Guild Wars 2

Wait, what? No, you can use transmuted items in the MF, it will treat that item as the base item – there’s even a little tooltip that says as much when you mouse over it while in the MF window.

I was able to infuse six spinal blade backpacks even after they were transmuted (long story short: picked the wrong stats, transmuted the items, realized half a year later where I messed up), so I know for sure you can upgrade backpacks at the very least.

Frebstyx.7058:

I’m not talking about rallying in general, I like the way it works in the non instanced world, I was more referring to rallying whilst running the LS solo.
I quite often got downed and then had to wait 10-15 sec whilst the downed took my health before dying. What I wanted was to be able to use one of the 3 options I suggested in my first post to apply whilst running an LS instance without the other npc nearby to rally me.

I was playing on my ele, in valk/zerk gear, while probably not a good setup for soloing things, it’s really only good gear I have.

Ahh, in which case I doubt it will happen. There’s really only one case in the game where skills work differently and that’s when moving between PvE and PvP, so for ANet to make downed skills work differently in instances they would probably either have to turn it into a PvP instance or create a whole new game mode specifically for instances just to let certain skills work differently.

I’m afraid your only real options would either grit your teeth and claw your way through the fight or gather some help.

zaced.7948:

i don’t think there’s a problem in experimenting on plants whatsoever. them being dragon minions or not. next thing you’ll tell me i shall stop eating meat because humans/asura/norn have feelings and stuff.

Generally people would tell you to stop eating humans and norns. Don’t know why you’d eat an asura though, they don’t have much meat on them.

Seems odd that you would complain about rallying now when it has presumably seen you through at least a few fights on your way from level 1 (or whatever level rallying unlocks at now) to 80. It should have proven its worth to you several times over now, unless you leveled exclusively in EotM/PvP and always got stomped/spammed to death after being downed, thus never getting a chance to even try to rally.

Hey, at least we don’t have to pair up two eyes and two kidneys this time!

Except the only experiment Vorpp seemed to be doing in the LS was to see if he could power golems with Sylvari life force – and unless he was both blind and deaf he should have recognized they have sentience.

It doesn’t matter if Sylvari are constructs (which they technically aren’t, they’re grown and are punted out of their wombs at adulthood instead of infancy, so they just don’t have the same life cycles as mammals) or not, the fact is he murdered sentient beings just to see if they could be a better battery. His disrespect for the life and sentience of races he doesn’t recognize is what makes him monstrous, that the one experiment we were shown (we have no idea who or what else he has experimented on in his career) coincidentally turned out to be on peaceful dragon minions does not invalidate this.

RNG ignores effort, nobody likes being ignored for the effort they put in (unless they have some sort of neglect fetish), address that and it’ll make RNG more tolerable.

Implement something that increases the chance for a coat chest drop after every successful run to limit the number of times a person has to redo the event (basically validate gambler’s fallacy); perhaps it could be an invisible buff with a 24 hour timer that stacks in intensity, each stack raising the chance of the coat drop, or just a counter (like Perseverance) that “cashes in” and spawns the coat box once it hits a cap.

And if there’s already such a system in place, perhaps set the threshold for awarding a second “guaranteed” coat box to something lower than 30+ runs.

Can’t really “fix” an utter lack of interest in a certain mode. I’ve tried it out, doesn’t really entertain me much, and there are far too many toxic players (granted PvE has its fair share too, but I just don’t hear as much from them). I’m reminded that there are lousy people of questionable worth every day when I read the news, it’s just silly to do that again when trying to enjoy myself in a game.

I recognize there are plenty of nice people in PvP, but – as in any situation – they’re generally not the most vocal ones. It’s the kids screaming death threats over trivialities or making 9/11 jokes that get noticed first and foremost.

