Guild Wars 2

Auralae.7482:

PopeUrban.2578:

Auralae.7482:

PopeUrban.2578:

GreyWolf.8670:

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

Yes. You can. Walk in to the guild initiative. Talk to the NPC. You now have a banner for favor.

Which NPC would that be? The Guild Requisitioner? He gives a message “This content has been temporarily disabled. Try again later.”

Then try again later?

Last two times I spoke with him he worked fine.

Complaining that the NPC is down for an adjustment is not the same as claiming “all my ability to use my old unlocks is gone forever”

And, honestly, every single post that parrots the same false assertion, that people can’t use their upgrades, has the same problem.

Sure, be upset that your access is temporarily suspended That’s a legitimate complaint and I agree with you. I’d like to know why he got temporarily disabled as I’ve used him as a source for banners while that horribly untested scribe is missing key components to actually produce banners. (Which, incidentally, is a far larger issue that actually blocks a production method for several things including tactics and decorations in addition to banners.)

However, this is just like when they temp disabled karma vendors or various other things. It’s as likely he’s being rewords to be even cheaper as it is he’s headed for the scrap heap. They didn’t go to the trouble of adding the NPC just to delete him a week later.

Using a temporary outage as a justification to rage against the entire system is just plain short sighted and silly.

What makes you think that I haven’t tried multiple times over different days? I have yet to see him working. There is a Reddit thread from 11 days ago asking why he’s disabled. The wiki previously listed the options he gives as having the disabled message. Now, the wiki simply lists nothing and he is still disabled.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Requisitioner

I have yet to see proof that banners and other previously attainable consumables are still available to a guild without needing HoT for the guildmaster. If there are non-HoT guildleaders without guild halls who have been able to access the requisitioner, I hope they post so I can figure out why I can not.

You are correct that the vendor is currently down.

However I personally used him the first two mission cycles after launch for banners. 10% XP/karma banners specifically. No, I did not personally attempt to buy one of every unlock as at that point I didn’t have the favor to burn and simply assumed it all worked just as well as the thing I did buy.

Until a red name posts that he is headed for the scrap yard, there’s no reason to assume that its anything more than a temporary outage born of some exploit. There are quite a few other things they disabled temporarily due to discovered exploits.

If your argument is, literally that this functionality doesn’t exist and never existed, I’ll say again that’s a very different thing than being upset it has been offline for an unreasonably long time.

For the record I agree with you. It has been offline for an unreasonably long time. I have excess favor piling up, I’d also like to use it like I had been previously, and I’ll be just as upset as you are if the vendor in question is in fact permanently removed.

Shukriyya.7629:

PopeUrban.2578:

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578:

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

{snip}

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Ummm… No, they’re not really. Banner A cost X. Much better Banner B cost Y. Think, oh, XP banner vs Heroes banner or something. The item costs were fixed, not scaled. Those are facts. They had nothing to do with the guild size. If you’d unlocked the pre-requisites & you had the influence, you could buy them.

Whether you think that’s better or worse than the system now? That’s opinion.

If you were a small guild, and you had & you did… You can’t now. Anet took that away. You’ve got to go through a huge grind to unlock the ability to purchase those consumables now; consumables that you had access to before. Now, once you’ve done that, it might well be that the cost for the consumable is the same whether you’re small or huge; X number of Y materials. But for Banner B, which you had access to prior to HoT, you have a kittening great wall to climb over to get the access that you had already unlocked once… Hard for a small guild.

Now that I understand your point a bit better, I think nothing has really changed. Instead of the wall of “I have access to this but need X amount to make it”, we have a wall of “I need X amount to access this, and then I can make it”. That isn’t easier for a small guild, it just puts the same effort in a different, earlier place. If you see what I mean?

No, you don’t have to go through a grind to unlock them if you already had them unlocked. That’s the central point of misinformation I keep seeing.

The acquisition method is only changed for guilds that didn’t already have access to these consumables.

If you had them unlocked previously, you walk in to the guild initiative, and hand the NPC some favor, though one poster has said that NPC is temporarily disabled, that’s how I have been spending all of the excess favor we don’t use for hall upgrades because it’s actually cheaper and faster than making them via the new scribing system, and that level of cheap and easy actually can’t be obtained by new guilds who hadn’t unlocked them in the old system.

You keep repeating that and it’s not true. My guild and many other guilds like mine had +5 supplies unlocked and it’s gone now unless we get a guild hall and grind out all the upgrades to get it back. I can try talking to that temporarily disabled npc till I’m blue in the face, he won’t be giving me back my upgrade even though I had it unlocked.

So maybe instead of repeating your “upgrades aren’t lost” mantra, how about you start reading what other people are saying to you? Not every player wants banners!

Also, not every player wants to have to grind some pve maps to get the materials needed for upgrading guilds halls (silverwastes shovels, anyone?). That’s why the old influence system was superior to what we have now – you could play the content you enjoyed and were still able to upgrade your guild. Now, if you don’t like pve, you’re out of luck. And you keep acting as if the players who complain about the new system were unreasonable.

Guild halls could have been a nice addition to GW2, but instead we got a system that seems to be purely designed to be a gold and time sink.

I’ve said this multiple times:

The wvw portion of the system (and WvW adjustments since launch in general) was poorly thought out and implemented. I completely agree with you on this front. The substance of my posts (all of them) aren’t at all about wvw. They are about PvE uses of the PvE-centric system.

The requirements for the war room and arena are in fact severely out of balance with actual income adjustments for those modes. Absolutely. It would not have been at all difficult, as they are independant structures, to make them specifically dependent on their respective game modes.

I don’t see how this would create fun builds.

It would just break the design of like half of the game’s skills and great an even more spammy and less counterplay focused combat model.

You do realize quickness was nerfed to half of its previous bonus for this exact reason right? It used to go twice as fast. It quickly turned in to a game where it was a mandatory buff for doing pretty much anything.

adormtil.1605:

Wait wait I need a group for that? This is Zaitan all over again wtf?

It’s the zone meta event. You don’t “need a group” as much as you’ll have a bunch of other players involved whether you want to or not because it’s an open world event.

PlatinumMember.5274:

PopeUrban.2578:

steve.2945:

I messaged anet about getting DR during SW and DS meta events. and the words that struck me the most from what they said was. The reason I’m getting DR is because I’m gaining an unfair advantage over other players..How in the world is doing meta events gaining an unfair advantage?

But CoF xp farming is fine.

Yeah.

Does CoF give loot? If it does big problem if it doesn’t maybe that’s why. Personally off is better gives a decent amount of money,

It does not. Fun story, we ended up short a person in that path the other night and had to wait for someone without waypoints to run to the zone. So we were stuck in that farm room for about ten minutes. I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone sits in that room and kills flame legion for hours on end. It was awful.

