Guild Wars 2

You could make it that in 3rd or 4th Fractals, kicking someone from a party requires either a) the person has disconnected from the game or left the dungeon, or b) all four of the other party-members agree to the kick. In a pug group, would at least make it so some discussion had to happen.

Yargesh.4965:

I don’t understand the question.

I believe the OP is concerned he may have to change his build and/or gear after the feature patch.

Zepidel.5349:

Everything in OP’s post are things that are really wrong with the game, and yet every post here is kissing anets kitten.

People generally play games because they like them. I really don’t understand why it would be surprising for someone to prefer the current state of the game they play, to ideas rather more reminiscent of other MMOs, which they perhaps do not play.

Weylin.6478:

OK, so it’s not water combat that sucks, it’s just that the elementalist is incredibly difficult to be effective with?

I mean, I was trying pretty hard to do damage.

So far I’ve only died once in water combat, it’s just very unproductive…

Like I said, I drag the enemies to the shore and vaporize them in seconds with with basically 2 skills.

Can we have some more context, please? What level are you, and what level are your underwater weapons? And what particular mobs are we talking about?

Ele has tons of damage on trident, in every attunement except earth (unless you’re built for condi rather than power, in which case you may do damage in earth). Fire auto-attack hits twice, the 2 skill gives a persistently damaging field, 4 and 5 skills do decent damage too. Water 2 and 3 each do considerable damage (you have to remember to use them twice, though, to make the explosions happen). Air is good for auto-attack and the 2 skill. That’s just for damage. You have sinks on Water 4 and Earth 4, a float on Air 4, a Stun field on Air 5, and a persistent Blind field on Earth 5 (bonus points if you use Water 5 through Earth 5 to stealth yourself).

Can we get a stickied thread, that just consists of links to every mount thread? It might reduce the regularity to just, idk, one per week.

Jado Cast.1805:

So does this mean we have to run to the map and we can’t way point there from another map? So if I’m in Divinity’s Reach, I can’t just way point to Orr because everything is contested? This is confusing.

Some waypoints are contestable, others stay open all the time. There’s several of the latter in each zone. You’ll only be able to port from another map to those that stay open all the time.

Mirta.5029:

Olvendred.3027:

I’m always amazed at the amount of people who think “gay means bad” is somehow not homophobic. Trying using the word “Jewish” to mean greedy or tight-fisted, and see how much support you get. (Illustrative example: ‘Stop being so Jewish, lend me some money.’) It’s exactly the same thing.

However, for the purposes of the OP, I feel like Block and Report should be sufficient.

So when hipsters go “I’m such a nerd”, or that’s so nerdy do we get insulted about a changing word meaning?

No… because ‘nerdy’ isn’t discriminatory, even when used as an insult. If I call someone an idiot, that may be intended to offend them, but it isn’t discrimination on the basis of something like race, gender or sexuality. You didn’t reply to my example about ‘Jewish.’ Would you find that acceptable? If not, then you have no justification for supporting the use of ‘gay’ to mean ‘bad/lame.’

I’d also point out that the meaning of ‘nerdy’ hasn’t changed. It is merely used more positively.

Gay to begin with never meant homosexual, it meant jolly.

Correct.

Now it’s changing again to mean bad but at the same time losing its meaning as homosexual.

Not so correct. Gay is not losing its meaning as homosexual. If anything, it’s becoming more dominant.

hannah mee.7925:

No, because etymology also doesn’t account for things like slavery, corruption and slander. It’s a bereft argument.

So your etymological argument doesn’t account for the historical and present-day discrimination against LGBT people? Good. Just so we’re clear that etymology doesn’t justify offensive language.

In any case, ‘gay’ came to mean ‘bad’ via homosexuality. Progression: “joyful (with certain sexual connotations” → “homosexual” → “bad, inferior, undesirable.” So there is a denotative correlation, as you put it.

JoeytheHutt.1742:

well, by your logic absolutely everything could be an offence, even radio, if you choosed to “understand” it kitten. No matter what is/was the intent. So it cant just be the receiver’s judgement who decides whats offencive or not. Because “reasonable” isnt always easy to agree on.

