On my Windows 7 desktop, I was able to follow the instructions at the link below and create a diagnostic tool that let me know I had a very poor quality internet connection – or so I thought.
https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/27698133-Connectivity
Tech support from my ISP had me try some things on my laptop and they seemed to work fine, but I am skeptical. I think the connection is still poor quality, but my laptop is better able to handle it. I’d like to run the same diagnostic on my laptop, but it is a Windows 8.1 machine and when I bring up the properties for the diagnostic shortcut I create, there is no window in which to type " -diag" . It’s simply not there. I’ve checked all the tabs and clicked on “advanced settings”. There is a place that gives part of the path name, but it cannot be altered. It’s just there for information purposes.
If a traceroute run on the laptop gives similar bad results, I can request my ISP swap out modems with me. Otherwise I can’t prove it’s not my desktop at fault. Of course it could indeed be my desktop at fault.
The ISP recently replaced my modem because the old modem caused a buzz on the phone line. The new one doesn’t cause a buzz, but it’s got a poorer quality connection. I suspect the problem is a poor quality connection between my house and the DSLAM down the street. I think the older modem generated a more powerful signal, which overpowered the noise on the line so the DSLAM could “hear” it, but also overpowered the DSL filter on the phone causing a buzz.
Below is a copy of my traceroute info from my desktop. I’ve removed any information that might be considered personal.
ArenaNet diagnostic utility 60049
Windows version: 6.1
Build 7601
Service Pack 1
Section completed in 0.00 seconds
I OMITTED THIS SECTION. IT SEEMED TO HAVE INFORMATION THAT MIGHT IDENTIFY ME PERSONALLY.
================
= Detecting network connections
================
—> netstat -n <--
Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP 127.0.0.1:49200 127.0.0.1:49201 ESTABLISHED
TCP 127.0.0.1:49201 127.0.0.1:49200 ESTABLISHED
TCP 192.168.0.2:50657 184.26.136.113:80 ESTABLISHED
TCP 192.168.0.2:50658 134.170.165.249:443 ESTABLISHED
Section completed in 0.08 seconds
================
= Discovering external address
================
Current IP Address: 75.121.124.149
Section completed in 0.86 seconds
================
= Checking server connectivity
================
Section completed in 0.00 seconds
Diag.ArenaNetworks.com
64.25.38.172:80 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.72:80 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.54:80 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.171:80 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.172:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.51:80 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.72:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.54:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.171:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.51:6112 – connect succeeded
Section completed in 0.19 seconds
assetcdn.101.ArenaNetworks.com.
174.35.32.145:80 – connect succeeded
174.35.32.143:80 – connect succeeded
Section completed in 0.14 seconds
auth1.101.ArenaNetworks.com.
64.25.38.72:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.172:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.51:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.54:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.38.171:6112 – connect succeeded
Section completed in 0.16 seconds
auth2.101.ArenaNetworks.com.
206.127.159.109:6112 – connect succeeded
206.127.159.77:6112 – connect succeeded
206.127.159.107:6112 – connect succeeded
206.127.146.74:6112 – connect succeeded
206.127.146.73:6112 – connect succeeded
206.127.159.108:6112 – connect succeeded
Section completed in 0.23 seconds
cligate.101.NCPlatform.net.
64.25.40.110:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.40.114:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.40.113:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.40.112:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.40.111:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.40.109:6112 – connect succeeded
64.25.40.115:6112 – connect succeeded
Section completed in 0.19 seconds
================
= Tracing network paths (about 10 mins)
================
—> pathping -w 500 -q 50 -4 64.25.39.1 <--
Tracing route to 64.25.33-1.ncsoft.com [64.25.39.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 NONEOFYOURBUSINESS [192.168.0.2]
1 modem.Home [192.168.0.1]
2 75-121-124-1.dyn.centurytel.net [75.121.124.1]
3 173-248-66-190.centurylink.net [173.248.66.190]
4 173-248-66-200.centurylink.net [173.248.66.200]
5 bb-atlngamv-jx9-02-ae0.core.centurytel.net [206.51.69.66]
6 * * *
Computing statistics for 62 seconds…
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 NONEOFYOURBUSINESS – SERIOUSLY WHY IS THIS EVEN IN HERE? YOU KNOW PEOPLE WILL POST THIS ON FORUMS.[192.168.0.2]
38/ 50 = 76% |
1 0ms 38/ 50 = 76% 0/ 50 = 0% modem.Home [192.168.0.1]
2/ 50 = 4% |
2 56ms 40/ 50 = 80% 0/ 50 = 0% 75-121-124-1.dyn.centurytel.net [75.121.124.1]
1/ 50 = 2% |
3 82ms 41/ 50 = 82% 0/ 50 = 0% 173-248-66-190.centurylink.net [173.248.66.190]
1/ 50 = 2% |
4 85ms 43/ 50 = 86% 1/ 50 = 2% 173-248-66-200.centurylink.net [173.248.66.200]
0/ 50 = 0% |
5 83ms 42/ 50 = 84% 0/ 50 = 0% bb-atlngamv-jx9-02-ae0.core.centurytel.net [206.51.69.66]
Trace complete.