+1

I would like this option as well.

Lakanna.2073:

I can’t run the 64-bit client on an old machine. We have 3 computers, 3 setups in the house, and all 3 had regular client crashes with the 32-bit client. I’m the only one who has NOT upgraded to 64-bit, and it does help a lot, but it won’t help me on a 7-year-old machine running a 32-bit OS.
The new maps:are you sure? I’ve crashed on them during Wyvrn Patriarch and during normal meta-event progress, and always log back in to 0% participation and a random map that may or may not have the event going on.
And yes, I submit crash reports. 6-10 on a day when I actually feel like playing. Less on days when I just don’t want to put up with the crashes. And I have been doing it for a long time. Each big releas seems to make it bad, then they fix crash issues, and it gets better. I think I only crashed 3 times today before getting annoyed that we had Teq at 20%, crashed, then logged back into a map with Teq at 100% and < 5 minutes left on the timer.
Edit: I see, you specifically said you need a party and someone still ont he map. Yeah, that’s a workaround, but you don’t always have friends to anchor you, and you shouldn’t NEED someone to act as an anchor against random client crashes, should you? In 2015?

Not to be rude, but it sounds like your machine may be below the minimum system specs for GW2. Obviously I don’t know your specs, but if this is the case, it isn’t a matter of the client being crash prone, but rather your machine causing the client to crash.

That said I agree with the basic ideal of a grace relog period for certain events, but in general the game isn’t designed around people disconnecting. At least in theory it is designed so that you don’t crash or disconnect in the first place. A 60 second “reserved” spot on the map might make sense unless it could somehow be abused.

Instinct. You ever watch a cat fall off of something in slow motion?

They want to land on all fours.

steve.2945:

I messaged anet about getting DR during SW and DS meta events. and the words that struck me the most from what they said was. The reason I’m getting DR is because I’m gaining an unfair advantage over other players..How in the world is doing meta events gaining an unfair advantage?

But CoF xp farming is fine.

Yeah.

assasin oates.3018:

Randulf.7614:

Im confused. How were the Elder Dragons consuming magic if you are saying magic did not exist before the Gods?

And we know for a fact magic existed before the gods arrived. That's why they chose the Artesian waters to enter Tyria, it was abundant in magic

It’s not about the binary existance of magic, but rather the amount. Saying the world was completely without magic is incorrect, yes, but it’s the difference between a toilet and flooding the house in this case.

The human gods (abby specifically) flooded the house, the others tries to engage in some emergency plumbing with the bloodstones, but then dad (the EDs) found out and got mad at everyone.

I just realized this analogy leads to dad then drinking all the toilet water. It could be better, but meh, you get the idea.

The previous rise of the EDs seems to coincide, again, with a rise in the general magic level of tyria as well, given what little records we have of that time.

Randulf.7614:

Im confused. How were the Elder Dragons consuming magic if you are saying magic did not exist before the Gods?

Elder dragons don’t exist to consume magic. They consume magic because they exist.

It’s a sort of chicken and egg thing that goes in the the whole nature of the mists/reality in the Guild Wars universe. Basically, the mists are the “stuff that makes up everything”

Sort of the outer space between dimensions. What we know about our particular plane, tyria, is that magic as we know it didn’t exist before the human gods brought it here (along with humans) but that the elder dragons did exist. There are records of the previous rise of the EDs from the elder races, from a time that predates tyrian humans. There are also records that a squabble between those gods (specifically abbaddon versus the other five) was about giving magic to the world, and that magic then being locked away in the bloodstones.

It is probable the entire reason the gods were nervous about giving away all that magic was that they knew about the EDs. This would also explain their swift exist form the tyrian stage as the EDs began to awaken again.

We extrapolate that what causes the elder dragons to rise is actually the presence of magic. Sort of like how a dog is content to just sleep on the couch, but will get up and start barking when someone that’s not supposed to be there enters the room. The jotun are an example of another race that, reportedly, had a great civilization and powerful magic before the last rise. Now the story we do know about the jotun is that they sort of murdered their own civilization, and we have records that are spotty at best of the exact amount of magic employed by the other elder races during that time, like the dwarves. However, given our newfound understanding of the EDs thanks to sylvari connection to mordremoth it seems probable that the EDs are the natural state of things and that magic, and possibly even free will, are unnatural.

The map actually does remember your progress for completion percentage in the new maps. If you leave the map or DC, and you have a party member still in the map, you can zone back in and you’ll still have your 200% or whatever. It will still however conveniently forget your event progress.

As for being crash prone, make sure you’re submitting your logs, and if you haven’t, try the 64 bit client. I haven’t really had any crash problems in GW2 for quite some time, but some guildmates who used to crash a lot moved to the 64 bit client and have been playing pretty much crash free.

The client, as far as I can tell, really seems to hate certain hardware setups, but isn’t really universally buggy/crashy. Submitting your chrash logs should hopefully help them develop test cases for whatever hardware setup you have.

It would really be nice to get some sort of red name comment on this issue.

You know:

“It’s a bug”

or

“You guys are doing it wrong”

You lost me at “defending an objective from being overtaken by the enemy feels like griefing”

Of course you’re causing them hardship. That’s the point of WvW. It doesn’t exist to hand out loot, despite what the poorly designed reward system may make you believe. It exists to take over the map, and prevent your enemies from taking it back

Ashen.2907:

PopeUrban.2578:

Ashen.2907:

Wouldn’t keeping existing, core game, elements in place and adding new elements, available to HoT purchasers, be appropriate ?

Expand the system for the expansion rather than contracting the system for those without it.

The problem here is that the rework of the system is so extensive it’s actually incompatible with the old.

Anet had the option of introducing new, for HoT owners, system(s) without taking anything away from the core game. They chose to not do so. Anet created the incompatibility you mention. It was a choice to remove game elements from content that players had already paid for in order to add value to the expansion pack.

In what other industry is it okay for a merchant to remove aspects of a product for which you have paid in order to drive sales of their new product (honest question here. I am at a loss trying to remember any specific examples of this outside of GW2)?

“We have decided to remove the entertainment center from your 2012 SUV, but don’t worry the new 2016 model has a great sound system!”

Alright, I’ll bite.

Explain to me a GW2 in which the old influence style system and the new materials focused system could live side by side without one obviously making the other pointless.

Literally every argument about what people “lost” is an argument founded in this idea that the status quo is somehow slanted in favor of HoT owners.

It isn’t.

In fact, guild that had a ton of upgrades pre-HoT have massively cheaper access to every single upgrade from that system that still exists

The fact is people are upset they can’t stack every single passive buff in the game any more, and that they’re upset guild buffs require HoT to use.

