Guild Wars 2

oooh, I just remembered tomorrow is FRY-day!

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

titanlectro.5029:

Just a quick procedural question.

When will this CDI thread cycle end, and when will the next thread to discuss the CDI process start?

That a good question. I am really enjoying the current conversation and ideas so I think until at least Wednesday next week and then the process evolution will follow shortly after.

Roughly two weeks then. With CDIs a bit more in the public eye compared to over the holidays, that’s seeming more and more like a sound window of opportunity.

I am going to be afk for a few days from tomorrow morning as I will be in hospital but as soon as I start feeling better and more awake I will catch up again on the thread.

Ooof. Rest up. And as always, thank you for posting a note saying you’ll be stepping out for a bit. It helps calm our nerves .

((Don’t eat the lime Jell-O while you’re on the inside. Just don’t .))

Having just left a 4 day stay in the hospital….

I LOVED THE LIME-JELL-O!! Best thing they had. Oh and Chris ALWAYS ask for the salt and pepper packets (they don’t give you them unless you ask). Everything is way too bland otherwise.

JustTrogdor.7892:

You guys should stop pecking on the OP and give him a beak.

Well, maybe if we were actually playing instead of being cooped up here on the forum.

Using my full zerker warrior both before and after last nights patch….recieved loot before patch solo and in a group, 4 kills, 4x loot…although one guy in my group did not get loot on one of the kills. After patch have recieved no loot either solo or in a group…and neither did anyone else in my group in 4 kills.

Damage is definitely not the problem as a full zerk warrior I do PLENTY of damage…

Fractals have always suffered with transparency. It seemed like every two weeks during the living story something would have changed in fractals without anything ever being in the patch notes.

Suddenly there is an invisible wall in a common skip-point, suddenly the cliffside fractal acts completely different on the third level, Suddenly there are dredge at the beginning of the dredge fractal, suddenly Guardian Shields no longer block certain attacks….it was ongoing. To say that Fractals never got any love in a year is probably incorrect.

Someone was working on fractals all year long…it is just that many of the “fixes” they enabled would introduce new bugs, and then these bugs would take weeks to fix, and then new bugs would appear. Cliffside was always a crap-shoot since that fractal changed constantly based on the whim of whoever was in charge of these patches. Same with Dredge. All of these though were “stealth” patches, very rarely being in any of the patch notes. It really did seem like every time I ran fractals after any patch the question was always “what works, what doesn’t after the last patch”.

Maybe the team in charge of fractals are all locked away in a little room in ANET’s basement without any outside internet access. This would explain the lack of any communication as they simply cannot talk to us. It also explains Chris’ responses since he probably doesn’t have access to go down into the “fractal dungeon” and speak to the fractal engineers. They are hidden away from the world.

Proposal Overview
Introduce Fractals with unique abilities or skills
Goal of Proposal
Introduce new abilities and new skills in fractals. This could even be used by devs as a test-ground for these abilities.
Detail
How about a fractal that utilizes the zephyrite abilities from “bizaare of the 4 winds”…maybe with some back-story of rescuing Glint’s eggs…
Or a low-gravity fractal where jumps go 10 times as high…
Or a speed fractal where you move with a speed boost always on to avoid a crashing wave.
Or a jump plateform fractal (like the tequatl jump platforms) requiring you to jump from side to side of an arena to accomplish different tasks quickly.
A fractal where your weapon skills are changed to different skills for your different weapons.
The possibilities are endless, and this could be a testing ground for new things for the devs that they are thinking of introducing in the regular world.

Associated Risks
New skills or abilities could introduce new unseen skips or bugs (zephyrite jumping for instance could allow jumping off screen if not coded properly for it).

Leveling the playing field was Izzy’s response:

How many of you were trapped in Cliffside as your final fractal with no way to progress? How many were stuck in Ascalon with no vets for support having to fight your way all the way through it alone? How many had the Maw not die because you knocked down his life prior to second phase and now your 2 hour fractal run was over.

I had more 48+ fractal runs end by bugs than it would take me right now to get to level 50…which is why I just have no urge to do even the levels up to 50 again. I endured Fractals when they had bugs that would go months without fixing…and if you hit the bug, you just had to “deal with it” and start over…often after a multi-hour run because you had dredge as your second fractal. I endured Fractals when they were hard because you barely had enough AR to survive so you had to use timing of Guardian heals to get past the Maw’s AR. I had my 500 fractal achievement only a couple months after fractals were introduced…and I did it all with PUG’s since none of my friends did fractals in the beginning. Now, you make me do those levels all over again because of skip-able instabilities….that is the insult to me. The new fractals don’t hit like the old ones…I was once one-shotted by a bunny on a level 72 because I didn’t time my dodge correctly. ONE-SHOTTED BY A BUNNY! It took teamwork to accomplish those levels…if someone went down (being one-shotted by a bunny) the WHOLE team jumped on them to rez them…because you had to…you NEEDED your whole team.

Leveling the playing field for Instabilities? How about leveling the playing field by making all the new players do 30-50 with the ever-present possibility that a bug would pop up preventing all further progress. I did 2500 fractals with THOSE instabilities, skip-able instabilities is a joke compared to that. The current level 48 (I’ve only done 48’s even though my new fractal level is only 34) is really a joke compared to the old one. With new AR, and Ascended weapons, it’s really not hard…the monsters hit far less hard and take far less damage to bring down.

Basically what I am saying is you young kids have it easy with your new fractals. In my day we went through the Snowblind fractal walking up-hill through ten feet of snow both ways dodging one-shot lightning bolts, only to have the ice-gate closed after one guy went in to fight the boss with no way for the rest of us to join him.