—> pathping -w 500 -q 50 -4 206.127.158.1 <--
Tracing route to 206-127-158-1.ncsoft.com [206.127.158.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 NONEOFYOURBUSINESS – YOU KNOW IT’S COMMON DURING WINDOWS SETUP FOR THE PC TO ASK FOR A PERSON’S REAL NAME WHEN DETERMINING THIS. [192.168.0.2]
1 modem.Home [192.168.0.1]
2 75-121-124-1.dyn.centurytel.net [75.121.124.1]
3 173-248-66-204.centurylink.net [173.248.66.204]
4 173-248-66-228.centurylink.net [173.248.66.228]
5 * * *
Computing statistics for 50 seconds…
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 NONEOFYOURBUSINESS [192.168.0.2]
34/ 50 = 68% |
1 0ms 34/ 50 = 68% 0/ 50 = 0% modem.Home [192.168.0.1]
5/ 50 = 10% |
2 70ms 39/ 50 = 78% 0/ 50 = 0% 75-121-124-1.dyn.centurytel.net [75.121.124.1]
1/ 50 = 2% |
3 50ms 40/ 50 = 80% 0/ 50 = 0% 173-248-66-204.centurylink.net [173.248.66.204]
10/ 50 = 20% |
4 —- 50/ 50 =100% 0/ 50 = 0% 173-248-66-228.centurylink.net [173.248.66.228]
Trace complete.
assetcdn.101.ArenaNetworks.com. – address lookup failed
Section completed in 76.61 seconds
================
= Running DirectX diagnostic
================
—> dxdiag /whql:off /t C:\Users\STILLNONEOFYOURBUSINESS\AppData\Local\Temp\GWTDC81.tmp <—
Section completed in 0.06 seconds
================
= Result
================
Test complete
<EOF>
Historically, one of the closest weapons would be the Dane axe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dane_Axe
The Bayeux Tapestry was probably made between 1000 and 1100 AD, and depicts scenes leading up to the Norman conquest of England. These sections of the tapestry depict Dane axes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry#/media/File:Normans_Bayeux.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bayeux_Tapestry_scene57_Harold_death.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapisserie_agriculture.JPG
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GkstgS8IHdY/UHnUk8OGQNI/AAAAAAAAACA/QPL5b8Qk45A/s640/bayeux+dane+axe+headchop.jpg
http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/pix/bayeux_axeman.jpg
http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/pix/axemen_bayeux.jpg
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hurstwic.org%2Fhistory%2Farticles%2Fmanufacturing%2Fpix%2Fbayeux_lh_axe.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsagy.vikingove.cz%2Fnekolik-poznamek-k-pouzivani-sirokych-seker%2F&docid=_eQckbeaYws05M&tbnid=BB73muZZlHCArM%3A&w=250&h=308&ved=0ahUKEwifpKmQyaLKAhUC8CYKHTILDSsQxiAICDAG&iact=c&ictx=1
And here’s a couple of sites that sells historical artifacts including Viking axe heads. It seems to me like there might be a law against that sort of thing and no guarantee of historical authenticity, but that’s just my opinion:
http://www.anythinganywhere.com/commerce/relic/pak-ax-fe.html
Here’s another actual artifact:
http://i.imgur.com/CTh1sve.jpg
Egyptian battle axe:
http://www.sharenator.com/artifacts-and-interesting-archaeological-finds/
16th century Italian battle axe
Anyhow, there’s some non-fantasy real life battle axes if the ANet team needs any artistic inspiration.
It makes more sense economically to sell expansions to a game with an established player base.
If they created a GW3, most of the GW3 customers would be GW2 players who would stop playing GW2, stop buying new GW2 expansions, stop spending real money on the GW2 TP, and put all their money towards GW3. That’s a lose/lose proposition for ANet as it is more expensive to roll out an entirely new game from scratch versus creating a new expansion to an existing game. They would end up spending more money in order to have fewer customers. Of course they might pull in new players with a new game or bring back old players that have left the game, but the same could be said for an expansion.
Unless there is a fundamental shift in gaming, such that games like GW2 are considered old and outdated by comparison, I don’t see a GW3 coming along.
I’m stuck at 23/25 crabgrabber, which in and of itself doesn’t bother me as I despise this particular mini-game, but it’s taking up one of the 3 slots in my “Nearly completed” achievement list and I want it off of there. Incidentally, another slot on that list is taken by Dragon’s Stand Explorer 16/18 because apparently two of the areas needed aren’t in the game yet. The third slot is a WvW achievement which is at 1778/2000 towers. I don’t even do WvW much anymore now that HoT is out. I wish there was a way to take these achievements off the list. The purpose of the list shouldn’t be to try and force you to do the achievements ANet picks for you. It’s supposed to be helpful.
I think when they created the thing, they thought of it just as a toy and underestimated its value. When I read the description, I bought one instantly. I realized it was anything but “just a toy”. For several days I would tell my guildmates every few hours that they absolutely had to buy one.
