Guild Wars 2

permanent SAB

ezd.6359:

(My thoughts when i realised i need 21 days to craft mawdrey)

Suggestion: Instead of spending time on a 2nd account, leveling characters, training crafters, gathering materials to craft the time-gated materials simultaneously on both accounts, why don’t you spend that time on doing different activities (e.g. dungeons you don’t run otherwise, visit maps/world events you haven’t visited and so on), exchanging the resulting loot into coin to buy the extra timegated materials on the trading post?

If you have enough time to duplicate all that is needed to craft mawdrey in the minimum 21 days without buying extras, the time should be more than enough to get the in-game currency to just buy the extras. Same goes for ascended time-gated materials really, there’s nothing stopping you from profiting of other people’s time to craft extras.

The heart outside of Molensk was removed with the latest feature patch. Unfortunately the map on the wiki was not updated, but simply ignore that one heart and compare the rest (if you count them, the wiki map still shows 16 hearts).

winterchillz.2564:

I run longbow on my warrior ever since I got the fractals skin. Come look at dem scrubz raging lulz.

You won’t fool me. What you really want is getting a good fire going to bake your cake above .

TKiller.6829:

Rasimir.6239:

I actually dug out my greatsword for the run, as being the only one in melee just wouldn’t work

Hmm, I think that would work especially well on a mesmer. But oh well, having fun and not hassling others is what matters.

I mostly play melee mesmer in dungeons these days, but with this group it would’ve been at least as problematic as putting a soldier’s gear staff/gs mesmer in a full berserker dungeon group. The playstyle just wouldn’t suit them at all, and wouldn’t have contributed to them having fun and enjoying the dungeon.

I really like these people, and I want them to have fun, enjoy themselves and feel like they’ve contributed their part to the adventure (which they totally have). I know they were intimidated by the dungeon before,being older players used to taking things slowly and not taking a lot of risks. They are more comfortable playing things safely from range than going into melee, where the greater rewards (aka faster kill times) are offset by greater risks (aka going down, either singly or the whole group).

Eventually, once they get more comfortable with the dungeon paths, they might close in on the mobs and dare to go into melee, just like I did (I played pretty much my whole first year in this game in a similar fashion and have only started to work on learning the meta way of running dungeons in the last 6 months or so), but they need their time to get there. For now, gs is the mesmer weapon that allows me to blend in with their playstyle and be my most effective at contributing to the way the group works.

Had a great weekend in game with (maybe too) many dungeon and fractal runs that I very much enjoyed. Ended the weekend last night with a very different kind of dungeon run: I took some of my casual guildies into Arah explorable path 3.

We had two longbow rangers (one even with bear pet ) that had never been in any explorable Arah path before, a staff elementalist who had only been through p4 once a while back, a guardian (fortunately with a good amount of Arah explo runs, although only in ranged/no-skipping parties), and myself on my full berserker mesmer. I actually dug out my greatsword for the run, as being the only one in melee just wouldn’t work, and of course I ended up to be the one to explain things (despite the fact that I don’t know p3 all that well myself).

It took us a bit over two hours to range down bosses (Lupicus included), clear out trash along the way (no skipping involved), and finally finish the ritual, but it was awesome fun. All three people that had (almost) never been in Arah before were positively surprised by the dungeon, no longer intimidated simply by the name “Arah”, and have shown interest in coming back and learning the dungeon. I’m actually looking forward to going in there in a slow, relaxed group of oldtimers (our party average age was somewhere in the mid-40s ) every now and then for the different kind of Arah experience.

I figured she’d kept it stickied so there would be one source of explanation of why all those posts were closed would stay up. If that one was unstickied, too, in a week’s time it would be hard for people who haven’t visited this forum inbetween to figure out what happened to those threads.

Esplen.3940:

@Rasimir, you can sell Ascended to NPC’s!

Armor and weapons, too? I had only noticed the sales price on rings before, but I have to admit I haven’t looked at the other stuff closely.

RiverSong.5067:

Just one thing i thought of: This isn’t about the crafting of an ascended equipment. It’s about the value of crafting said equipment to begin with. Doing so should be a possible way to spend endgame and this thread is about the rewards. Not about the damask prices.