Orangensaft.7139:

maybe let no mobs that dont give at least 2 exp or more drop loot?
if its possible to code that?
but at least the on kill effects would all be fixed then

I have a theory that loot drop is also an On Kill effect which calls the same function that all other On Kill effects call, so any change that would implement an exp threshold would also have the same effect on traits, sigils, and foods.

If that’s the case they would need to implement a new function that only the On Kill effect for loot will call, but that might not be a desirable solution because a) it introduces new overhead to the server (since ever kill now calls an additional function), which might cause lots of lag, and b) runs the risk of breaking either or both functions (happens even in “simpler” programs where you have two nearly-identical functions being called at the same time, on the same actor), which can cause On Kill traits/sigils/food to not work, or loot to never drop, or both.

A good rule of thumb is that game developers/publishers never give people a heads up before banning them. If you’re going to be banned, you will be banned and expected to figure out who to contact on your own, so any offer of preempting a ban will always be a scam.

Rauderi.8706:

So, assuming the code is intact, the easy counter to their solution is for instance mobs to give 1 XP. Not exactly worth farming at that point, but hopefully would trigger on-kill effects again.

I suspect triggering the loot table is an On Kill effect (something like “x% chance to drop loot On Kill”), but since all loot tables have a chance of dropping precursors ANet made summoned mobs and story instance mobs give 0 experience to prevent precursor farming.

Which, of course, cripples every other On Kill sigil, trait, and food effect. I guess preventing farming is more important than making sure certain game mechanics work properly.

Blaeys.3102:

I support this change wholeheartedly. The damage ceiling is just a little too high in the game currently. Negating fight mechanics with the simplistic strategy “kill faster” creates boring gameplay and discourages build diversity.

The challenge should come from a mix of how much damage you can put out and how well you can stay alive. Right now, it’s skewed a little too much toward the former.

Im not saying that the ability to pump out the highest possible damage shouldnt be rewarded (it should), just not quite as much as it currently is.

What PvE mechanics are you referring to, specifically? I tend not to see people really try to max stacks of might outside of organized Teq and Wurm, not so much in dungeons/fractals anymore, and hardly ever at the other world bosses. If you’re just referring to specific events or dungeon speed run groups, then this nerf unfairly affects everyone to address a sub-group of players that you have the option not to join.

Andred.1087:

What’s even wrong with gem store skins? Gold -> Gems exchange, anyone?

I see gold to gem conversions as “I like this item, but I don’t think you deserve any of my money for it”, so I prefer to pay for gem store items that I want with cash and as such I want to get value for my dollar. Seeing partial sets at double the original price point (full set is $10 for 6 pieces, $1.67 per piece) at $3.75 per piece is not a trend that anyone should be happy with (even if they’re enabled for all weight classes, because the amount of work for the modeler and GUI artist remain unchanged, only the backend programmer has to do extra work, but since they’re salaried that’s irrelevant to the company’s revenue).

tl;dr: want to throw money at ANet for stuff, ANet wants more money for half the stuff instead, not happy.

Yeah, this was an unpleasant discovery from the very first day of Season 2 and it hasn’t been addressed at all.

SilverWF.4789:

What do you mean?
You want to have 50 total stacks of Power/accuracy
or
you want to have 25 stacks of power AND accuracy
or
you wanna get 2 stacks per kill?

He means none of the mobs in the Living Story instances and many of the mobs in Silverwastes (the ones that spawn during defense and escort) trigger On Kill effects, which renders a few sigils and traits completely useless and would like for them to actually work as intended.

Doesn’t always work out that way, take Grenth’s Hood for example: I know a few people were expecting it to show up on Halloween, but it actually reappeared on the store about a week or two before Halloween and was gone again in a couple of days. On the other hand the Wintersday outfit and earmuffs did appear (and stay) throughout the event, but the scarf was a bit of an unexpected extra item a lot of people bought – and a couple weeks before that there were a series of sales (the one with the character slot, bank tab, and collection expander sales) that drained people’s gold/gems savings beforehand.