Now get off my lawn.

Dont forget about this also (right before they lost connection Izzy was about to talk about Fractals reset) http://dulfy.net/2013/12/13/gw2-developer-livestream-2013-retrospective-notes/

This was the one thing that drove me from any sort of commitment to this game. Prior to Fractured, I was active on the forums, I was actively recruiting and holding fractals training sessions regularly to get people into and enjoying fractals. I did daily fractal runs. I did several runs at levels above 50 because of the challenge. With the limited AR, Fractal level used to mean something also…because to get to level 50 you really needed to have everything that could have AR, with AR…which meant you had to be committed to fractals to want to do regular 48’s or above. Even outside of fractals, I had every gift gathered to make my Legendary and was repeatedly throwing greatswords into the mystic forge going for Dusk to make it.

After Fractured and the COMPLETE lack of any response regarding the changes after countless threads….and having my own threads deleted or moved and merged with no comments at all…and having this constant “dev blackout” on this topic…I really haven’t put any more investment into the game. I post very rarely here…I haven’t bothered getting my legendary….I think I am only up to level 34 in the new fractals (haven’t bothered with them after I ran a couple runs and realized they were much easier than before…which meant I was effectively “wasting time” regaining my old levels.

I lost my passion for this game…like Lilith said, not necessarily over the lack of compensation, but the utter lack of anyone over at ANET willing to even discuss it with us. We had threads going into more pages than I have seen in anything outside of a CDI and yet not a single response. I have had so many threads deleted or merged without a single response. We have had Chris and Izzy both say they were “thinking” of a response….without a single response. This recent “shut up” by Chris in the CDI felt like another slap in the face…

Seriously ANET, why the blackout on this topic? You had a loyal fanbase who did content in this game that was constantly bugged and you basically just slapped us all in the face and said nothing beyond that. Total blackout when discussing this. In most of the threads we were respectful, we offered insight as to our thinking, we offered possible solutions, we offered to discuss it with you. We got nothing in response.

I count hours before this thread is deleted also.

Proposal Overview
Give us more to do with rewards
Goal of Proposal
Increase flexibility with the rewards that we currently have earned from running fractals. We need something to buy with the Pristine fractal relics that we have been earning from the beginning. There also needs to be something that can be done with the ascended rings (I have already destroyed 50 ascended rings that I was not using…I only kept the infused ones). Fractal skins need something as well
Proposal Functionality
Let us buy additional equipment with Prestine Fractal relics. They could be the currency similar to other dungeons have to buy fractal armor or weapons. Ascended rings could be Salvagable for Ascended materials (dragonite, deldrimar, gems, even infusions if they are infused rings). Or maybe a recipe to throw 4 rings into the mystic forge to get a different one back. Fractal Skins can perhaps be traded (2 of one type for one of your choice for instance), or could just simply go into a skin-locker (like achievement skins) with the game keeping track of what we already have and only granting new ones.
Associated Risks
-lots of coding.
-Risks of people who destroyed large quantities of items (like myself) who could be upset that there is now a use for something that there was no use for previously.

Proposal Overview
Rewards need to be in-line with risk and time-sink
Goal of Proposal
Increase rewards so that fractals are once more “worth it” to do on par with dungeon runs.
Proposal Functionality
If I can earn 1.5 gold for a 15 minute run of COF or HOTW, I should earn 4x that for a 1 hour run of fractals. Gold reward should be commensurate with the length of time it takes to complete an individual fractal. If the fractal takes 10 minutes (Swamp) it should provide less reward than one that takes longer. This will make people actually want to do the longer ones for the increased rewards. If you end up with a set of 4 “long” fractals, your reward should be greater than getting the 4 “short” fractals.
Associated Risks
-Unless all fractals are re-worked (as an earlier proposal of mine) to be 15 minutes each, this would mean re-coding new rewards on a per-fractal basis so that if someone ended up with Dredge they could count on higher rewards than if someone ended up with Ascalon.

Proposal Overview
Add more need for skills within fractals
Goal of Proposal
Involve the different Skills. Make skills necessary. In the past, the only way through certain areas successfully was to use a teleport, or invisibility, or to advance in another area, Stability was necessary. Bring in more of those mechanics. Make people change skills based on Fractal area entered. Make people think a little to accomplish the task at hand. This also has the added effect of forcing increased group dynamic, making people want to group with a mesmer, and a guardian, and an elementalist (or bring in alts) to make use of the appropriate skills.
Proposal Functionality
I propose bringing in more use of skill mechanics. Make people change skills based on Fractal area entered (like we used to on the super high level ones). Make people think a little to accomplish the task at hand by possibly requiring the use of specific skills to advance (or combination of skills). This also has the added effect of forcing increased group dynamic, making people want to group with a mesmer, and a guardian, and an elementalist (or bring in alts) to make use of the appropriate skills. The easiest way to implement this would be with new fractals (like someone suggested, bring in missions from GW1, or even old dungeon paths).
Associated Risks
-Some back-lash from the community over being forced to play with certain classes because not every class has certain skills (invisibility or teleport). People wouldnt always get to “play like they want to play.”

