Guild Wars 2

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think for townclothing to really work, we need to first be able to wear it when ever we want.

This is where I disagree, and here’s why: different armor types were put in the game fore two reasons. A) they have different stats (I think anyway) and B) different looks. So when you look at another character, while you can’t tell what profession they are unless they use a skill (or have their pet out), you can see whether they’re a soldier, adventurer or spellcaster type.

I’m not saying that this rule should be written in stone and never strayed from. But what you’re talking about is basically making “light armor” looking clothing available to medium and heavy types (while not making heavy looking armor available to the other types).

In individual cases, I wish the system was more flexible – there is a lot of scenarios where I see individual wishes as entire justifiable and not immersion-breaking: a warrior with an eyepatch, a thief dressed “like a Sir” (a privilege that is currently reserved for light armor), better pants for light and medium dressed characters of both genders, the pirate pants (town clothing) to go with the pirate coat (armor) for my engi, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Do I want to see a guardian run around in hotpants, blouse and bunny ears/ANet base cap? Me personally, no, that is the last thing I want to see in battle. (Not to mention: on opponents in WvW and PvP.)
In mini-games, where your class doesn’t matter and you use mini-game specific skills, I don’t care about characters dressed in what I would consider their “after work hours” leisurely yoga pants.

You can already wear town clothes in PvE whenever you’re not in combat, and I think the reason people don’t make use of that option a lot is because the town clothes don’t get too much exposure. Making them “mandatory” in mini-games would change that somewhat and people might put more effort into their “town outfit” – without making the whole concept of armor types obsolete.

A Lion’s Arch that is decorated in Halloween, Wintersday and Dragon Bash decoration, overrun by Aetherblades as well as flame and frost refugees, with the pirate council election taking place forever but never having an outcome…. wouldn’t work for me.

nightshade.1950:

Content should never be removed

The point of the living story is that you see the world change (sometimes based on the community’s decisions). This change means that something new comes and something old goes away.

The things that actually happen in the game’s present WILL be the things of the game’s past. Otherwise anything you do in the present would begin to feel pretty pointless. I already know that the game does not care one bit how many times we fight the dragons, we can never defeat them… and guess what, I don’t bother with the dragons anymore. (In the context of the living story it would be similar: Why fight the molten alliance if we knew that it never went away, no matter what we do?)

There are other concepts already in place that allow (or will allow) us to relive part of the content (through fractals, quest items that replay cinematics) and I agree with many here who think that we need more replayability like that, for instance through historian NPCs that give you access to long-gone story instances.

The other approach is to sometimes add permanent content along with the temporary content, such as a new jumping puzzle or dungeon path or a new boss fight mechanic, which is already being done and ANet says they’re exploring possibilities and trying to get better at this.

Bearhugger.4326:

Also, if you start as a street rat humans, your original town clothes are rags. (Charrs get town clothes for their legion, sylvaris get town clothes for their waking time, etc.) If you don’t like that, you can buy the other origins’ town clothes with gold so you’re not stuck with your origin. It just gives flavor to your story.

Excellent suggestions!

Town clothes could drop from personal story chapters where you dress up as pirate, bandit, nightmare court, inquest, flame legion etc. Obviously, not every character goes that route during the personal story, so I’d be happy if they unlocked from a gold merchant when a character has completed the equivalent vigil/priory chapter instead of the order of whispers one.
Like cultural armor, I assume that some of these costumes are race-based, but I can live with that.

Moriwenne.3128:

Anet screwed up with this. There’s some mistake in the code clearly. There’s no reason to make this work so poorly and be so hard to obtain. The freaking corruption doesn’t appear most of the time and afaik it shows up on champs after like 5minutes or even more, sometimes not at all. Most of these get killed before it appears so it all gets reset somehow. It makes no sense how this works. Why do it like this anet? WHY?!?

The debuff has a chance to show up right away after the champion spawns. Seriously, I got most of these on the second day, in Queensdale where champs go down within seconds. And still every ~3rd champion had the debuff by then. Any champion which is less popular and doesn’t get killed in under 15 seconds would have a higher chance than that.

Bosses get the debuffs, too, and take a lot longer to kill.

So if you think this is hard to obtain please consider that you might be looking in the wrong place. Do some boss fights, and see how that goes.

I was wondering the same for two seconds, but in the description it says “inside look”, not “preview”. And I, too, would rather see the new stuff in the game first.

