Showing Posts For Nkuvu.2570:

Bad design decisions IMO: The hologram boxes

in Dragon Bash

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

The Wintersday boxes werent as big a deal because it took a while (and a little thought) to kill those enemies, giving people time to get there.

Sort of. The Wintersday boxes definitely had stronger enemies, but the primary problem with those was that you didn’t need to kill the enemies to get the gifts. Open the huge gift, pick up the smaller ones inside, run away — leaving the toys inside to fight someone else (and of course by the time someone else got there, the spawned gifts would be gone).

So the holograms are an improvement in that respect, so that you do have to actually kill the things that appear. They just die too quickly.

Bad design decisions IMO: The hologram boxes

in Dragon Bash

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I said it earlier in map chat — for a game that’s really good about providing cooperative play styles (such as individual resource nodes), this seems like a really poor idea.

Side note: ArenaNet, please hire someone that’s colorblind. Dark red indicators on green maps make it hard to see the projector locations in the first place, then I have to fight with other players to get there first. It’s really evil.

Dragon Pinata Bug

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

It’s the same for the fireworks launchers. If someone else runs up and uses it just before I do, can’t shoot the fireworks off.

Risen Abominations can't be dodged

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Recently I’ve noticed that the Risen Abominations seem to have a fairly new skill — or maybe it’s just that I haven’t been playing in Orr for a while. In any case, the abomination will do a shoulder-down Charge skill. Knocking down players and doing insanely huge large amounts of damage.

In one Charge during the Killing Fields personal story (level 51, character downscaled from 80), my character wakitten in sequence for 3320, 2215, 2215, 2215, (1315 using Abomination Swipe), 1031, 1031, 1031, 1031, 2062 damage. For the mathematically lazy, that’s 17466 damage from one skill. And this is after I dodged backwards, missing part of the Charge. Needless to say, I went from full health to downed state.

This is just… not fair. If I dodge, I shouldn’t be downed by a single skill. If I missed the dodge, I think this would have simply killed me with one skill.

Last Stand at Southsun: Feedback/Opinion

in Last Stand at Southsun

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I’m sorry if you feel that this is hardmode or content for hardcore but it’s definetly pure casual player content.

After fighting the crazed karka queen last night, I really disagree.

I died three times in that fight — on a character that, at level 80, has only 10 deaths (and no crafting at all). First death was instant. Standing in Steampipe Steading and suddenly surrounded by a dozen crazed young karka all at level 84. I don’t know if it was just spawning for the event, or culling. Either way, literally nothing I could do, just standing at full health to defeated (and I was not the only one, about a dozen other people reported the same). Second death, I tried to rush through the horde of crazed beasts to get to the queen. Obviously didn’t work out. Third death, running back to try to get to the queen and got caught by two veteran karka at the “curtain” north of Owain’s Refuge. I came really close to dying a fourth time during the fight, simply due to so many kitten-ed additional spawns — and I didn’t even get to fight the queen until the last minute of the fight before she retreated.

In short, it was brutal and chaotic and not fun in any way for me (I certainly won’t be doing it again, regardless of the “double rare” chest). I’d rather go kill two world bosses and get nearly the same rewards without all the death.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not criticizing the fight aside from my subjective opinion of “fun-ness.” I think it is actually a good response from ArenaNet in reaction to many people discouraged by how easy the boss fights are in other zones. I know lots of people will enjoy how difficult it is. I just disagree that this is aimed towards the casual player.

Last Stand at Southsun: Feedback/Opinion

in Last Stand at Southsun

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I suppose I can share my views. I started off thinking that I’d just jot down a few quick thoughts, but… I ramble.

Story is really weak. I have no idea why Canach was aggravating the wildlife, nor how he was really doing it. No idea what’s going on with the Consortium, or the tourists, or… anything, really. I don’t know who I’m supposed to talk to in order to get these details. I suspect that the actual story is buried in some NPC dialogue somewhere. Or maybe random speech if I stand around all of the NPCs long enough. But this is very similar to the initial Lost Shores karka event — if you weren’t in the exact right spot in Lion’s Arch, you missed all the NPC dialogue containing the story exposition.

Solo dungeon wasn’t fun. I really loathe the “give every player the same environmental weapon” approach. It’s cheap and makes me think “we didn’t have enough time to actually balance this, so everyone does the same thing.” But of course my characters aren’t all the same. Not to mention that Canach frequently knocked me down from range, then before I could get up again knocked me down a second time into a mine. Seriously?