Then it went off the market and people started finding out what they had missed. And because the vast majority of players didn’t have one, instead of drying up the candy corn supply, it created a market for that trickle of candy corn coming from all those home instances with the candy corn node. People that had candy corn nodes, but no gobbler made sure to harvest and sell their candy corn.
But now of course you had a minority of players with a very real XP advantage over everyone else and people started stacking hours of XP bonuses. I think the most I ever got was about 2 to 3 hours worth.
So the choice was to bring it back for everyone and unbalance the whole game, let things stay as they were with a minority enjoying a huge advantage purchased relatively cheaply, or nerf it. They chose to nerf it. I wish they hadn’t, but that’s that.
For it to work as they had intended, they needed to let everyone who wanted one buy one. Then the candy corn supply would dry up fast. Instead it was only available for a short period of time and most people didn’t realize how valuable it was. Also, if they kept it from being account bound, people that have gotten what they want out of the gobbler could sell theirs and let someone else start using up the supply. That’s my two cents.
Use all kinds of XP boosts. Check the Wiki. If you can get a kill streak boost (candy corn gobbler provides one if you got a gobbler), then DS is wonderful because you can maintain a kill streak for 10 or 20 minutes at a time. Tag all the bad guys you can. GET IN A SQUAD!
Bumping a post about a bug over a year old? I shouldn’t have to do this. It’s still bugged.
I am a member of TTS, a multi-server guild that often does events like the Triple Trouble Wurm and various HoT metas. We’re very good at all of them except TD.
One of the main reasons for that is that we can’t get all our players in the instance. Instead, there will be non-guild members who aren’t in our Team Speak channel out doing hero challenges, exploring the zone, etc. or participating in the meta but doing a poor job of it because they aren’t in our Team Speak channel. Note that our Team Speak channel is not private. Anyone can join. They’re not in channel because they don’t feel like going to that much trouble and that attitude often shows in the quality of their performance in the meta.
Meanwhile those of us that didn’t get in are stuck spamming “join in tangled depths” for up to an hour. Sometimes we get in. Sometimes we don’t. It’s not a fun way to play. You can’t really explore or kill stuff and try to taxi in at the same time.
My suggestion is that if players get a full squad, the leader has the ability to trigger an instance of the zone (at the Waypoint where you enter from Auric Basin). This instance would be closed to normal zone-in access. You’d only be able to access it by joining a squad/party of someone already in the zone. If that’s hard to write code for, one way to accomplish that would be to set the soft cap on the instance at 50 (the number of people already in the zone from the full squad). Of course there would be a tiny window between the formation of the instance and everyone in the squad entering where someone not in the squad might get in. Set the hard cap at maybe 100 people. If a guild gets an instance going and gets all their people in, then they can start using the LFG tool to pull in outsiders if perchance they need more. If scaling works properly, they shouldn’t need anymore people though.
I can see the need for repping if the guild members were doing an event such that non-guildies might show up uninvited and mess it up. The commander(s) running the event might want to know what percentage of people there are actually being coordinated via Team Speak or guild chat or whatever.
I purchased it just for the glider skin. Didn’t get anything worth using from the dyes, not going to use the sniper outfit as my current skins are way cooler, not going to use any of the immortal weapon skins (again, current skins are cooler), have never used a total makeover kit – got a small stack of them stashed on a storage character.
- Bandit sniper outfit
- Soul river glider
- Immortal weapon choice
- total makeover kit
- (5) shadow dye kit
Now I was willing and able to do this at the current inflated gold to gems ratio, but think of all the people that looked at that 2000 gem price and just sadly shook their heads and walked away. Sure they hook a few people like me that have the money, but if they had kept the items separate, they could have charged MORE than 2000 gems collectively, so how is that a bargain?
Let’s say that as a part of the package, the glider skin came out to 600 gems. They could have sold it by itself for 800 gems and made a lot more money just off the glider alone.
Recently I was involved in an attempt at the Tangled Depths meta that almost succeeded. It’s failure was blamed on people CC’ing the boss monsters and thus reducing their defiance bar to zero. For those that don’t know, when the defiance bars on these monsters goes to zero, they change their behavior and become very difficult to defeat.
People were told not to use fighting skills that could lower the defiance bar, but one source of this undesired CC wasn’t fighting skills at all, but traits. For example, maybe there is a trait for some class that does a knockback on a critical hit. That’s just something I made up just now which may or may not really exist.
So, my question is this: Are there any Thief traits that would lower a defiance bar even when used with a fighting skill that normally doesn’t lower the bar?
Part 2: Also, on a related note, which 1-10 Thief skills lower the defiance bar? I know that for offhand pistol, pistol skill 4 (headshot) and also scorpion wire lower the defiance bar. Someone said that basilisk venom does as well.
I confirmed that the 10 non-account bound mystic forge stones I had in the bank are now account bound and stack with previous stones. I cancelled my orders I had placed for these stones and got my money refunded. They can still be found on the TP in a bugged manner because undoubtedly people put them up for sale when there were not account bound and never cancelled their sale.
So if any of you out there read this, cancel your buying/selling of these stones as the transaction can’t go through.