The first point is, quite frankly, just silly. That entire system was redesigned specifically because the old system was too powerful and was nerfed permanently for everyone

The second argument I can see merit in, but I also don’t see any reasonable way to grant access to the new buff system without also tying it to the prerequisite guild hall system. The alternative is taking the entire redesign of guilds as being dependant/centered around the guild hall and throwing it out the window.

If it were the case, in stead of threads about how unfair it is you have to have hoT to use the buffs, there would be threads about how unfair it is that only guild leaders have to buy HoT. In the end I’m honestly suprised that non_HoT accounts even have access to guild halls in the first place. I’d assumed they would be limited to accessing their existing services from the guild initiative.

Not only that, where does it end? Move forward in time to the next expansion, or even the next feature patch. Guilds are now built around guild halls. That was the whole point. It wasn’t to sell HoT. It was to fix the guild system. They tied it to a HoT purchase because it’s a minor feature that gives minor buffs, and hey, maybe they’ll agree with you that its fair to place all of the financial burden on guild leadership and give everyone who isn’t a guild leader a free pass.

Never mind the fact that the only reason people can even get in to a guild hall to complain they can’t use some stuff in it is because their guild leader bought HoT, or because he managed to get a party’s worth of other people who also own HoT to actually do an instance to claim the hall. You know, that critical guild mission that the people complaining they can’t use the hall also didn’t help with.

Now you extend the guild systems by extending the halls. How do you then make that system “fair” for non-HoT accounts? Now you have to design the same system twice again. And you’re doing a lot of extra design and implementation work for people who have already told you they’re not interested in paying you for the time spent to develop that system.

Does that seem like a good use of development funds to you? You know, when you could be spending that money extendining the game in new content patches. Content patches that, by hte way, you also need HoT to gain access to.

Core GW2 is still a fantastic value for the money. The fact that one minor portion of the guild system had to be axed for the good of the game, and that you can’t use NPCs that you technically shouldn’t have access to anyway is just nitpicking.

GW2, and HoT in general have tons of problems. There are huge balance issues with elite specs. There are core flaws in the design of WvW. There is an overallocation of resources to an esports platform that makes up an extremely small portion of player interest and revenue. There are far too many “rewards” that go straight to the cash shop in stead of being earned ingame.

However, this particular instance, the transition from influence to guild halls and their specific implementation is probably the most even handed, well designed, and fair thing to come out of HoT.

Asking for the new to coexist alongside the old is like asking for the old trait system to coexist with the new. They’re incompatible. People lost a lot of customization and trait options with the transition to specs, and they lost them because of the elite spec design. Yes. Certain parts were cut specifically for expansion features. Yes, the game will feel somewhat incomplete without the expansion for this reason. No, the buy-to-play game is not designed around people who can’t be bothered to buy new content in order to play with the new systems. Doing so would literally be more work spent in order to appease people willing to spend less money on the product.

Hate arenanet for that if you like. It’s valid. They absolutely value you less as a customer when you decide to stop being a customer. I understand how that’s a problem for people.

I have a theory:

Glint’s Legacy.

Glint, as evidenced by Tarir did a lot more than spin off a few prophecies. Glint had a very long game in mind. She had an agenda for Tyria, in the interest of the free peoples of tyria.

If we assume that those who “attune” with they crystals are somehow special (the game makes this about guild leadership, but I’m willing to say that’s just a convenince for game mechanics) and we know that the expeditions happen some time in the HoT storyline before the fall of Mordremoth (as the bosses we fight are those we prevent from replicating during DS) then it’s reasonable to assume that what maked the attunement possible is the act of being chosen by the egg.

Why is this important?

Mordremoth posits that the Elder dragons are the natural state of things. They eat magic because it is unnatural. We know this to be true, as magic didn’t exist in tyria before it was brought by the human gods. If the EDs are in fact the tidal forces that cause the mists to calesce in to what we know as tyria, then Mordy is right. The free will of the peoples of Tyria is an aberration.

We also know that Zhaitan was unable to corrupt sylvari because they were creatures of mordremoth. This seems to insinuate that the EDs are unable to “reclaim” things not of their domain.

What’s interesting is that there are a series of trials, both in GW1’s crystal desert and GW2’s Tarir designed by the forgotten, under the instruction of Glint. Those who complete these trials are deemed worthy to take on some form of power.

In Tarir’s case we know that this attunement is to the egg. The egg of a crystal dragon. Specifically the crystal dragon that believes our free will is important and desirable.

Those trials aren’t arbitrary. They’re part of Glint’s plan. That plan is a benign form of “corruption” of tyria. The crystals, like the source of Orr, were placed there to carry this “corruption” throughout the world. The two we know about are in the Gilded Hollow and Lost Precipice, but we can only assume that more exist, in new guild halls in new expansions at the very least, and quite probable lore-wise in other places.

We attune with the egg to prove our worthiness. We become “corrupted” champions of this new ED. We attune with these crystals in order to claim dominion of and “corrupt” the lands around them.

This form of corruption, designed by glint isn’t meant to enslave, but rather to empower us. It’s like an innoculation. We take on a bit of the new crystal dragon to safeguard us from the others.

The trials are to ensure that only those who have demonstrated virtue and ability to uphold the ideals that Glint believes to be necessary for ensuring that that power, the power to enslave through the very nature of this “corruption” is only held by those that would not abuse it.

That’s my theory anyway. The Guild hall crystals are outposts of this new symbiotic elder dragon and part of Glint’s plan to save us by ensuring that her offspring and the people of tyria are given a system in which they depend on one another in balance.

It is entirely possible that the Guild Halls are not the only place we are going to see these, and it’s almost certain that the two we know of now aren’t the only two in the world.

There is, however, a giant sylvari shaped hole in this theory. If its true that EDs can’t reclaim the “property” of the others, then how is it possible Glint’s plan applies to sylvari? Can sylvari, as free willed beings simply choose to be corrupted in this manner in the same was they can choose not be become subservient to Mordremoth? Given the extraordinary circumstance that gave rise to the Pale Tree’s sylvari, was this part of Glint’s design? Was Glint in contact with Ventari, or was the rise of the Sylvari people simply an anomaly that Glint couldn’t have possibly forseen?

We know that in the case of Zhaitan his minion can’t possibly posess free will because they’re dead. We know that Mordremoth can only corrupt weak willed sylvari, but otherwise constructs minions. We know that Jormag can only corrupt the willing. We have yet to see Primordus corrupt anything, but rather than Primordus seems to construct all of its minions. We know that Kralkatorric seems to corrupt forcibly, but also that it is not inveitable. Almorra Soulkeeper witnessed the corruption of her warbang but was not herself corrupted. Was this simply a matter of the will to resist it as well?