Champion instigators discourage team play. I spent some time today running with the zerg, just to see what they’re doing. The instigator at Kiel’s outpost died very quickly (I think it was bugged, actually). So we’d kill that one, run back to Driftglass and wait. In the meantime, I saw players running past events in progress. Or running past downed/defeated players. Meaning that if you didn’t stay with the zerg, it’s likely you’d miss the Kiel instigator entirely. But players didn’t want to stop because “OMG chest and no chest for the other events.” I even had the “pleasant” experience where the instigator spawned, and everyone around me ran off to deal with him — leaving me solo against a veteran young karka for the other event that was running. Thanks, guys! Note: Yep, it’s the community that’s the issue here, but primarily due to the “phat lewts” offered by the frequent instigator chests.

Southsun still has issues with travel. Pearl Islet waypoint is open all the time, but the others are very often contested. Considering that most people are drooling over the loot from the instigators, the events rarely are cleared. For the past few days, for instance, the waypoint at Captain’s Retreat has been unavailable due to the group event there (and utter lack of anyone willing to tackle that group event). So most travel involves running through dense fields of enemies. Bleh.

Rewards in Southsun Crates are not enticing. I got a few Southsun crates from farming, and picked up a sclerite weapon ticket. I don’t find those at all interesting, but the ticket is account bound so I can’t even give it away (and I know there are other people hoping for these). But the vast majority of the chests give me passion fruits and flowers and karka shells. Exactly the kind of stuff I can go and get on my own without the RNG factor. I’ve opened a dozen boxes or so, and so far there’s absolutely nothing in there to make me want to open more. Even Black Lion chests have more variety and unique rewards.

But now for the positive stuff:

It was easy to get the two back pieces. I followed a guide to get the achievements, because I really had no clue what I was doing with the detector thing for the samples (a ping on the compass would have helped) and got a little annoyed. But at least I didn’t have to spend forty years in a dungeon looking for the items.

The scenery is still nice, even though it’s still infested with karka.

The fact that there was a solo dungeon plus a 5-person dungeon was a nice concept. I do agree that it shouldn’t be strictly solo for the first bit — excluding people is rarely a fun approach. But I think it’s a step in the right direction (I never completed Flame and Frost due to the final dungeon requirement).

And the most positive: I think I’ve exhausted the topic now, so I’ll be quiet.

Troop escort pathing in Malchor's Leap

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Yesterday I was playing around in Orr on my engineer, and decided to zone into Malchor’s Leap. Before I was even able to load in, I was under attack. I ran back through the portal — barely. A second attempt was the same as the first, but this time I ran forward into the zone. As far as I could tell, I was the only one anywhere in the immediate vicinity.

Long story short — I believe the pathing for this event should not be placed so close to the portal. It’s a killer for anyone that may experience longer load times.

Attachments:

Major bug with Bouncing skills' mechanic

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Critters as well, Its great giving my might stacks to a mouse.

And just to add to the fun, I’ll mention that bouncing now hits neutral targets. So just in case you wanted to aggro that extra pack of moas nearby, a bouncing skill (like the aforementioned Elixir F) will bring them into the fray without any additional trouble.

Of course I should mention that I am not 100% positive that it didn’t bounce before the patch yesterday, but I’m pretty sure. Additional confirmation of the previous behavior would be nice.

Edit: Almost forgot. It seems like the range of the bouncing was also vastly increased. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Major bug with Bouncing skills' mechanic

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

It’s not just mesmers.

My engineer has been using the elixir gun and turrets. The second skill, Elixir F, is bouncing between enemies and turrets… giving the turrets swiftness, I guess.

Uninstanced Salma, new walls.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I can see the position of closing bugs. But I’m really not sure why uninstanced Salma district is inaccessible in the first place.

Consider an alternate setup:

The front door near the waypoint brings you into the instance. Whether that’s for personal story or just walking around seeing the sights, it’s the obvious way for players to get to the zone. Just like it is now.

The side door is opened — that’s the door along the road to the Plaza of Lyssa, on the south eastern side of the area. This would allow players to walk into an uninstanced version of the Salma district. Perhaps with a few NPCs, but mostly unoccupied.

In this setup, there are no bugs, since the access is entirely allowed. Roleplayers have their potential RP spots available, and other players will still enter and exit the Salma district as usual (avoiding any confusion for new players).

Stun/Knockdown/knockback

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

If you’re faced with 20 spiders or whatever, you either f&@$ed up because you were trying to run from them and trained more together, or you’re intentionally gathering masses of mobs to be killed.

Or you’re in part of a dynamic event. My example above with the centaurs trampling my warrior happened for an event to defend Earthworks Bluff. Waves of centaurs came running in. It’s not a group event. Just a bunch of chained knock downs. Yes. One after another after another.