But it is a good demonstration of how subjective said “value” acutally is. What kind of value are you talking about? The (coin) value of the material that went into crafting? The value of coin you get for selling it once done (0 in the case of ascended since you can’t sell it)? The value of net power gain you get from equipping the item compared to the alternatives? The value of the comfortable knowledge that you have tickled every last bit of strength out of your equipment and there’s nothing better around? The value of feeling good over a difficult job (aquiring all the materials needed for crafting) completed? The value of time spent to get all resources needed for the equipment?

Personally, I’ve got full ascended armor, (infused) trinkets and mainhand weapons on my mesmer, because to me it’s worth it. I use her in high-level fractals, thus need the infusion slots for agony resistance. I’ve only crafted the euqipment once I had all the materials in place through normal play, so it didn’t “cost” me anything out of the ordinary to get it. I’ll probably try to craft a few other pieces for the skins, which is another “value” that appeals to me. If the equipment doesn’t give you what you’re looking for, why bother getting it?

hands Winter a cake to soothe his nerves

Go play the game. The forums have gone down the drain recently, to the point where even reading them during work hours makes me want to hit things with all the stupidity displayed in most every subforum. I whish I had my game at work to do a bit of chatting and keeping entertained on the side …

Danikat.8537:

Tachenon.5270:

I just play. If I get the dailies done, cool. If not, cool. Sometimes, if I’m about to log off and I notice I’m really close to getting the dailies done, I might take a few more minutes and finish ‘em off. Or maybe not. All that matters at the end of the play session is, was it fun? If it was, I’ll come back to play again.

This is what I do too.

Some days I get it without even trying, some days I realise I’m close and I’ll go out of my way to get the last bit done, some days I play for hours and I’m still not close because I happen to have been doing different things that day. But it doesn’t matter, if I don’t get it that day I’ll get it another day.

This is exactly the way I’m handling my dailies, too. So what if I miss out on dailies occasionally (and its a rare day when I don’t get to finish my dailies naturally through 1-2 hours of normal play), I’ve got way more laurels than I would ever need anyway.

Ashen.2907:

Now do those numbers mean all that much ? I think they are worth considering, but not to the degree that the face value of the numbers would seem to indicate.

Is there any indication how many of the people who voted in the poll have actually created a new character and leveled it a considerable way into the game before voting? How many are voting based on personal experience, and how many are voting on (mis-)information they have picked up on the internet? How many of those voting negatively now will still do so in a week, when they have gotten used to the new system? For many people, change in itself is bad first of all because it takes them out of their comfort zone, and takes some getting used to before it becomes as enjoyable as what was there before.

Back on topic …

Why do you simply refuse to give the playerbase at large what it wants???

It’s simple stuff…more maps, more weapon choices/skills.. new races.. new classes….Extended campaigns?? There is a reason why this formula is tried and true in MMO’s..it works….

Personally, I enjoy this game exactly because it does NOT fall back to the tired old pattern of releasing new areas, items and so on and keeping the old ones as static and boring as they have ever been. To me, the fact that the world is changing rather than simply being inflated by new, static maps, is one of the reasons I enjoy this game. I much perfer to figure out different ways to use the weapons, skills, classes and even races I already have than add new ones and only superficially touching each of them before I run off to play with a new shiny.

I get that it’s not the way everyone likes their games. Just like I no longer enjoy playing games that make me chase new stuff all the time and turn what I formerly enjoyed (be it areas, equipment or whatever) useless with each new update.

Djinn.9245:

if you make it incredibly fast to get to 80 then what is the point at aiming an achievement completion reward at a low level character?

I seem to recall a forum conversation a while ago (I think around the time the pvp reward tracks were introduced) where somebody from ArenaNet stated that they were trying to include level and skill point reward scrolls/tomes/whatever into veteran rewards (pvp track rewards, birthday gifts etc.) explicitly aimed at veteran players to make it quicker/easier for them to level multiple alternate characters to 80. If you have done the “work” of leveling for the first time, you will get shortcuts to do it again on other characters.

From this angle, including mentoring rewards into endgame (be it collections or personal story completion) does make sense. It’s aimed at those players that would like to experience the game with different classes/races/whatever to make it progressively easier to get new characters to the point older characters (of the same account) already are.

Like most (if not all) rewards, this doesn’t appeal to everyone, but apparently at least to a large enough group of the playerbase that ANet finds it worthwhile to include it.

Check the Wiki .

