.

In WoW, I don’t think you’re even allowed to have two of the same unique in your inventory at once. (Which would probably cause massive headaches for ArenaNet developers to implement.)

Hence, in Warcraft it’s not as much of an issue… Since it’s not “Why can’t I equip both of these?”

It’s more “Why can’t I loot this gear?”

The issue is that Guild Wars 2 is catering to the WoW crowd now, rather than the GW1 crowd. It’s highly disappointing.

Not everyone is a WoW convert. (I didn’t play it until after playing GW1.)

Had I not, I wouldn’t know what unique meant. GW1 didn’t have rings/accessories… Thus no “unique” items.

AFAIK, it’s only Ascended gear that even carries the “unique” status.

ArenaNet really should have informed people better. Had I not kept up with the forums and wiki prior to buying my Rings from the Fractal vendor, I probably would have made the same mistake. (It’s easy to overlook… especially since it’s NOT normal in the Guild Wars world.)

See: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Unique
GW1’s “uniques” were green items, as other posters have mentioned. They were max-stat items that only dropped from specific bosses. (Each boss added after Prophecies tended to have at least one.)
Green/unique farming in GW1 was a cool draw to the game. ArenaNet would even have “unique-drop weekends” with double drop rates. (as well as double XP for elite skill capping)

They should have done a better job at making the Guild Missions more scalable.

Isn’t the main thing they brag about with Dynamic Events? How the events scale for multiple people?

Small guilds are hindered in more ways than one. First in finding the bounties, and then with the bosses being incredibly difficult for small groups.

The issue that I see with GW2 is with it only turning more and more people away by its use of the Gem Store.

The initial issue with GW2 wass that people got bored with lack of things to do after reaching 80 and beating Zhaitan.

Most armor and weapon skins aren’t that appealing… Thus no reason to really grind for aesthetics. (Unlike GW1 which had loads of interesting skins… With an armor art variant for each profession.)

Now they keep introducing new content… but nothing to really “work for” other than Ascended gear. Which, everyone’s arguing isn’t a significant increase to stats. So, why grind for an insignificant stat increase? There’s no visual benefit stating “Hey, I got this cool item!”

The new guild weapons are hideous, while the Flame & Frost weapons (which should have been a reward for completing Braham and Rox’s stories) are limited to BLCs.

NCSOFT wants everyone to become gambling addicts.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am sorry, I do not see where ArenaNet announced how these new dyes are obtained. Just that someone had datamined the new colors. If someone would be kind enough to link me to the official announcement, I would be ever so appreciative. Thank you in advance. =)

Otherwise, it seems to be conjecture (which may be true..or not) on how to get these dyes.

I think it’s just an educated guess, judging from how every month has been…

Last month brought Flame & Frost weapons to the BLCs for all the gambling addicts.

I’d probably pay $5 for a weapon skin… but no way am I gambling away my hard-earned cash for the chance at having one.

If you follow ArenaNet’s current pattern of introducing stuff, you’ll see that the Gem Store is at the core of everything.

squashedsquirrel.5408:

Valar Morghulis.7049:

They are only from BLC correct? I’m having horrible luck getting one from BLC

That’s the idea, if you were likely to get one then you wouldn’t have to spend a subscription’s worth of cash for a mere chance of getting a stupid skin. I am seriously beginning to regret my preorder, and I’m one more horrible Anet scheme away from just giving up on them entirely. Which is sad, considering how excited I was all through development.

Exactly how I feel.

I just become more and more disappointed with each month’s update.

A common complaint is that most of the skins suck and aren’t worth grinding for. (Hence why people stop playing… because there’s no real reason to play. I know plenty of people that liked “collecting” cool looking armor skins in GW1. Heck, that was supposed to be the appeal of Transmutation, which other games now include for free without additional purchase.)

Whenever they introduce a decent skin, they add it to the Black Lion Chests as a “limited-time” deal.

(though, honestly, I’d be surprised if they don’t bring these back again at some point… since they’re some of the better looking weapons)

I feel like these were probably developed as potential rewards for doing the content… (They generally added new weapon rewards [for free] when they had multi-update storyline content in GW Beyond.)