Unless you’re already sitting on a pile of gold from successfully playing the trading post, chances are your best efforts to save up for items will be thwarted somehow and you’ll find yourself wrestling that credit card out of your own hand.

Limited availability (particularly for items that come and go unannounced) likely generates more cash purchases of gems because it doesn’t give people time to save up for them or catch them at a bad time (like right after spending all their gold on a precursor). It’s all about triggering that impulse purchase, much like how supermarkets have all those snacks just sitting next to you while you’re waiting in line at the checkout.

nightwulf.1986:

I don’t think they really make an effort to justify the cost of items on the gemstore much at all. Isn’t that a case of “knowing how the sausage is made”? Price points are set internally without needing to communicate a clear justification of it to consumers and are changed (like with the infinite use tools) based on customer reaction and what they feel they are worth. They could have kept the lower price point on infinite mining picks etc. but they chose not to. In the end, whatever justification they used internally would never match the desire of people who wanted the lower price point so why argue?

Fair enough, it’s just a vain hope on my part that ANet be a bit more transparent on pricing decisions. I don’t want to assume the worst, but the truth is likely they just do it because they know they can get away with it.

lordkrall.7241:

Pandaman.4758:

One day I’d really like to see ANet’s justification for charging a premium for individual armor pieces, particularly for pieces that don’t appear to require any extra work to implement across weight classes (only chests and legs need separate models for each weight class).

Why would they need justification?

But alright then: They need to make money in order to survive. They choose to do so by charging for completely useless optional things rather than things that actively effects game-play.

Would you prefer being able to buy items that makes you more powerful than people that can’t/won’t buy stuff in the gemstore?

What? Re-read what I wrote. I’m not complaining that they’re charging at all, I’m complaining they’re charging extra for less work.

One day I’d really like to see ANet’s justification for charging a premium for individual armor pieces, particularly for pieces that don’t appear to require any extra work to implement across weight classes (only chests and legs need separate models for each weight class).

Ashen.2907:

GSNairb.1456:

The real question is: when has this item NOT been on sale?

Interesting question actually. I don’t know about Washington state where Anet is located but in California it is illegal to advertise something as a, “Sale,” price unless it has been priced at some normal price within the previous (I honestly don’t remember if its 30 or 90 days, but I can check my documentation when I return to work next week). This is why many companies will use different verbiage such as, “mark down,” or, “price reduction.”

Every time I see this item and how it’s been priced, I can only think of:

zacharias.5437:

like a cat standing on its hind legs.

Which is rather the point.

They can’t automate it because the achievement doesn’t actually keep track of exactly what pieces you’ve purchased. If you look at how it behaves, it completely ignores armor weight and counts light, medium, and heavy gloves as one “unique” piece (which is why you can’t complete the achievement tier by buying three gloves and three boots of different weights).

Having the achievement tells ANet you have at least 1/3rd of the skins, they have no way of knowing whether or not you have the remaining 2/3rd or which of the 1/3rd you have (unless you still have the skin in your inventory). The only way they’d ever know is if they write a script to comb through every vendor purchase your character has ever made and that’s assuming they even archive that kind of information.

Thanks for the suggestions! Sadly in this case it’s a bit too late for precautionary measures, but I’ll see if they have a smartphone to install an authenticator on. I also have to remember to suggest this because I certainly forgot to check after posting (yes, I’m a wonderful friend, always attentive of ohh, shiny!)

Out of idle curiosity, what exactly can be done to re-secure a compromised account? Off the top of my head I can only suggest changing passwords (both email and login), changing the login email, and changing account name, but from what I can see these phishing scams ask for a lot of details (basically everything ANet would ask you to verify your identity) – enough to potentially steal an account even after the above steps are taken, so it seems like a lost cause.

What can I realistically suggest to someone who wants to save their account? Request a CD-key change? Request certain personal details be flagged as invalid for purposes of verifying their identity? Change the names of all their characters? Sacrifice a goat to culturally-appropriate deity?