I do map completion every now and then to relax and just be by myself for a bit. Currently I’m working on my 6th world completion that way (81% done), and have a few more characters in the 50-60% range waiting in line.

Hope to see you again, Lilith! Take care!

winterchillz.2564:

this is a serious matter of fashion first and utility skills next. Here’s Aurora, the Tequatl slayer.

My in-house fashion consultant (aka my youngest daughter, the little princess) saw your guardian in-game yesterday and was very impressed. She even asked me if she could dress her norn mesmer that way, and was very disappointed when I explained to her that mesmers unfortunately can’t wear heavy armor. So on our side Aurora’s new look is very much approved (although I have to admit that the older one of my girls prefered Aurora with her fuzzy panda hat when she saw her a while back ).

I’ve revisited my norn thief again, since she’s the next character on the list for leveling (currently lvl 30 I think) and will most likely be the one I use to check out the feature patch changes. I still haven’t decided on her look, but I’ve got a few ideas that I kind of like. Any opinions?

I had originally got the viper set for her, but am not quite happy with it, as I can’t find a choice of gloves and shoulders that fit that I like (and that don’t have clipping issues with her hair … backpieces are off for now because of hair, too). Also colours are still up for debate, alternate suggesions are welcome. Just not black please, that’s just not my colour at all .

Taku.6352:

They are unhappy because they have to get out of their casual comfort zone

Taku.6352:

of spamming auto attack in WvW/PvE zergs to actually putting in effort to get some shinies.

I fully agree with the first part of the quote, but not with the second. A lot of people I know that are feeling unhappy about needing pristine relics for the ascended backpiece are simply people that are scared of fractals because they don’t usually play that kind of content and are not the type of person who just jumps in and tries new things. The feeling that four other people are depending on them getting something right when they don’t even have a clear picture of what it actually is they have to do in a group dungeon/fractal is extremely uncomfortable for those people.

Just last week I took a guildie into fractals who hadn’t been in there since shortly after the original fractal launch. She’s just not much of a group content person (for several reasons) and almost had to be dragged in there, despite the fact that she really wanted the backpiece. Afterwards, she said (in a rather surprised tone of voice ): well, that was actually fun, and not nearly as hard as I expected it to be (we did a level 19 since she had enough ar from her old fractal outings).

Yeah, I admit it, I’m just an old lady and a filthy casual , and thus have an unhealthy tendency to play with people who don’t just “jump in and try”.

Septemptus.7164:

Well if this feature pack was mostly for the new players

Do you honestly think so? The feature pack includes a lot of things asked for on the forums countless times, amongst them global guilds (which to me, being a member of two cross-server guilds, is a huge thing), golem mastery and account-bound commander for WvW, crafting updates, as well as all of the week 3 announcements. Plus the general balance-changes will likely change up pvp at least for a bit. That’s quite a lot of changes for veteran players, that many have been waiting for for a long time.

They were referring to the blog posts about wardrobe updates (including the upgraded features for mini pets), collections and reworked trading post. While all of these features are controvesial, they cover a wide range of features often requested on these forums.

I am personally looking forward to the wardrobe/mini/collections stuff because it all fits well with what I enjoy about this game.

Define “rewarding”, please. What do you consider rewarding, and how would you expect a reward structure to be so that the “reward” of the challenging content is on the same value level as “reward” for other GW2 content?

The major complaint I see these days about the challenging content this game does have (no matter if it’s complex world bosses like thw or harder dungeons like high-level fractals) is that “it isn’t rewarding because no guaranteed skins and you get gold easier in other places”. This leads me to the conclusion that (many) people asking for challenging and rewarding content actually expect said content to have better rewards for other parts of the game, which indirectly forces people into that very content again.

It may not be a WoW-style gear treadmill, but it leads to the same situation: People are forced into a certain kind of content to get the “best” rewards and the bragging-rights attached, if you make rewards for that kind of content outstanding. And if you don’t make it outstanding but keep it in line with the rest of the game, a large part of the people calling for challenging content end up complaining that the content isn’t worth it because they get their shinies easier through other content.

The indicator is in the tooltip of each item. Hover over it in the vendor display, and in the bottom half it will display the name of the skin and whether it’s locked or unlocked.

Lazuli.2098:

If there are so many people excited about mini pets why don’t they use them in game. I can go days without seeing a single one (not that I’m complaining).

