Guild Wars 2

Same. I logged back to the character screen. It appears you can restart the story instance at least.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Odd that we would get falling damage when we aren’t falling. I’ve run up and down the ramp many times, and only got the ‘insta-death’ once. My guildie, as well. Funny, a few minutes later there was no adverse effect in that area. No idea what is causing it….seems like a very odd, sporadic bug.

I suspect it may have something to do with our character’s feet leaving the ground because of the steepness of the inclination. The game calculates falling damage based on the distance between leaving the ground and landing, regardless if the player is moving up instead of down. So we receive falling damage when dashing up a steep slope.

I was walking down the Krait tower spiral walkway when it happened though.

The other time I walked on an even walkway, in front of the entrance to level 3.

Rouven.7409:

I this what is called a win-win situation?

Not in my book. I doubt that after the amount of whining during and after the election, ANet will put anything up for public vote ever again. Which is a shame, in my opinion. The ability to help shape where the story goes was… a promising and exciting direction for the living story to take.

wookiee.4631:

No, today is not the last day. It says specifically in the Fractured release page the Tower is staying for the length of Fractured:

The Nightmare Continues

The Tower of Nightmares is heading towards its collapse, but the fight isn’t over yet! Join in the fight against the vile Toxic Alliance and destroy the foul structure. Bring it to ruin before its evil spreads any further! Learn more.

EDIT: I agree that they should have the end date somewhere, though!

We’ll see.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Assimilator.5342:

As i said, Arena Net wanted Kiel to win

You do realize that data mining revealed that originally, Kiel was going to fund the Aetherblade fractal and Evon the Molten fractal? In which case it would have been a landslide win for Evon Gnashblade?

Do you really think they tried to set up a candidate, and then halfway through changed their minds?

Did you know that Kiel was originally going to be a man? Did you know that datamining means nothing at all, as nothing is official until it’s released?

Give it up, your candidate lost, your fractal was scrapped and nothing will change that.

(Also, I don’t like RNG, so that was another vote for Kiel).

Dude, I voted for Kiel, too.

I was just saying that no matter what the outcome of a public vote, turning around later and declaring that it was fixed all along because you lost is ridiculous.

Draknar.5748:

Ayrilana.1396:

Would you prefer another back piece?

Yea, I’m pretty sure most would gladly take a back piece versus mats.

A back item in the shape of a bloodstone brick.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I mean, I kind of rely on seeing the spells, in order to dodge them (although having to dodge empty red rings is already a bit of an issue).

You don’t have to dodge the spells cast by your own team… and the spells coming from the enemies are not the problem. At least in PvE, the situations where I don’t see skritt on the screen are mostly boss fights, with 30+ players unloading all their particle effects in one place.

Even in WvW, if you were able to tone down friendly spells’ particle effects, it would cut the clutter in half.

Enemies’ spells need to be seen, but nobody is debating that. Remember when the culling solution rolled in to allow better visibility of other players… but the monsters were sill invisible? That wasn’t helpful at all.

Have fun

I know that many people want to duel others in their PvE getups, and I’m fine with that, but I do think it should be limited to designated areas.

Black Citadel —> The Bane —> perfect match

If it really was available to anyone at any time in open world, it should cost money. I’m already getting spammed with all sorts of requests from group dances to food fights to belching contests to costume brawl. All. The. Time.

It has happened to me twice in the Krait tower, and my boyfriend reported it happened to him on a different wooden walkway (Aetherblade dungeon, IIRC).

Assimilator.5342:

As i said, Arena Net wanted Kiel to win

You do realize that data mining revealed that originally, Kiel was going to fund the Aetherblade fractal and Evon the Molten fractal? In which case it would have been a landslide win for Evon Gnashblade?

Do you really think they tried to set up a candidate, and then halfway through changed their minds?

So as of a few days ago we know that we should hold on to our excess bloodstone dust (etc.) because (as dev said) we will definitely be needed more, or a lot more, in the near future (my guess is when ascended armor is released in 2 weeks).

Meanwhile, lots of players have foolishly destroyed any ascended materials they didn’t feel they needed.