Proposal Overview
Improve current Randomness of Fractals
Goal of Proposal
Get Fractals to be more repeatable. I love the random nature of some fractals (dredge end-boss, new Thaumanova reactor), this needs to be increased to increase replayability.
Proposal Functionality
I propose adding “split zones” to all fractals where the dev team can add additional elements whenever they want. This might be an opening that reveals a separate path that you now suddenly find in front of (similar to moss man / tree at the end of swamp). This could be a door that you don’t know what is behind (different boss). The flexibility of adding these “split zones” to fractals for developers is endless. This gives them then the opportunity of simply coding something “cool” when they want to and throwing it into a fractal without extensive re-coding. By adding these “quick insert” types of content into the fractals it will always change them and make players more likely to play them. It can be something as simple as changing a final boss randomly (instead of Moss-man / Tree, you get Champion Skelk or Champion Spider.
Associated Risks
-Requires re-working of many fractals to add “split zones” that are then easier to code for in the future. Putting a door or a teleporter into a part of the fractal that then allows the developers to code something behind it that is different to what was expected. Many fractals have methods of this already. Close the gate on cliffside (so someone has to pull the chains to teleport in…which then makes the end area a seperate zone that can have different end bosses), Close the Ice-wall on the frozen fractal forcing you to touch the standard to teleport in…I think the end result of giving more flexibility to developers to add new content is worth the risk though.

Proposal Overview
Improve current Time-sink on Fractals
Goal of Proposal
Get Fractals to be a known entity, so that they can be planned on and executed regularly. The problem with current fractals are that they can take 45 minutes or up to 3 hours….this makes it really hard to put into any kind of dungeon rotation for players.
Proposal Functionality
I propose a maximum time per fractal of no more than 15 minutes so that a full set of fractals can be accomplished in no more than 1 hour. This means that several of the fractals will have to be cut down in the amount of time it takes to accomplish them so that if you get a set of 3 longer ones, your total time is still no more than one hour. This will tie in with my next couple proposals as well.
Associated Risks
-Requires re-working of many fractals to get them into the 15 minute time frame, this may also diminish a lot of the hard work developers put into these fractals. This risk could possibly be mitigated by simply cutting some fractals in 1/2…for instance the dredge fractal could have the section with the buttons, and then the “clown car” as the final boss…and it could be made into a second fractal that includes the bombing of the door (or destroying the other door) and the dredge mining suit / elemental as the final boss.

Seras.5702:

I got Triple Play last night on an overflow. Seems people are starting to understand how the events are to be done. Really, it’s a crapshoot as to the type of people in your overflow. Do you have selfish bag farmers or those who understand that the greater rewards come from succeeding in the events?

I got it last night in overflow also…same overflow??

I also want to +1 this, it would get more people to go after the civilians!

Here’s my warrior with her mask on.

1: Ranger (needs to be able to function without the pet…give it striker capabilities…more build options that are useful) Ranger needs to be more useful in parties and in dungeons…I hate the ranger hate in dungeons.
2: Elementalist, needs to be buffed majorly for how weak it is. make it the ultimate glass-cannon. Ele should be the highest damage in the game for how glass it is.
3: Warrior, needs to be adjusted. One build is good for everything with warrior, there is never any need to change…thats not right. There should be glass-cannon (high power, high risk, or tanky, or CC, or party helping….not all in one build like it is now. Warrior should not be the highest damage, and have the highest regen, and have the highest CC, and have the best armor rating….give something back to the Guardian to do.

She wants the Ley-line under Lion’s arch….all of her studies in Theaumanova and etc where in studying places of power. The whole Marrionette test was in powering the Marrionette (sacrificing power from other watchwork towards it). The Thaumanova experiment was an experiment in power.

She wants to power her Marrionette…The ley-line under lions arch (the probe that turns green) is the right one to do it. Then, in 2 weeks we will see her ultimate goal…which personally I think is an attack on the pale tree, not a dragon. The nightmare tower had very tree-esque qualities (even spawning the end creature out of a pod). She either wants to corrupt the tree or kill it. The Scarlet tendrils wrapping around the tree….her goal is the tree, Marjory and Kasmeer just haven’t pieced that part together yet…they are too focused on Scarlets immediate goal…which is to power the marrionette and unchain it onto the world.

I know there are people that think they have debunked all the theories of Sylvari being meant to be minions of the Elder Dragon Mordremoth and that the only reason there are player characters as Sylvari is because the Pale tree is some sort of Glint-like freed champion.

But I would truly think it was cool if at the end of this living story (1 month away) Scarlet actually comes out as having been controlled by Mordy and succeeds in bringing the Marrionette against the Pale Tree and destroying the Pale Tree in the way that Kralky destroyed Glint. Making the Grove cease to exist. NO new Sylvari.

There could be two different consequences to this: 1: a new tree (Malyk’s) could be found through the gates by the Tengu in the Caledon forest and a new starting area for Sylvari could be created over there where new players will start….with the old Grove being a kind of memorial to where the “Pale-born” were born.

Or: and even better: Introduce Tengu as a new starting race at this time with their starting area being through those Gates outside of the caledon forest…and NO NEW SYLVARI player characters. The ones already created are the last of their kind “Free Sylvari”. vs all of the Sylvari minions of Mordy. The Grove would still be a memorial to the Pale Tree…and a place where all free sylvari could go to mourn her death and the loss of any future free sylvari.

This truly would be something I dont think any MMO has done before….get rid of a starting race (albeit replacing it with Tengu to keep the dynamic of 5 races).

Player characters who already have a Sylvari will keep them, and play them as normal, but other races may view them with suspicion (similar to the way humans view Charr in Ebonhawk). They will aid in the fight against their controlled brethren of other trees…but be the last of their kind (like how the Dwarves sacrificed themselves to hold back the minions of the great destroyer in GW1. New characters just wont have the option of creating a Sylvari.

