Guild Wars 2

By the way, my boyfriend asked me to tell you it looks awesome so far

After catching up with the last few pages,

TL;DR for Gaile

• create a bomb and a grenade “weapon” held in hand
• if back item/shield is equipped: always show back item/shield; if NO back item/shield is equipped: show hobo sack
• on standard player models (competitive PvP): always show hobo sack

Community: did I summarize this correctly? Is this the easy fix that wil make almost every player happy – those that hate and those that love and those few that rely on seeing hobo sacks?

Tamasan.6457:

My consolidated feedback on Wintersday 2014:
There’s many things that ArenaNet does right. Wintersday 2014 was not it. If I was feeling very charitable, I’d grade this as a C-, at best. It’s like going to your favorite restaurant, ordering something you know you like, enjoying the first bite, but then finding a hair in the food on the second bite.

1) Bell Choir. Buggy and frustrating. At least half the time, I join and every note I play is wrong, but if I stop playing notes, I don’t take damage and get a perfect score and not credit. Most of the rest of the time, I enter an instance which is or nearly is completed. So between these two problems, I spend most of my time in loading screens, “waiting on additional players”, and not enjoying the activity. For something that is identical to last year and should not have changed, this is a complete failing grade, F. Suggestions: Fix the bug, lower the waiting time between songs, and don’t allow new players into an instance that has started the second song.

2) Winter Wonderland JP. Only small changes from last year, and I’m fine with them. There seem to be a lot of people complaining about lag, but I was not one of them. Only real problem I see is the falling damage on the candy cane. Grade: B+. Suggestion: just turn falling damage off for the whole instance – everything else is highly scripted so it shouldn’t make any difference anywhere else in the puzzle.

3) Grawnk. Perfect. Short, sweet, light-hearted. A+ Need more things like this.

4) Toypocalypse. It’s not Wintersday if I can’t play with my friends. I realize that code changes were required for PvP (and I’m enjoying PvP more than I used to, so that was good). However, it was entirely a choice to not devote resources into fixing this activity. Why it is even in the competitive activity format is kind of a mystery to me anyway. I’ll be generous here and grade this as a D. Suggestion before next year: allow me to join with friends, of course. Or if I’m asking for the stars, a complete competitive activity overhaul. I’d like to play with my friends in other activities as well. Parties should end up in the same instance – not necessarily on the same team, as that may make some things like Snowball Mayhem and Keg Brawl unfun going up against a premade – but at least put us in the same instance so after I launch a snowball volley at a friend I can laugh about it with them on teamspeak.

5) Snowball Mayhem. No changes needed with the exception of what I just said above, as it can be difficult to get into the same instance as friends. Grade A.

6) Infiniarium. Seems there was some variations or additions for some of the tasks – this is a good thing. And as always, running around doing the SMASH EVERYTHING thing is so cathartic. A+.

7) PvP reward track. Perfect. A.

8) Divinity’s Reach, Ho-ho-tron/Dolyak Event. Again, perfect. A.

9) Achievements. Mostly fine, but more thought needs to go into the cap for repeatable ones. 30 rounds of Snowball Mayhem for 3 points? With 5-10 minute matches, plus starting/loading times, that’s about 6 hours. That’s just a bit silly. Grade B.

10) Wintersday Presents. I feel like I’m being trolled by Arenanet here, even after the update. It’s like some awful meme: “Yo dawg I heard you like RNG boxes, so I put RNG boxes in your RNG boxes, so you can risk getting banned for using an autoclicker while you rage about RNG.” Seriously, Arenanet: stop it. RNG lottery isn’t fun. Boxes in boxes is absurd. No grade for this, please go to the principal’s office for detention.

I personally had no problems with Bell Choir this year (other than the high chance of being put into an instance that is already on its last song or even “play what you like”), despite playing on a kittenty laptop and slow internet. I’d give Bell Choir a B because while I would be able to think of some small improvements, none of them are critical and I enjoyed Bell Choir as much as ever.

Other than that first point, I agree with you 100% and I’ll leave it at that.

Daily SAB

Right now, you can also get an additional laurel each day for completing 5 out of the 6 Wintersday achievements (until Jan 12).

Olvendred.3027:

Alternatively, they could add further guild bank upgrades.

That wouldn’t help me at all.