NCSOFT’s greed is killing this game.

I’d, honestly, prefer a flat subscription fee than this nonsense.

At least then I know what I pay each month.

Other games let you transmute armor freely. Guild Wars 2 makes you buy stones through the Gem Store.

Same with adding additional weapons… At least then everyone has an equal chance of getting them. Rather than just the gambling addicts.

NetherDiver.6079:

Didn’t they fix this?

Last patch buffed the Krait.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I wonder if they tested the new mechanics in story missions.

I wonder if they test any of the changes they make, honestly.

Apparently whoever made this short-sighted decision “forgot” to regression test the story missions.

The new Krait buff has made the Story quests much more difficult as well.

I agree with this entirely. The Apatia mission chain is miserable.

I’m a level 78 Elementalist doing a 64 level event (downscaled, but I have level 70+ equipment). Shouldn’t it be EASIER since I’m doing it with higher equipment?

Downstairs Eddie.8125:

ASB.4295:

Fernling.1729:

That’s kind of what I was thinking. Didn’t they say that they have a live team and a team that solely works on expansion content?

Not only that, but they said they split their staff 50/50, which is a substantial number. Did the expansion team get laid off, consolidated into the live team, or are they enjoying a year paid vacation?

Interdasting…

PR.

If Colin said “yeah we’re working on an expansion, but we don’t want to talk about it yet”, the headlines become GUILKDL WAR 2 EUXPANDION DCOMING!!!!!!

By leaving it ambiguous, the attention (theoretically anyway) can stay on what they want people talking about: the monthly content releases. Those are the things that will encourage people to keep playing the game right now, rather than something that might tempt players to come back a year from now.

Yeah. He directed attention to the Living Story (which brings a small amount of new content each month) and fixing/improving the game.

Colin has also said stuff in the past that he later clarified (on these very forums) was incorrect because he wasn’t aware of it.

I’d be very much surprised if they aren’t working on an expansion.

For as broken as the game still is, they need to focus attention on the fact that they’re trying to fix it. (The HoM ranger pets will finally be FIXED next update… Only 7 months after launch to change TWO numbers.)

With the on-going sensationalist PR trying to hype the Living Story to be more than it has been shown to be, it wouldn’t surprise me if this just wasn’t another PR stunt.

Besides, we haven’t heard from Linsey Murdock since she announced Ascended gear. (Perhaps because of all the bad PR that decision resulted in.)

According to other devs, she’s still hard at work “designing” a scavenger hunt system for precursors. (By which time they’ll probably introduce entirely new legendaries.)

She was a very active, major part (publicly, at least) of the GW1 Live team, which gave us the Black Moa Chick mini-pet scavenger hunt.

There were reports last year about NCSoft expecting increased revenue around Q3 of this year… Everyone speculated then that it’d be a GW2 expansion.

I’ve never seen the “Defend the Ash Legion’s camp” event completed, so I’m just wondering: Has anyone successfully defended the camp?

I, personally, suspect that since it’s a 7 minute timer (wherein the damage to the tents continues to accumulate), it may just be a way to force the Decimus Stones event chain to reset.

I am curious, though, is there possibly an event that happens after?

Maybe a boss with a chest?

Chaosgyro.6023:

Nothing much to add to this, but I wanted to say that I came to nearly the exact same conclusions as you. I think a similar amount of time in the the future (with a bit of number tweaking on anet’s part) people will feel the same way about the current guild mission uproar.

The only problem is that jewelcrafting is pretty well useless now. That’s rather unfortunate.

As all the crafting professions will be after Ascended armor and weapons are introduced.

I suppose there’s a small possibility that they’ll introduce craftable Ascendeds for 50 ecto a piece. (That’d be 300 ecto for all six armor pieces on one character by the way.)

They’ll need a way to increase the cost of ecto (as it is currently dropping).