Why? Why make another one of these? What makes you think that this thread will end any differently than… looks at url… the other 49 threads of the exact same title?

Well, we got a bunch of stuff that hadn’t been promised to anybody, so if some of these things take a few months longer then whatever. Especially if that means that the new content is tested more thoroughly.

I don’t see the problem. I’ve played Inquisition a bunch now and villagers have won it quite a few times.

Secondly, I don’t see why the villagers even SHOULD win 50% of the time anyways, seeing as it is the Mad’s King’s Halloween game. Have any southsun survivors ever held out for 12+ minutes against the spirits and karka?

I keep seeing threads that complain that the ghosts are much stronger than the villagers. Well, apart from being really slow, they also start out with one ghost (I think anyway). The ghosts are supposed to overpower the villagers. Otherwise the game would start with the same number of ghosts and villagers.

When the villagers don’t win, the game is shorter which means you can play more games in the same time. The middle part, when there are ghosts and villagers clashing into each other, is more interesting than the hide-and-seek at the end. Just end it so we can start over with the fun stuff

But that’s just my opinion.

I don’t even.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

when is ArenaNet going to make it so that players can knock off creatures in PvE from platforms and such?

I would think around the same time when they give mobs the ability to jump on and off things, so they can follow you when you jump off a cliff or onto a platform.

:P

Players are already at a massive advantage.

I actually don’t mind them being just shoulders and gloves, as I think they combine well with heavy, medium OR light armor.

400 gems is very very steep though, especially considering that you cannot dye the green and black parts, so they don’t have a very high re-use value. If I could fully dye them, I’d be able to use them for all sorts of outfits later on, not just a “toxic” inspired one.

Sarah was amazing helping out my group last night, even though it took us ages to set it up. It was the first time at level 10 for 3 of us. I cannot recommend her enough

Thank you! /bow

Aedelric.1287:

Salma District, they just dumped most of the rewards in the orphanage, convenient yes, but most definitely not an appropriate location.

I think that every. single. day. when I go to the orphanage and rob the orphans of quartz crystals. On top of that, now they’re all going to die of tooth decay.

I really only like the placement of the Krait shard in Salma district.

In the other home instances, the placement of the nodes seems even more random.

Shriketalon.1937:

Solving town clothing is pretty simple.

1) Everyone wears town clothes in minigames.

2) Release more minigames.

3) Minigames include town clothes as part of their rewards. Town clothes can also be crafted, purchased from karma vendors, earned as story rewards, purchased directly in cities, or discovered from mini dungeons/jumping puzzles, etc.

4) Headgear now has three different options: Display headgear armor, display town clothes headgear, or hide headgear. Want to look cool? Kill Tequatl. Want to look awesome? Kill Tequatl at night while wearing sunglasses.

Awesome. +4

Thanks guys. I’ve suggested it before and I’ll keep doing it – maybe one day a dev will read it and find it worthy.

I think it’s a side effect. They changed the system glory works so you get 125 glory for participation in PvP (as long as you’ve scored any points at all) plus a bonus for winning, rather than glory based exclusively on your own performance / rank points gained.

Now all the PvP activities are technically PvP matches and as such you now get the participation bonus.

While I don’t think this is by design, they may just decide to keep it in.

inazuma.7021:

Everything I’ve seen says it’s supposed to give a skill point per day.

What have you seen and where?

Everything I’ve seen on the forums so far suggested that it was a skill point like every single other skill point in game: once per character.
Beyond that, it is a place of power where you can charge your quartz crystals if you have any.

I don’t remember how this particular heart’s instructions are worded, but many of them have a sentence at the end that says something like “… and keep the population safe” or “… and eliminate other threats”.

Meriem.3504:

I want to fight the bandits eyc. not the toxic nonsense for the hearts. From RP stand point it does not make any sense in my book.

From an RP standpoint, I guess it depends on this heart’s NPC, but I think almost all of the NPCs don’t have agendas that are too specific to appreciate a hero coming along and kicking some Kraits’ behinds. Nobody likes the Krait.

“No, sorry, I don’t give you karma (RP: appreciation/reputation), because while you protect the local citizens, you’re fighting the wrong eveil mobs! I asked you to fight those bandits over there, not these Krait sorcerers who are super more evil and dangerous and darken the skies, and their rapidly spreading poison spores!”

… said no NPC ever. ;-)

I like it! The different parts combine really nicely.