The “free will defense” seems to be consistant among the limitations of the Elder Dragons. They can only corrupt the willing, but it takes an exceptional and heroic amount of will to resist that corruption, enough so that Glint rightly assumes that the peoples of tyria as a whole are not equipped mentally to resist in large enough numbers. This cleanly solves the sylvari paradox in relation to this theory. We know that sylvari player characters are exceptionally strong willed sylvari.

I’m not sure when it started, or if it’s tied to guild level, but the crystal core at the center of our home in the Gilded Hollow is getting bigger.

I looked around and haven’t seen anyone else remarking on this.

It seems important somehow.

I am vexed.

As I recall, there’s like a (I think) one week lockout on this stuff for new (paid) accounts to help combat botting and RMT. The same lockout applies to guild banks.

How long has the account been active? I know if you play a lot you could be L55 in less time than a week.

Celtic Lady.3729:

PopeUrban.2578:

I got my bladed chest two days ago, and you know what? It felt like an accomplishment, and the people on my map really felt like allies rather than random other people running around chasing their own selfish goals. We were all chasing a shared goal, and play was much improved because of it. I was happy to see people run off a defense event to get supply. I was happy to see some people not go up to the boss event and stay on the ground to hold objectives. It felt like what I imagined the “movie version” of the pact war effort would look like and made playing there a lot more fun, even the ten or so times we failed.

Well, this is a nice little story, but I’ve only seen anything even remotely approaching this twice in three weeks.

Far more often, I’ve seen a lot of raging and the screaming of obsenities and blaming people in map chat after constant failures as people grow tired of doing the same thing over and over again only to fail…again.

That’s not really my definition of a healthy community.

That’s not a symptom of the content. That’s a symptom of the community being rude. You can’t design cooperative content without also opening the door for people that would rather be abusive than supportive to be abusing. Those people are going to be abusive and pushy no matter what the content is.

However, if I had to choose between the occasional people whining and yelling at one another, or even more maps of autoattack mindless zerging, I’d pick the first every time. The second is just plain not fun gameplay. The first you can easily filter out of your chat log. You don’t need map chat to actually “play to the meta” on these maps as long as you’re familiar with how they work.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Magnito.6187:

VaaCrow.3076:

Oh no, you will have to play the new content, woe is me.

Buck up and do a bit of pve, it wont kill you.

Grinding the events over and over again, hoping they’ll reach t4 ain’t “a bit”

I see maps repeatedly failing to get T4, especially at night. So, this is probably going to take some time…

The whole design revolves around attaching something special to T4 because it’s the best way to incentivize players to not just do events and hope for the best, but rather to coordinate the map in an attempt to “win” it.

The fact that there is a “lose” condition makes the system work. Without it, literally no map would ever reach T4 because… why bother?

It prevents the whole map from zerging one event after another by creating incentive to split, which generally lowers population per event toward a number that the scaling balances better for fun and challenging play in stead of the core game’s “hit 1 and get loot” snorefest.

It makes even soloing the events there have a sense of teamwork. The way the zones are designed you are still contibuting white a bit to the team. Pulling in a solo supply NPC in VB and flash-upgrading the defenses when you hit 10 players desparately defending a camp feels great. You know you helped, and you know that your solo mission meant something to other people rather than just recieving the empty gratitude of NPCs.

As it is now you can get those rewards, but to do so all the people on the map have to put in the effort as a team. I don’t really see a problem with that. The open world design was always built around the assumption that the players in the map were allies in pursuit of a central cooperative goal. The T4 exclusive rewards simply further cement this concept and ensure that even years down the road you’re much more likely to be able to get a t4 map going.

I got my bladed chest two days ago, and you know what? It felt like an accomplishment, and the people on my map really felt like allies rather than random other people running around chasing their own selfish goals. We were all chasing a shared goal, and play was much improved because of it. I was happy to see people run off a defense event to get supply. I was happy to see some people not go up to the boss event and stay on the ground to hold objectives. It felt like what I imagined the “movie version” of the pact war effort would look like and made playing there a lot more fun, even the ten or so times we failed.

Black Box.9312:

Ayrilana.1396:

Black Box.9312:

I don’t mind the idea of scribe being tied to the guild hall and guild upgrades. What I do mind is when they take something like that and make it a necessary requirement for other things that are completely unrelated (cough cough, crafting the Chosen).

Paper will be tradeable if it isn’t already.

Even so, the cost of it will be through the roof because of how much gating there is behind scribe leveling. Precursor crafting was poorly implemented enough as it is; having such a steep price to even START crafting the Chosen is just ridiculous.

They already confirmed that this was a bug. The paper is being made tradable, as it was never supposed to be bound.

As for the cost of scribe in hall upgrades:

yes. It requires guild hall upgrades to level scribe because scribe is a crafting profession specifically designed to build things for guild halls and guilds.

That’s the whole point of scribing.

Requiring permanent one time upgrades to extend the scribes capabilities is fine. What’s not cool is the cost of many things one you actually have them unlocked. Not the TP cost but the basic rarity or pigments and the time gate/rarity of shards. It’s sensible for banners/consumables which are intended to be more rare than before, but a little crazy for even the most basic decorations. Like, if I were to task my guild with building a chair just be gathering. Not a crazy throne but just, like a t3 chair with arms on it.

The costs for massive centerpieces and esoteric stuff is fine, but tents? Single potted plants? Chairs? It’s a bit high. The inks should really be lowered to 1 pigment from 10, and guild missions should pay out more like 5 shards per player. All the other mats and hall upgrade costs are fine.

And don’t get me started on scribe consumables. Given the rarity of pigments and shards who in their right mind would ever craft and use these?

Magnito.6187:

Hai!

Short introduction: I’ve been playing Guild wars2 for about two years
and all I’ve been busy with is pvp.

So I was completing a pvp reward track, rewarding me with the Bladed Gauntlets.
I felt like “oh wow, that’s a nice looking armor set!”
So I started looking around what I had to do to get the rest of the set.

It happens to be a complete pve grind to get the full set.
Why would you do that? Why would you force pvp players to do pve,
just because they want to make their character fashionable?

Back to verdant brink, sigh,

bubai.

The same reason you have to play pvp to geth the balth backpack, or wvw for the wvw skins, or fractals for fractal gear, etc.

Or how you have to do pvp to build an arena and upgrade it, or wvw to build a war room and upgrade it, or do raids to get raid skins.

Some skins are tied to specific content. This has been true ever since release. it’s not going to change any time soon. I’d be campaigning for more unique pvp skins rather than less unique pve skins.