What if her target is not Mordremoth but the pale tree itself. Similar to how Kralkatorik killed Glint, maybe Mordremoth wants to get rid of the “free” champion of himself….and has been guiding Scarlet to “get rid of the voices” one being Mordremoth himself, and another being the Pale Tree. If she truly wants to be free of all influences she has to get rid of both. The Ley-line in Lions arch is a means to power the marrionette….which can then be used to attack the pale tree directly (heck, it wields a giant sword…what better to hack at a bunch of vines with than a machete??).

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Nick.6972:

Fractal weapons are ugly anyway. Best weapon skins are available only in Gemstore, same with armor.
Wouldnt be too surprised if they were selling Asceded Armor in gem store.

There is one nice fractal weapon I’d liket to have. But I know I’ll never get the RNG for it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Fractal_Sword_Preview.png
[&AgF2lAAA]

I have that one (got it pre-fractured), I get asked about it all the time, it even has a white swing trail when you swing it around or when you are running. It is indeed a very pretty fractal skin. Another good one is the Fractal Dagger and the Fractal Focus.

My personal opinion: based on the evidence and actually not reading most of this thread (so I haven’t been influenced by other ideas here yet…I do plan on going back and reading, just haven’t yet)

Scarlet wants “to be free”, free of the influences of the Pale Tree as well as the Nightmare (she stated this), but also to be free of the “whispers from the forest” that appeared after her trip in Omadd’s cube. I do think that the whispers are that of Mordremoth….and that the sylvari (including the pale tree) were meant to be minions of his but broke away (making the pale tree a Glint-like figure in GW2). The Nightmare court have just drifted slightly back towards their roots (pun intended).

I don’t think Mordremoth is anywhere near Lion’s Arch. The “probe” going green in Lions arch just means she found a major conjunction of the ley-lines. Remember, she was having to sacrifice watchknights to power her Marionette. If she can find a serious source of power (Theaumanova reactor was trying to tap the power of ley-lines) she could power the marionette. The only point to the attack on Lions arch will be to tap into this Ley-line and power up her marionette so that she can cut the strings (litterally) and it can go stomping on its own towards Mordremoth.

I think she means to kill both mordremoth and the pale tree to truly “free” herself from all outside influences. I think the drill is merely a mechanism to tap into the ley-line to power the Marrionette and that the Marrionette is what she hopes to do battle with once it is fully “unchained”.

I think the new and improved poison that she developed is to kill the Pale Tree. Possibly even using nightmare court infiltrators to do the job (would be an adventure for us to go into the grove and defend the pale tree from infiltrators)

We may well defeat the Marionette on its way to fight mordremoth, which will leave an expansion to our personal story to then go and take down the second Elder Dragon….or possibly season 2.

I think Mordremoth lives in the Meguma wastes to the north west of Brisbane wildlands…which will open up as the last part of this whole campaign…giving us “expansion level content” as part of the LS.

Whichever team is in charge of Fractals I think is the least talkative of the teams. Either that or they are just afraid to talk. I was joking with a friend a few weeks back that it feels like a conspiracy. Even in the developer livestream around that time Izzy was asked about fractals and began to talk about the Fractured update and suddenly the feed was cut. They made a joke that Scarlet cut the feed…and when the livestream resumed the next day, they ignored the question about fractals. Izzy never did finish what he was saying.

There was someone in the back room going “NO! THEY CAN’T TALK ABOUT FRACTALS! CUT THE LINE!! CUT THE LINE!!”

Both Izzy and Chris had said during CDI’s (and one developer livestream) that they meant to talk about loss of fractal levels for us as well as the issues with fractals in general (and lack of improvements), but they had to “think about it some more”. That was shortly after fractured was released. To my knowledge they haven’t spoken about it again.

Fractals was something I truly enjoyed. I would run them just for the fun of running them. Fractured ruined that for me.

First, Fractured took my fractal levels for supposed “leaderboards” that are still not implemented.

I used to get a new infused ring about 50% of the time when doing fractals levels above 26…and never a non-infused ring above 26, now, I have actually only gotten non-infused rings regardless of level…and probably only 1 out of 4 runs. And even the infused rings no longer have the +5 AR, instead you have to grind out fractals to get one to put into it.

I used to get a fractal weapon about 1 out of 4 tries on a 30+…with higher percentages when doing 48s. Now I have not gotten a single one in any try…and I actually don’t know anyone that did…I kinda think Fractal weapon skins are a myth.

They said there would be weapon boxes to choose the stats of your weapons, then they admitted those are not yet in the game

They said that as soon as ascended armor was released, it would be in fractals, then admitted that it would not be until higher levels that are currently released.

They had said that they were tweaking all the fractal levels to make each only last 15-20 minutes so that a full run of 4 could be done in 1 hour to 1.5 hours….yet actually increased the time sink with several fractals so that now these take even longer.

They said that the rewards would be increased to make fractals more in line with dungeons with a reward / vs / time allotment. Yet, we discover that even doing a level 48 fractal run that could have taken 3 hours only gives 1.5 gold….equal to a 10 minute run of COF or HOTW or AC….and as I mentioned above, fractal weapons and infused rings drops were decreased (as well as the fact that you can now get non-infused rings above 26).

I’ve stopped doing fractals. After having done 2000 or so pre-patch and having every single achievement pre-patch…I dont do them anymore.

In all, I still consider Fractured the absolute worst update this game has done, and if there was one thing that killed a lot of my enthusiasm for the game it was this update and the lack of all responses (80 or so pages of people discussing in multiple threads, yet no responses).

Even with the CDI, the devs still need to earn back my trust from this one single update…it threw a negative spin on everything they have said after it in my mind. And I am still dissapointed by the lack of any feedback.