And by your logic nothing is offensive, as the speaker will simply choose to ‘intend’ it inoffensively. No. The interpretation is always in how the statement is understood, as only the person offended will know whether they’ve been offended. The Code of Conduct exists to protect the gaming environment, and people in the gaming environment. It’s not there to protect your ‘freedom of speech’ (in fact, it strongly infringes upon it. Quite legally, too.). ‘Reasonableness’ – an objective standard – simple means that calling someone a radio wouldn’t be offensive, because, as I stated earlier, even if it carried a perjorative meaning, it otherwise only refers to an inanimate object. If radio commonly meant ‘homosexual’ and you were using it to mean ‘bad’, then yes, that would be offensive.

hannah mee.7925:

I agree with this. The etymology of terms plays a huge role in understanding people. In fact, most of these examples looks like OP is just QQing because he doesn’t understand how slang is used in modern culture. Does he have to agree with it? No. However, these examples show few signs of any mocking over sexual orientation.

I think he understands exactly how slang is used in modern culture: namely, that ‘gay’, a term for homosexual people, is used as a catch-all term for ‘bad.’ Associating homosexuality and badness like that is homophobic and offensive. An etymological argument would justify the N-word on the basis that ‘niger’ is the Latin for ‘black’ (literally, just black. The colour). Are you going to argue that?

Zepidel.5349:

“Don’t judge people!”

“Unless they do/act a way I don’t like!”

you cant have your cake and eat it too, if you want to accept all people… that means even those who use the word gay in any way they wish. You guys are just trying to push a leftest agenda under the guise of tolerance when its really just rampant hypocrisy.

Not entirely sure what “leftest agenda” means (and I’m pretty sure you couldn’t accurately define it either), so we’ll leave it aside as meaningless.

Pretty simple distinction: judging people on how they positively act is ok, judging them on who they are is not. Someone wants to make bigoted/offensive/intolerant statements, then yeah, we can judge that. Very different to judging someone on their gender, sexuality, race, ‘sensitivity,’ etc.

No hypocrisy there.

JoeytheHutt.1742:

A word is never racist or homophobic or anything, its the intent that is. It is what you mean by saying it. Like if you dont want to swear in front of your kids and you start to use the word “radio”. You are still swearing, and after a while the kids will learn what you mean when saying “radio”.
As you would, if everybody started to use “radio” instead of gay. Would it still hurt?
By now everybody knows “kitten” mean emphazising something. Is it better to say “kitten you”, than something else?
It is all about context, intent and situations.
Something I had to learn as a kid, was that it was often MY choice to let someone ruin my day or not. I am me, and the only one that is me, why would I let some random idiot make me feel bad? Even more so if its just some who tries to sound cool because they think they have to? Poor them.

Incorrect. It’s not the intent behind a statement, it’s how that statement is understood. Either subjectively or from the perspective of the proverbial reasonable person.

Now, your example misses the point. It’s not saying ‘X thing is gay’ that is offensive to LGBT people. It’s the implication that gay means bad. If people started saying ‘X thing is radio’ instead, that would be offensive to… radios. Which are inanimate objects, rather than people, so we really don’t care. For a better example, see my post above about ‘Jewish.’

As for choice to let someone ruin your day: this is a game, not the real world. What that means is there is no such thing as freedom of speech/expression – Anet can moderate anything at will. That’s why we can report people, because Anet wants their game environment not to be offensive to anyone. As such, if players are routinely using offensive language, those offended by the language have a valid concern, which isn’t going to be solved by people saying “Just get over it. It’s your own fault you let it get to you.”

Ouimette.5902:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Feedback such as “fire this person” or “get better at writing” are not helpful or useful to us. If you wish to provide constructive criticism and feedback, I strongly recommend reading this thread which details how to give good, constructive feedback that is useful both to the development teams and in discussions here on the forums.

What the forum really benefits from is the CDI threads. I can’t know how often you want a gathered and constructive feedback thread but you should put them up more frequently just for different gametypes in the game such as WvW,PvP,PvE,Dungeons,LS and other things. I love those threads.

I think the CDI threads are good at seeing what people don’t like about the game, not so good at learning what they like and want kept in it.

I’m always amazed at the amount of people who think “gay means bad” is somehow not homophobic. Trying using the word “Jewish” to mean greedy or tight-fisted, and see how much support you get. (Illustrative example: ‘Stop being so Jewish, lend me some money.’) It’s exactly the same thing.

However, for the purposes of the OP, I feel like Block and Report should be sufficient.

Lol. I can just see the blog post: “Facilitating Unfriendly Play: Do you irrationally dislike players on your own team? Do you feel like your enemy has insufficient opportunities to laugh at you? We have the answer! Start fighting among yourselves! Go on. Seriously. It’s hysterical.”

But yeah. This is never going to happen.