Hey, just because it’s gold plated doesn’t mean it was built for aesthetics. It’s a darn fortress after all. Maybe see if you can get a burnisher to touch it up. I always see those guys working on walls that seem perfectly fine.

Tarn.1374:

Maybe not reset our hearts , but it would be nice if we could still interact and take part in the heart activities upon revisiting them. For example, if we could pick up a bucket of water to throw at a norn to wake them up during our heart, I think it would be nice if we could still do this after.

When helping other players it’s always nice if you can interact and take part as well.

I agree with this one. Seems silly to cut off your ability to interact with things like that, even if they become pointless to do after you finish the heart.

In general the building follow the aesthetic of the hall, so I’d imagine the lost precipice structures are very similar to what you find in dry top.

Would be neat to see pictures though.

Also remember that if you change your mind later you can swap halls for just the price of the expedition, you’ll keep all your earned upgrades when you switch over (though the expedition will still cost you 100g and you’ll still have to do an easy instance to claim it)

has anyone upgraded the workshop to L2 to see if somehow the crafting station and vendors need to “level up”?

This would be highly irregular behavior (which the game in no way clues you in to) but it would make some sense.

We’re still all in tents chasing l1 upgrades, but it had occured to me. I’m sure one of you has a L2 workshop to test the theory right?

Palador.2170:

Klaugh.7415:

I’d be okay with the removal of sprocket pickups. My pick has earned back the investment.

Sprocket nodes should be added, and there are plenty of spots for ‘em — techy-type JPs, Jinx Isle in Malchor’s Leap, around CoE and the other Inquest areas, maybe Rata Novus — to give EVERYONE a fair shake at gathering sprockets at a decent rate.

I’d turn all of the wrecked probes Scarlet left around into sprocket nodes. It would make sense, right?

That’s a great idea actually.

I mean they did leave the spores in kessex.

I agreed with the pricing before HoT. At the time those were content updates intended for active players, so it made sense to charge a premium for new or lapsed players, as they obviously hadn’t been around potentially funding the game through the gem store.

With HoT, though, they made the entire core came free, and including LS2 alongside it would have incentivizes f2p people to actually get the expansion. Not only that, it’s really odd in a narrative sense for people that buy the game now. They have the Zhaitan arc and then end of the mordremoth arc, but they have to pay for the middle of the story at a premium?

That’s just irritating, especially considering how heavily the LS2 characters feature in HoT’s story.

Tspatula.9086:

Jski.6180:

Sich.7103:

the problem with the troll are the troll…. not the system…. Give tools to ban the troll… Or make guild alliance, and make the game guild vs guild… Then if you have troll in your team you can just kick it out… The problem in the server mode is that you can’t choose your ally, and then you have troll….
The previous upgrade system was very good, maybe except the gold cost (and this one never disturb me)… No need to destroy everything because anet is unable to ban troll / hacker (yes because we speak about troll, but what about the hacker who where never ban ?)

That the thing EVERYONE is a troll even ppl who do not mean to be. If your a new player you have no ideal what going on and to be able to chose an upgrade by any one is a significant cost of time for every one on the map. To keep it a chose of one person for a full world is a bad ideal. The auto upgrades you do lose a bit of personally and meaning to them but you stop making it a “dumb dictatorship” type of system.

Now there is nothing wrong with making the upgrade time longer and make the yacks more time reduction making yack def and ganking a lot more of a thing. But to go back to a single person chose type of system is not only a bad ideal but a dangerous one.

I think what a lot of people are talking about is simply making the available upgrades require an actual person at the camp or tower to trigger then when they become available, if no one is there, then the progression stops until the available upgrade is triggered. So there aren’t any choices per say, but structures won’t just go to tier 3 just sitting there. I also would like to see the timers on upgrades be a bit longer than currently set.

I disagree. They absolutely should go to T3 just sitting there, but only if they keep getting supplies from yaks to do so

Remove the timer. Turn it in to a “Supplies Delivered” bar that only goes up when yaks drop off successfully.

Having stuff not upgrade when literally nobody has made so much as a halfhearted attempt to keep it from happenning is dumb.

As it is now you can’t send a havok group to cut off yak runs to an objective to prevent it from upgrading. you just slow it down a little. yaks are completely useless for this reason, and that combined with all the upgraded stuff only encourages more zerging and less tactical play and force splits.

If you are cutting off supplies to an objective, that objective shouldn’t get upgraded. period.

If you can not get yaks through you shouldn’t be able to run a train of 50 people from a supply camp to get it upgraded either. players supply runs should only be applicable to repairs and siege. Yak supply runs should be required to upgrade objectives except for camps. Camps should require killable NPCs for upgrades.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

My idea to fix it is to remove all the gold sink from it and put it back to the old way of getting influence. Except this time do not allow gold to be used to buy it. This would make it so that large guild with lots of repped players will advance fast and small guilds can still advance but at a much slower rate. There would be no way to exploit it and both small and large guilds would take a while for the upgrades, its just that large guilds would be done faster.

Influence exploited itself based strictly on the way it worked.

It creates a system that had no limits or purchasing decisions for large guilds, and was almost completely unusable for small ones.

It in no way awarded prioritizing the guild over oneself.

It completely undermined the multiguild system by requiring people to maintain specific tags for long periods, preventing them from contributing to guilds as they swa fit if they were in multiple guilds for different kinds of activity.

It only allowed you to use upgrades by slowing down or completely halting progress to further upgrades

Influence was not only a lazy system. it was a fundamentally broken system at its core that only served to completely shaft small guilds and give large guilds far too many benefits for zero effort or time spent playing together.

Swift.1930:

As per several other comments… why in the world do people who are happy with how things are bother to come onto the forums to complain about people who are wishing for updates that would not affect the game experience of those who are already happy?

Honestly, it can only benefit you if things are changed to meet the complaints. You won’t face people complaining about the same thing all the time, for one. And then you won’t need to take the effort to complain about people complaining any more.

Often it isn’t about what’s better for a single poster. it would be better for me, personally, if I could unlock every skin in the game and every dye color just by logging in today.

It would, however, be horrible for the game as a whole.

MMOs are not about the experience of single players exclusively. They are about how those experiences add value to and interact with the experiences of all of the other players, both new and old.

This is why people have forum discussions about things, and they’re often pretty productive and occasionally useful to developers.

If every player of an MMO got what they thought they wanted, that MMO would be dead in a week. Players are selfish and often uncaring or ignorant of the long term consequences of their personal desires on the overall health of the game.