Definitely a new class. I already have one of each class and only really enjoy two builds for each class, so just keeping an alternate set of gear (which also helps fulfill that fashion itch) and a screenshot of trait setups is more than enough to keep me satisfied.

Expanded weapons for current classes might tempt me, provided the new skills (and associated traits/utility skills) can substantially change how classes are played, otherwise they’d just become gear to optimize existing builds (or ignore if they’re horribly underpowered).

thorodenson.2907:

my point is people need to realize that no rules are being broken and no one is violation EULA or anything like that. ANET put the mechanics into the game, those players are just using them.

ANet has a system in place that kicks people for inactivity. You go AFK for too long, you get kicked, that’s intended behavior.

A class mechanic allows someone to circumvent the autokick. You go AFK too long, you don’t get kicked, that’s categorically not intended behavior. That’s a bug.

You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars 2 and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars 2.

Being able go AFK without being kicked for inactivity is a harmless bug in itself, but the unintended benefit is that it allows people to earn rewards without actively playing. People are breaking the rules.

GamerOnline.3650:

Keep in mind that some people can be AFK for legitimate reasons like a local emergency, bathroom breaks or simply falling asleep while playing.

If someone is AFK for more than 20 minutes without being automatically kicked it’s either because of a glitch (happens, but is rare) or they’re running something to stay active; if five or six people are AFK for more than 20 minutes without being automatically kicked it’s pretty much guaranteed they’re all using something to stay active.

nekretaal.6485:

I don’t get this. Unless you guys are talking in code to avoid infractions.

An Afk player, even one with auto attack enabled, wolnt be able to tag events for loot. Time for an Afk player to get booted is an hour, and people just standing there should not be reported.

It’s nowhere near an hour, I’ve gone AFK (in a city) to eat lunch and came back to find myself at character select. I don’t take an hour to eat lunch.

And there are certain class mechanics that can be abused that let you get credit for events while being AFK, but we can’t talk about them openly because it’s against forum rules. They’re pretty evident if you do a little theory crafting though.

Huck.1405:

It’s not when crafting is one of the achievements because many of us don’t do crafting! And having to run Fractals as a achievement is BS too.

The crafting achievement is easy even if you never bothered grinding a crafting profession; all you need is 20 fine essences of luck, which is enough to refine to 1 exotic essence of luck via Artificing (skill requirement is 0 for all tiers of luck refinement).

Despair.2374:

Remember the battle for Lion’s Arch? People, entire zergs would afk at the way point next to the exit to get a free reward. Can’t speak for anet, but a few people were punished for doing that from time to time.

“Few” being the key word. I’ve reported several people for abusing class mechanics to damage mobs (and thus qualify for event credit) and using some sort of macro to stay AFK 24/7, but the most I’ve seen done is theoretically a GM booting them, but since they’re back in the matter of hours I’m not sure if it was an actual kick or just a DC.

And here they are, doing the same thing in the Silverwastes again.

Torsailr.8456:

So Grawnk stole some toys and we were supposed to retrieve them. Instead we poisoned him and…forgot about the rest?

Am I blind or did that story kind of fall off a cliff?

You have to poison, er, warm his heart over the period of three days, each time returning with a more potent drink. He even tells you straight up to come back tomorrow to feed him again, so no falling off of cliffs there.

I used to do EotM for easy WvW daily kills: set up a superior arrow cart at FR keep, above the BL workshop, or snipe Stonegaze/Tytone gate/courtyard with the OG supercannon. It was great seeing 10~30 bags suddenly appear at your feet.

Don’t need to do that anymore with the new dailies, so I’ll miss that. I’m sure 10~30 other people won’t though.

My only complaint about the new dailies is that it just removed 730 AP from a year (10 AP a day vs potentially 12 AP a day for 365 days). Didn’t the last Daily/Monthly revamp also cut down on the amount of potential AP earned?