The thought occurs that the devs are trying to do those people a favor who prematurely decided to chuck out their bloodstone dust.

In addition to the TA dungeon path, Aetherblade jumping puzzle and other things mentioned above, I can think of the following:

Scarlet invasions (45 minute zergs) are still taking place. When they happen, they’re announced in chat with a yellow message telling you where to go. (Although the player zergs focus on the Krait tower right now.)

All boss fights were updated to not be over within seconds, so far only Tequatl had its mechanics changed. The megadestroyer looks different. All boss fights give you at least one rare or exotic item, overall boss drops were increased several times.

All champions drop champion loot bags now, which prompted people to hop on “champion trains” and run around in circles all day farming them. Particularly in Queensdale and Frostgorge Sound.

The living story is far from terrible. People are of course entitled to their opinions. Objectively, all it means is that there is new content every two weeks: things will happen, then they are happening, then they have happened. Sorry for those who missed stuff, but you’re getting new content a few days later! In addition, as was said before, living story chapters tend to leave permanent changes behind.

Today, fractals get a major update: 5 new fractals in total, new ways to acquire more agony resistance, and gambits (handicaps) that make higher levels more challenging in hopefully interesting ways. 4 out of the 5 new fractals are based on 2 temporary dungeons that you missed, but will be able to see now in their fractal form, and the 5th fractal was (narrowly) voted for by the player base in an election campaign themed living story chapter.

Tons and tons of new items were added over the months, including (exclusive/expensive) weapon skins, gem shop armor skins, new hair styles, dyes, new types of boosters and other consumables, a new series of minis, etc.

Read the summaries listed on this wiki page for a quick overview of the most important changes.

All in all, we did get nearly an expansion’s worth of new content, but in order to benefit from it all, you have to log in once every two weeks. I personally think that for a game that has no monthly subscription fees, this is a fair enough deal.

Saulius.8430:

pve dailies promote traveling around tyria and doing stuff. that dailies favors casual adventurers, and doesn’t cater to burnt out farmers

imo dailies are fine as they are. and they are adding more and more of them as time goes by, which is awesome

This.

You only need 5 to get the daily reward, and 5 are always easy to get.

Additional dailies encourage people to try, or remind them of, content they don’t do so often. Between my boyfriend and myself it often goes like this: “Hey, remember, we wanted to do that last dungeon path. It’s daily dungeon today, so shall we give it a shot? One free AP today!” – but daily dungeon / fractal / WvW / living story are all easy to ignore if you’re not into it / done with it.

There’s still always enough to get 5, without those, with very little effort; plus some additional ones for those who get bored and don’t know what to do with their time.

I remember on another NA holiday (was it veterans’ day?) American players complained that the new release fell on a family holiday that people were going to spend with their families, and not gaming.

Now people complain because they think this falling on a family holiday will give Americans an edge.

Uh…. ?

slurpey.6014:

Fror.2163:

Not sure if serious or trolling so I’ll assume serious.

EU or even non-American people have no Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is purely an American celebration.

EU as well as other countries do have thanksgiving. It isn’t called thanksgiving but it’s the same crap we doing over here lol.

Care to give me a couple of examples? I’ve lived in Europe for all my life and traveled around quite a bit. I have never seen or heard of any thanksgiving-like celebration in any European country.

Wikipedia only lists a commemorative church service in the Netherlands (no mention of family dinners or somesuch) and the info on the German Erntedankfest is wrong – it is not actively celebrated in any households I know of; it’s a religious thing (but not a holiday) so it’s only celebrated by the religious minority and/or some smaller towns in catholic Southern German. Source: being German.

The only thanksgiving-like dinners I’ve had were those that my Canadian boyfriend has cooked for me, or other North American expats I’m friends with.

You could upload the video under a new URL and link to it from the wrong video’s description…

But tbh, I’d probably resubmit and explain the details in the new video’s description, possibly also link to this forum post of yours. I don’t think there will be so many entries that they skim over descriptions.

Healix.5819:

They should implement a proper scaling system where all group content scales between 1 to 5 players.

I agree.