Although, I expect Ascended armor and weapons to be gated through laurel/guild/fractal merchants. So that people can’t craft it right away. Thus ruining all the crafting professions.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

EDIT/UPDATE:
Turns out there is currently a health discrepancy between the white raven and black raven – I was checking our current information for our next patch, which showed that they were the same.
Right now it is true though, they have a bit less HP. Our next patch will address and fix this.

It’s nice that 7 months after release, this minor discrepancy is finally getting fixed.

Keep in mind, the black widow spider also has a discrepancy when compared with the regular pet.

Rhysati.4932:

None of my characters have Karma…because I spend it all. No thank you.

I’d expect you to be in the minority. Most players seem to have an overabundance.

Since they’ve announced GW2 will not have expansions this year, I’m kind of expecting the game to die.

I mean, the consistent complaint is that there’s not enough content and the counter to that was that the GW1 that most people remember had 2 expansions.

Without an expansion, they’re not really resolving the “lack of content” issue.

They still haven’t provided an adequate reason for people to continue playing after reaching level 80. There’s no new armor art or weapon skins to grind for.

Just Ascended gear which will only appease people that like grinding for more stats without visual reward.

GW2 is increasingly seeming like a churn-and-burn game where they get people to throw money at the gemstore, and then quickly abandon the game.

They keep introducing new currencies (because people have kept accumulating the existing ones).

Nothing’s really being resolved.

Without an expansion, I expect more content like Southsun Cove which really has no current reason to visit.

It’s nice to see that they’re planning on FIXING that content release in the coming months… But if it takes them months to fix something that should have been worthwhile to begin with? That shows a lack of quality control.

They have no idea what they’re doing and it’s showing.

At least Blizzard has a clear vision on what they want to do.

Arguably, how is it a “much needed” gold sink? Don’t we already have plenty?

Repair costs, cost to list on TP, etc?

On the other hand, we have no karma sinks.

I think having waypoints cost karma instead of coin would be a much better idea.

First, it’d be a (much needed) karma sink. Everyone has an overabundance of karma with nothing to really expend it with. (Especially since they keep introducing new Ascended gear with new currencies.)

Second, it’d reduce the actual cost of dying back down to a reasonable 1.36 silver (from an absurd 3 silver or more depending on where the nearest open waypoint is.)

The Orrian Jewelry box was introduced as a potential karma sink, but the Minis are more common than Lodestones… And you can’t even sell/trade the minis. So most people aren’t finding it worthwhile.

Finally, it makes sense from a gameplay perspective:
What’s the most common reason to want to waypoint? If you want to quickly get to an event.

Ursan.7846:

Uh? Where did you hear they bolstered the servers?

Are you sure it’s just not just the players all flocking to the world events?

Well, I guess it could just be that there aren’t as many people playing anymore.

But that wouldn’t be good news at all, would it?

I noticed it to a lesser extent in Dredgehaunt Cliffs on Tarnished Coast.

From what I’ve read, though, Gem→Gold conversion rates are closing in on gold seller prices. Maybe that will put botters out of business.

You’ve done an incredible job of bolstering the servers so that Overflow has become a thing of the past.

On Tarnished Coast, I used to always see overflow anytime I would visit Lion’s Arch.

Now it’s as rare as getting struck by lightning.

Congrats to all the developers!

Rifter.6591:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Suddenflame.2601:

So basically the person who created the instance becomes the server.

surely this cannot be right?

I agree there is ZERO chance of this being true, imagine the exploits this would open up if the client was the server and in charge of the drops………

That assumes that the client could control the drops. Is there any such toggle in-game?

First, they’d have to know the ins-and-outs of all the game’s protocols to do anything like that.

Second, you’re still connected to ArenaNet’s servers. I imagine anything inherent in the game’s functionality (like generating drops and your inventory space) is probably handled by their server.

The map itself is “hosted” by the instance creator. I imagine all item generation (and your inventory) is still performed by the server. You still have to be connected to ArenaNet, after all.

Instancing is how GW1 was. (though, I don’t really recall the disconnect issue… I could usually rejoin my existing instance if I disconnected.) It’s just cheaper to have the clients host their own mini-server for whatever content you’re doing.