I’m not sure about the brown/yellow combination – if that’s supposed to be gold, I’d go with a more subdued tone, such as dijon (or similar).

But all in all, good job.

It’s looking dire.

Even on TC.
Directly after reset.
On a weekend.

:(

Lolyta.4582:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

What if there were two separate conditions, one with a bonus for teamplay / malus for solo-play, and one that works the other way around?

Um….

In that case both conditions would be useless because we are ALWAYS either soloing or involved in grouping/proximity with other players… those are the only two possibilites.

So regardless which one we were doing, we would have offsetting conditions- one a “boon over time” for whichever we were doing (solo or grouped) and the other a DoT that offsets the buff.

So if the mathematics were, say, 100 HP per tick with one second ticks, every second the boon would give us Regen of 100 HP, and the DoT would take 100 HP away… resulting in absolutely zero net effect.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see the point of that.

Duh, I didn’t mean at the same time :P

Example:

You enter a really creepy environment, such as, I don’t know, the Krait tower. The atmosphere and/or Krait magic make you feel very lonely, and you get a demoralising debuff. Only comes into effect if you go alone. (lower endurance)

The next living story chapter is one focusing on the Norn. There’s this survival challenge. You go in a team, nothing happens. You brave it on your own, you get a confidence boost! (higher endurance)

I could make up more situations where either a bonus or a malus would affect either a solo player or a team.

Okay, so while I was looking up Tassi on the wiki, I found this page, which lists all characters that were introduced by the living story.

Of course it doesn’t say anything about HOW male and female characters are represented, or how large their part was. But anyway -

Male living story characters: 18
Female living story characters: 12

However, the list includes Logan, Rytlock and Eir, but not Jennah or Anise, so it’s really more like 16:11.
If Horrik is in the list, then why not other dungeon bosses? Also, Subdirector Noll, Hobo-Tron (and possibly others) are missing, so I’m beginning to think that the list isn’t very good.

Anyway, one thing the list does show is that Asura are in no way underrepresented in the living story. Norn, on the other hand, are.

Lorelei.7809:

So… might I ask you, why aren’t there more women? If you include holidays in there, and they are part of the Living World, then we need at least 1 more woman character to even it out (not sure whether or not to count Bloody Prince to make it 4 men).

Then we’ll have to add Tassi to the list; a side character since Halloween 2012 (!), played a central part in the story instance of Dragon Bash, inventor of the Tassi box, and the one who put the Bloody Prince back to rest.

Let’s not forget about Tassi.

She kicks kitten.

:)

Sarahfull.4930:

I love my fractals ( I do them a lot ) and I also love helping people so that’s why I’m here! I believe this is the right spot so I’ll post it here.
Anyway I am here to let everyone know ( even if its a little late ) that I’m here to help you fractal!

Awesome. I’ll add you to my friend list if you don’t mind. I have a regular group of friends I run with. We occasionally do fractals, but none of us have (to my knowledge) progressed past level 10
Maybe on days when we’re a person short I’ll whisper you and see if you’re “free”

Royalarts.1965:

“Characters” implies they are all different and not just avatars of yourself. Call them avatars or the popular term “toon”

That is the established term in roleplaying games though and has been fore decades. Hence PC = player character, NPC = non-player character.

What if there were two separate conditions, one with a bonus for teamplay / malus for solo-play, and one that works the other way around?

I am very much a team player, would those conditions, applied only in very specific situations, would help create a dense athmosphere and encourage players to leave their comfort zone and experience other playstyles…

Yep. +1

I will continue to +1 this every time it is brought up. As has been stated many times, it would haev been possible to avoid different server vaults, or set them up in a way that allows for cross-vault guesting.

What annoys me the most about minis is that you have to double click them every few minutes because the game decides to stash them every time you touch water or leave the map or die (etc.)

The main reason given by the devs is that they don’t have the time to create unique swimming animations for each mini, which I understand completely, but here’s the thing: why not just put the mini into a bubble of air, and it can float by your side? The bubbles are already in game (dwarf mini dungeon, some skills) so there wouldn’t be that much to code, and it would make additional animations unnecessary.

Lolyta.4582:

Great idea. Maybe they would actually do it if there was a sliding price schedule, similar to the way Dungeon Armor is priced (in tokens):

Full set 800 tokens

Helm 150
Shoulders 150
Chest 300
Gloves 150
Legs 200
Boots 150

The 6-pieces would cost 1100 if purchased separately. Chest and Legs, generally the most visible and sought-after pieces, would cost 500.