I don’t actually mind fractals being a lot harder to solo than to group, but story instances, living story dungeons, personal story instances, dungeon story mode etc. etc. etc. would be super nice if they scaled “properly” to allow all players to play in the way they enjoy the most – be it solo, as a tag team (I know many couples do this, I’m one of them) or with a full party of five.

Healix.5819:

Additionally, they should allow you to select the scaling you want, where if you go up a level, you get increased rewards or less if you go down. This would open up possibilities such as challenges and actually getting increased rewards for doing something undermanned. With the exception of simply scaling stats, scaling isn’t something that is easily accomplished without designing each encounter 5 times, for each scale.

That would be the icing on the cake and possibly spare us a lot of whining from hardcore players who feel that Arah explorable isn’t “endgame” enough

Healix.5819:

In general, scaling shouldn’t be exact. For example, if there’s only 2 people, it’s probably “with a friend” (casual) so scaling should be something like 1.5x the normal, rather than 2×. Scaling for full groups however should always be at max.

I have no problem with certain encounters favoring groups or favoring solo-play (as long as they remain doable with other group configurations) – it would encourage people to try out new play styles without preventing anybody from doing it their preferred way. Some variety would be nice, as long as the scaling was done in a conscious and meaningful way.

Here’s hoping that the devs take a last look into this forum before it gets closed today…

How about Glitch?

I can also help you out with a Charr.

That’s awesome.

I voted for Thaumanova.

Oh man. I always assumed that the transfer button had a confirmation dialog. o_O
That is scary… I guest all the time

Excellent and informative post, OP. Shame about the whining that followed!

Some of my favourites:

• Branded Mine (Not super easy, but I love it. It was my first.)
• Chaos Crystal Cavern
• Spekk’s Lab (is much easier when you bring a friend as some of the longer sections then can be broken down into shorter sections. You will need someone to stand somewhere else and push a button for you.)
• Under New Management

Smooth Penguin.5294:

So as I brought up previously, the loss of the human gods lore Fractal is quite significant.

Why? Significant for who? What does it change for anybody to know more about this, other than personal satisfaction/curiosity? Even the “living” gods are no longer relevant in Tyria. They’re not active. They might as well not exist. So… what?

I as a player don’t care about the old gods.
My human characters are more invested in the things that happen right now. My asuran, charr, norn and sylvari characters don’t give a skritt about human gods either.

So I don’t know what your definition of “quite significant” is. Maybe you meant “interesting to me”? Which would be fair enough and a good enough reason for you to vote for whichever fractal you chose. But please don’t try to make other people feel like they did it “wrong”.

What’s the lore behind the fact that dungeons are instanced and you can never meet other adventurers down there who fight the exact same enemies at the exact same time?

What’s the lore behind only being able to take 4 more people with you when you enter one?

What’s the lore behind overflows?

What’s the lore behind the account wallet?

Why does the personal bank have all your stuff, no matter which main city you go to?

What’s the lore behind making 250 wooden planks into dowels in a few seconds?

What’s the lore behind clothing that is the same size for Asura, Human and Charr, and both genders, but magically fits everybody?

How about unlimited ammo?

Carrying around a stack of 250 pizzas in a pouch?

There are so many things we accept as part of the gameplay because that’s what they are. Why not the personal fractal reward level? It never gets mentioned by any NPCs so your PC would have no knowledge of them.

Edit: locoman beat me to it. I guess I should have refreshed the page

Do the boss instance, then after finishing it don’t leave through the little “door” icon. Instead walk through a portal that is basically the back door of the boss instance. You will find yourself outside of the tower. The goggles are on a wooden beam in front of you.

I’m a semi-hardcore ex-GW1 player who’s played GW2 since release.
I never cared about the two candidates’ races, or anti-villain backstories. Or the WP costs.
I voted Kiel because I wanted to see the Thaumanova fractal.

Now please go sit in a corner and eat your stereotypes.

thekap.8645:

How does it negatively affect your experience in the game?