Ricky Da Man.5064:

Don’t run straight at a Guardian standing at the end of a bridge holding a hammer if you don’t have stability…

Yes a Thief actually did this today, waved at me, then came charging shadow stepping and such, made a nice home run for me :P

I had this exact same thing happen to me with my guardian and a hammer….WAMMO!…off the bridge he went….do we have a problem with suicidal lemming thieves?

I actually thought the game was highly ALT-friendly until ascended gear came out….that ended alt-friendliness, since I now have one character fully decked in ascended (granted, only a single set of armor)….while all my others are in exotics. This means that if I want to put my best effort forward in dungeons or WvW or anything, i only have one character rather than the way I used to play (pre-ascended) where I played different characters every day.

Some days you are simply luckier than others. I had a day 2 weeks ago (I have 133% MF) where I got 6 exotics in one single champ run in frostgorge. But I have not gotten a single exotic since then, or for about 1 month prior to that…while a friend has gotten 2 since then…with no MF….over-all though, I am better than him by 4 exotics looking at the whole month…MF has a minimal effect on individual rolls, but over longer time periods that little effect adds up.

I’m not sure anyone really understands how magic find works, but from my understand (seeing previous posts from Devs), it works like this:
Each monster has a specific drop rate: As an example, looking at a level 80 subjugator in Cursed Shore (a level 80 zone).

When you kill it, you roll on a RNG table. That table probably is a 1-1000 table, on this table 1-200 = Heavy moldy bag, 200-400=White item, 400-700=Blue item, 700-900 = Green item 900-999=yellow item, 1000 = exotic

Once you roll your item you then go to that table. So using exotic as an example, in the first case you rolled 1000. Now you go to the new “exotic” table. Which probably has 1-100 Orrian sword, 100-200 Orrian scepter, 200-etc etc etc, all the way to 1000 = precursor.

Once you roll your type of loot table, you go to the next table for specific item on that table (so which stats on an Orrian sword for example, or which pre-cursor).

MF% changes your percentage on that table. So using an example of getting a pre-cursor. If you had 100% magic find. On the first table you would have a 2 in 1000 chance (instead of 1 in 1000) to get onto the exotic table, and then after that (once on the exotic table), with 100% magic find you would have a 2 in 1000 chance of getting a pre-cursor (instead of 1 in 1000) and then after that, it doesnt help at all, since every number is a specific item for which precursor.

So if with 0% magic find, your odds of a precursor drop are 1 in 1000 in 1000 (or .0001% on a single drop) with 100% magic find, this would increase to 1 in 500 (2 in 1000) in 500 (2 in 1000 again) or now you have .0004% (which is actually significant), with 300% MF, your odds become 1 in 250 (4 in 1000) in 250, which becomes .0016% chance.

Now even with 300% magic find, that still means you have a 99.9894% chance of NOT getting a precursor. but you still have nearly 16x greater chance than without any MF.

Please note, I made up all the numbers above as an example, no one knows the exact RNG tables that are being used (it could be 1-500 for exotic, or 1-10000…we dont know)…but devs have said that you roll on one table first, then the next, then the next and MF affects your odds on each single table.

So it is not 100% MF = 100% chance to find magic, it simply means you have 100% more chance (2 instead of 1) on an individual roll within a table.

Firearm.6904:

I mean have you seen the size of the Marionette? That booty’s definitely gonna cause shockwaves.

Badonkasaurus?

Obtena.7952:

FenrirSlakt.3692:

I’m still waiting for the reason that GW2 needs mounts. So far, I can summarise every argument into “because I want them” or “WoW and other games have them”.

That’s what I was thinking. Not once have I though “It would be nice to have a mount right now” while playing GW2. Just because other MMO’s do it doesn’t mean GW2 should too. If we did get mounts, it would hope it would come with massive restrictions to make them worthless from a gameplay perspective (I can see them as nice bling though, like the town clothes were)

+1

Wanze.8410:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Wanze.8410:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Wanze.8410:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I don’t have an issue with soul bound gear. That’s pretty standard across these types of games. I would like to see a better implementation of easily swapping out the stats on a set of armor. This way we don’t necessarily have to invest an arm, a leg, and our first born child into obtaining more than one set. Mainly thinking ascended here, since my husband when thru and broke everything down and tallied it all up across our characters.

When i hit lvl 80 about a month after release, it took me at least another month, if not longer, to gather enough gold/karma/etc. to get my first full exotic set and the next ones also needed their time. I didnt hear anybody complaining back then that its too hard to gear up different alts in multiple exotic builds.

Just because exotic sets are easy to come by now doesnt mean the same should apply for ascended gear.

Exotics are much easier to get, although sometimes the t6 materials can be a wicked kitten if you don’t have the gold to just buy them. But there is a huge discrepancy between the availability of exotics vs the availability of ascended. You built karma to obtain your exotics. At the present time, ascended can only be crafted, and the leveling of that crafting can be extremely expensive. Drastically more so than a single set, or even several sets of exotics.

I was comparing to exotic gear when the game launched and the months after, when they were best in slot. At that time, it nearly took as much effort to get a full set as it is now with ascended. And Anet stated that the player base got exotics way faster than they anticipated and intended. So it is working as intended that ascended builds take as much time as they do right now.

chuckle

No, it never took as much effort to get exotics as it does to get ascended. However, that’s also due to having so many avenues of acquisition for exotics. Karma, Dungeons, Crafting, straight off the TP…

It’s not quite that simple for ascended. Yes, it’s supposed to take longer, I get that. But it borders on going a bit overboard.