GC, TTS, DTOP, SW are 4 guilds already
Arah vets, Aetherpath guild, giant slayers
RP guilds
Personal guild
Shared bank space with partner or BFFs
Short term guilds for sharing minis

All guilds I have been a member of, or considered at some point (then couldn’t because I was maxed out)

And I haven’t even started on PvP, WvW, honorary guild memberships and other sentimental stuff.

5 has always been a very tight limit for me, and I would buy additional guild slots for gems if they let me.

Foe a casual PvE player: it doesn’t matter. Whatever is the most fun, do it. It will be fine.

If you don’t care for a career as a dungeon speedrunner or semiprofessional PvPer, it really, really doesn’t matter.

I don’t think Gaile knows that we’re serious about this.

I cannot +1 this thread enough.

I am on vacation right now, stuck with an old laptop, no proper keyboard or mouse or even comfortable chair, terrible (throttled) internet connection, and with anything between 5 and 15 FPS (that is, outside boss fights, which I can outright not do right now).

I absolutely cannot do the jumping puzzle under these conditions. You miss one jump, you have to start over.

I can do bell choir. You miss one note, or even quite a few in a row, you have the chance to heal back up by hitting a right note.

Last year, playing from my own PC, I got pretty good scores at bell choir, and I really enjoyed playing it, so I have that going for me.

This time, I have to live with getting between 20 and 60 points out of 100 per song. But, unlike the jumping puzzle, it is doable.

Because for the daily, all you have to do is survive a single song. (And if it’s the first song and you pick the lower part… it is quite doable, even under the conditions I deal with right now, which are pretty bad and do not fulfill the MMO minimum requirements.) And for the meta, just do the daily a few times in a row and the 500 notes will be done in no time. The patch has been out for not even one week out of four. You have all the time in the world to do this bit by bit.

I realise that there is a handful of players who have it harder and on top of it all have no fun doing it and I feel for you guys, I really do. But… with everything in the game there is always some (in this case, fewer than usual) few players that are not able to do it, for an array of possible reasons.

But honestly, it could be so… much… worse. It could be 6/6 for dailies.

Kulvar.1239:

Human/Norn => Use a first and last name (Eldric Cooper / Ulvric Johansson)
Charr => Use a first and warband name (Rawl Dustblade)
Asura => Use a title and a first name (Magicist Friff)
Sylvari => You’re kittened!

It’s not an issue at all.

I haven’t had any problems at all, not even for Sylvari.

I do stick with lore conform names (I don’t like clever puns" or referencing other people’s material for character names). My Asura has a title, although I might just as well have doubled some consonant in her name.

If you want to give your character the same name you have used in a different game before and it’s taken, that sucks, but for humans (for instance) you can go with a middle initial and that will fix that problem for now.

In my opinion, the effect should be tied to the skin, as has been the case so far for legendaries and the Golem backpack. This is what we got the wardrobe for.

Good luck OP, I hope you get the item back.

Do you like lore-friendly names or “clever” pun / fun names?

What is your mesmer’s style / do you have any idea what weapon and armor skins you’ll use?

What will she look like (hair color / style, skin color, younger/older, cute face or no-nonsense face, short/tall…)

Do you have sort of a roleplaying background in mind? At the very least, you can take queues from character creation. (I would give a different name to a “street rat” than to a noblewoman.) What is she like? What does she like? What does she do for a living? etc.

And if you can’t tell us anything about your mesmer – tell us something about your own preferences. What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite foreign language? Your favorite musical style? Your favorite franchise… etc.

RoseofGilead.8907:

That’s not the JP you go to for the ornament. It’s a different Orr JP.

Wrong: Any grand, splendid or magnificent Orrian chest will do. It doesn’t have to be at the end of a jumping puzzle, let along a specific one.

I got my Orrian Ornament from the hope falls chest which is in the water, right next to the POI, you just swim up to it an voila.

I wish I’d known about the Asura chest in the vizir’s tower though, I just spent entirely too long in Portmatt’s Lab for this!

I don’t think there is anything to fix – it worked fine from the second day on.

I don’t expect ANet will send me the first bonus chest via special delivery…

That’s fine, I figured you were busy, who isn’t in December

Love the drawing so far!!