Speculating:

They’re testing some new content guide features, possibly a less obtuse way to clue players in to collections and to track them better. As important as collections are for a lot of things now, being a new players that doesn’t really care about traditional achievement systems you could easily miss them. I have a guildmate that I had to point out collections to who replied “there’s actually more content to this than I thought. neat.”

He had no idea collections existed, or that the sometimes very unique items they granted even existed.

They may also be testing some enhanced tutorial features. Players to this day still fail to understand the basic leveling method of the game, ignore events, grand mobs, and then wonder why their leveling speed sucks.

If the influence system didn’t scale upgrades costs based on guild size, a system that actually generated influence just for having a larger guild, what logical basis is there for the new materials based system to do so?

In terms of raw gold it is a far cheaper system.

people like to tout the 20k gold cost of upgrading everything. Did you ever break down the gold to influence cost of the old system? The one that was supposedly more friendly to small guilds?

It was massively more expensive, and it also required not just playing guild missions, but playing types of missions you didn’t even want to play in order to unlock missions you did The difference was that nobody cared because it could also be played passively.

Passively awarding guild hall advancement would be a horrible system saddled with the same exact problems the influence system had. It becomes free for large guilds and only ever costs gold for small ones. The guild hall system costs the same amount of gold and mats for everyone, and that’s just fine.

You don’t get cheaper vendor fees or TP prices because you invest less playtime and gold in your characters. Why should a guild get discounts because its members invest less time and gold in to it?

As of now small guilds actually have the ability to upgrade and use their guild, in stead of working like crazy for upgrades and then figuring out they don’t make enough influence to actually use most of them.

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578:

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

{snip}

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Ummm… No, they’re not really. Banner A cost X. Much better Banner B cost Y. Think, oh, XP banner vs Heroes banner or something. The item costs were fixed, not scaled. Those are facts. They had nothing to do with the guild size. If you’d unlocked the pre-requisites & you had the influence, you could buy them.

Whether you think that’s better or worse than the system now? That’s opinion.

If you were a small guild, and you had & you did… You can’t now. Anet took that away. You’ve got to go through a huge grind to unlock the ability to purchase those consumables now; consumables that you had access to before. Now, once you’ve done that, it might well be that the cost for the consumable is the same whether you’re small or huge; X number of Y materials. But for Banner B, which you had access to prior to HoT, you have a kittening great wall to climb over to get the access that you had already unlocked once… Hard for a small guild.

Now that I understand your point a bit better, I think nothing has really changed. Instead of the wall of “I have access to this but need X amount to make it”, we have a wall of “I need X amount to access this, and then I can make it”. That isn’t easier for a small guild, it just puts the same effort in a different, earlier place. If you see what I mean?

No, you don’t have to go through a grind to unlock them if you already had them unlocked. That’s the central point of misinformation I keep seeing.

The acquisition method is only changed for guilds that didn’t already have access to these consumables.

If you had them unlocked previously, you walk in to the guild initiative, and hand the NPC some favor, though one poster has said that NPC is temporarily disabled, that’s how I have been spending all of the excess favor we don’t use for hall upgrades because it’s actually cheaper and faster than making them via the new scribing system, and that level of cheap and easy actually can’t be obtained by new guilds who hadn’t unlocked them in the old system.

It’s actually more slanted toward players with old unlocks having a permanent advantage compared to new players that have to either scribe or use the commendation trader.

The costs I mention are, specifically, for buffs and guild missions. banners haven’t changed in terms of how they scale with income, although they have been made more expensive across the board and tied to influence so that having a larger guild doesn’t equate to being able to generate more banners with favor. The favor cap is universal, and it doesn’t care how big your guild is. The old influence method directly translated to more banners, more often, because you had more guild members. If you had a banner unlocked before you still have it unlocked for purchase with favor at the guild initiative HQ in LA. You only need to do upgrades if you want to build it via scribing like a new guild would.

Additionally, the scribing method requires a fixed materials cost, meaning that no matter the size of your guild, if you want to scribe more banners, you need to spend a corresponding amount of resources. This scales linearly with the contribution of resources.

This means having a larger guild doesn’t automatically equate to using more banners more often. Doing so increases your cost, but also increases the required expenditure on a per member basis. The influence system didn’t require expenditure past a certain point. Influence was just generated from thin air just for having guild members tag up and play the game. once your membership hit a certain point, you were simply generating enough to roll out banners and buffs without any effort or coordination.

The new system requires effort, coordination, or both to acquire consumables and upgrades. It caps favor gain specifically to level the playing field between guild sizes for favor based purchases, and it requires hard materials to level the cost/benefit ratios for scribed consumables. if you want to constantly run banners for a large guild in multiple places and zones, you are paying more, and earning the same. In the influence system you were paying more, but you passively gained influence just for having enough people to need to do so.

In effect, all banners now work like the high tier ones that previously required merits. You can only generate a limited number for “free” per week because of the caps on favor gain. The rest, you need to pay for, either as an individual with commendations, or as a group with resources.

You have not, however, lost access to any upgrades you previously had. The only thing you need to get hall upgrades for are the ability to scribe them, which is actually new and thus requires advancement in the new unlock system.

If you had progress toward an unlock and hadn’t yet completed it, yeah, you don’t have that progress any more, and will never get it back. I suggest saving the inf to convert it to resonance later to speed up banner ques when you gain access to the new thing that you didn’t have before through scribing.

As for the wvw systems, yeah, that was mismanaged and is unfair in its material requirements compared to the actual income of playing wvw.

Those are the first two levels of the precursor journey most likely. The recent blog explained that you don’t get a precursor as a drop. You unlock a mastry track. if the current mastries are any indication there whould be an additional third tier, followed by the finished legendary, which adds the shininess.

These being armor skins, it may even be possible that there are more than three precursor ranks.

They have all worked fine for us until this week.

For some reason the quaggan rush refuses to give us credit. We’ve done this multiple times, always with another guild’s flag on the course. Just as with the other rushes we did, it asks on completion if we’d like to get credit for the mission, I click yes, and… nothing happens.

I’ve tried to get our banner on the rush but its generally swamped by other guilds trying to do the same, presumably because they all have the same problem as us.

The system works fine on the other rushes, and most of them we’ve done have neded up being three or four guilds at once finishing the course and getting rewards. for some reason the quaggan one isn’t working.

Also, rushes specifically, need their finish lines fixed. Having to form a line at the end of the course just so people can get credit for finishing slows it down, which can potentially fail the time limited course completion goal.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

The only problem I have with this is that I was able to contribute to my guild by PLAYING the game. It didn’t matter what I did, whether it was PVE or WvW events, running dungeons or doing guild missions, influence grew from PLAYING the way we wanted to PLAY.