Ranger is less than OP above ground, since they only have the 2 skill to stop a finisher (though quickly swapping to wolf and hitting F2 is a good way for another one). But underwater…. as a downed ranger being healed by the pet, I’ve survived against the combined DPS of 3 enemies for minutes.

Ele, underwater, has absolutely nothing, incidentally.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Olvendred.3027:

Question concerning Ulgoth: there’s a massive event chain you have to do across Harathi to get to him. Will the entire meta-event only be available at the spawn time, or only the last sequence of events (starting with “Escort Captain Whatshername into the last Camp)”? And if the latter, if you haven’t done the event chain prior to the last events in time for the window, do you miss out on the boss until the next window?

The chain would probably start at X time instead of when someone gets around to it. If the chain fails, so too does the boss spawn.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seraph_Assault_on_Centaur_Camps

That’s going to be painful. Both for the people wanting to do the world event, who can’t start the entire event chain until the window, and for anyone doing map completion, who can’t uncontest waypoints/areas all the rest of the time.

I wasn’t sure either. 3 possibilities:
1) The stacks vanish+reset the moment you unequip or weapon swap the weapon.
2) The stacks vanish but do not reset when you weapon swap. So when you swap back gain to the sigil weapon, the stacks reappear. This one is probably the most consistent with how all the other sigils work (only effective when the weapon is active).
3) The stacks don’t vanish until you unequip the weapon altogether (or die).

Question concerning Ulgoth: there’s a massive event chain you have to do across Harathi to get to him. Will the entire meta-event only be available at the spawn time, or only the last sequence of events (starting with “Escort Captain Whatshername into the last Camp)”? And if the latter, if you haven’t done the event chain prior to the last events in time for the window, do you miss out on the boss until the next window?

Aidan Savage.2078:

Olvendred.3027:

I guess… but it would at least be good for the people on that map. If you’re in Brisban Wildlands doing map exploration and there’s barely anyone on the map. Maybe it’s because there are only 10 ppl in all of GW2 in there, and they’re all in the one shard. Or maybe there are 40… but the first shard filled cause a big guild (from your server) came to do the Guild Puzzle (and decided to all go to Shard 2), you zoned in while they were there, then they left, and now you’re on an empty shard. With a menu, you can see, “oh, this is as good as it will be atm. At least we’re not missing out” or “Cool! there’s a Medium full shard we can go to, guys!”

The menu would also let you know when the game’s recommendation for your changed, like in the second Brisban scenario. You’re on an otherwise empty shard, so now the game would pick the first shard instead… but you don’t know that unless you decide to relog.

Instead of a drop down, why not an option that simply “reshuffles” you among the available map copies (if any)? This would allow you to jump to a different copy in the event the one you’re in empties out, or gets too full for your liking.

Good for some scenarios, like the map emptying out, bad for others, like being constantly re-sorted into a map with a toxic map chat from a champ train, or that sort of thing. There’s a lot of different reasons you might want to switch shards, and the type of shard you want to go to depends on what you’re doing at the time, how you’re feeling, why you wanted to switch, how good your internet is (eg. if you want to be on a low-pop map due to lag), any number of things. But no algorithm can take that into account, not without being incredibly complex. But our own brains can, and we already have that choice (by being able to guest). So a list is pretty much the best option, imo. Even if you don’t choose “right” immediately, based on the information in the list, you can transfer to each of the options and figure it out yourself, rather than being constantly sorted to the same shard, or not knowing whether there’s even another shard to go to.

Choice and transparency go a long way towards making players happy.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Olvendred.3027:

kgptzac.8419:

Make what choice? As far as I know, guesting is not going away yet. If you want to play with another server’s community, just guest away—nothing from the blog post saying megaserver will prohibit you from doing.

Also it will be easier to jump to another instance, as currently you can only jump onto overflow instances, but after the update you can jump to wherever there are people who can ferry you to.

Let’s talk about choice: You choose your home server, you choose your guild, you choose your friends. Algorithm will place you into an instance based on your choices. If the algorithm fails for some kitten reasons, there’s the ferry option.

Of what shard to be on, that choice. Guesting is not going away yet, for the non-megaserver maps, which is kinda irrelevant. At any given time, the algorithm will sort me into one particular shard of that map. That will be based on the things it takes into account. The only way to avoid that is to get a ferry… assuming there happens to be someone you know, who happens to be on a different shard of the same map, who is willing to do that for you. There are other reasons for wanting to leave a shard than to be with someone else: eg. toxic map chat; eg. a big guild is doing missions or a world event and the map is otherwise empty; eg. the players on the map aren’t being helpful for a meta-event you want to do; eg. the players on the map are spoiling your champ farm. Whatever.