Makes total sense to me.

I probabl still would have bought the complete viper set, as the only item I don’t care for right now is the boots, but I would have loved to have the choice.

I could also have bought just the gloves and shoulders (that I use on my main) and the top, skirt and possibly eye thing would have followed later for my alt, resulting in me spending MORE than 800 gems.

And, scenario three, if I run around in my new viper (or partly viper) outfit a lot, I might find that I really, erally like those glovesm and want to pick up additional pieces for my alts, but I am unlikely to spend the whole 800 gems a second time around.

Shriketalon.1937:

Basically, the LS consistently portrays female heroes as skilled, capable, and varied, while painting male heroes as inept, flawed, or reliant on their superior female counterparts.

[…] (had to shorten because of maximum posting length)

While I know some of that is deliberately phrasing things in a bad light, I invite you to consider to questions. First of all, can you name a prominent male character in the Living Story who is skilled, capable, and does not get shown up by a superior female? I’m not saying every single one needs to be a strong, independent male who don’t need no gal….but still.

And secondly, if the genders were reversed, do you think the Living Story’s portrayal of women would be acceptable? If Lana Thackery was called out by Count Anthony for being so blinded by her love for the King of Kryta that she couldn’t do her job? If Caneche the guerrilla fighter rampaged around Southsun Cove proving Subcontractor Gnilie a fool, only to have the rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold Captain Kieth show up and upstage both of these two ladies with his scoundrel smile? If the large-but-dumb Brahma chased after her boyfriend only to have him dump her immediately, at which point she latched onto Rawx the soldier and followed him around obediently? And finally, if Lady Farrah was constantly preening about the story acting like a complete ditz, serving only as a joke or a damsel in distress? If these were the only representations of the entire female gender, would this be alright? Methinks not.

The statement earlier in the thread is absolutely true that the goal should be for good characters in well written stories. I would assert, however, that the current writing is doing a lackluster job depicting the male characters, concentrating far too much on making one gender look good by highlighting the other’s failures and flaws.

I see your point, and appreciate the entertaining style you chose to illustrate it.

I would like to point out though that while I agree that there is a slight imbalance at current, the situation is not nearly as black and white as some people in this thread paint it.

Examples:
Rox is competent and passionate, but she is also deeply insecure, superstitious and her main motivation is to please Rytlock Brimstone. I’m sure that male Rawx would be criticized by players in the same way that Logan is right now.
Inspector Kiel was criticized for being bland and somewhat of a bully, and Inspector Keith would have likely been criticized for being a one-dimensional, cardboard-cutout male “police type” character.

People perceive even these characters very differently, and it somwhat depends on your choice of words whether or not they fit into gender stereotype “boxes” or not, and whether they’re “positive” or “negative”.

But two additional questions come to mind when we play the gender-reversal game:

• How would the community have reacted to a male Marjory and Kasmeer gay couple?
• How would the community have reacted to a femal Lady Farrah (Lord Faren) in Scarlett’s cauldron in her underwear?

I’m not making a point here, just pondering the subject.

Keep trying until the game puts you in the same instance. It will happen eventually, it’s just super glitchy for some reason

Draknar.5748:

devessi.3154:

If I was copy and pasting, I’d understand it better, but I was intentionally varying the message a little in each mail to try and not get suppressed. Grr.

Gotta vary them more. Do a different subject for each message, do a different intro “Hi XXXX!” then “Hello there XXXX!” then “Congratulations XXXX!!!” Change your outtro as well “Thanks – XXXX”, “Regards – XXXX”, “Warm regards – XXXX”. Also pick a random sentence in the body of the message and reword it each time. “You have won XXX, congratulations!” “Hooray, you just won our contest and will receive XXXX!” “OMG you WON!! WOOOO!”

As a guild officer who has had to send many many messages in game you get better and better at getting around the suppression. Even with all of these changes I still sometimes get suppressed, maybe after 7-8 messages. I go and do whatever the Activity is that day and then continue when I’m done.

Honestly it sucks that it requires this effort to send effing messages, but it’s that or send two messages then get stuck. They need to have inter-guild messages that cannot be suppressed. Some kind of mass-guild mailing system.

This really only goes to show that the current system

1. makes messaging inconvenient to use for everyone (how many % of players are goldsellers?) and
2. can and will easily be cheated anyways.

I still think that the contact list is a perfectly reasonable indicator for which players I don’t mind getting “spammed” by.