That is out now. Now you have to grind, grind, grind. Grind mats and gold for upgrades. Grind mats and gold for scribing. Grind, grind, grind for masteries. Grind grind grind the new zones hoping for a successful meta to get a pittance of new materials needed for hall upgrades. Grind for ley line tools, grind for kegs, grind for glass mugs, grind for sand, grind for flax.

And I am in an extremely large PVx guild, I can only imagine what it is like for a small WvW focused guild who just saw their net worth plummet and their operating costs skyrocket. These guilds typically don’t touch PVE areas, but now they have to grind grind grind them just to get some rudimentary WvW upgrades from their hall.

Grinding for the most efficient means of influence in the old system is no different than grinding for the most efficient means of materials in the new one. Grinding for gold was the most efficient way to progress the old system as well

What has changed is that it’s not a passive system any more. I understand why some people don’t like this, but I feel its an improvement. It was always silly to get guild features for “free” while needing to “work” for personal upgrades, features, and shinies.

Now you have to invest materials, and that comes at the expense of personal gain, making the new system much more of a team effort rather than something that “just happens”

In the new system, a small guild that makes an effort to take on the project as a team can actually advance faster than the large guild that doesn’t do anything but wear a guild tag and solo.

It is my personal opinion this is an improvement, though I understand some people liked the old passive and effortless system.

I do agree with you in terms of WvW though. The cost of upgrading and using the new tactics system was designed without a single though as to how to improve income for active WvW guilds that are using it. Guild claiming and holding objectives should somehow offset the cost of using tactics, as the way the system is now tactics are a huge cash sink that is even worse than the old wvw money pit.

War room upgrades should revolve around wvw materials gained from playing wvw successfully, and tactics should require mats gained exclusively from playing wvw successfully.

The PvE end of the system is fine. It requires a diverse array of PvE content. The arena is also fine. It’s cheap to obtain and the upgrades are sandbox toys that are completely optional.

Aisina.4963:

Beginning to think this was intentional to stop us grinding it out and to create a buffer of Slivers from the initial Guild Missions. When I contacted support they wouldn’t acknowledge it was a bug. Frustrating.

If it is in fact not a bug, and we’re expected to discover a recipie for it, it would be nice to get red name confirmation of this so we can stop treating it like one and spreading misinformation that scribing is broken.

I mean hey, just tell me “the recipie exists, but it needs to be discovered” and I’ll be a happy camper.

I hope its an awesome globe decoration.

Which opens up to reveal a minibar.

Nidome.1365:

PopeUrban.2578:

The watchwork pick was a massive mistake. Its functionality should honestly be rolled out to all L80 picks avaliable in and out of game, or a decent amount of sprocket nodes should be added to the world to make its ability a strictly QoL advantage rather than a literal pay-to-win one. It is a gem store only item that is superior in function

If you could only obtain gems from spending real world cash then I would agree with you – However you can obtain gems by converting in-game currency which is exactly how I obtained my watchwork pick during a gem store sale.
In other words I played not paid to obtain mine – unless you are going to suggest that obtaining items via gameplay is wrong?

Gems are only obtained by spending real world cash. The fact that you can buy gems from other players with gold doesn’t change the fact that these picks only enter the game when someone spends real money to make it happen.

The fact you can trade gems for gold makes it no less of an anomaly of actual efficiency increase in an otherwise completely cosmetic/convenience cash shop. It is literally the only gem store item capable of paying for itself and then generating profit.

If the store contained more such items, fine, whatever, but the fact that it is literally the only one, and that the other harvesting tools are completely cosmetic makes it an outlier that doesn’t conform to the rest of how the interactions between the gem store and the rest of the game work.

Just bring it back in line with the other tools, and offer players the option to refund it for gems. Those that like the aesthetic can keep it. Those that got it just for the sprocket ability can get back the gems they spent and get something else. Now all tools are created equal, and the cash shop doesn’t have an item that plays a significant role as the primary producer of a core crafting component.

Raedwulf.3712:

Well, we’ve got somewhere, Pope. However, it seems to be you stating as fact that the new system is better for small guilds, whereas many other posters state as a fact that it isn’t. So maybe your facts are, like theirs, just an opinion?

And as I’ve already said, I’ve no real interest in the guild mechanics. I have a guild hall, courtesy of assistance from my bigger guild (they get to see what the other guild hall looks like first hand! ). It’ll take me forever to get anywhere with it, since there’s only me to progress it. Such is life. I never did anything much with my own guild under the old mechanics. Beef? Not me, guv!

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

The new system’s permanent unlocks only require an initial investment.

Look at it this way. Your guild starts with maybe 25 people, you do a bunch of upgrades via influence, then all but 5 people quit, and of those five only two play daily and the other 3 only on weekends.

In the old system, your “small guild” can’t use its upgrades unless they constantly dumped gold in to influence every week forever.

In the new one, your “small guild” can happily use all of the upgrades they helped earn.

Will it take a small guild longer to earn the unlocks? Yes. However this was true of the old system as well, in in terms of the old system it was actually worse as progress past a certain point was gated by merits, which you had to get from 2 target bounties, which were absolutely impossible to do with less than 8 players in most circumstances, and furthermore failing those bounties actually cost you influence.

In the new system the “easy” level missions are toned down to be achievable by 1-5 players depending on mission, and the zero cost design allows multiple attempts so you’re not “stuck” when failing a few times because you ran out if inf or merit and now can’t progress until next week. The upgrade costs are still fixed (just as they were in the influence system) but with the changed from merits to favor and the new free guild mission system, actual barriers to progress for small guilds were removed.

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

“nerf shadowstep, mesmer portal is fine”

What purpose would disabling it serve exactly?

Many people, myself included, managed to get through it bug free. It’s not as if its spitting out a high volume of economically damaging mats and giving those that complete it some sort of advantage.

Sylvari have a clear and documented system of genetic tendency to oppress others as documented minions of an elder dragon. Are we supposed to trust these “people” with our children or financial futures? isn’t it true that any one of them could still play host to the consciousness of Mordremoth?

I say we round them all up in to camps so that we’re all safe.

Just because there are a few “good ones” doesn’t change the fact that they come from a genetically dangerous stock, and we should at least consider how to deal with the sylvari problem long term.

I mean what could possibly go wrong?

Oh man, someone on the internet said something offensive in a competitive video game.

No matter the policy, it is effectively impossible to police this kind of activity to the level the OP seems to desire.

Block and report. That’s why they are there.

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578

The only permanent unlocks in the old system…

You still don’t get it, do you? What people had (not consumables that they’d made, stuff they’d earned & unlocked that allowed them to do other things. such as making those consumables.) has been taken away. They thought it was permanent. Now they have to go through a far bigger grind to unlock AGAIN what they had access to before. And what you claim is “permanent” now could just as easily be taken away in the future, if Anet decide another complete re-vamp of the guild system is necessary (or just funny).