And it would literally be as simple as a menu. Have a new icon at the top of the UI for Megaserver – you open it up, and it lists all the available shards of the map you’re on, as well as a bit of data. Even include a “(Recommended)” tag next to the one the algorithm wants you to go to. Eg.

Shard 1: High
Shard 2: Very High (Recommended) [You are here]
Shard 3: Full
Shard 4: High
Shard 5: Low

Then you can simply check ‘Go to shard’ and will go into a loading screen for another shard (make it available only out of combat, if you want).

Your idea of a drop down menu is great. But I’d bet Anet does not want you to know how many shards are active at any given time: it’d look bad if there were only one for most maps.

I guess… but it would at least be good for the people on that map. If you’re in Brisban Wildlands doing map exploration and there’s barely anyone on the map. Maybe it’s because there are only 10 ppl in all of GW2 in there, and they’re all in the one shard. Or maybe there are 40… but the first shard filled cause a big guild (from your server) came to do the Guild Puzzle (and decided to all go to Shard 2), you zoned in while they were there, then they left, and now you’re on an empty shard. With a menu, you can see, “oh, this is as good as it will be atm. At least we’re not missing out” or “Cool! there’s a Medium full shard we can go to, guys!”

The menu would also let you know when the game’s recommendation for your changed, like in the second Brisban scenario. You’re on an otherwise empty shard, so now the game would pick the first shard instead… but you don’t know that unless you decide to relog.

kgptzac.8419:

Make what choice? As far as I know, guesting is not going away yet. If you want to play with another server’s community, just guest away—nothing from the blog post saying megaserver will prohibit you from doing.

Also it will be easier to jump to another instance, as currently you can only jump onto overflow instances, but after the update you can jump to wherever there are people who can ferry you to.

Let’s talk about choice: You choose your home server, you choose your guild, you choose your friends. Algorithm will place you into an instance based on your choices. If the algorithm fails for some kitten reasons, there’s the ferry option.

Of what shard to be on, that choice. Guesting is not going away yet, for the non-megaserver maps, which is kinda irrelevant. At any given time, the algorithm will sort me into one particular shard of that map. That will be based on the things it takes into account. The only way to avoid that is to get a ferry… assuming there happens to be someone you know, who happens to be on a different shard of the same map, who is willing to do that for you. There are other reasons for wanting to leave a shard than to be with someone else: eg. toxic map chat; eg. a big guild is doing missions or a world event and the map is otherwise empty; eg. the players on the map aren’t being helpful for a meta-event you want to do; eg. the players on the map are spoiling your champ farm. Whatever.

And it would literally be as simple as a menu. Have a new icon at the top of the UI for Megaserver – you open it up, and it lists all the available shards of the map you’re on, as well as a bit of data. Even include a “(Recommended)” tag next to the one the algorithm wants you to go to. Eg.

Shard 1: High
Shard 2: Very High (Recommended) [You are here]
Shard 3: Full
Shard 4: High
Shard 5: Low

Then you can simply check ‘Go to shard’ and will go into a loading screen for another shard (make it available only out of combat, if you want).

Stormy Dragon.9210:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Mind if we keep the RP thread where it is? The new blog posts haven’t addressed those concerns yet, so everything in that thread is still relevant.

Seems to me that the solution to the RP problem is to make “RP” a language option.

Or just, like, let everyone choose from the shards available, once they’re in a zone. With a simple menu.

Though we are moving to our new megaserver model in PvE, it’s extremely important to us that we maintain the level of identity and competition in WvW that we’ve established since the release of Guild Wars 2.

It will be difficult to maintain the level of server identity in WvW if we don’t have that identity in important meeting-places outside WvW. Aka, don’t implement the Megaserver in cities, so we can do all-calls, and talk about wvw… as a server.

mtpelion.4562:

I think for each pre event you complete, you should be guaranteed a rare from the boss chest.

For Shatterer? Hell no. Well, not until they address the failure in scaling that occurs in every “Collect X item for Mr NPC” style of event (in this case, the siege weapons), where the amount you need increases with the number of players in the area, but the supply (or amount of mobs that drop them) doesn’t.

As a general rule, though, it’s a good idea. But would need to be individually tweaked for each event chain.

Yes, there is DR. The game will stop rewarding you if you keep doing to same thing over and over.

But all games have abysmal loot. It’s the only possible way desirable loot is desirable – because it drops rarely. If it dropped all the time, it would be worthless (lots of supply) and people would complain about the abysmal loot.

mtpelion.4562:

You clearly don’t understand what they’ve said if that is the conclusion you have arrived at.