Did you actually play the game in 2012? Exotic gear actually cost more in the first 3 months to craft or buy on the tp than now. And there wasnt that much gold floating around in the first place, so coughing up 4g for an exotic zerker greatsword was alot of money, considering that you got an average of 1 gold for 100 gems in 2012, now you get 6g. It also wasnt easy to farm gold those days as it is now and getting 42k for a single piece of gear took quite a while. Dungeon runs also looked quite a bit different then and took some time as most people were still in masterwork or rare gear and didnt have a clue what they were doing.

I played since start, and didn’t craft my first exotics, me and all teammates went and bought piecemeal Karma armor from the temples for our first exotics, first exotic weapons were from dungeon vendors. And on each of my level 80s I had exotics pretty much the same day as I got to 80 since Karma was so abundant back then….heck for alts I used to run the Dredge leaders in Frostgorge….take a karma potion and run that over and over again (they respawned every 1/2 hour and killing all 6 would net you like 2400 Karma back then even without the potion…with potion is was 3600. I could have another temple set in a few hours.)

If they had an option like that for ascended’s for my ALTs I would love it. otherwise there is no way I could get my 8 level 80 alts in ascended gear.

saalle.4623:

I hope we will get duels,Anet said that they will try to add them

Wait, What? When?? reference please because i have seen absolutely NOTHING regarding Anet saying they will add them (quite the contrary actually).

I personally dont see the point of them. go into Pvp and duel…but I definitely don’t want the constant “player X would like to dual y/n” on my screen.

Amok Threeohthree.8501:

I don’t think I ever visited my home instance outside of personal story… Takes too much time to get there and not enough rewarkitten

he only one who doesn’t use their “home” home instance, but instead just goes to the Salma waypoint in Queensdale since it is literally AT the home instance.

Portal Salma, enter instance….it is effectively as easy as the portal stone someone is mentioning.

Just because you are Asura, or Norn, or Charr, does not mean you can’t use the “home” instance in queensdale and still get all of your nodes and stuff.

Why? They have stated time and time again that the over-all damage decrease will be 10% and that it will still be the best DPS equipment in the game. No point in switching.

4600 hours played, 12000 achievements including all Slayer and about 3/4 of the weapons ones.
500 exotic greatswords thrown into the forge before I was broke and gave up (about 800 gold plus a lot of dungeon tokens).
Countless (500 last month alone Rare weapons put into the forge…I put every set of 4 rare weapons I find into it)
Been playing since launch…I have had all of my gifts for twighlight for a little over 6 months (since the last Bazaar of the 4 winds).

Never seen a precursor.

Friend joined the game 1 month ago. I mentioned how I use dungeon tokens to “throw greatswords away” in the mystic forge. He decided he wanted Kudzu (he plays ranger), started doing TA for the gift…threw 4 longbows into the forge bought with TA tokens after he bought his gift…got leaf of kudzu on first try.

I almost quit the game entirely….not a fan of RNG or the current precursor / legendary system. I think precursors / Legendaries should be earned and not RNG or bought off TP.

Yup, as I said (when I edited my post above) understand what you are talking about now…and I apologize.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Moshari.8570:

Have you actually looked at the vendors in WvW?

Not to sound condescending but these have been in existence for about 6 months. I have them on all of my WvW characters ascended equipment and they do exactly what you are asking…..so this is a weird post.

Do you know what a Versatile Infusion is?
Please look it up. Bye for now.

Do you??? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion

as you can see, there ARE WvW versatile infusions (as I have said)…doing exactly as you asked (replacing the +5 agony with a +X vs guards, etc).

So before you go telling me to “Please look it up. Bye for now.” I suggest you use Google and the wiki.
edited but leaving my original

Sorry, I apologize, I didn’t read the Omni infusion part. Totally makes sense now. Sorry again.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I tend to think that a lot of Guardians with staves aren’t using them because they think its actually a good DPS weapon, but because its one of the best mob-tagging weapons in the game.

I think due to how much the event fails, people are coming with the mentality that even if they play well, being 1 in 100, it won’t have any swing on the outcome of the event (ie, it fails anyways), so they’ll just tag as many mobs as they can and grab as much loot as possible before it fails.

This is exactly the problem. I had an argument with a guardian in my guild who was doing this. I play a guardian main and I had to show him during one fight that not only was I doing far more damage than him (I was using GS and S-F), I was actually getting just as many Tokens to turn into keys….he switched to GS for the next time we did it together and was FAR more effective when it came time to do Wardens (the first time, his group failed warden, second time his group actually won).

I have used this event as a teaching moment for a lot of different things which is why I actually like the Marrionette…I’ve taught guild members about switching skills, switching weapons, dodging, kiting and when not to kite…putting pets on passive…to me it has been good and I think that my guild skill level has increased because of it.

Moving servers is addressing the “symptom” and not the “problem”. The problem is events like the Wurm and Tequatl and giving massive chests of wealth to the winners of WvW. These things make players want to be on the “winning” server and not fight it out on their own server so they transfer (and then come onto the forum and tell everyone else to do the same thing since it worked for them).

The Problem needs to be addressed. There was a huge CDI about WvW population balance and ways to get people to transfer back to the lower pop servers, but then new events like the Wurm come out that starts it all over again.

To put it simply, Events need to be scalable to be accomplished by ANY server and not just the Elite few. Rewards should not be granted to the server that can muster the most people for a given event but should be based upon over-all challenge of the event. If anything, greater reward should be given to those people that succeed on an event with LESS people instead of more. After-all, what is harder…defeating an event with a 150 person zerg who all just spam #1 at the same spot? Or defeating the same event with 50 well-organized people who each contribute by utilizing blast fields and finishers to maximize their damage and equal 150 people?