At this point I think I’ll just give up on trying for the hellfire/radiant chest/leggings.

Dinks.2478:

No, you no longer receive laurels for dailies, you’ll get laurels from daily login rewards. In any case you can however at the moment get laurels from the wintersday dailies.

Ahh, okay, so this being the first day I logged in since the new monthlies it’s normal that I only got two mystic coins? Thanks for clearing that up.

nottsgman.8206:

you don’t get laurels for completing dailies anymore, you get them as login rewards instead.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Login_rewards

I really should have looked up the wiki, instead I was staring at my keybinding options to try to figure out how to pull up that new daily achievements screen again.

Yesterday I had 89 laurels (a little OCD with numbers, so I always notice when I’m a point away from a value divisible by 10) and after completing three dailies in PvP I wound up with… 89 laurels.

This is the process in which I completed the daily:

• Logged in as an Engineer, skipped the new daily achievements window to rush into PvP (have a group of regulars I play with and I was late, so I was in a rush), got Daily PvP Captures and Daily Rank Points. Three boxes collected from this in total (one for daily login, two from the pvp dailies).
• Switched to Necromancer, went back into PvP, got Daily Necromancer Winner. One box collected (from pvp daily).
• Switched to Guardian, went back into PvP, got Daily Guardian Winner. One box collected (again, from pvp daily).

If I understand the new system correctly my necromancer should have received two boxes, one of which containing the laurel for completing the daily, right?

Edit: I should note that I didn’t open any of my boxes until after I finished the dailies on my guardian, so I opened one box on my guardian, switched to my necro, opened his box, then switched to my engineer and opened his three boxes.

This could be an argument for not trying GW2 if you have no prior MMO experience: it’s going to ruin your expectations of other MMOs.

Sure, GW2 is pretty grindy, but as far as MMO grinds go it’s on the lower end of the spectrum. If you come to dislike GW2 because of the grind, you’re not going to have a better time anywhere else.

Wiitos.5891:

I think I remember reading that ANet were thinking of implementing a feature that would allow you to do older Living World content for those who missed it. I would really like this because I enjoyed the content when I was able to do it.

Each chapter of Season 2 is unlocked for free if you log in within the first two weeks of its release; if you missed that free period you’ll have to pay 200 gems for each chapter you want to unlock.

Currently it’s not possible to do this with Season 1 chapters because they tied parts of it to open world maps (which have changed since then) and designed for 100+ people to participate in (so it’ll be impossible to solo). If they do plan on making Season 1 replayable it’ll require a bit of an overhaul.

Also, when I left there was a train going around Orr farming champions for gold etc. Is this still a thing? I hope not as it just felt cheap

The Queensdale champ train has been axed, but Frostgorge and Orr still have trains.

Lopez.7369:

I’m pretty sure if you toggle your actual armor’s shoulders, the shoulders on the outfit will disappear.

According to previous threads on the same topic, the Shadow Assassin outfit is an exception to this.

Also highly unlikely this will change, given how it is an unaddressed complaint since the day it was released.

Look at it this way: a single player game takes a year or two to develop and gives you maybe 40~60 hours (10~15 hours if it’s a FPS) of non-repetitive entertainment. You can’t realistically expect any game to not become repetitive after playing it for more than a few hundred hours, nor can you expect developers to be able to churn out content fast enough to keep pace with how quickly it’s consumed (barring artificially enforced grinds to prevent players from consuming it faster than it can be produced, but that’s no fun).

Until we have AIs that can dynamically and flawlessly evolve the game world on the fly, you’re just going to have to accept all MMOs will be long stretches of repetitiveness punctuated by much shorter stretches of new content.