They are designing the maps to use your guild, friend list, and server to group you with other players. You will find it EASIER to play with other members of TxS because the system will automatically group you guys together.

Actually, you’re making assumptions too – namely, that it will be easier for TTS. All we know is that, at the time you’re placed in a shard, you are more likely to be placed in the one with your guild, than the one without your guild. TTS relies on filling one single shard/overflow entirely, and they’ve made no comment about how easy it will be to do that. We also have yet to see the system in action – for all we know, it could be completely awful, despite Anet’s (historically not exactly reliable) assurances.

Block is sufficient, I think. It’s you who get to choose who you don’t want to hear, which is a good way of doing it. Block does need to apply to emotes, though.

downwithdragons.8291:

I personally like the proposed change. I was tired of logging in to do something as easy as Jormag or the Shatterer and finding only one or two other people on the map.

Reading through the posts, in my opinion, the majority of people who dislike the idea, are those that would splinter the player base. Those people who feel that “noobs” and sub optimal builds should be blocked from their personal Tequatl overflow. How RP players should have their own section. People who want to play with only “their” community. Sure, this community may not be marked as friends or guild members.. but they are still better then the noobs from those other home servers.

In my opinion, its a Guild Wars 2 community and we ALL are part of it. Noobs, hard core players, RPers, no matter what home server you are from. I’m tired of elitists.

Would you like the elitists not to be in your community?

insanelyapple.2870:

While I’m happy that we will finally get rid of Overflows, I’m concerned about group of players that doesn’t use English or neither any of supported languages (German, French, Spanish). Will they be kicked into some low populated copies of map?

They probably tested whole Megaserver system for players cap but I’m not sure how this will work with languages.

They’ve said the language will only take into account official server language. Even if you have the game set to a different language. So basically the language criterion will only apply in the EU servers.

kgptzac.8419:

hedix.1986:

However, more populated places will suffer in terms of community spirit of you have separate overflow-clouds and if you cannot chose from them (something they haven’t explained yet). Cause essentially, the megablob system makes the choice for us.
I don’t care for playing with randoms, I want to see friendly faces I AFK next to or run world bosses next to and have funny map chat with. I wanna see my server’s guild tags around. And I definitelly dont want any server bashing, which always came up in overflows during big events like Knightfall. By removing real servers, all we have left is a cloud of overflows essentially.

If you actually read the devblog and devpost you would see your concern is already addressed. If you read the dev posts, you would understand that ANet is already aware that it’s important to maintain a comfortable size of players in the popular maps. If you apply reading comprehension and correlates to the original devblog, you would come to an understanding that the map instance under megaserver architecture will realize exactly what you want—as seeing familiar faces more than unfamiliar faces. I think you have a personal fantasy where most GW2 players dislike others from another server and would actively and mutually ruin the gameplay experience for each other. It’s time to wake up and face the fact that 1) trolls who really want to do that can already do that by guesting and 2) players from another server aren’t looking to ruin you.

I think you’re the one who’s not reading what Hedix is saying. He wants to make choices himself, not have a megaserver force them on him. I agree with him.

ceol.9175:

Olvendred.3027:

huge amount of rudeness

Nothing you quoted has anything to do with what you replied with. Samuel wasn’t talking about removing home servers. The devs have stated multiple times that servers are not going away. And I wouldn’t go pointing to highschoolers for lessons on establishing communities.

party members, friends list, guild, language. That’s it.

They literally included your home server as part of that list. How could you miss that?

Any rudeness stems from the way the devs try to feed us advertising in posts like the one I quoted, rather than actually trying to understand and respond to player concerns. Hence why I ridiculed the (ridiculous) idea that the game would somehow take account of my goals and aspirations in a meaningful way, or whatever. Which, tbh, is consistently rude on their part (even though I’m aware they have limits on what they are allowed to say).

The high schooler part was merely that it was obvious, even in high school, how people form communities. The nature and prevailing culture of the communities formed depends primarily on those in them – you may say high schoolers tend to form bad communities, I won’t dispute that. But they form them in the same ways as everyone else.

And yes, I read about home server being included in the list. I even read the hilarious post which told us that “the most exciting part of the update is that you’ll be able to play with people from your home server even more!~”… even though, I do that, like, literally all the time. It’s something I take for granted, just like playing with the people in my party is something I take for granted, just like playing with the people in my guild is something I take for granted.