In another example, I was in Orr and an event spawned where there were spiders attacking a nearby outpost. Or escort — not sure which. Doesn’t matter, because my character was chain-controlled until death. I used a stunbreaker, but of course that didn’t help since I was just knocked down/pulled again.

Boy! I’m sure glad I ran into that group of spiders! I totally knew what I was getting myself into, and could easily have prevented that! Except… that when they all spawned, my character was right in the middle of them. Fun! I really like sitting there watching my character die and being unable to do anything to prevent it!

[Minor] Pygmy moa herding event

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

In Queensdale, there’s an event near Kappa’s Corral. Herd pygmy moas into the pen. It’s not a particularly difficult quest.

Unfortunately if it’s left unfinished, the nearby raptors will eat the pygmy moas. This leaves the event in the state where there are no moas available to herd into the pen, but Kappa still wants more. The event will stay in this state for days — usually until server reset.

I’d suggest altering the event to count the number of unherded moas alive. If that number drops to zero, the event fails. Or possibly a timer (long, because pygmy moa herding can be a little troublesome — maybe 15 minutes?).

Or periodically spawn new pygmy moas in the area to allow them to be herded, preventing the event from ever becoming deadlocked.

Stun/Knockdown/knockback

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Nope. Crowd Control is short duration for a reason.

In those other MMOs where you can literally be locked by control for 5, 8, 15 seconds, it’s only logical to implement immunity afterwards for players…but stuns, knockback and the like in this game last maybe 3 seconds at most. And you can dodge, block, blind and break these CC effects as well as using instant skills that work while stunned.

The answer to your problem is to not get stunned.

Until you run into several enemies that stun/knock you down. My engineer was killed by reef drakes due to chained stuns. Having a stun breaker equipped would work once, but with long cooldowns on most, it’s not a viable solution for chained control.

My warrior got trampled by centaur during an event in Kessex Hills and knocked down. I used “shake it off” to get back up again, and was immediately knocked down by a second centaur. I got up again, and knocked down a third time (and killed). Nothing I could do about it. I definitely couldn’t dodge while lying on the ground.

Where is my mini?

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Did you check to see if it was deposited in your bank vault?

If you select to deposit all collectables (or whatever it says) it will send minis to the vault too.

I suspect that this is the issue. But in addition, to avoid this behavior in the future you can put the mini into an Invisible Bag (armor smiths make a “Safe Box” that has the same function). Anything that’s in an invisible bag will not be sent to the bank or be visible in the vendor window.

Sonic Periscopes still spawning May 14

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Still seeing them appear, and they’re attacking and starting the events to kill Molten invaders.

Apparently they didn’t get the memo that the Molten Alliance was defeated.

Metrica's steam ogre portals buggy

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I’ve seen this a few times now, beginning with the April 30th patch.

Steps to reproduce: Kill fire elemental. Open the force field for the steam ogre. Jump in.

Expected result: Falling, then warped to the platform with the steam ogre champion.
Actual result: Falling… then landing in water under the reactor with no exit.

Additional (related?) bug: Kill the steam ogre. Jump off the edge of the platform into the permanent portal.

Expected result: Warped to the entrance of the reactor, just west of the CLEAN station.
Actual result: Falling to my death.

I might attribute the latter to missing the portal entirely, but I’ve killed the steam ogre dozens of times and have not once missed the portal on the platform. Also, when the falling to death bug happens, I pass right through the portal on screen.

This afternoon I saw five other people fall to their death at this spot.

Boots won't accept dye

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I’ve seen this bug show up on occasion, and in one case it even caused a game crash.

My workaround was to use the “dye remover” on all color panels for the boots. Close the hero window, then re-open and apply dye as normal. This has worked for me every time I’ve run into the bug.

[Minor] Lower usage priority on a few things

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I’m not a huge fan of every action bound to F, but that’s not the point here.

What I want to see is the priorities of some things that are more important being moved up (or conversely, moving down the less important things). Confusing? Consider some examples.

When my character is gathering and something attacks, I start using skills. Except… they don’t activate. I have to move first, then I can break the gathering action and start using skills. I think the gathering should be a lower priority than skill use.

In Caledon Forest, there’s an area with a heart for trolls. One of the things you can do for the heart is poison some troll food. This action is long — takes three or four seconds. This action, when started, is also completely uninterruptible. I can’t use skills. I can’t move. I can’t stop messing with the food. This nearly got my character killed several times (especially when fighting the champion troll in a cave nearby, and by habit hit the F when I saw a prompt). The priority for this food poisoning is far too high.

In Fields of Ruin, there’s a similar example with reloading some Charr mines. Totally uninterruptible, long action. That one did get me killed when three Separatists appeared and my character was chilled and bleeding before I could even stand up (and then knocked down by the one with the hammer).