Whenever I try to buy the new mystic forge stones at the TP, I just get the whirly round thing in the middle of the TP interface. It never goes away. 30 seconds later or 5 minutes later, it’s still whirling. Other items on the TP do not have this problem, so it is not a generic TP problem.
If you look under the general category of achievements, then under “explorer”, there is an HoT exploration achievement titled “Dragon’s Stand”. There are two areas listed for this achievement that aren’t on the map. Thorn Hollow and Deserted Coast. They are in the Wiki.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon's_Stand
One poster claims that by cheating and going outside the map you can get Deserted Coast
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3r6z9p/need_help_with_some_dragons_stand_achievement/
I’ve seen the “husk” in question. At the very end of the pale reaver series of events, if you look across the bridge at the vine, on your right across the bridge is a tower of some kind. The champ in question spawns high on that tower, and his position is such that most (possibly all) attacks from ground level can’t reach him. I went there when there was practically nothing there to attack me and couldn’t get up there by jumping, so on to Plan B.
I used gliding to get down there from the canopy with a mesmer and ported up someone (a ranger maybe?). Between the two of us we broke his bar. He was still alive and had absolutely no bar left. I did NOT get the achievement. Apparently this is the wrong guy.
So sorrry . . . I had high hopes for this one.
Oops. My bad. The trap thing is in Chapter 10, not 9. Forget I said anything about the traps.
I’ve finished the entire living story.
I can replay chapters before and after “The Predator’s Path”, but unless I’m grouped with someone else that opens it, I can’t get into that chapter anymore. The “Replay This Chapter” button isn’t there.
It may be unrelated, but just in case there’s a connection, once inside this instance which someone else opened, I was able to get all the achievements except the one for evading the traps. I definitely avoided the traps. I kept the icon over my buff bar indicating that I could still get the achievement right up to the very end of the story when we exited the story after completely finishing it. I tried the workaround where you run back and deliberately trigger a trap at the end, but the traps were gone.
I am of course referring to the following, the new karma merchants that move from place to place in each of the main regions of pre-HoT Tyria.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pact_Supply_Network_Agent
So, are any of their items “grand prizes”? Is there anything rare and valuable or no longer accessible in the game any other way? I’ve spent about 300k karma out of my 9.2 million karma I had and I’ve seen nothing to really justify it yet. Maybe someone else has won the Pact Supply Agent lottery and can clue me in.
So far I’ve gotten a bunch of recipes I’ll never use. I wish they’d take the stuff you already have off the list of potential recipes, but then maybe it’s a standards set for everyone for a given time or location.
The problem with merging Tyrian and HoT mastery points and xp is that everyone would just go spend the next week in CoF, farming xp.
Also, some people complain that masteries are account wide, but I would truly hate to have to repeat every single thing that got me a mastery point for every single level 80 character in my account.
I grind most of my mastery xp in Verdant Brink. Get 200% map completion. Use good food/utility xp buffs. I also have the candy corn eating thing that I use to pump up my xp there as well. Keep a 10 kill steak buff going and the xp gets pretty good. Target events over and over, especially ones where there is a lot of stuff to kill. I’m currently grinding away at gliding level 4 (which is 5 mastery points) and it’s going pretty quick.
My biggest concern now is running out of mastery points, not lack of xp. I may have to take a break from xp for a few days to crank out some more mastery points. I just hope it doesn’t turn out that there are EXACTLY as many master points possible as needed to max your HoT masteries, cause some of those mastery points are really hard/expensive to get.
I found a video of a frog playing a banjo in the swamp.
Kermit seems to have changed over the years.
Of course it’s terrible that sharks are being harvested in huge numbers for their fins just so people can have “shark fin soup”.
The good news is that I’ve made a wonderful discovery that could save the sharks. Apparently porpoise fins are indistinguishable from shark fins in terms of soup quality. This discovery will save the lives of many sharks. I’ve gotten the word out to as many shark fin harvesters as possible. So the next time you chow down on a bowl of delicious shark fin soup, don’t feel so guilty! It’s probably made from dolphins instead!
It’s an annoying bug, but it doesn’t block game progression or cause crashes or anything like that, so it’s low priority.
The problem with this event is that unlike the other entrances, a few people who are new and don’t know what to do can mess it up for everybody else. Make sure you give explicit instructions over and over. A common mistake is people shooting at everything that moves and in the process hitting the triggers and detonating the bombs prematurely. I have to admit that I did this the first time I played south entrance. Nobody corrected me. I had to question other players in map chat to figure out what was going on.
Pushers push. Armor pulls trigger blossoms out of the way. If you aren’t doing one of these tasks you should probably leave and go to a different gate.
One complication is that there is an achievement that requires participating at all four entrances. So if you have to do this and you don’t have a good push skill, grab some armor and pull trigger blossoms to the side.
You definitely want something that gives you kill streak if you do this. The thing that eats candy corn and occasionally gives you duration-stacking XP buffs is great for that.
Some fireworks from the lunar new year festival give a small XP buff that stacks with just about everything. Not many people use them. They stack up to 2 hours.
Get 15% food and 15% utility XP. Those potions that work against Scarlett’s minions are great for 15% utility XP.