Could you imagine if ANet hosted every instance of the Fractals? Talk about “overflow.” (Harharhar… so punny.)

Although, other games have instancing and there’s no real issue like this.

I’d imagine, at this point, it’d take a lot of re-working the code to eliminate this issue.

It’s simpler to have one person host the instance, rather than have everyone “share” the instance.

As someone said in this topic, most dungeons in GW2 are about avoiding red circles.

The same could be said of the entire game, in general, to be honest.

One issue with dungeons is that there’s no clear explanation of what you’re supposed to do in any particular boss battle (which is something I never had an issue with in the other MMO). Just the basic knowledge to avoid red circles.

I feel that’s why boss battles aren’t as interesting as they could be. There’s no system to inform the users what to do.

As a follow up to that, most bosses are “difficult” simply due to either:

1. One-hitting everything.
2. Having an insane amount of HP.

Neither are particularly interesting. Yes, very good players can dodge everything from now until eternity, but it doesn’t make it enjoyable.

Another issue is, the game’s dungeons aren’t rewarding enough to be difficult or time consuming. (See: risk vs. reward)

Well, congrats on your first!

Hopefully the first of many, if ArenaNet brings the multi-choice thing to monthlies (like dailies now have).

Astralporing.1957:

Dr Ritter.1327:

Why are the newer ascended items (trinkets/amulets) not able to be acquired in FoTM? Their purpose is to give agony resistance so why not let us either get them from jade maw dailies or trade pristine relics for them…

Because Anet doesn’t want you to play the way you like. They want you to play the way they like.

But isn’t that exactly what was said multiple times? (Yes, I realize your sarcasm. I’m just re-iterating your point.)

I’m still hopeful that with the March update they may add current Ascended gear to the Fractal merchant. As there’s currently no point to Pristine Relics if you’ve already gotten your rings.

I think monthlies are generally either:

1. In place to help get players to play-test content. (Because QA teams can’t possibly test EVERYTHING and there will always be issues in released content.)
2. Promote content that may be useful in the future. (They recently mentioned that they’re going to try to make crafting “worthwhile” again.)

So, recently, League of Legends has gotten a lot of press online about their decisions in banning players with bad attitudes. (Especially because some of those players included tournament winners.)

And, yet, it seems like we keep having posts on these forums about players being insulted etc.

Since you seem to be doing a good job at taking care of botters, could we please get a better system for dealing with player abuse and such?

Overall, such players only detract from the community and the feel of the game.
Certainly, we want this game to be family friendly and encourage everyone to play.

It’s only good business sense.

Lorelei.7809:

My question is why didn’t they make them exotic?

Priory, Whispers, and Vigil armors are slightly more expensive than T2, they’re level 80, and they’re rare. They’re vanity armors, but the price makes sense to me. The T3 and order sets are comparable armor sets.

I don’t mind them adding a bit of price for “Destiny’s Edge” looks, but 110g more (in comparison to the Orders’ armors) seems wacky. Unfortunately for me I really like T3 Norn armor for two characters of mine.

At least Obsi armor was max stats. I only got it for my HoM. I liked and wore my Vabbian.

The Fractal weapons are exotics, but have no bonus stats on them. Just the base weapon damage. So they’re kind of worthless without transmutation.

I expect that the reason for T3 being “rare” is much the same reason. To encourage the use of Fine Transmutation stones. (with the only guaranteed way to get them being the Gem Store.)

Also, it may have been an attempt to make people work for Exotics. (As they had no plans for Ascended gear at the time.)

Lexandro.1456:

As a 5+ year vet of GW1 I can say with pride that I never bought obsi armor at all, ever because it was bloody ugly. I sold my shards and ecto to those people grinding away for fugly gear and was always happy to do so.

Personaly I much prefered Kurzik faction armors and fair number of Elonian armors. Vabbi armor for instance was nice on my sin.

Agreed.

I got Vabbian armor for my Dervish. Thought occasionally about getting Obsidian armor on my Ranger, but never did.