I don’t have a problem with the Megaserver per se, as long as it meets these two requirements:

1) Does not apply to cities, or to replacement cities (aka, Gendarren Fields at the moment). This is where server communities really come together. (Not to mention other uses, like doing an all-call for WvW, which would be pretty stupid in an overflow full of enemy players…). It’s also where you don’t want massive fights or arguments in map chat, such as, over which server is best. Keeping these server-based helps ensure good and harmonious communities. It also gives players a home, where they’ll be sure they’re at home. And keeping some cities with low populations means I won’t have to sit through the 5 min loading screens that are usual for crowded zones like LA.

2) Give us the choice of Megaserver, without having to relog and hope for a new one, or finding a party in a different megaserver and getting a ferry. This new system is going to sort me on it’s own criteria, not mine. Mine change, depending on what I’m doing, and sometimes I’ll want to be in a different version of a map. We have choice of that now, no reason not to with this Megaserver.

I don’t see any system that takes choice away from players as good. Currently, we basically have a list of versions of each zone – 1 per server – and we can pick exactly which one we want. I can choose to guest to, say, TC or DH, or I can choose to stay on my home server. Occasionally there are overflows, but you are at least put in a queue to go to the version of that zone that you want, rather than one chosen for you.

Megaserver: you’re put in a random version of a zone (essentially, all versions are now overflows), without any choice in the matter. If you want to move to a different version, the only surefire way sounds like getting a party with someone else, who you just happen to know and who just happens to be in a different version of the same zone, and getting a ferry. Since people you know will automatically be placed in with you, it will be difficult to escape the particular version that is decided to be right for you. Unless the megaserver comes with choice built in, this is only a downgrade in game quality.

BIMBLE.7952:

History shows us that people like him have caused an enormous amount of bigotry around the world… (Don’t bother replying Draknar.5748, from your obviously unimportant job, I know your type).

“I do not like bobbleheads. And when future generations speak of this day, in hushed tones, as bespeaks its foul notoriety, they shall praise my name, for I alone took arms against the evil tyrant Draknar the Unimportant, and soundly scolded him.”

mjhungness.8059:

Add at least one daily that requires interaction in one of the cities.

Daily Laurel Vendor. Done.

Sarie.1630:

Sophiera.1209:

All of Salad race is getting the blame in the eyes of some people too

That would be interesting if they explored it in-game. Suddenly Humans, Charr, Norn and Asura turn on Sylvari because, after all, in 25 years one went bad so perhaps the rest will follow. You could see new voice acting between NPCs discussing how shifty a Sylvari looked as it wandered past, new text dialogue for the player explaining how NPCs no longer trust this relatively new race.

Sadly though I think developer created fictional racism would be a step too far for many people. It would be a natural progression of events though, perhaps. Sylvari are new, and one went bad. How long until the rest do; they wont, because of player characters, but that’s fairly by-the-by.

Jennivere Borden (an NPC) at the refugee camp near Vigil Keep says,“I can’t believe what some people here are saying about the sylvari, saying they’re all killers and lunatics like Scarlet.”

Eh. Just wait a few weeks, if you’re having trouble. Or try at different times. At one point or another your server will be there in force, or you’ll have mesmer ports, or there just won’t be any enemies around who want to kill you. If you want the achievement so much, a little persistence will go a long way.

Have scouts. Have a commander who reacts quickly and appropriately to scout reports.

Acinonyx Rex.8609:

Phadde.7362:

Unloveableone.6082:

Is there a reason you can’t afford such a small fee to travel…?
It’s like a few silver at most >.>

This. But more importantly, the fee encourages you to run and view the landscape and perhaps explore something new.

If there where no fee it would take some enjoyment out of the game for me. The fee is also very small, so why bother complaining about it.

I have a good news for you, if one day they remove that fee, you can send it to me by mail, i’ll accept all your silvers to help you keep enjoying the game.

I would prefer a huge tax on TP, which could benefit a lot to enconomy, than a tax on people traveling to help friends….

There is a huge tax on the tp.

lol. The one game that gives you unlimited, instant teleportation to almost anywhere in the world, from absolutely anywhere in the world, and there’s a problem with it costing some pocket change?

I have the solution! Giant Dolyaks! Progress Giant Slayer and Yakslapper at the same time!

Finish one… oh, about 10 years before the other. But who’s counting?

Most of the skins PvP players have are not exactly expensive in PvE. Either you get a million of them as drops and salvage them without a thought, or they’re the incredibly cheap karma skins from heart merchants, or they’re easily accessibly crafted armour. That mostly leaves us with dungeon armour skins, cultural armour, Order armour and maybe one or two others.