If you’ve been hording XP buffs since day 1 like I have, you have a nice little reserve to get you through this farm. If you wasted them for the heck of it like most people, well that’s too bad.
Regarding the farm itself, there are four spots that appear to spawn enemies, but one of them doesn’t work. The two spots farthest away from the entrance, one spawns enemies at both spots and the other does not. So, most people stack on the spot that spawns two spots for continuous spawning while someone that can move around fast tags the other two spots closest to the entrance. Just try to tag all the enemies. That’s your goal. Tag them all before they die. It’s not about DPS, so sacrifice a DPS weapon or skill in favor of one that lets you tag a lot of stuff.
As a thief with a short bow, I picked one of the trigger points, set my back to it, parked halfway between the trigger point and the main stack of players, and used my 3 skill to fly backwards into the trigger and then run forward back to the between spot. It got to be pretty automatic after a while. That left one trigger for a runner to go back and forth to.
I would dedicate one character to this farm and play a different one so you can log out the XP buffed character as soon as you are done XP farming to preserve the buffs.
It was very, very boring though. I did fractal and pact commander sets of masteries, but decided to accumulate legendary XP the old fashioned way as I have no intention of trying to make a legendary for a long, long time. As anticipated, making legendaries is very expensive and very time consuming. I have eight 20-slot bags on my main, so rather than put a ridiculous amount of money/time into a legendary, I can just make a few different ascended versions of the same weapon for a fraction of the cost and time.
Having a legendary is all about the weapon skin, not the practicality.
So maybe you could share with the rest of us who are in the same boat where the marker was? A bit more specifically than “wasn’t anywhere near the actual location” please.
I’ve noticed that if your aim is perfect and you fire a shot and then attempt to move to the next target before the bullet actually hits, it’s an automatic miss. Presumably the bullet follows the mouse pointer? I don’t know, because I’ve fired a shot I knew was a miss, and moved the mouse pointer on target before the shot hit/missed and it was still a miss.
So, to recap, if your aim is perfect and you move the mouse OFF target after shooting, you miss. If your aim is not perfect, but you move your mouse ON target after pulling the trigger, you still miss. This is an actual bug in my opinion.
I like to do this in first person, but the camera keeps popping out of first person and suddenly bushes BEHIND my toon are in the way of my aim. We’re talking stuff that isn’t actually between the gun and the target. Maybe there is a setting to lock it into first person that I haven’t found yet. I have to keep spinning that mouse zoom wheel every few seconds to stay in first person.
A little helpful hint. You can kill targets as soon as they start to form.
I’m wondering if a taller toon might do better at this because first person would let you see over stuff.
And to repeat what others have said, that tiny white dot is not a good sight. A tiny cross hair would be better, something you can spot instant. One trick used for this purpose in real gun sights is to have the cross hairs thick away from the center and sharpen to points in the middle so you can see your target better, but still see the crosshairs.
Check out this stuff called Vantablack. It’s a real substance made from carbon nanotubes that is so black you can only see it’s outline. That is, if you had an action figure of say, Darth Vader, coated in this stuff on top of a round pedestal also coated in this stuff and you looked at it from above, you’d just see a round, black circle. Darth Vader would be invisible from that angle. From the side, you’d see a silhouette of Darth Vader standing on top of a horizontal line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack
One application would be coating the insides of optical instruments (telescopes, microscopes, etc.) to absorb stray light and reduce signal noise.
Note that in the pictures, Vantablack looks like it’s a smooth surface in the middle of a bunch of crinkled up aluminum foil, but in fact it’s coated on that crinkled surface but you just can’t see the crinkles.
In Lion’s Arch, in the NW corner where the cave full of skritt is located, there is an underwater tunnel that leads to a small cave. If LA were a real place, I’d really like to get my hands on that cave.
In the eastern end of LA, where the guild related stuff is, there is a trick to getting into the buildings there. I don’t see the harm in it as there is no practical advantage to getting in there, but seeing as how it’s technically not meant to be accessed, I’m not going to give instructions on how to get there. The amount of work that has gone into the interiors of those buildings, that nobody can see from outside, leads me to believe that it may be a model for guild halls.
Ooh, imagine a torch, but instead of flames, it’s a fountain of blood. (coming out of the mouth of a skull, held by a demon). That the sort of thing you want Rikimaru?
And such weapons are feasible under the new system if the assumption is that the evil-looking design of the weapon is based on defeating foes embodied by the appearance of the weapon. Perhaps the skull vomiting blood is the skull of the final boss monster you have to defeat, famous for his poison blood attack. His spirit is forever imprisoned grasped in the fist of his mortal foe, the demon Xnspttstl whom he transformed into a small, bronze statue.
But wait! Perhaps you envision your own character as evil! Isn’t that a conflict of interest, heroically slaying evil monsters? Not necessarily! The biggest threat to evil people is usually other evil people. That’s why mobsters and gang members who go around killing people usually are killing other mobsters and gang members, not because they are heroic, but because they are getting rid of threats and competitors.