Valid question, fair answer:

• People on champ trains (not all but many) feel entitled and start arguments about killing champs out of order in /map all. the. time. Having to read these in /map actually affects my gaming experience in a negative way.
• So then some people disable /map. When they choose to ignore /map and do their own thing, they’re getting raging whispers and sent on a guilt trip for not respecting the train.
• Other than that people can do what they want anyway, there is a perfectly valid use case for killing champions out of order, too: when I was new to GW2, exploring maps and learning about the world was awesome. Maybe you remember the time, too. I’d run around only with my closest friends, and try very hard to be immersed in this beautiful new world (and yes, that meant that /map was disabled). Encountering any champion on my low level character was an adventure. I would die a lot. But sometimes I would conquer it, together with my friends. It felt amazing.
  It would have been totally ruined by people hogging the runestone, storming in with a zerg, one-shotting the troll, spouting a bunch of meta-information and rushing on to the bandit.
  I’m just saying, when you accuse somebody of ruining your precious train, please keep in mind that you may be ruining someone else’s gaming experience, too! And neither of you is “right”.
• It negatively affects any roleplaying taking place in the same location (I know the hunting lodge is a popular location for this)
• And another example – if I’m in the middle of collecting grub tails and the zerg stomps into the troll cave, the collection requirement skyrockets and I might not be able to complete it.

I run the champ train myself occasionally (for dailies or when I have nothing better to do). I have no problem with it existing, personally. I do have a problem with some people’s attitudes.

If I wanted to see wiggly bums, I would go watch music videos. This is a role playing game.

New maps would keep us entertained for approximately 3 minutes… not a year

Or onto the achievements page in game

OR ANYWHERE

I prefer the new animation. I don’t care for a “jog down the runway”. My engi is ready for action.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Thanks to those of you who have made some great suggestions, including people to run with!

I hope you added me to ^^

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Oh, where you said “d) never even brought up the subject of fractals” did you mean “voip” instead of “fractals”?

Anyway, I think I included everything you’re saying in my first post. Maybe it didn’t come out as clearly as I thought.

Ooops XD … I’ll go edit… thanks man

Well you said that if she wanted to run with an organized group, she should expect them to expect her to use VOIP.

My own group is organized enough to do well in fractals and have fun, and doesn’t expect anybody to use VOIP.

Seeing as the OP originally said that she prefers not to use VOIP, I felt it important to let her know that this is not a prerequisite with all organized groups – so contrary to her own conclusions (and possibly yours), I am saying that fractals might in fact be “for her” after all and she might not have to miss out on content.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

1 and 4: You can’t just do part of a dungeon, walk away, and expect to get credit. Every dungeon path is split into parts, FotM just randomizes those parts and makes them easier to distinguish. Doing all four only takes about an hour, which is 1/3500 of the time you’ve spent in game so far.

2. You don’t need friends to play FotM with, the LFG tool makes it very easy to just find a group and go. If you insist on playing in an organized group, then join a guild with other players who want to do fractals.

3. You don’t need to use voip by any means, but if you’re expecting an organized group, expect them to require voip. You don’t need a microphone to listen.

Or she could run with people that take it easy… ?

My own group of GW2 friends that I run fractals with has some top-tier pros in it and many casuals (levels 5 – 20) and we a) do absolutely fine in fractals, b) have fun doing it, c) are not in the same guild, d) never even brought up the subject of audio chat. Not once. Not by the pros either.

Some people are just more relaxed about the whole thing and play with a social focus rather than a competitive one, which I believe the OP is looking for.

Edit: I wrote “fractals” when I meant “audio chat” which made my whole post not make any sense at all. <insert dog shaming picture>

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

1. the bonus fractal was a hindrance, I wanted to be done, not given more to do

You don’t have to do them – every fractal counts for 1 fractal.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

2. I don’t have enough friends who play the game regularly to make a non-pug team

Run with Sarah. I cannot recommend her highly enough.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Fractals-A-friendly-hand

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

3. I don’t like the need to use audio chat. (I do well running a northern defense team for tequatl without a microphone)

I don’t have a mic or any audio software installed, and have never been asked to by anybody I ran fractals with.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

4. I would much prefer to do one at a time instead of 3, so I can make less time commitment.

You can leave after one – no problem. Just do one at a time when you feel like it? It’s what I do…

People use running to skip mobs and other content all the time.
Running should be disabled.

… is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day, and I’ve been on the Internet and seen pictures of baby animals.