Story dungeons: read the blog post again. It doesn’t say you’ll need to run the story dungeon again, though I admit that’s possible. It does, however, say that this is only necessary to unlock every dungeon reward track at once. Whereas the standard will be that there is a dungeon reward track, which everyone (no matter what dungeons they have done) can advance, rotating every 2 weeks. And you can only advance one reward track at a time, anyway, so having all the reward tracks unlocked isn’t actually that big of an advantage.

Zomaarwat.3912:

APfarmers are some of the most whiney people Ive ever encountered.

You’ve never been on these forums before? This is a very quiet thread compared to any time a popular gold farm is nerfed.

McJAC.4739:

I am tired of the argument that nobody is making you to do the achievements so why limit those who like doing them

How about you think what makes games fun? Why we play games?

And I’m tired of the argument that “I [the poster] don’t find something fun, therefore nobody can.” People play games for different reasons. People have fun for different reasons and from doing different things. Why limit that, when it’s won’t affect you or your playstyle in the slightest?

Yeah, other games in the past have had different achievement models. GW2 has the model that GW2 has. It’s not going to be any different going forward, just that certain aspects will be limited. It’s not like casual players are ever going to get to 10k AP anyway, so they won’t be affected by the limit. Equally, none of them were affected by the pre-existing lack of a limit. The only players who benefit from this change are the “AP hunters” who are apparently so unable to control themselves that they must spend their entire lives farming dailies instead of having fun. If farming dailies is not fun for you, but you do it every day anyway, it’s time to re-examine your life generally.

I agree that the change is probably because Anet can’t be bothered to make non-gem store skins every few months. But they could change the gaps between skins as you get higher, and it would give them plenty of breathing space.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Acandis.3250:

Let’s pretend for a second that the people that make these decisions frequent this forum and care about what any of you have to say…

+1

Dev confirmation: Anet does not care about player feedback

DDCarvalho.2071:

Well, I stopped talking about the problem at hand to talk about another gameplay paradigm which we may try to absorb its best practices, but coming back to your question:

Olvendred.3027:

So. Is there really any reason to cap this number, which affects nothing in terms of gameplay, at a certain point? Especially if the game is optimistically looking 5 or even 10 years into the future? It’s simply disincentivising playing the game often and for a long time, which makes absolutely no sense.

If they want to incentivize another style of playing, yes, it makes sense.
ArenaNet always made it clear that wanted the game to be a cooperative one, at least when playing with allies. That’s why, by design, we don’t compete for rare mobs, gathering nodes and the game always rewards helping people doing an event together, so it won’t fail.

What I mean is, their decisions are influenced by their philosophy in making the game. If they want the game to be more cooperative and less grindy, they will take steps in doing so and I believe they are right in that. And this is one such step.

Also… Achievements are usually a fixed, non repeatable set of points in almost every game which implements it (allowing a dedicated enough person to complete 100% of them without having to “pre-order” and allocate every day of it’s life to it).
So, their decision would also be seen as “returning to form” in achievement management, altought not totally (there were people who wanted leaderboards to not include dailies or monthlies, for example).

And yes, this may mean that people complete 100% of the achievements and stop playing the game if they are not interested on repeating content. That is called “healthy behavior”.

But that’s the thing. Getting every single one of your dailies promotes individual competition, which a lot of players like, at the same time as promoting cooperative gameplay. You have to go to Shiverpeaks or Ascalon or Maguuma or wherever, and get enough kills or events. Get a couple of Group Events and kill a champ. Revive 10 things. Cap a Tower in WvW. Do a Story Dungeon. Etc, etc. Yes, you can do all of these solo, but at least it gets players out and around in the world doing them. And it gets experienced players out and about interacting with newer players, rather than playing with their (often equally experienced) friends. That’s why Anet introduced specific dailies like this: to get people doing all these different things that aren’t the most efficient way to make gold.

And no one is ever going to get 100% of AP. Even with this cap. Look at the WvW achievements if you don’t believe me, some are impossible even trying constantly for 10 years. Do you think it’s healthier to do a set of varied, changing dailies each day… or run around a BLs hoping to defend half a million friendly dolyaks and kill a million enemy yaks?