And Thus, these events should be able to be accomplished by both. And note, I am saying the event should be easier with 150 people, and harder with less (but still doable). If you start making the rewards greater for the lower amount, you will start seeing people grabbing their guilds and guesting to low-pop servers to do events with less people, you will also see transfers to the low pop servers of entire guilds to get these rewards (the opposite of what is happening)….until eventually everything will even out.

Have you actually looked at the vendors in WvW?

Not to sound condescending but these have been in existence for about 6 months. I have them on all of my WvW characters ascended equipment and they do exactly what you are asking…..so this is a weird post.

I wouldnt call it Blackgate and Desolation living world, but definitely the Wurm and Tequatl are Blackgate / Desolation / Jade Quarry, high-pop server content…most other servers dont have enough active players on at any given time who are good enough to accomplish these events, which is why they fail, which then discourages people from trying, which then causes the good active players to transfer servers to Blackgate / Desolation / Jade quarry or another high pop server….which exasperates the problem making it worse on any but the high pop servers.

I saw it happen with Tequatl, so many good players I know from Borlis Pass transferred to Blackgate (and Jade Quarry) because they couldnt find enough people to do Tequatl on BP…and because “they are going to re-vamp all the bosses to be like Tequatl”. My friends list looks lopsided with more people being on other servers now than being on my own…yet we all met on BP.

The majority of the good / active players have been transfering to certain servers, which makes it really hard for the rest to even do the event, events like the Wurm only make it worse by glorifying the servers that can achieve it…making more people (even those without any skills) transfer there to be part of the “Elite”.

Heezdedjim.8902:

The thing that I find surprising and excellent every time about the Marionette fight is just how crazy sideways it can go and still, somehow, end up in a win.

Last night the fight I was in seemed like a sure loss with several lanes in a row failing the same warden, then my lane got in (for the second time), killed it, and somehow the fight succeeded with the cannon power sticking at 99% for what seemed like forever.

I really have no idea how half the wins I’ve been in on have happened, because most of them looked like utter fail up until the last second.

This fight makes good things happen, both personally, as you figure out how to not fail on your own little part, and on a community scale when a huge number of players realize that if they try hard they can win it even when the odds look terrible.

I have not seen an encounter like that in any game before, where no matter how lost it seems, you still have a legitimate reason to keep pushing rather than just going /afk or giving up and kittening in chat.

All too often it’s the exact opposite; early on you reach a point where, if a couple of things go wrong, everyone can see that the fight likely is headed for failure and people just give up or leave, making failure certain.

I only have two minor gripes about the fight which are (1) the dodge achievements should be granted if you avoid all the puppet attacks and your platform kills its warden; and (2) it is maddening that I am at 4/5 on the defeat wardens achievement and have no way to tell which warden it is that I need to work on to complete this achievement; these checklist achievements ought to always show us the checklist so we know what we’ve done and what we need to do.

I have a similar attitude. Love the Marrionette. HATE the Wurm and Tequatl. I think the Marrionette is good design since there is always a possibility of success and have been in many runs where we though for sure we lost after three lanes in a row failed the same boss, but then won it anyways because we all really pushed to the end. With the Wurm and Tequatl there is always that stupid arbitrary timer instead of player skill that causes us to fail…been on so many attempts where if we had just a few more seconds we could have succeeded. I really hate timers on world events, it completely gets rid of any immersion I have in a battle to look at a clock to see if I am going to fail.

I also agree with another persons post that said these types of events should never be in low-level zones…for the Marrionette: I have been in a group with two 40ish characters (guildmates) and still beaten the marrionette…they were good players even though they were low level…for the Wurm or Tequatl, since both of these require less personal skill and more DPS (or use of mechanics in the wurm), these two are absolutely not do-able by low level characters…these should never have been placed in low-level areas. Put challenging content in the level 70-80 areas…that is where it belongs…having people who have never been to frostgorge or Orr trying to do these events is disaster.

phys.7689:

Kageru.9124:

It’s always this way DeWolfe, the forums are a self-selected sample of the most dedicated players. I would expect the vast majority of GW2 players have never checked out the forums and certainly do not read them regularly. These more dedicated players want hardcore content (because ego has been attached to in-game achievement and / or they’re bored) and they want people to know about it (forum boasting and the demand for exclusive signs in game of their achievements). This has been the case since EQ1.

In the end though Anet has the tools, and I’m pretty sure interest, enthusiasm and successes in these new events has involved a subset of the server population and rapidly dropped. Whether this is through the skilled / dedicated getting what they want and moving on or the less skilled / dedicated giving up.

no the forum is the forum goers, they range from dedicated, to people who just like talking, to people who have an opinion. The truth is the people who claim the represent casuals really dont. People complaining about achievments are probably not that casual, because having to get every achievement isnt very casual. In all honestly this debate is probably more between the hardcore time investers (even if you only play a little, if you are commited to play continously, you are a time invester) versus the hardcore skill rewarders.

You have a point, a “casual” probably doesnt come onto the forum, I have lots of friends in that category, who could care less about what people talk about on the forum. They are not here. Pretty much if you come to the forum, you are probably not “casual” anymore, because you are putting in extra effort towards the game.

I tried /cheer after the cinematic and didnt’ get it. Next time I closed the cinematic and /cheered…and didnt’ get it. The Next time I closed the cinematic and entered the portal to be up next to the chest and did /cheer….and didn’t get it.

so far only beaten marrionette three times….guess I will try /cheer quickly before cinematic next time.