Gaile Gray.6029:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

In case anyone missed this part of the Patch Notes:

Players logged in after 4:00 p.m. PDT [should say PST] on December 15 will receive their first daily log-in reward chest after 4:00 p.m. PDT [should say PST] on December 16.
Players last logged out before 4:00 p.m. PDT [should say PST] on December 15 will receive their first daily log-in reward chest immediately after the update.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-16-2014/first#post4630748

I think this is very relevant for most of these reports. If each of you could please review and see if this describes your situation, it may let you know that this is the way distribution took place and does not represent a bug, per se.

I knew that, that’s why I explicitly stated in the original posting: I had not logged into GW2 in a week. I definitely had not logged in in the 24 hours before the patch hit.

:)

If tonics were in the wardrobe (like finishers), I’d bother collecting them.

boykottalypse

Noah.4756:

I am seriously getting carpal tunnel from all that clicking.

It’s the next morning, and my wrist still hurts.

I wish I was joking.

Anyandrell.6238:

Select crappy minor rune or crappy minor sigil
Are you sure?

Yes, I should have listed that in the first post too.

Silverwastes was already a stretch – for every run through the map, after the boss fight, I’d spend up to 10 minutes opening / sorting / depositing / salvaging / selling / replenishing shovels and such, but at least most of the stuff that wasn’t worth keeping I could just sell to the NPC. I basically usually skip the labyrinth for this.

But wintersday is worse.

:(

Yeah, I got the second bonus (after reset today) and also saw the new dialogues. According to the advent calendar my logging in before reset did in fact count (it was greyed out and I am now on “day two”) but as I said, I didn’t get the chest to go with that.

Thanks for forwarding it Gaile, although I’m not sure it matters after today.

I get that, but there’s a point where it is simply too much. Like I wrote above, in order to add a finisher to my wardrobe, I have to double click four different items in succession, like a russian doll. It is boggling the mind. Those presents that reveal another present (and so on) until you find a tiny thing in an initially super big wrapped box, they are fun in real life, because you typically only have one of them. Not stacks of 250. The reward in GW2 right now feels more like a college prank, like when you come home from a vacation and every single item in your room is wrapped in tinfoil.

I kind of want to spend the majority of my time in GW2 playing, not unwrapping / managing my inventory. I don’t mind setting aside some time for overhead, but this is too much – whether double-click or pressing a different assigned button. One is too much, and the other is too much, with a side of swollen wrist.

Yeah, that’s my favourite part

“You can no longer enter Toypocalypse as a group because it now correctly uses the PvP system. PS: You can enter PvP as a group, but shhhh…”

Haven’t you heard? It is because Toypocalypse now correctly uses the PvP system. Or something.

e_e

I would, but there is no “Area” / “Subarea” categories that fit, and it won’t let me send the bug report without selecting those.

Yes, I have been discussing technical workarounds with others for the last hour or so. It’s also the top thread on the GW2 subreddit right now. Sadly, the macbook pro I’m playing on (running windows) doesn’t have a number pad. I’m sure I’ll find some way to work around some of the clicks (although there is still stacks and stacks worth of trash in my inventory that has to be tossed out manually) but a videogame in 2014 should not require people to find workarounds for this sort of thing.

There is a lot of stuff in the new patch that I like.

I like: playing bell choir, the Grawnk, the new dailies, the new login thingie, the arctic explorer outfit, PvP reward track bonus drops. I am also really looking forward to the hipster scarf.

I don’t like: five million double clicks (including all new dailies’ bonus thingies), inventory full of trash, Toypocalypse achievements with PUGs, new bugs in old content, the usual inconsistencies.

So, no, I do not think this is a 100% failure, and I am having fun playing GW2, but this update is 40%/60% for me because honestly, my wrist hurts.

Every time a new activity is released, the feedback has been the same… allow us to go in with a roster / with our party and play with or against our friends and guildies.

The PvP excuse makes no sense at all – as, obviously, in PvP you always could create a roster, which now has been replaced with your party.

I agree, it’s somewhat random and annoying.

I think I got a laurel for the wintersday dailies, which, confusingly, still use the old system

Are you in the mists? For some reason I cannot open unsafe gifts in PvP / PvP lobby (while I can open all the other ones).

In turn, I can open all consumables in PvE, except for PvP reward progress. I have to go back to the PvP lobby to be able to double click that.