Just one of those minor annoyances in the game that could stand some perusal.

Movement while sliding resets position

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

same issue it’s not just sliding but ‘falling’ from heights in general. I will fall from yay high and hit the ground and take no damage until i move forwards, and sometimes it will rubber band as well.

It’s possible that the reason I didn’t see an issue with just falling was because my test was in the center of Rata Sum. That is, dead when hitting the ground, always. I should have thought to test with non-lethal falls as well.

Missing chest for King Jalis's Refuge

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Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

For the jumping puzzle in Snowden Drifts, obviously. I went through the puzzle and defeated the veteran. The gate opened, and… the room behind the veteran is empty.

No chest, no Scholar Gina NPC.

I did at least get credit for the puzzle in the monthly list, but it’s still missing a chest and NPC that are normally there.

Movement while sliding resets position

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I first noticed this in Weyandt’s Revenge in Lion’s Arch. Entering the puzzle, sliding down the ramp my character reset position (a.k.a. rubber banding) a number of times before I finally slid into the puzzle cave.

I thought this might just be lag, but I have not had any issues with characters in any other aspect of the game. No problems with regular movement, or skill activation, or loading times.

I figured I’d try just sliding in general, so took a character to Rata Sum. While sliding down the side of the city, any time I hit A or D (my assigned strafe left/right keys), my character’s position would be reset to where I started the slide. I tested with other movement as well (forward and backward) and also reset my character’s position.

This position reset did not apply to a falling character. Just sliding. I’m not sure what the difference is in terms of movement, but my character was able to fall into the center of Rata Sum and strafe left/right and move forward and back without any reset.

Edit: p.s. This makes it rather difficult to enter Weyandt’s Revenge, my character’s position reset several times on the way down. Once, I got to the water at the bottom and was then reset back to one of the stalagmites at the lip of the slope.

(edited by Nkuvu.2570)

Accessing the forums

in Forum and Website Bugs

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I suspect that there is a cookie with login information saved. This information expires, prompting the re-login.

The reason I think it’s a cookie is because I can go to a different browser and visit the forum main page without a login prompt, read threads, et cetera. But return to my “main” browser and can’t do anything without logging in.

For some reason the developers here think that logging in daily is the way to make things secure, so no matter what I can’t stay logged in for more than a day (even though in game I can save login credentials without issue).

Since when are repeated knockdowns fun?

in Flame and Frost

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

If you get knocked down too often in a short period of time, you gain a short immunity to knockdowns.

That prevents excessive juggling and “deadlock” situations, as even if you bring all the stability and stun breaks in the world, a team fully specced to spam CC can literally keep anyone shut down permanently.

Guild Wars 2 could use that.

I definitely agree.

One of the times I did the event to defend the Lone Post outpost in Straits of Devastation, I was running into the outpost just as a group of putrifiers showed up. My character was knocked down repeatedly until I was dead (because of course it wasn’t just knockdowns, but a bunch of Risen hungry for brains as well). This was on a character where I didn’t have easy access to stability — my mesmer or engineer, I forget which. But there was nothing I could do except watch my character die. Very frustrating.

For this thread, though, I’m thinking more about the design of the game where knock down skills tend to be more and more popular. Orr, for example, had a lot of the knockdown skills toned down — but they’re all there again in the Living Story, with the boss at the end of Braham’s story and the numerous annoying periscopes.

That trend is, if you ask me, a bad one. Tone down the knockdown skills in the Living Story, give the fights a bit more variety, and it’s more fun.

Fix "training" enemies

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Also, stop going AFK in the middle of an area where enemies spawn. If you die doing that, it’s your own fault.

As mentioned a few times already, this is only one of a few different scenarios where training enemies is a problem.

If I go AFK in a spot where events/enemies normally appear, I fully agree. It’d be my own fault if I got killed.

On the flip side, though, if I go AFK where enemies don’t normally show up, and someone else drags enemies over and I die, it’s not my fault. It’s the fault of the other person and the poor aggro system based on proximity.

To respond to your first paragraph, it makes a certain amount of sense — unfortunately it’s at the cost of potential griefing, something that GW2 is usually pretty good about preventing. I’d favor a system that’s a little less “realistic” in terms of preventing situations where someone can interfere with another’s game play.

Fix "training" enemies

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I don’t think that would work so well because then it would essentially turn all enemies into neutrals.

Only if someone else is fighting an enemy already.

Consider “Bob” standing out in a field. Not neutral, but not attacking anyone. Player A walks up, and Bob sees him, and poof, attacks. Just like it is now.