Because currently each and every time you log in, change maps, or waypoint after defeat, you have to open your inventory, select the minipet in question and activate it again. Plus it takes up inventory space, and if that mini-Moto my ranger wants to summon for a walk through Mount Maelstrom is currently in my warrior’s inventory someplace deep in Dry Top, the ranger is out of luck (unless I can be bothered to move both to a bank, exchange the mini, then move both back to where they were going).

The update is going to do away with all those nuisances. A mini once summoned (equiped) will stay so until I change its status, I will be able to equip and switch any unlocked mini on any character anyplace in the world, and they no longer clutter up my characters’ inventories. Even though I already have minis out a lot of times these days, I’m sure it’ll be even more often after the update.

What makes or breaks this game for people is figuring out what in game it is you enjoy. It actually offers a lot more choice on what (kind of content) you want to play than most other MMOs do, right from the beginning (ok, level 2 really ).

You are free to go all over the place, explore in any direction you like, and see how far you get before you find yourself up against opponents too strong. There are points to discover on each map, waypoints that let you move more easily between locations (for a modest fee), points of interest, skill points (that allow you to unlock utility skills) and so on. Discovering any of these gives you experience, so don’t hesitate to simply start running and see what you find.

Dynamic events are kind of the equivalent to quests in more traditional MMOs, only they aren’t available all the time, but rather happen depending on circumstances (sometimes just timer-based, sometimes based on the outcome of other events, sometimes plain random). There are interesting stories in some of the event chains, so don’t just run off if one event is over but stick around and see if it will lead to something else.

You will find jumping puzzles and explorer achievements tucked away in pretty much every map. Check the achievement log in your hero’s panel, and you will find a multitude of things to try in achievements to go after.

WvW and PvP are separate game modes that you can try at pretty much every level. While a low-level player will be less strong in WvW than a lvl 80 (since stats and equipment are scaled to 80, but there will be a difference in traits and utilitiies unlocked, as well as gear rarity level), PvP gives pretty much the same options to players of any level, which also makes it nice to test classes that you have not leveled fully.

A lot of the game resolves about collecting “fluff”, too. There is a skin wardrobe that you can find in your account bank, that allows you to collect a multitude of weapon and armor skins and equip those on every one of your characters. Many people have a lot of fun collecting new skins, in open world, through crafting, dungeon vendors and so on. Even more collecting seems to be incorporated in next weeks update, so if you like that kind of thing this game will be able to keep you busy for a while.

Just jump in with an open mind, look around you, and check out things. If you can let go of expecting the game to tell you what to do, you will surely find something to interest you and have a great time.

Like this ?

Zardul.3952:

we do not needs these things, what im arguing for is that the resoures spent on these things should be spent on actual USEFULL things.

Speak for yourself. I’d rather have new minipets and toys to play around with than yet another generic map I run through to 100% completion, then put a checkmark on it and be done with it. I’d rather have new skins and outfits to collect and play around with, than yet another weapon that in the end falls short in damage and utility compared to the one(s) most useful for my playstyle. I’d rather have new food and (temporary) story episodes than yet another class that’s making balancing all classes even more complicated.

You don’t need the toys, I don’t need more “generic mmo features” to consume and be bored again afterwards. I prefer changes to existing maps and the world around me, rather than just mindlessly expanding and leaving the existing world stale and never-changing. That’s why I am genuinely happy playing this game: because the whole world is relevant and fun, instead of getting something new slapped on every year or so while the rest of the game gets stale and irrelevant.

I know how you feel, I’ve got a complete set of Melandru runes on my warrior’s wvw armor that I was considering transforming to another …

There is an item in the item shop called the upgrade extractor that you can use to get the runes off non-salvagable equipment, but if you compare the price at the current gold-to-gem exchange rate, it’s actually a lot cheaper to just buy new runes.

Two ways to get at least some use out of the equipment would be to try to sell them to a vendor (although vendor price is a joke compared to what it costs to get them again), or put them into the mystic forge and hope to get one salvagable and/or tradeable item. I’m not sure if you can mystic forge WvW armor, but karma armor should work.

As a rule of thumb, gear bought from vendors through gold, karma or badges of honor (in WvW) aren’t salvagable. Transmuting skins onto it doesn’t have any impact.