The point is: People like to buy things to show off their wealth.

The point being, dungeons are too difficult for the average player.

The rewards aren’t good enough to encourage them to keep playing dungeons if they keep dying.

They’ll get discouraged and likely end up leaving the game for something else, like the OP.

This is why ArenaNet needs to fix them.

All players are encouraged to do the story mode dungeons (when reaching the “minimum” level, no less) by the game itself.

Try doing story mode AC with some fresh level 30s. See if you still find it so easy.

That’s the point.

Other games make content easily accessible for shorter periods of time. I don’t have to devote hours to play a dungeon in another MMO.

Raid? Yes. Dungeon? No.

Other games are even splitting the PUG raids into multiple parts to make it easier on players with time-constraints.

The average player can’t devote hours of their time to do a dungeon, nor can they be expected to keep up on the latest strategies for taking down each and every boss.

And, yet, the average player is the one that’s expected to pay for YOUR experience. Keep this in mind when you diss someone the next time.

TL;DR: Most “hardcore” players probably are going to buy gems with gold rather than cash. (As they have more gold to begin with.)
Thus, “average” players are the ones expected to pay for the game.
If there’s no one playing the game, then the game will die.

Loki.4871:

Minos.5168:

rt,

1. Pets in GW1 didn’t need infusion. They (like heroes) were, by default, "infused.

Bit of trivia; they weren’t at first, and for a fair while after release were not either. Wasn’t fun, but it got sorted. IIRC originally getting infusion when you did, and then just always being resistant.

Well, point being, they had infusion (after ANet acknowledged that it was silly for them not to be).

I don’t care if pets are immune to Agony.

I just think they should, at the very least, inherit my Agony Resistance.

Many people thought Obsidian armor from GW1 wasn’t that attractive… But yet would still grind for it, because of the “prestige” behind having it.

I’d really just like having Alliances back.

RakaNishoo.6071:

Encounters are more polished, but IMO more forgiving and overally easier. (At least the ones we did.). However, I’m overally not happy with the change. First of all, I imagined that it would be required to kill Kohler. As well as more exploits closed. I also imagined that you will take a different approach with the dungeon. I hoped for less linearity, more replayability, making use of dynamic events and adding the exploration feel.
…
I’d like the dungeons to go more into the direction of GW1 Underworld or fissure of woe. I feel that you have great engine and you failed to put it to good use. GW2 dungeons are not much different from any other MMO dungeon. Except for combat system of course, but you know what I mean.

I think that GW2 should have difficult content, but I feel that the Fractals currently fulfill that need.

I don’t really know of all that many people that did GW1’s Underworld or FoW (aside from people farming Ecto which wasn’t really all that useful in GW1 outside of obscenely expensive prestige armor art.)

There are a variety of reasons GW2 needs to make dungeons “easier” and “more forgiving.”

First of all, most players aren’t going to be elitists. They’re not going to be willing to try difficult content with a PUG (or even their guild) multiple times if they’re not really getting anything out of it. (i.e. if they end up getting wiped multiple times in the dungeon, so that repair costs skyrocket and outweigh any potential benefit.)

The reason you should care about this: You need other people to keep playing the game to keep it alive. I’m not sure how much (if any) real money you’re putting into the Gem Store, but a company needs cash to keep servers running and to pay developers to come up with new content.

Ascalonian Catacombs are the FIRST dungeon. The main purpose should be introducing players to dungeoning.

It’s a level 30/35 dungeon. At those recommended levels, players are just unlocking their first Elite skill. They also are limited in what traits they have available to them.

If players at level 30/35 decide to try their first dungeon and played what existed before the recent patches, they may very well decide that GW2 isn’t for them.

Dungeons were TOO DIFFICULT for your average player. You need people playing to keep the game alive. Those are the facts.

That’s probably why other MMOs succeed with their “easier” dungeons. Because it’s fun and enjoyable content for the majority of players.

Hardcore elitists are always going to be difficult to please. I mean, that’s arguably why the Fractals (and Ascended gear) were introduced.