Player B walks up to the fight, and Bob is already concentrating on player A. So Bob doesn’t stop attacking player A, unless player A dies, or player B also attacks Bob. Not too different from how it is now.

Can’t really think of a way in which this could be griefable, unless the player in question is AFK, at which point, don’t go AFK in the middle of an area.

I’ve had people drag enemies over to a vista — where I should have been safe, since no enemies are normally in that particular spot (not saying all vistas are safe, but the one I was at… yeah, you get the idea). I wasn’t entirely AFK, but looking on the map for the next thing for map completion. Suddenly fighting four things that someone dragged over — and then that someone left, because those things started attacking me instead of him. Could that have been intentional? Sure.

I’ve been in fights with groups of enemies. Some chucklehead runs through, followed by five or six enemies. Directly past me, where the fight is already not going too well. Chucklehead leaves, but the enemies are closer to me than him, so they start attacking me instead. I die. Could this be intentional? Absolutely.

I’ve watched people drag extra enemies into dynamic events, in hopes that it would fail. I watched those same people go out and drag in some more. Could that be intentional? Without question.

I could go on. These aren’t definitive proof that someone is griefing, but the game is set up so that it’s very easily done.

Fix "training" enemies

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

The problem:

Consider a fight, with hostile monster (let’s call him Bob), chasing fleeing player A. Nearby, player B is standing around idle, perhaps AFK entirely. Player A runs past player B, and Bob says “aahhh, fresh meat!” Bob then proceeds to eat player B’s face off. Yum!

The consequence:

Player A might be fleeing a fight going poorly. Or might be simply ignoring Bob and Bob’s friends and just running through the area. Or in the worst case scenario, player A might be maliciously dragging Bob over to player B, “for the luls.”

In addition to the idle player B scenario, player B might be already fighting Bob’s friends. Nothing say fun like being in a fight and having someone else drag a whole bunch more to you (and then, typically, fleeing — since the lured Bobs will stick around to fight).

The solution:

Alter the aggro table so that proximity is not the only deciding factor on what Bob attacks. If Bob is chasing player A because of a previous fight, make Bob smart enough to remember that it’s player A that hurt him, not player B. As such, Bob will ignore player B unless player B also attacks him. Hooray!

I’m sure it’s not quite as simple as I make it out to be, but for a game with tons of cooperation involved, it strikes me as really poor design that someone can “grief” other players simply by training things onto them.

Since when are repeated knockdowns fun?

in Flame and Frost

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

That particular boss knocks down with the attacks where he throws slow-moving flame jets at you. His normal attacks, which look like the sonic periscope blasts, don’t knock you down. However, the flame jets are kinda unpredictable in that I’ve been knocked over by jets that had already passed me or that I wasn’t struck by. Lag may have been a factor, but I’m not sure.

The fire columns knocked me down (and like you said, past where I expected them to, but lag might have been a factor for me too). He had an attack from his weapon that knocked me down — though he knelt before doing this, so if I had anything like an interrupt I might have been able to stop it. He had another weapon attack that didn’t knock me down. When I got to melee range he’d do a leap to knock me down. And then of course I’d have to go chase him while he was throwing more fire columns and ranged knockdowns — only to get knocked down again by the time I caught up with him.

This is why I made the topic in the first place. The sheer quantity of time my character spent on the ground was far over the top. And just not fun.

I think it’s neat that ArenaNet is adding new content for free. I’m just wondering who thinks this kind of thing makes for a fun and/or interesting fight. Want to give us a challenge? Fine! But please don’t make it repeated knockdown spam, excessive loss of control of my character is just… not a great time.

Since when are repeated knockdowns fun?

in Flame and Frost

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Out of curiosity, I did Braham’s mission again with my necromancer using scepter/dagger (a.k.a a ranged build). Note that my engineer was using the bomb kit primarily, so melee range.

My necromancer still got knocked down. Over and over again. But not nearly as much as my engineer did.

I’m not sure how you only got knocked down once or twice, my necromancer was knocked down at least a half dozen times, and that’s with dodging several of the attacks.

Still, no fun overall. Just a big ol’ annoying fight.

Since when are repeated knockdowns fun?

in Flame and Frost

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Just an idle curiosity. I finally got around to doing Braham’s story today. My character spent almost as much time on the ground as she did actually killing things.

“Duh! Just use stability!” Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen this said lots of times. Engineers really don’t have much available. Neither do a lot of other classes (mesmer, for example). There’s some available, but definitely not enough to deal with the quantity of knockdowns presented.

Consider, for instance, the champion at the end of Braham’s story. Every other attack is a knockdown. Dodging avoided some, but the fight was really just annoying. Not hard at all. Just annoying. A lot like the periscopes.