I have practical concerns that dictate my choice. I prefer small characters where a lot of jumping is involved and HoT is full of jumping.
When viewing your character from behind and above, larger models tend to obscure what you are jumping on.
That would seem to make the obvious choice Asuran, but the Asuran jump animation with all its flailing around makes it more difficult to judge landings.
That leaves using the smallest possible human or sylvan models.
And, as I stated earlier, HoT is chock full of jumping.
According to the following link, HoT will be released on Oct 23, 2015 (Thursday).
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns
That would seem to be pretty straight forward with the assumption that perhaps at reset on Thursday the game will switch over to HoT/Halloween mode.
However, my question has to do with Greenwich mean time. Unless I am mistaken, daily resets (which are currently occurring at 7 pm Central time (my time zone) are actually based on midnight of Greenwich mean time. That means that when Oct 23 rolls around in England at the stroke of midnight, it’s about 7 pm on Oct 22nd where I live (depending on daylight savings time).
So, my question is whether the Oct 23rd date is the American date meaning our Thursday at about 7pm Central or is it Greenwich mean time meaning it’s really going to be Oct 22nd, at 7pm Central for those of us in the United States..
I’d use the cost of things like precursors and tier 6 mats to measure inflation. Although the gold to gems conversion rate connects to inflation in some ways, I don’t think it directly correlates. That is, when the exchange rate went from about 100 gold per 800 gems to briefly over 200 gold per 800 gems, that doesn’t necessarily mean that inflation doubled, merely that the demand for goods sold for gems increased more than the supply of gems did. I suppose you could call that “gem inflation”, but it’s not gold inflation. If the things bought for gems could then be sold on the TP, there’s be a stronger connection between gem inflation and gold inflation, but gem purchases are an economic dead end.
In a real world economy, some of the things that can cause inflation are printing too much currency (analogous to the fact that there aren’t enough gold sinks in GW2) and something that has sweeping effects across the board economically, like an increase in the price of oil, raising minimum wage, or a serious trade deficit. In the video game world of GW2, pretty much the only thing that really causes inflation is the lack of gold sinks. The prices of vendor goods never changes. For the most part, drop rates of most items does not change.
Let’s make up an oversimplified example. Suppose that now when you open a champ bag you have a 90% chance of getting item A and a 10% chance of getting item B. Because of this, item A sells for 10 silver and Item B sells for 100 silver (1 gold).
Now, imagine that HoT comes out and they exactly reverse these two things. Now B drops 90% of the time and A drops 10% of the time. It takes a little while, but the prices reverse and B sells for 10 silver and A sells for a gold piece. Actually, what will happen initially is that the price of B will drop fast and the price of A will come up slowly because some people have been hording A (because A was easy to get before HoT).
So, if you open now, you’ll be doing well when HoT comes out and if you wait for the prices to flip. If you wait until HoT comes out to open your bags, by the time you realize what the new drop rates are, odds are the opportunity for profit has diminished.
ON THE OTHER HAND . . . . If a new item never before seen in the game drops from the new bags – we’ll call it C – and maybe it’s a very rare and very valuable drop used to craft precursors, then you’ll wish you kept those bags unopened. Everyone will desperately be farming bags, bags that you already have . . . or maybe you don’t.
I’ve seen this requested repeatedly over the past few years. I assume some A-Net guy reads the posts, mutters “working as intended” under his breath and goes back to playing Minecraft.
According to the Infinite Monkey Theorem (and yes, that is a real thing – look it up), a monkey typing random keys on a typewriter, given an infinite amount of time will eventually almost surely type something like the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the odds of this are so small that if the entire universe were full of monkeys typing away at random keys, it would still take countless eons just to produce one of Shakespeare’s plays, let alone the complete works.
So, what are the odds that thieves will get a buff? About the same as two monkeys typing War and Peace (1225 pages) over the weekend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Typically patch notes look something like this for the classes:
Warrior: Did three things that made warriors easier to play, more effective in combat, etc.
Other classes besides thief: Basically same as warrior.
Thief: Corrected a spelling error in one of the tool tips.
And it happens over, and over, and over. . . ..
Even if most characters don’t run reveal, how many does it take in a WvW zerg running reveal to mess up stealth thieves in WvW? 10%? 5%?
I have yet to get a key drop since the recent change.
ANet has made it so you get one key per week maximum (per account) from doing the personal story stuff to cut down on key farming.
I’m assuming that the drop rate from monster kills will be based on this somehow, probably either slightly more often or slightly less often.
Remember, farming keys takes actual cash money out of ANet’s pockets. That’s why they nerfed it. If you spend real life money to buy keys, ANet gets money. They are well within their rights, but it seems kind of petty.
I predict that the cost of black lion skins will go up so high that the market will practically dry up. Most of the skins aren’t that good anyhow. Trade in skins that cost 1 ticket will dominate by far. Older skins will not be worth it. Who wants to farm for six months to get enough keys to get a skin? What would you charge for such a skin if you sold it? I’d want at least a thousand gold, but that’s me.
Based on my calculations, if you farm keys under the current system and get 52 keys a year, you’ll get enough tickets/ticket scraps to have 3 or just under 3 tickets. Assuming you buy the skins when they first come out, that’s 3 skins a year.