And if you understand nothing else, understand this. I don’t really care about the guild stuff. My own guild consists of me (my Raid Alliance from another game tried GW2, didn’t take to it, and I can’t be bothered to recruit). My GW2 guild has around 20-25 active players. I have no say in what happens with the in-game guild mechanics, mostly because I don’t want any authority (been there, done that). I do care about bad arguments & people not listening.

You can keep can repeating yourself until you froth at the mouth and fall over backwards. And then, a la Monty Python, you can become a candidate for Tory MP. I’m sure you’ll do swimmingly. Those that bother to read the thread know your opinion by know; those that don’t you won’t reach by repeating the same thing over & over. If you see what I mean.

Other players’ opinions differ from yours, and they’re not happy. You won’t make them happier by repeatedly insisting that they’re wrong.

You totally have a right to your opinion. However, stating as fact something that is absolutely untrue as the central basis to this type of argument is something I’m not going to shut up about because that misinformation seems to spread like wildfire.

Some people have very valid arguments or preferences. Some people don’t like permanent unlocks or working for their upgrades in the new system. Some people don’t like that they have to do guild missions to get stuff now. Those are opinions. People don’t like that guild and guild halls require direct effort now. That’s fine. I understand that certain people preferred the passive and effortless system we had previously.

The WvW players have the best legs to stand on. Their ability to actually acquire and use the entire tactics system is extremely slanted toward not doing wvw related activites because wvw rewards weren’t revamped along with the tactics and scribing systems.

Stating that you lost access to old upgrades is not an opinion. It’s is a straight up false statement. If its your only beef with the new system, than you’re upset for literally no reason.

GreyWolf.8670:

There needs to be a scribe trainer in the GIHQ if that’s going to be the intended location for people that can’t capture a guild hall. There is no way to learn the trade and craft without one.

That would be a start.

There’s no reason to learn the trade and craft without a guild hall. If you had upgrades from the old system, you buy them with favor, or any guild member can buy the consumable versions with guild commendations, regardless of unlock status, and do so far more frequently given -every guild_ has the ability to run at least three missions a week for commendations without a single upgrade. The only guild-centric things scribe makes that are exclusive to scribe are decorations, which are useless without a guild hall, and whos acquisition is heavily tied to guild hall upgrades. The other stuff is the backpack, which isn’t the point of leveling any profession, or tradable consumables so expensive they’re not worth crafting in the first place for the buffs they give.

If you’re a new guild without previous unlocks, then you already have HoT and thus the ability to acquire a guild hall.

The funny thing is, the non-scribing options are actually far easier, cheaper, and faster ways to acquire these consumables than crafting them with a scribe. I know this because I am a scribe.

Auralae.7482:

PopeUrban.2578:

GreyWolf.8670:

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

Yes. You can. Walk in to the guild initiative. Talk to the NPC. You now have a banner for favor.

Which NPC would that be? The Guild Requisitioner? He gives a message “This content has been temporarily disabled. Try again later.”

Then try again later?

Last two times I spoke with him he worked fine.

Complaining that the NPC is down for an adjustment is not the same as claiming “all my ability to use my old unlocks is gone forever”

And, honestly, every single post that parrots the same false assertion, that people can’t use their upgrades, has the same problem.

Sure, be upset that your access is temporarily suspended That’s a legitimate complaint and I agree with you. I’d like to know why he got temporarily disabled as I’ve used him as a source for banners while that horribly untested scribe is missing key components to actually produce banners. (Which, incidentally, is a far larger issue that actually blocks a production method for several things including tactics and decorations in addition to banners.)

However, this is just like when they temp disabled karma vendors or various other things. It’s as likely he’s being rewords to be even cheaper as it is he’s headed for the scrap heap. They didn’t go to the trouble of adding the NPC just to delete him a week later.

Using a temporary outage as a justification to rage against the entire system is just plain short sighted and silly.

Because death running is a penalty for dying and leaving waypoints uncontested right next to major events would make death effectively meaningless, and all content would result in resurrection zerging.

Because the intent of events is to work a limited area, especially in the new meta, and not bounce from one side of the map to the other doing events rapidly.

Because contested WPs add incentive to do certain events for reasons beyond their event rewards.

I can think of some other reasons, but these are the largest ones.

Let me preface this by saying I actually really enjoy HoT, and I don’t regret my purchase. I’m also not here to slight Anet, or the ball of awesome that is Gayle. This is consructive criticism in regards to the launch of HoT.

However

The number of things that are flat out untested, not iterated on, or just plain unfinished is just plain staggering.

• Final story boss fight saddled with numerous bugs.
• Selling point scribing and guild hall decoration systems missing key recipies, vendor ingredients, and a button to actually enter decoration mode with nothing in the guild inventory.
• Elite spec balance is laughably bad for PvP, yet you’re pushing pro tournaments.
• WvW revamp design requires copious amounts of non-wvw play, and still does not address the basic flaws of building a primarily team oriented mode with a primarily personal reward mechanism.
• Map completion for characters the expansion was designed for doesn’t reward properly.
• Halloween event bug prevented progressing in the new mastry system.
• Easy farms subvert your long term advancement systems.
• More rewards added to the gem store since release than can be acquired in the entirety of the expansion’s playable content.
• Several selling points simply haven’t materialized.
• No communication with the community since launch in regards to critical, progression blocking bugs.

Many of these things were discovered by players immediately or within a day of release and still haven’t been so much as commented on by arenanet staff.

I understand that you guys have a long history, going back to GW1, of “spoiler free” releases, but honestly you need a live test environment, and you need to be on the ball with communication in regard to critical bugs and player issues.

Gayle spends the majority of her time placating account issues, and she does an amazing job at it, but would it be so strenuous to hire one additional community rep just to say “hey, we know scribe is broken, and the fix will be out x” or “Oh, that sounds like a nasty bug, I’ve notified the team about it” or “we’re looking at the costs of X”

The HoT beta weekends may have helped you field test a few things, but it’s pretty obvious that large parts of your systems and content simply didn’t recieve the QA needed to make them release ready. You have players willing to do that QA for free in the interest of a better game, and the deployment of test clients can’t possibly be more of a logistical pain than attempting to find enough internal QA to give all this stuff a fair shake.

I love GW2, and it makes me sad when I see things in such rough shape enter a game that is known even among people who hate it for its high degree of polish and design consistancy. Please let us help you, and please don’t be afraid to push back releases in the future to ensure better releases.

Thanks! You guys are awesome.