It seems that the majority of the new enemies provide lots of knockdown. And I’m wondering if anyone at all finds this fun or interesting.

Periscopes ranged knock back spam = NOT FUN

in Flame and Frost

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

The first periscope I found was outside the Black Citadel. Barely even to the first heart in Plains of Ashford.

So let’s think about what sorts of characters might be here. Level 2. Brand new players. With repeated knockdown skills at range.

So… how are they going to deal with this? Simple. They’ll die. They don’t have the skills on their character to help (especially for melee characters that might not have alternate weapons yet). They probably don’t have the gaming skills to dodge properly. They certainly won’t have utility skills to give them stability to deal with the knockdowns.

All of the suggestions on how to deal with these periscopes need to take this into account. We’re not talking about level 80 areas here — but brand new player-ville.

That said, even as a level 80 elementalist I found these periscopes to be highly annoying. Stability is too short with too long of a cooldown to effectively deal with the frequent and repeated knockdowns (though I’ll admit that I didn’t have any elementals out, that might have made things easier).

My solution? Kitten it. I’ll just avoid the blasted things until the Flame and Frost is over.

Equalize refinement times

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Umm…
Go refine a mithril ingot and compare it to how long it takes to make an iron ingot.
It takes about twice as long to make a mithril ingot.

That’s what I’m talking about, yes. But for clarity’s sake, I got out my stop watch and timed the creation of several different materials. And not just one, but a whole bunch.

These are the times it takes to make 100 ingots/planks/bolts — so even though the quantity of raw material is different, these should all be the same:
Iron ingots: 18s
Mithril ingots: 37s
Silver ingots: 37s
Darksteel ingots: 18s
Bolts of Jute: 37s
Soft wood planks: 37s

To be honest, I expected more variance out of this. Cloth somehow subjectively feels slower to me than mithril, but the time is actually the same.

Still, I’d like to see everything go as quickly as iron/darksteel.

(edit: and p.s., apologies for the initial confusion, some of this could have been more clear from the start)

Grenades problematic underwater

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Today I was killing things underwater on my engineer, and running into issues with the grenades. If there was a significant vertical difference between my character and the enemy, the enemy would not get any conditions applied.

The grenades were still exploding on contact, and the enemy was still taking damage, but the Shrapnel Grenade did not apply bleeding, the Flash Grenade did not apply blind, et cetera. Once I moved my character to be at roughly the same height (on the same enemy), conditions were being applied as normal.

This occurred every single time there was a vertical difference, and always went away when the vertical difference was removed.

Equalize refinement times

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Short version: All material refinements should take the same amount of time.

Longer version: Take a stack of iron ore, and refine it into ingots. Then take a stack of mithril ore and refine that into ingots. The iron refinement is much faster. And both are faster than refining cloth into bolts or wood into planks.

All of it (in my opinion) should be as fast as iron. There’s already a huge improvement from other games when it comes to crafting a lot of materials, but this difference in time is the fly in the soup. And honestly I can’t think of any reason at all to have different refinement times.

Intermittent mouseover problems

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Every once in a while, I am unable to target or highlight NPCs or players with my mouse. Normally, when hovering over an NPC or player, they’ll highlight — showing name, and health bar above their head.

When the problem occurs, I can still click to activate dialog options and other interface items, but the hovering provides no feedback. I also cannot click to target anything.

A full game restart (exit to desktop) fixes this issue, but it comes back… sometimes. I have been unable to pinpoint any significant cause for this. And although there is a solution, exiting the game completely is not always desirable by the time I notice the bug.

Broken Brutes

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Just found a bunch of broken Risen Brutes near Morgan’s Spiral in Caledon Forest.

They aggro, and shuffle up to my character, but do not attack at all. Just stand there.

The Risen Thralls still attack just fine, as do the Abominations and grubs. It seems that only the brutes forgot how to attack.

Cinematic audio issues

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Brought a character through the personal story quest at 30 to begin the Order of Whispers line. I entered the instance to meet with Tybalt.

I’ve recently completed the storyline on another character, so I skipped the initial cinematic with Tybalt entirely. Skip to End before the characters were even on screen.

Tybalt bows and leaves, Riel shows up, and I start the other cinematic. Only… for the second one, there was initially no audio at all. I heard my character say “I’m looking for my contact. A member of the Or—” and a few seconds later, Tybalt replied with his line. At one point in the cinematic, the bottom of the screen (where the subtitles are displayed) showed simply “Lightbringer Tybalt Leftpaw”. There was no other audio played.

I heard none of Riel’s discussion on the Order, throughout the entire thing.

Personally, it’s no big deal for me — I’ve seen it before a few times. However it’s certainly not working as intended.