+1

I prefer the new animation.

Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels like that.

I strongly doubt that the chambers were designed to favour 2-player groups and completely screw over 3-player groups. It seems to me this is a byproduct of technical limitations and/or not taking the time to scale bosses individually.

Scaling in PvE has its own problems (see also this thread)…

Sweet! I really have to make some money fast, so I can sign up for stuff like this…

Yes, people keep suggesting this

Achievement 1:
Diving goggles on the corner of the platform in front of the entrance to the boss chamber

Achievement 2:
After beating the hybrid boss, don’t leave the instance through the “door button” – go through a “back door” portal instead, it will take you to the outside of the tower. The other pair of diving goggles are at the end of a plank there.

Let me start by saying that I enjoy this last update. Much of it really works for me. Some of it I would have personally designed differently. For instance, it is hard to get to chambers but easy to complete them (I would have done it the other way around). However, this thread is just about one thing that I really feel was messed up.

Scaling

The point of scaling is so you, as a developer, have better control over how hard it is for an individual player or group to defeat a specific encounter.

You can adjust a bosses’ hit points, damage dealt or skills used based on how many players are present, or what level(s) the players are. (The latter is insignificant if the players are scaled up to 80 already.)

This way you can aim for a specific encounter to be roughly the same difficulty for 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 players.

|
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| _  _  _  _  _
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|  1  2  3  4  5

You can, of course, also use this to influence the difficulty in such a way that a specific encounter favors solo-play or group-play:

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|     --  _  
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|  1  2  3  4  5

But this is not how ANet implemented the chambers. How the scaling of the boss instances work right now is this:

• If you are 1-2 players, the watchwork or spider boss is a vet
• If you are 3-5 players, the watchwork or spider boss is a champion
• Unless it is a special boss (Trahearne, Destiny’s Edge, Mentor) then it doesn’t seem to scale at all

This scaling algorithm that just spawns one OR the other, instead of spawning the same boss but with adjusted difficulty, may work (somewhat) in PvE, but on such a small scale it really just messes up the dynamics big time.

For the Watchwork as well as spider vets / champions, it leads to this difficulty graph which is a complete mess. Easy to solo, trivial with 2 players, a total nightmare with 3, doable (but hard) with 4 or 5.

|         _  
|              --  _
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| _
|     --    
|  1  2  3  4  5

It is most apparent in the spider:

• 1-2 players: a vet
• 3-5 players: a champion that coccoons, heals, has stacks of defiant, and spawns mines

…

The other effect is seen on the special bosses. Rytlock is actually kind of tough to solo, as he spawns minions all the time, but he goes down in literally 2 seconds with a full group.

Is this really by design? Or is it just because current technical restrictions make it really difficult to scale in a more reasonable way? Because on small-scale encounters, … this isn’t doing it for me.

I think the point of this encounter is to CC the spider away from the coccoons. I use all the immobilize I have (net turret, etc.) as well as BOB to knock her away when she gets too close.

I do have to say though that some coccoons indeed appear to be bugged as they are a TON stronger and take a super long time to take down even with 5 people.

Secondly, and this is not a bug, but it is seriously stupid to design an encounter around CC skills and then give the boss stacks of defiant. (…)

Draknar.5748:

Does anyone else notice that:

Molten Alliance, Aetherblades, Toxic Alliance = Vigil, Durmand Priory, Order of Whispers? The evil versions obviously. They are even growing an evil Pale Tree. Scarlet is creating evil versions of what we got going on.

I don’t see it

(The Order of Whispers created the pale tree??!!)

Can you go into some more detail on this?

The sad thing is that I honestly believe that ANet has enough player data to make a very accurate prediction / create an algorithm that will ensure that the bar is full around a specific date, without manipulating numbers.

However, that would have required the boss instance to be attractive beyond the 4 runs you do for story completion, one-time reward and achievements (maybe 5 if you managed to miss the back door). There’s not currently a reward (or even chance of a reward) that I think makes people feel like they should run it at least once a day, like they were with the SAB or even the Bloody Prince instance.

Boggles my mind why the Hybrid instance doesn’t drop 1 guaranteed key a day.