As for healthy behaviour: as I stated in my first post you replied to, I don’t think it’s up to Anet to police people’s play time. In another thread just yesterday, someone complained of being addicted to playing the TP – my advice was to quit the game for a while. If someone is acting in an unhealthy manner, or a manner that they think is causing them stress or problems, that’s always going to be the answer. But, within the next year or 2, it will be perfectly possible to get 10k daily AP and 5k monthly AP without being unhealthy or addicted. At which point… why do anything at all, since there’s no reward?

Moreover, we can return to the question of gold. It’s an equally hypothetical reward, but has a much, much higher impact on gameplay. Due to the latter, people get much, much more dedicated to farming it. Yet, there is no cap on the amount of gold you can make. There are also only a limited amount of ‘most efficient’ ways to earn gold. Should there be a cap on the amount of gold you can earn, if we want to disincentivise selfish grinding, and incentivise cooperate, ‘healthy’ play? I can tell you right now, that idea would not be received warmly on these forums. People expect to be adequately rewarded on gold for their play… what reason is there not to be rewarded in AP as well?

They’re not going to remove UW combat, but it does seem like they’re distancing themselves from it. I mean, this is The Big feature patch. A perfect opportunity to completely rework UW combat for every class, add new weapons and features (like different UW traits to land traits) and generally make it work a lot better. Instead, they’ve removed it from PvP. They previously got rid of the lakes in Wvw Bls. That means there’s not going to be any major improvements to UW combat at least until the next big feature patch… whenever that will be. If then.

So yes, it looks like Anet is quietly trying to make it a smaller and less relevant part of the game, instead of actually making it work.

DDCarvalho.2071:

Olvendred.3027:

ahhh, good point. Anet’s next move should be to delete gold rewards, item drops, karma, dungeon tokens, BoHs and XP from the game. Cause you know, them hypothetical rewards are just bad.

That would be awesome. This way, people would play because it’s fun, and would stop when it’s not fun anymore! Can you imagine that?

Anyhow, I decided to play with your idea because it is fun, I’ll stop when it’s not fun anymore.

The option to remove most rewards and simplify it is not as crazy as your “Reductio ad absurdum” tries to imply. By what I know, this is how most MOBAs (Multiplayer online battle arena) work. And these games are veeery popular.

Most MOBAs are very restricted in what kind of progression you can have, with your character being reset to level 1 with each new match and the only things remaining for eternity being cosmetical items, the experience of playing and having fun with friends. (Maybe also some gold, I don’t have much experience with them).
I think that the initial idea of ArenaNet was to replicate this in PvP, but it caused a divide between people who cried about it being a bad MOBA (unbalanced, complex, yada yada) and also the PvP didn’t capture people from PvE enough to compare to DOTAs and competitors.

I think you’re missing the point. People should be able to control themselves, rewards or no rewards. Certainly they should take responsibility for controlling themselves. If playing a game (in a particular way) is no longer fun for them, I honestly don’t understand why they would keep doing it, especially not every single day. And it’s certainly not a reason to restrict what may be a source of fun for other players, if they enjoy doing dailies for the AP reward.

Also, GW2 most certainly isn’t a MOBA. In fact, it’s removing itself even further from that model in this feature patch. It’s an MMO, which implies things like accruing rewards, and having progression. AP are horizontal progression, which GW2 is apparently all about. No one gets any gameplay advantages from having 20k AP compared to 10k compared to 1k. It’s simply a form of reward mechanism to show how long you’ve been playing and how much you’ve done. While you may say, “Oh, how shallow!” it’s very clearly something that appeals to a lot of gamers (even, as you seem to think, at the expense of having fun: ie. they would prefer to be able to see the accrued AP reward than to play in a manner they deem fun). GW2 also lacks any other means of this.

So. Is there really any reason to cap this number, which affects nothing in terms of gameplay, at a certain point? Especially if the game is optimistically looking 5 or even 10 years into the future? It’s simply disincentivising playing the game often and for a long time, which makes absolutely no sense.

DDCarvalho.2071:

Removing the annoying whiners from the game
“waah waah they removed hypothetical rewards!”

ahhh, good point. Anet’s next move should be to delete gold rewards, item drops, karma, dungeon tokens, BoHs and XP from the game. Cause you know, them hypothetical rewards are just bad.

Yeah, this is ridiculous. Talk about Anet shooting themselves in the foot: ‘We have this lovely and largely meaningless system of horizontal progression (which is our whole philosophy, yay!), and we’re going to cap it so those players won’t be interested in playing anymore!’ Is there any logical rationale to making this change?

Oh, and to those saying that they are AP hunters who will feel less stressed once they hit the cap… deal with your own life. ANet isn’t your mother, you shouldn’t be relying on them to control your game time.