The idea behind those restrictions is to keep people from transforming their (cheap) currency into valuable resources, either by converting karma/BoH into plain gold, or to aquire certain crafting components on the cheap (in the case of low-level vendor equipment).

rapthorne.7345:

The developers obligations should, in my personal opinion be towards long-term players and gem market purchasers, rather than people purchasing the game for the first time

But the people purchasing the game for the first time are a lot cheaper to satisfy than the long-term players, since they have a lot of already existing content to keep them happy and content for a while. From a business perspective, getting new players interested and keeping them in the game has a much better return of investment than trying to put out new content to relieve the boredom of veteran players.

Personally, despite playing for almost two years with currently 10 characters (7 classes) at level 80, I am still happy with this game, as it offers the lot of activities I enjoy. The things I don’t enjoy I simply don’t play. Sure there are things I’d love to have (longingly looks at the empty wardrobe slot for the yellow SAB backpack), but there’s enough here to keep me happy, even if I can’t have it all.

Looking around at my in-game friends and aquaintances, there are a lot of people that very much enjoy playing this game. There are people that have exhausted the parts of the game and taken a (temporary or permanent) vacation from it, which to me is just the natural course of things. There are new people coming in all the time, too, so it evens out (although a good friend leaving and a stranger joining may not have the same impact on my feelings, but that’s a personal problem, not a game problem).

Why am I posting here if I’m happy in game? Because I like to read the forums and post whenever I’m not at home and thus unable to acess the game directly . On days when I’m home all day, my forum participation is often reduced to none, because I don’t want to take off time from playing.

Asura of course! You can never have too many Asura .

Wait, this was about class … personally I enjoy the gameplay of elementalist the most out of the three you’ve listed. It can be squishy in pve, but has a ton of potential and a very flexible gameplay.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

After that… let me say troublesome run you deserved that.

I still hope it’s not me, but there’s a disturbing number of fractal runs I’ve had with forumers that were “special”. Ask Winter about the first time I went to fractals with him and his guildies … two warriors, three mesmers, and at least three of us (my little asura mesmer included) below 25 ar in a 20+ fractal. By the time we got past mossman in swamp we already had seen everything go wrong that could go wrong . And I did a 49 with some other forumers a couple of weeks ago that didn’t exactly go smooth either … I guess I will have to do my best to go back to fractals often and break that streak of bad luck runs (although I wouldn’t mind them so much if they’d reward me with a few more nice fractal skins ).

A couple of days ago I was browsing through the wardrobe, trying to find a focus skin that would suit my sylvari guardian, but the only one that I really liked for her outfit was the fractal focus. I resigned myself to using something sub-optimal, since I never expected to win any fractal skin, much less the focus.

And then last night I did a fractal 40, somebody got a skin (horn) and I almost forgot to open my chest (I’ve had a streak on people getting four infused rings and me getting nothing lately), and when I finally remembered it, there was a brand new shining fractal focus skin inside, perfect for my guardian. Good thing I wasn’t on TS that moment, I wasn’t exactly quiet when I realised what it was .

Favorite: CoE . It’s got golems!

Least favorite: HotW . Too cold

Power is a purely offensive stat, increasing the damage your skills do.

Vitality is primarily responsible for the amount of life you have.

Toughness is the stat that increases the armor protection, reducing the damage you take from direct attacks (not conditions).

Whether to focus on offensive stats (power, precision, ferocity) or defensive ones (vitality, toughness, or even healing power if you use a lot of healing skills) depends on your prefered style of play.

Ultimately elementalists tend to be a bit on the squishy side in this game, and even full defensive stats will only help you so far if you don’t know when/how to dodge, crowd control enemies and so on.

Personally, I wouldn’t concentrate on either of the attributes but try to find the sweet spot inbetween that gives you enough defense to get around while having as much offensive power as possible, to get rid of enemies quicker. Once you are getting better at using your defensive abilities (dodge, positioning, …), you will be able to replace defensive stats on your gear with offensive ones step by step.

You can always repair your gear.

“Breaking” goes in two steps: Every time you are killed, one of your armor pieces (including back items) starts to break, getting an orange symbol to show it.