Edge.4180:

MatthewMedina.5419:

Thanks for expressing your concerns. It’s definitely our preference to give players as much choice about their instanced experiences as possible. Whenever possible, we make instances capable of being either soloed or completed in groups.

However, in this particular case, because we are manually intercepting everyone over level 25 and automatically loading them into the instance, we currently don’t have support for parties to be brought into the instance together under those circumstances. This is something that we are looking at addressing for the future. It was not an easy choice, but for narrative reasons we felt it would have been less impactful for players to load straight into Kessex Hills without having experienced the instance beforehand.

I do regret that we weren’t able to offer “The Nightmare Unveiled” as group content at this time, but hopefully the remainder of the open world content makes up for this.. :-)

The problem with this approach is that impact you were hoping to achieve ends up getting lost on some players. Friends zone together, but when they don’t end up in an instance together and can’t find any way of joining one another, they end up leaving the instance immediately and prematurely to try again (because in their minds they’ve encountered a bug rather than an intentional design). And so, the focus shifts completely away from the story and onto resolving an annoying problem of the game not functioning as expected.

This is exactly what happened to us.

Especially after the las instance (Tassi resealing the Bloody Prince) allows up to 5 people, but sometimes you all end up in different instances, and sometimes you end up in the same instance as your party but it kicks everyone out after two seconds. Yesterday it took us 8 tries to get in the same Bloody Prince instance with a 3 people party.
How were we supposed to know that the new instance was strictly solo and not just broken? We could have left and tried again but we didn’t know if it was repeatable either.

I mean, I could study the patch notes before heading back into the game, but I really want to avoid spoilers before a new story instance.

It’s all just stuff I’d rather not be dealing with when what I really want is to enjoy new content and get caught up in the story and atmosphere…

Did you get the achievement, too?

I see no problem with using Abyss in addition to “dusky” dyes, but have you considered limiting the use of Abyss to gloves/boots/shoulders?

I’d rather get one skin that three different physical helmets (Dragon Bash) or non-ascendable back items

That’s cute. Love the background…

This restriction needs to be lifted for people who have added each other as friends.

My boyfriend and I frequently send each other dyes, foods and other goods and I cannot understand for the life of me why the game thinks it has to protect us both from each other’s messages. Suuuuper annoying.

The other example is when I buy food of the TP before a dungeon run to send to each of my 4 party members. Like… why?

More options are better.
+1

Laurelinde.4395:

Lostwingman.5034:

Laurelinde.4395:

“The dudes I don’t like don’t count!”

Sorry, but Logan, Trahearne, Braham and Faren are still male and still living story characters no matter how much you or I or anyone else likes or dislikes them. You can’t just discount them all together and then claim that supports a lack of male characters.

P.S. Plus, men get Hobotron on their team, so that’s a win right there.

All but Trahearne are doofus’s or muscleheads. I’m sure you would feel there wasn’t a lack of good female characters if all of the female MCs were changed to ditzy airheads?

Up until her recent revelation as an apparently astoundingly powerful mesmer (which is both weird and suspicious IMO), Kasmeer came across as the female version of Faren to me – she was introduced to us as a spoiled bikini babe.

This. I didn’t understand then (and wrote so on the forums on several occasions) why the character was so popular.

I assume that ANet gave her a bigger role after seeing that she was popular with the community.

In regards to Ellen Kiel: She was voted by the community, not ANet. Some people even feel that whoever was voted council member would likely disappear in council duties and the other, not-elected character was going to be “free” to appear in living story chapters. I guess we won’t know until we know! So far, neither Gnashblade nor Kiel have had anything to do at all since the election.

I would also like to point out that while I see that in the last few story chapters (IF you don’t cound Halloween, SAB, etc.) had more female than male characters, but keep in mind that we now know that the Moto story is not limited to thinking inside the box anymore and it was foreshadowed that the whole story was going to go somewhere with Moto the protagonist in the next SAB release.

Jennah is not a living story character; this year’s updates combined (starting with Flame & Frost), Rytlock had just as much “screen time” as Jennah. So if you count one of them, you have to count the other. Logan and Eir appeared in story instances with less screen time.

In fact, the only member of Destiny’s Edge that I don’t remember playing a role in the living story so far is Zojja.

Thobek.1730:

Lily Miranda.5407:

Thobek.1730:

But currently there isn’t a male in sight, nor has there been for a while.