Bonus side bug (related?): Many many NPC audio lines have very long pauses between speech. It sounds horrible, especially when one NPC interrupts the other (after a three second pause).

Daily Tracker - Still Collapses

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

The way the feature works is that if the tracker auto-collapses it will auto-expand the next time you make progress in an achievement. Clicking to collapse will turn off the auto-expand behavior.

It doesn’t seem to be working for me, even with this information in mind.

I am tracking the Weapon Master achievement for short bow kills (“Short-Bow Master”). An event popped up, and the achievement tracker collapsed. I killed things with a short bow for the event, and the tracker stayed collapsed. I got a gold medal for my participation in the event (dismissed that notification), and continued on. I killed several things, all by myself and all entirely with a short bow. The tracker stayed collapsed, even though I was making progress towards Short-Bow Master.

The event and monsters I was killing were all in Wayfarer Hills, and nothing special about anything I killed (no veterans or champions, even for the event).

Daily Tracker - Still Collapses

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Just make it remember what I set it to. Please. Same with the personal story tracker.

If I expand it, stay expanded until I collapse it. If I collapse it, stay collapsed. Is this a technical issue? Is it really that hard to code up? Because it’s really one of the more annoying things about the whole tracker.

Guild Missions [merged]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Correct me if I’m wrong. I do want to understand the problem.

One issue is NOT that it requires tier 5…it’s that it requires tier 5 Art of War, a tier you have not invested in.

You would be OK if it required tier 5 in the other trees because you already have invested influence in those.

I’m assuming you would also be ok if they made it require a completely separate and new tree, since everyone would start at the exact same point.

What you are NOT ok with is the fact that other guilds will be able to experience the content at a maximum of 16 days before you, assuming that you are starting at 0 AoW. This is because you would not be on equal footing on day 1 of the patch.

I think it’s a combination of two separate issues.

One, tier 5 for any aspect is a lot of influence. The guild I’m in has a number of casual players — six people in the roster total, two or three active at once. We’re nowhere near tier 5 in any tree.

Two, Art of War is not a particularly attractive tree for guilds that are not into WvW. So far, my guild has spent a bit of influence for Architecture, because it’s something we wanted (i.e., guild bank). We had zero plans to invest into Art of War simply because it gave us no benefits to how we play.

Guild Missions [merged]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I’ll just toss in my two cents here.

I’m more than a little disappointed that tier 5 of any guild upgrade is required. I know that some people are in huge guilds. And some people are in small guilds that play all day every day. But I suspect that there are many many more guilds (like the ones I’m in) that have done very little with guild upgrades. Especially something for PvE being based on the WvW track.

I knew that the guild missions would probably be more difficult for the small guilds I’m in. It seems that there’s a lot of cases where a number of people utilizing teamwork is the goal. That’s neat, and I’m not disparaging that. But I was expecting that it would be difficult simply because my small guilds would have to recruit random players in the area. They get bonuses, we get bonuses, everyone’s happy. Then I find out that we can’t even start a guild mission. Swing and a miss.

So this whole guild mission feature is an utter lack of anything useful to me. I would have been far more interested if the same time spent developing these guild missions was put into bug fixes. Or some other non-gated content.

Briarthorn Den Heart

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Old thread, but bumping back up because it’s still an issue.

Ride the Lightning briefly changes my first five skills to no skills. This drops the Briarthorn Den disguise, and if I am anywhere near the front, I’m kicked out of the area.

At the skill point towards the back, Ride the Lightning rushed me forward, and now my character is in Briarthorn without the Nightmare disguise. So apparently the disguise is dropped due to this skill — hoping that this extra information assists in debugging the issue entirely.

Underwater utility skills sharing cooldowns

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

The underwater skills are sharing a cooldown with the same slot as the land based skill. Even when the skills are totally unrelated.

For example, given an engineer. In the slot 9 utility skill, on land I might have a Thumper Turret. I set the turret down, kill things, pick up the turret, and have a fairly long cooldown before I can use it again. No problem. I jump into the water, where utility skill 9 is my grenade kit. The grenade kit is not usable, it’s still using the cooldown from the Thumper Turret.

The Thumper Turret and grenade kit have nothing to do with each other except sharing a utility slot, and equipping/stowing the grenade kit should have essentially no cooldown at all.

The cooldown is not limited to the skills I name above, those are just used for example.

Ranger laurel box giving non-ranger gear [Merged]

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I wasn’t, I was calling out the notion that “they just had to open the box” ; that QA testing breaks down to a boolean of “tried it once/didn’t try it”.

Fair enough, I agree with your point. Somehow missed that part of the quoted text.