Today before reset, I didn’t get the daily reward chest. (I didn’t get to see any of the new fancy dialogues either – neither the “advent calendar” nor the daily achievements.)

No, I had not logged in at any point during the day before the patch update – in fact, I hadn’t logged in for a week.

I get a Giant Wintersday Gift, that I double click to reveal a Small Wintersday Gift, that I double click to reveal a book, that I double click to drop a finisher, that I double click to add it to my finisher collection. You couldn’t just stick the finisher in the first gift as-is?

(Also, sweaters/socks/hats to salvage, drops of XP that now needs to be double clicked, and the usual luck etc. Also, a bunch of items that for whatever reason I cannot sell to an NPC vendor, so I have to toss all of them out of my inventory manually – 8 weapon skins and 6 tonics, various runes, sigils and recipes as well as logging tools that don’t stack > 100… my inventory hurts, although not as much as my wrist.)

Dear ANet, has any player ever complained that we don’t have enough items to double click?

I’m not trying to be mean, but right now, I’m more or less speechless. This is five times as insane as usual (and GW2 already had quite the reputation before today’s patch).

After Halloween and the Silverwastes rewards-in-bags I don’t think I have any human tendons left in my wrist to even do the new content.

Well, I never finished my warhorn mastery, and now I know I never will.

Re: Fleshreavers:

If the demon potion works but the demon sigil does not, then either the sigil is bugged or the potion is bugged :P … but something is bugged.

Re: “Imps are not demons”:

“Imp Slayer – Don’t worry, demon blood is easy to wash out.” – Quote ArenaNet

So obviously, several issues here could do with some dev attention beyond the one reply we got.

Wolfeng.3784:

That grid view is amazing.
Except for the candy corn, since that is also a crafting material.

Which you can withdraw as needed.

(Or, I suppose, craftable currencies could just automatically show up in the relevant dialogues (crafting station and MF).)

Nightz.2491:

Tested against Fleshreavers. Demon potions worked, however demon sigils did not.

Quoted for visibility. Devs?

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

You are blowing things out of proportion here. It’s not like zone X,Y,Z take more than a split second to port to. All I see is: “Today I will level my alt in Ascalon, I can’t do the daily events because it’s in Kryta”. Why? Is it so far away that you can’t do it? Time-wise it’s similar (if not faster) than the current system

Go ahead, do your leveling of a low level alt in Orr and Dry Top. I’m sure it will be fun.

Dailies right now depend to some degree on your characters’ levels (i.e. Daily Orrian Killer won’t come up for players who can’t go to Orr) – I don’t see why they would change that.

Anyway, I am tentatively approving of the new system (and very excited to try it out).

1. sometimes
2. sometimes
3. sometimes
4. sometimes
5. sometimes
6. nobody knows, but IF it is, it’s made by the same people, and directly follows the events of the LS, so you should play through it regardless
7. at that low price, absolutely.

If you don’t want to spend the money (or are simply unsure yet) and don’t care about the rewards that much, play it for free by entering a party member’s story instances (most of us have all episodes unlocked and would be happy to give you a ride). Then you can judge for yourself. If you want the rewards and/or achievements later, you can stiil buy the episodes at anlater point in time.

Workaround:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Forum-s-search-feature-doesn-t-work-A-tip/

Tom Yzf.5872:

Use the Google search bar

Type the following in the search bar (without any brackets):

• site:[the url of the subforum you want to search in] [your search terms]

Example #1:

You need to search in the subforum “Players Helping Players” for the term “search options”. You want to type this in to the Google search bar:

• site:forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/players search options

This will bring up results that limits your search of “search options” to the specific subforum url.

ANet statement:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Forum-s-search-feature-doesn-t-work-A-tip/first#post4612877

Gaile Gray.6029:

The problem is deep within the technology behind the forum structure itself. Yes, we had a search engine in the beginning, but it was broken by our forum contractor in the course of working on other things. We no longer have a relationship with that contractor or his company, and someone else is not able to step into the system and fix the search engine because (1) our programmers are tasked with other essential work, (2) the forums run on a web framework with which most of our programmers are not familiar and (3) we’re investigating other options for forums and it would not be prudent to pour money into hiring someone to fix this as a short-term solution.