Mad King? Bloody Prince?

That’s not the LS, its a festival. geez come on!

The festivals tie into the Living Story (Dragon Bash and Queen’s Gauntlet were festivals, too…) and other living story elements were designed to be recur (Zephyrites, SAB) so you’re drawing a pretty arbitrary line there.
But I’m not going to create a thread now complaining that the Mad King, Bloody Prince, Tixx and Moto are all male, because that would be silly. I’d rather look at the complete picture, and the complete picture shows that the male/female distribution overall is ridiculously even in this game. (I’ve listed plenty of examples on the first page of this thread.)

I do all story instances, if at all possible, in a team of two. It’s always disappointing when that isn’t possible for some reason that just sounds arbitrary.

Why port level 25+ characters into the instance in the first place?

A better way would have been to play a cinematic for ALL players who port to Kessex Hills, and then spawn them next to the instance entry point, where they could have entered the instance solo or in a group, regarless of their levels.

That’s weird – I’ve collected way more than 30 laurels at a time before and it never maxed out

+100

To add to the list of recurring (?) characters: the Mad King, the Bloody Prince, Tixx the Toymaker.

In Activities: the announcer voice in Keg Brawl, Crab Toss, etc, all male. Sanctum Sprint, different male voice. PvP, male voice. Actual NPCs in Keg Brawl and Crab Toss, men.

The drinking game: 3 vs 2 for the champions, and I think a male end boss during the Zephyrite chapter.

World bossee. Dungeon bosses. Etc.

And that’s fine, not everything has to be 50-50. ANet is already overly strict with this (see the examples from my earlier post.) But before saying that ANet has a feminist agenda or whatever, take all aspects into consideration.

Lostwingman.5034:

Laurelinde.4395:

“The dudes I don’t like don’t count!”

Sorry, but Logan, Trahearne, Braham and Faren are still male and still living story characters no matter how much you or I or anyone else likes or dislikes them. You can’t just discount them all together and then claim that supports a lack of male characters.

P.S. Plus, men get Hobotron on their team, so that’s a win right there.

All but Trahearne are doofus’s or muscleheads.

I disagree.
Some more male characters from the living story that I don’t think are doofuses or muscleheads: Rytlock Brimstone, Moto, Evon Gnashblade, Canach.

Engineer – pretty happy with it, but if my engi could use a whip, I’d be over the moon.

ninetales.5208:

Maybe they need to bring Dougal Keane out of retirement He’s pretty cool in the Ghosts of Ascalon.

I would love that very much. Dougal Keane (as well as the other characters that made it through the novel) doesn’t have anything to do right now, but I seriously think the character has so much potential as an NPC.

• As for the living story characters:
  If you list Roxx, you have to list Braham.
  If you list Ellen Kiel, you have to list Evon Gnashblade. (Remember, it wasn’t ANet who decided who won the election.)
  Moto.
• Personal story: Trahearne.
• Novels: as 50/50 as it gets.
• Base game: 2 out of 3 order heads may be female, but 2 out of 3 mentors were male. I believe two out of 3 Charr legions have male bosses (3 out of 4 IF you count the flame legion). NPCs seem to be 50/50, including all lion guard, seraph, personal story side cast etc. Dynamic events, boss fights: for every Brenda there’s a Brogun, for every Rooba a Gamarien.

All in all, it is SO evenly distributed that I am convinced that someone at ANet’s is keeping a tally sheet.

I thought the Krait Historian was fun – I like scavenger hunts. Boyfriend and myself tried to find as many as possible without any guides, and then went to the guides for the last 2 or 3.

I do strongly agree, however, that (as has been stated many times) the game should share its “checklist information” on the achievement’s mini-page. There’s no reason to have players keep their own lists outside of the game, other than to make it all needlessly difficult.

That aside, I know the achievement is bugged for some, and the whole issue of having to double or triple research the Krait shards due to being interrupted and then not knowing where to go is a sad one.

I would have suggested:

• Option 1:
  An in-game checklist on the achievement page that breaks it down into maps: “You found 3/4 shards in Sparkfly Fen”, etc. This way you would know which map to go to find the remaining one or the one that wasn’t “tagged” correctly.
• Option 2:
  After using a Krait shard correctly, place a shard icon on the map. Players can then compare these maps with friends’ / guides’.

I had the achievement stickied in the top right corner and checked that the number incremented after each shard.

I saw someone link the codes in chat last night, for what it’s worth