This is based on the drop rate of 0.323 ticket scraps per chest and 0.02 full tickets per chest. So, it takes roughly 31 chests to get 10 ticket scraps and 50 chests to get one full ticket. In 52 weeks you would expect to get 1 full ticket and 17 ticket scraps (on average). Of course some people will get lucky and some people will get unlucky. Some people won’t get that full ticket even after a full year of farming.
The psychological appeal of buying keys and opening chests is kind of like playing a slot machine or scratching off those things on lottery tickets. To some people this sort of thing is horribly addictive and they are the ones that will spend cash to buy keys (that and people who are actually wealthy in real life). Most people won’t see the appeal.
With my luck they’d make them where you can sell them or make something valuable out of them and then after I used all of mine up they’d raise the cap to 400.
It’s thief or nothing. I’ve got a level 80 character in every class. The play style of other classes bores me. I’ll just play a different game. I’ve really given up on GW2 pending how HoT turns out. If it sucks, I’m done. If it marginalizes thieves, I’m done.
Frankly I was underwhelmed. As someone who is a fan of the Daredevil comic, the name gave me high expectations.
The dodging/evading stuff wasn’t that effective compared to what I had to give up to get it. It was difficult to control in combat. I could see myself dashing off the edge of a cliff, which is a very dangerous thing to do in HoT (not to mention Edge of the Mist or half a dozen other places). It didn’t seem to make it any harder for NPC’s to hit me. I suspect it wouldn’t make it any harder for PC’s to hit me in WvW. We have this thing in GW2 called “auto targetting” which means that jumping all over the place like a kangaroo on speed doesn’t actually do you that much good.
DD seems like more of a novelty line of traits, something you do for a week or two to get some cool screenshots before going back to a real thief build that actually works.
The tool tips in the Daredevil line are hard to follow. I had to go to Dulfy for explanations on how some of them work. PIXELS ARE FREE, A-NET! Sheesh!
It feels like the Daredevil trait line can’t figure out what it wants to be. It tries to be offense here, defense there, and utility over in that direction. Pick one to concentrate on please. Trying to be a “well balanced” thief (or any class for that matter) means you either get crushed in WvW or you end up surviving, but accomplishing nothing. Balance is something to be accomplished overall when considering all the trait lines taken together, not something done in a single trait line. It’s like celestial armor, one of the most useless armors in the game because it tries to be a little bit of everything, meaning it’s not really good at anything. I think maybe there’s one build in one class that uses that armor.
DD feels like A-Net wants thieves to give up on being anything but condi. I despise condi builds.
Basically I see no reason to use the DD trait line. It has a few good traits here and there, but not enough to make it worthwhile to discard one of the good trait lines I’m already using. Maybe if I had a condi build I would feel differently. If that’s the case, it’s just another nail in the coffin of anyone who isn’t a condi thief.
No, the deadline to get the free character slot with pre-purchase came and went a while back. If you didn’t order back when the free slot was available, even if you pre-order today, you don’t get it. I’m a vet. I’ve played since a month or two after the game was released. I pre-ordered maybe a week or two ago. I didn’t get a free character slot for the lowest cost package. For $25 dollars extra I could have gotten a “free” character slot. I’ll just buy it with gems purchased with gold if I have to. It’s a lot cheaper than $25 in real money.
Frankly I’m kind of underwhelmed by the beta testing. I had originally planned to take the revenant to level 80 in my “free character slot” I assumed I’d get, using tomes of knowledge. Having seen the revenant in action in beta, I’m not that interested. I’ll just stick to my current character class I favor. Really I’m not sure I’ll even go the daredevil route with my thief. It’s gimmicky and not that effective compared to existing builds.
I’ve maxed my magic find from luck. I now have 15 stacks of 250 exotic essence of luck (200 luck each) and one stack of 51. That’s 3,801 × 200 luck = 760,200 luck. I’m scared to destroy them lest ANET come up with some use for them the next day. I destroyed some of my tricolor key fragments a while back and now I suddenly have a use for them with the mordrem invasion. Who knew?
I’m probably repeating what everybody else already posted, but I don’t feel like wading through 8 pages (so far) to figure out what’s been said.
I was really excited when I found out I could get the selfless potion to go with the thoughtless potion I got way back when. Then I did the math. A lot of people are doing the math and it’s not good.
CAUTION:
It’s better to give up on salvaging the event completely and chalk it up to experience than to do a half-hearted fix. If you kind of/sort of fix it, the people who gave up on the event because it wasn’t worth playing end up getting punished for it. That is, if you make it great for those that didn’t give up on the event after it’s too late for players to get back into the event and earn blooms, it’s going to look incredibly petty and vindictive against your critics, even if it wasn’t intended that way.
If you wait until the event is over and say that the 450 bloom items are now 100 blooms, the guy that gave up with 60 blooms is up the creek.
The guy that had 120 blooms and spent 60 of them already is up the creek. He could have saved them and bought the best item.