My team agrees that it would be great to share the system that is outlined in the OP, and we’re going to figure out a way to do that. It won’t be as simple as “plumbing” the current search window to go to Google — each of us still will need to input the search manually, but it’s better than the current “poke and prod” to find a particular post!

I’ll reiterate:

The problem is not so much when certain things are released (the schedule naturally suits some and does not suit others), but the problem is (as it is so often) that nobody knew, so the playerbase had to make plans based on assumptions.

Similarly, if you announce a few days before your birthday that you will celebrate a month later, half of your friends won’t be able to attend because they made other plans, and the other half of your friends will be cranky because they canceled other things that they thought clashed with your birthday party on your actual birthday.

If then you tell your friends that you always planned to celebrate a month later, you would have to expect that your friends ask you why on Tyria you wouldn’t disclose that information in time for everybody to make their own plans accordingly.

:)

Mark Katzbach.9084:

I’m not sure where this rumor that the break is to focus on PvP is coming from. The team that works on PvP is very different from the team that works on Living World updates. The break is for the holiday. The 16th is the last release date before people start taking time off to travel or spend with their families. It also happens to be time for Wintersday, which will run from that day until the first update of the new year on January 13.

There isn’t much different between this break and the break we took last year, or the year before, for the same reasons. I understand you’re all excited for episode 8, but it wouldn’t make much sense for Wintersday to happen after the new year.

This is perfectly reasonable, and I personally don’t care whether I have to wait a few weeks or not.

My only input here is, if (as we all know) the schedule is known way in advance, why not share some of that information with your playerbase?

I assume that many players are disappointed now because they, also, took time off over the holidays, and maybe planned to spend that time playing the new content.

If you’d let us known the general roadmap (without going into content too much), we all could have planned our lives around your game (as, sadly, many of us do) and that’d be that. There might be opinions about your schedule, but not the emotional outburst we’re witnessing right now. You keep us guessing —> we’re guessing wrong —> we have expectations —> expectations lead to disappointment —> disappointment leads to anger. (Which is, of course, why you don’t share information with us: because you think that this way there will be no expectations, no disappointment, and no anger. Well, turns out we can come up with our own expectations anyway, so help us make them into more realistic expectations.)

For your consideration <3 Now everybody enjoy, happy December time!

For the last two years, people have complained that new content every 2 weeks is too tight a schedule, too grindy, too fast.

Now we have a few more weeks of a break (and not even that, as Wintersday content is, well, still content) and everybody loses their minds.

I for one have things to do over holiday season/new years and now I don’t have to juggle that with my “gaming schedule” – I’m happy.

I enjoyed the skritt out of the entire episode.

Ranger.

- make sure you aren’t randomly stuck in combat mode (can you change your utility skills? If not, you are!) – in combat mode, jumps are shorter.

- if all else fails, cast swiftness on yourself (every class has at least one skill that does that) before the jump.

Dondagora.9645:

Net never said anything about a majority. There’s a minority who likes it, and I agree with ANet in that it should not balance PvP around what only the majority likes. Every time I’m in que and Skyhammer is an option, at least 1 person votes for it. That’s 10%. That’s a lot, despite not being the majority.

Well said.

If you create a new account today, all the living story that happens after today is free for you.

PLUS you can re-live content you LEGITIMATELY MISSED. For a small fee. It is entirely optional! You can hitch a free ride on somebody else’s instances (enough players would be happy to take you through there) or, if you care about the rewards and achievements, pay something like 3 dollars / 30 gold per chapter.

How is this even creating so much drama?

I enjoyed it. A nice change from my usual rotation. Knocking out the Asura from behind was the most fun I had in the entire episode.

entropy.9613:

Instead of PvE, you get to play the Mists Minigame: accept the match ready prompt every 30 seconds until you eventually get a game or fall asleep.

There’s no good reason to have to queue in the Mists. Afks gonna afk, no matter how much you change the UI. If someone knowingly queues for pvp, why is there even an option for them to not enter the game? Give people 10 seconds notice then just boot them into the pvp map.

If player is in a load screen or cinematic, redirect them. If afk is still a problem, increase the afk dishonor penalty exponentially until people get the point. Anything but this.

I strongly agree with this.

There’s actually probably MORE players queuing but afk now – simply because they have nothing to do.