Ranger laurel box giving non-ranger gear [Merged]

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I think the point was that if the devs had opened up each box as a test before launch, the hunter bug would have instantly been caught.

Such an over-site implies that there is little to no testing before new content goes out.

This is silly, the testers could easily have opened dozens(if not hundreds) of boxes and simply not encountered a bug.

Why do ppl assume that RNG results are verifiable by one quick pass?

Because they don’t need to play the RNG game to see what comes out of a box. They should be able to look at “this is all of the stuff that could possibly come from that box.” The loot table for a given package is not a mystery to the developers.

Clearly it was an oversight, and these things do happen, so I’m not criticizing them for making a mistake. But don’t try to defend the “testers” with the RNG, it doesn’t make sense.

Culling issues in PvE

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I’m having problems with events in PvE where there are a number of players nearby. I just participated in an event in Wayfarer Hills, with five or six other players. The event was to kill the grawl east of the Grawlenfjord Waypoint as they were trying to reclaim their food sacks.

What I saw was a number of players, and… a few grawl. Two or three grawl at most, and the shamans holding the portal open were invisible. Yet I was being attacked anyway, by invisible grawl. Fun!

The followup event was to kill the winged horror. This monster didn’t appear at all through the event, making it impossible for me to target it. But I got to watch other players fighting it. I got a bronze medal for the event with my warrior, simply because I used a few AoE skills in the general area.

I have not had significant issues with events in other starter regions, so my random speculative guess is that the culling is looking at overall region population rather than the number of players in the immediate area — with the new events, Wayfarer Hills is quite busy. But of course that’s just a guess.

Top right GO away!

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Personally I love the daily tracker. Particularly with achievements that change, and the addition of new ones. It was a blessing to be able to check to see if I dodged in time, or whether that combo field counted or whatever.

I’m not so much of a fan of the monthly, since I have no plans to complete it.

In any case, however, I’m very much in favor of customization. Put a checkbox on the hero window to allow/disable the daily/monthly tracking, and those of us that want to use it can, and those who don’t need it can turn it off. Everyone’s happy (minus someone who’s bound to complain about something, due to the nature of “can’t please everyone all the time”).

Caledon Forest map completion text

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Actually completing the map is no trouble at all. But if you mouse over the zone name, you get the completion text for Metrica Province rather than Caledon Forest:

http://i.imgur.com/snQ0tYn.jpg

Obviously in my screen shot it’s not a big deal, as my character is already in Caledon — but I initially checked from Lion’s Arch, but couldn’t see how far along Caledon was done before I actually went there.

Sunday Bonus Bug! Woo! In the initial cinematic for humans, the Seraph Soldier somehow misplaced her helmet. And her hair: http://i.imgur.com/SBBlus6.jpg

Copper Node In A Tree

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

I noticed this as well, but I couldn’t find a way to the node. Granted I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on it, after all it was just copper.

But I thought I’d add that this was on Tarnished Coast server, not sure if ore nodes are server specific or not.

Allow salvaging gem store skins

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

When initially purchased, the gem store skins are account bound. The consumable item can be freely moved between characters.

To be honest, I’d like a lot more flexibility for the gem store armor. In GW1, for instance, purchasing the armor skin was a one time deal for all characters, and it could be recreated whenever desired, so the issue I mention above would never be a problem.

My suggestion here is (I hope) simply a stop-gap measure. Hopefully something that is not too difficult to implement — I would guess that it’d be easier to implement than the complete revisions I’m thinking of.

Allow salvaging gem store skins

in Suggestions

Posted by: Nkuvu.2570

Nkuvu.2570

Something of an uncommon situation, so let me explain my recent issue.

I’ve been playing around with temporary characters. Making a character, playing for a while, then when I get tired of that character deleting and re-creating. For one of those characters, I used my Krytan armor that I purchased from the gem store.

Before deleting characters, I’m pretty good about clearing inventory. The character using the Krytan armor was no exception. I carefully checked inventory, and moved the Krytan pieces into my bank before deleting.

Unfortunately, I did not notice that one of the pieces was soulbound. I deleted the character, and… lost the armor. It was still in the bank, of course, but no other characters could withdraw it for transmutation. The only option was to destroy the armor to recover the inventory space.

My suggestion is to allow salvage of the gem store skins from a piece of armor — regardless of that armor being in the bank, or soulbound to another character. When salvaged, the consumable skin would be recovered 100% of the time even with the lowest level kit. It would come off the armor and be account bound just like it is when purchased, and the armor would then be salvaged like any other armor piece (based on the level of the kit used).

I paid real world money for this armor set, and lost it because I wasn’t careful enough. Which is my own fault, of course, but it would have been really nice to have some way to recover it.