The guy that realized the event was hopeless on day 1 and stopped with 30 blooms, but could have had 120 blooms by the last day if he had kept playing is up the creek.
*************************************************************
The event had potential. A few minor details killed it.
SUGGESTIONS:
1: Extend the event by one week in addition to its current length and announce your intention to do this QUICKLY! If you get to the end of the four days before announcing this, extend it 10 days instead. Why? Because people are giving up on the event right now (including me) because there is no way we’re spending 8 to 10 hours a day in the short amount of time left in order to earn the stuff that costs 450 blooms. If, after we have given up, you wait until the four days are up to announce we get an extra week, you will have in effect robbed us of the first four days of the event which we assumed was utterly hopeless – if you wait until the last day to announce an extension. If we knew that the event would be extended long enough to make these items attainable, we’d keep playing now instead of skipping it.
2. Give us a reason not to tag and run. Maybe we get 1 bloom for bronze, 2 for silver and 3 for gold. Put a chest at the end. Let champs have champ bags. People will stick around and fight for champ bags.
Let the NPC’s we kill drop loot. It doesn’t have to be uber loot. Just regular run of the mill loot would be nice. Give a small chance of something nice like an extra bloom, etc. to motivate people to kill as much as possible, which they can’t do if they are just tagging and running.
3: Let us build stacks of bloodlust or whatever we build stacks of off of the NPC’s in the events. Why? It’s an extra incentive to make more kills.
4: It’s a bit late for this now, but for future events, have grand events incorporated in addition to the run of the mill repetitive ones. Make them something you can do once a day for a special chest or whatever. Something like the marionette event in Scarlet’s invasion. Guilds get into events like that. Its challenging.
CRITICISM
I’ll be blunt. The whole event feels half-hearted, like maybe you normally have 20 people working on living story events and spending a month getting them ready and this time you grabbed four or five interns and told them to “Whip something up by Friday!. . . . . But don’t get any overtime! . . . . And make sure you do your regular duties first!” Okay, maybe there was a little bit of hyperbole there, but you get the idea.
My current strategy isn’t even to tag. It’s to do one event and go AFK and do something else until I get my 20 blooms for participation. Why waste all that effort for so little extra reward? When the whole event is over, I’ll take the 80 to 100 blooms I’ll have earned this way and spend them on whatever. Right now as I type this I’m logged into the game in Kessex Hills, having just done my first and last encounter in this event until tomorrow’s reset. I peek in from time to time so I don’t disconnect before I get my reward. They should make a “Demotivation” poster based on it.
The event is also kind of “grindy”. There’s no excitement. The events are too easy in terms of strategy. They take very little skill – hence my suggestion for incorporating “grand events”.
Hamburgler. That’s what we call it. We specialize in stealing hamburgers and other food items.
Berniemadoffer – We won’t just steal what’s in your pockets, we’ll steal your retirement stock portfolio! (F3 to steal from stock portfolio)
The Creep – Like in the Lonely Island song, only stealthier. Change stealth movement animation to “The Creep” dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0
Sneakers – Because we’re sneaky! We could also put the Nike “swoosh” symbol on our chests and maybe ANet could get money from Nike for the free advertisement . . . or sued mercilessly, you know, whatever.
Ninja Death Scout Assassin Bandit – It covers all the bases. Or, we could rearrange it as Bandit Assassin Ninja Death Scout, then we get an acronym we can pronounce “BANDS”. And our specialized weapon could be a rock so we could be . . . . “Rock BANDS”!!! Our war cry would be “Are you ready to rock?!!!”
I heard that someone in ANet got offended by criticism of SAB and decided to metaphorically speaking “take their ball and go home”. If so, we’ll never see it again.
It was an awesome item. Once I obtained what I wanted with it, Gold WvW status, it was permanently retired in favor of other items. It’s a shame that those still using it are up the creek now.
I went with buying more character slots. However I got gems when the exchange rate was much better than it is now.
For everything exotic and up I use a Black Lion salvage kit. Exotic and up are the ONLY things I use these kits for, so I’ve actually built up a little bit of a stockpile. I think I have maybe a couple of hundred of them at the moment. Anyhow, it’s more than enough to salvage all my ascended gear.
BL kits give a 100% chance of recovering upgrades. Now, I’m not sure if that includes infusions or not. I don’t think it does.
I can see a form of abuse happening by players if this isn’t handled correctly. If salvaging rings for example is too profitable in terms of ingredients salvaged, people who are willing to camp out in higher level fractals will make ridiculous amounts of money until the cost of tier 6 materials (presumably what would be salvaged) drops to almost nothing. The cost of legendaries will drop as well as one of the main contributing factors to their cost is the cost of tier 6 materials.
This assumes that as per the original poster, a guaranteed maximum salvage occurs.
I have a concern regarding the upcoming fractal changes. There will be new achievements and that is fine. I am an achievement junkie. What I am concerned about is the possibility that some of the existing fractal achievements might end up being removed, such that only the people that have already done them get those achievement points.
I’ve put off achievement completion in fractals because quite frankly I don’t like fractals that much. I’m concerned about the possibility that I might be “forced” to grind away at those achievements now if I ever want to get them.