I have to agree with many people here…its not that Ranger is a bad class, its that there are an aweful lot of BAD rangers out there, and I do think that the class teaches bad behaviours in players, which makes them BAD rangers.

I used to main my ranger, now my guard is my main because of all the hate for rangers that you have to overcome (I hated being instantly kicked from dungeons without them even attempting the dungeon with me). I still main my ranger in WvW. One change I wish ANET would implement with the ranger is a trait that when taken, gets rid of your pet and adds damage to your weapons…a “solo” trait (send your pet home, but gain 20% additional damage in all attacks…you cannot use skills that require a pet).

I do a lot of dungeons and fractals, and I do understand the hate on rangers…a bad ranger can completely ruin any run you do…mostly revolving around their pet doing stupid things causing the group to fail…good rangers however can also make a run go really well! We need a way to tag the good rangers with a heart or something so we can tell the difference!

DarcShriek.5829:

Moshari.8570:

Chris RJ.1843:

Most of the Guardians I see around. They of course wield exclusively staff.

UGH!! This bothers me as my main is a guardian, I carry every weapon for different things, pretty much only pull staff for temple runs (mega tagging for mega-loot) and to clear the poison bulbs in TA.

On this event, there really is no loot for tagging anything so staff makes no sense whatsoever…Ive informed a few guardians that when I see them running with staff on it, Greatsword / hammer / sword-focus are SO much better for taking down the champs and especially the wardens (I switch to scepter-focus for warden 3 and 4 before going in the portal).

Actually, there’s quite a few fragments to be gained by tagging. I usually get enough to make 1 or 2 keys, even after a loss.

I get that much from using Greatsword or hammer and standing at the chokepoint where everything runs through (every lane has this spot down near where they spawn)….and do 2x the damage of the person standing there with the staff spamming #1.

I am very sick of the “leecher” comments that always seem to come from the high population servers. There IS a discrepency of servers…and it is not just in population, it is also in playerbase. I know entire guilds that transferred servers either for WvW or for Tequatl, or because they felt that their server just simply wasn’t “leet” enough for them.

Server population is one number. Active players out of that population is another number. Good players out of that population is another number. I would argue that Desolution (EU) and Blackgate (NA) have a higher population than other servers, I would also argue that they have a higher population of active players (since I know of at least one guild worth of 400 players that moved to Blackgate, because they thought that Borlis Pass had too few active players)…and there are probably others that did the same thing. And then I would also argue that Desolution and Blackgate have a higher number of Good players…simply because for a long time people have referred to them as the “elite” servers and as such someone who thinks of themselves as “elite” transfer to there.

Honestly, I love guesting to Blackgate here in NA (Jade Quarry also). I do so often in the noon hours when I am not at work as well as in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep…because during those times Borlis Pass is also asleep or at work. BP is really only active starting at about 6:00PM central time until about 10:00PM central time….Blackgate is active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You guys call me “leecher.” I call me “I want to do the event and there was only 10 people doing the event on my server 2 hours ago.” But every night I do the Marrionette locally on my server at 8:00pm central….because then we have enough people to do it.

People are not always guesting to be a “leecher”, sometimes people guest out of necessity…which is what I think is the problem with these events. I dont want to have to guest to be able to do it. I want to do it on my server…but there are not enough active players on my server at odd hours to do it…and probably not enough good active players to accomplish it with any regularity….it would be nice if you could send a message to all the good active players on a server and tell them all “meet at wurm” or “meet at Tequatl” but that simply does not work.

I love the Marrionette. I hate the Wurm and Tequatl though because I have to guest to other servers (or overflow with TTS) to even attempt to accomplish it. Not that I haven’t joined in with others from BP to try Teq regularly….

Hule.8794:

FrozenStarRo.7240:

. And most of the small servers don’t even have an active playerbase of 150, not even during a primetime evening slot of 8-10 to pull this off.

HAHAHAHA, even small servers have enought people. They just lack of coordination. Everybody is waiting until someone will step forward and organize it.
But noone will because everybody is waiting.
Catch 22

And trust me, I was transfering a lot during last 8 weeks to check out population so I know that almost every EU server have enought people.
Just lack of organization.

HAHAHAHAHA you don’t understand the player-base! lol! Even big servers have players that are casuals and don’t bother with doing events like these, they just dont care!
And trust me, I was transfering a lot during the last week trying to find servers who were doing marionette at 2:00 in the afternoon and didn’t find a single one until I guested to a high population server!

Big servers have a larger pool of people to pull from, if only about 1 out of 10 people are non-casual players and play more than for a couple hours a day, and your server population has 1000 players, you have 100 active players at any given time of day….if you have 10000 players, you have 1000 active players at any given time….

Now take into account how many GOOD players are out of the active players…..carry the 1…..oh wait, now suddenly low population servers fail the event and it can only be accomplished on high population servers.

Since good, active players want to do the event…they have no choice but to guest to a high population server in order to find enough other good active players to accomplish the event.

I laughed until I cried.

Chris RJ.1843:

Most of the Guardians I see around. They of course wield exclusively staff.

UGH!! This bothers me as my main is a guardian, I carry every weapon for different things, pretty much only pull staff for temple runs (mega tagging for mega-loot) and to clear the poison bulbs in TA.

On this event, there really is no loot for tagging anything so staff makes no sense whatsoever…Ive informed a few guardians that when I see them running with staff on it, Greatsword / hammer / sword-focus are SO much better for taking down the champs and especially the wardens (I switch to scepter-focus for warden 3 and 4 before going in the portal).