DeWolfe.2174:

Gaile this is off topic but, I noticed while upacking the Krytan armor skins with the deluxe account it actually included an armor set too. Is this something new? I SO don’t recall receiving this on the other deluxe accounts. Does the armor set (not skin) come with purchasing Krytan, Profane, and/or Primeval from the BLTC? Not really a big deal but, my OCD appreciates having the same things available across all my accounts

This is at least a year old, when I first started playing last December I got a set of low-level, fine quality Primeval armor out of the deluxe box as well.

I don’t mind Dry Top’s RNG, I just wish these unidentified fossils weren’t account bound. I don’t like how the ambrite weapons look and have no plans on making them, yet I’m sitting on seven fossils because it seems like a shame to toss them when I would rather give them to people who want it.

Why are people surprised? There was a break between chapters to make room for Halloween, didn’t everyone expect this would be case with Christmas and New Years as well?

Pasha.3857:

Heres my little Necro!

Can’t quite tell, but your little necro looks more like an engineer.

Oh, and you have a human in a non-mix-n-match Outfit in the way

On a similar vein don’t use your greater nightmare keys either, since the chest has a chance of dropping an armor box.

The thing that made this achievement difficult for me was the kittening bloom and sepia tones.

I get that it’s supposed to be a trip down memory lane, but if you’re going to smear astroglide all over the camera and call it kitschy, then don’t include an achievement that requires you to see things. I was able to get past this by just selecting Best Performance instead of Best Appearance, but video settings shouldn’t be a part of the difficulty.

It’s like Liadri’s whiteout all over again, ugh.

Frostroses.4196:

johnnymiller.5968:

My only annoyance with bound items are when it comes to weapon drops. You’ll be running around Orr & receive a level 35 account bound weapon. Only option is to destroy the item if you do not have any low level alt. Either stop placing these low level items in level 80 zone or get rid of them.

Are you sure this ever happen? and in Orr at that? I never get 35 drop from such high level map (and high level character), probably with the exception of personal story rewards. This only happen when my 80 toon running around queensdale or slaying lv 5 mob (which drop ~lv 5 items and/or bags with lv 5 to lv 80 items inside).

I can confirm this does happen, the new low-level consumable items that let you pick one of two or three stat options are dropping in high level zones. I’ve picked up five so far, one level 15 and the rest level 35, all of which were either in Orr or the Silverwastes.

Okay, let’s just assume that ANet’s claims that GW2 is doing fine financially is a complete lie and assume every MMO that charges a subscription fee are successes that regularly patch and update.

And maybe if we close our eyes and plug our ears hard enough, the world will spin the other way.

Lil Puppy.5216:

The red salvage highlighting over-rides the rarity highlighting so that makes it a hit or miss when trying to salvage the greens. I would love to have a sort by rarity (excluding invisible bags). Maybe instead of trying to make a color around the edge of the item, just change the entire hue of them with their rarity color or a color swatch in the corner of the item slot.

That’s odd, the red highlights don’t bleed past the non-salvageable icons for me, perhaps it has something to do with your resolution and/or video settings? I’d suggest submitting a UI bug with a screenshot attached.

rapthorne.7345:

this story just released also has a carapace piece reward.

I suspect if you’re willing to be patient, the entire carapace set will be available through living story chapters

I think you missed the note that the next chapter is the final chapter, so no, you won’t be able to get the entire set by doing the story only – you will have to grind for the boots and most likely have to grind for the chest or helmet next chapter.

And if you want the luminescent versions? You’ll have to grind the RNG for mordrem parts, because there’s no guarantee next chapter will come with specific part extractors for the helmet and chest piece (there will be extractors for the legs and boots though, at least).

They’re secondborn, Sylvari awaken with some knowledge they learned in the Dream of Dreams, so while they’re naive they aren’t complete blank slates – and during the story sequence you also overhear they’ve actually been awake for a couple weeks already, so there was plenty of time for them to become accustomed to their physical bodies.

Oh, didn’t realize both the boots and second trinket weren’t LS rewards, thanks for pointing that out!