Once all worn armor (and back item) pieces started breaking, the next time you are killed one of them breaks down totally, getting a red icon to show this. Broken pieces (the ones with a red icon) will no longer contribute their stats, runes etc. to your character, until you get them repaired. Once repaired, they are back to normal, as if nothing ever happened to them.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Rasimir.6239:

If it makes you feel better, I have five of those insects and not a single recipe beyond what I needed for the back piece. I think I have about 50 geodes … just thinking about going to Dry Top makes me run away screeming at the moment, I’ve seen too much of those events lately .

votes for the Dry Top dungeon that gives geodes instead of dungeon tokens

You know, I wouldn’t mind those insects. I’m afraid I probably won’t even get another one, yet alone two. lol

They should add a Geodestorm which can spawn instead of the Sandstorm, problem fixed.

Geodestorm sounds like an awesome idea lol. Well, to be honest, I still have a few more options to gather geodes. Most of my 80s haven’t gone beyond episode 1 or 2 of season 2, so there are geodes and lockpicks waiting that way, and I haven’t done any achievements beyond episode 1 yet.

Unfortunately, I tend to quickly get bored if I keep doing solo content in the same kind of area for an extended period of time, and I’ve just seen too much of Dry Top at the start of season 2. I’m hoping to find new enthusiasm for Dry Top one of these days, I do want those weapons, too … maybe I’ll get them by christmas .

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Rasimir.6239:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Got bored during Aetherpath yesterday, decided to take a screen of my second warrior I rarely use. lol

Pretty (the warrior as well as the background ). Wouldn’t one of the Dry Top weapons go even better with that colour scheme?

This means more geode farming…

I thought of it, but my Ele needs Staff and Scepter first (and I only have one Insect and around 300 geodes), on top of that I really can’t get myself to farm that crap. So yeah, it’s on the list but may take a while.

And, of course, thanks. :P

If it makes you feel better, I have five of those insects and not a single recipe beyond what I needed for the back piece. I think I have about 50 geodes … just thinking about going to Dry Top makes me run away screeming at the moment, I’ve seen too much of those events lately .

votes for the Dry Top dungeon that gives geodes instead of dungeon tokens

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Got bored during Aetherpath yesterday, decided to take a screen of my second warrior I rarely use. lol

Pretty (the warrior as well as the background ). Wouldn’t one of the Dry Top weapons go even better with that colour scheme?

Thanks to human nature, there is no balance that can possibly achieved that will make all content be equally played. There will always be content perceived as being “more profitable”, and thus being farmed, while other content will be perceived as being “less profitable” and thus be orphaned quickly. This doesn’t even necessary have any relation the the intrinsic difficulty/profitability of the content, the simple fact that you know your old farming content inside-out and can do it half asleep makes it look like it gives more profit for less work than new stuff you have yet to figure out, even if it objectively is the other way around.

Loot/equipment tied to specific content rather than aquired through generic currency (gold, karma …) is a concept I’ve read quite often on these forums. There is a sizeable group of people out there asking for it, I guess because they hope that it will break up the monotony of farming the perceived best-return activities over and over again. Sure, it’s a psychological thing, nobody is forcefully keeping them from doing different activities but themselves, because they percieve other things to be not as rewarding as whatever farm they have chosen, but even though it is a real problem (for those people). I guess with the Dry Top specific content and currency, Arena Net is adressing the people asking for more content-specific rewards.

Personally I like having a mix of content-specific but achievable rewards (like the backpack ingredients you get from doing the last couple of episodes of the living story) and generic rewards (like the rest of the backpack ingredients that you can get from a variety of different activities, including the trading post if that’s what you prefer). On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of content-specific currencies, since it severely limits my flexibility in spending whatever currency I have earned, and what content I can play when looking for currencies for specific items.

I’m very much on the fence about Dry Top and the geodes in particular. Adding content-specific currencies to non-dungeon areas does increase the variety of activities you can do to gain special rewards, but the sheer number of different things you can get there (weapon recipies (skins), backpack ingredients, cooking recipies, …) is a bit much for such a relatively small area, and has quickly put me off of trying to gain that currency.

I also don’t care for the currency clutter involved in new, content-specific currencies, especially if they don’t even go into the account wallet. I currently have 10 lvl 80 characters, most of which have been to Dry Top at one time or the other, and they probably all have a number of geodes, sand piles, and whatever else in their bags. Finding a bank to deposit everything and keep count that way every time I want to switch characters gets old very fast. It’s just a quality of life thing, but it’s one that keeps bugging me more and more, especially since the currency and crafting material collection is very streamlined and un-intrusive in most other parts of the game.

Stiofan.6720:

I shouldn’t be have to be reminded of people I don’t like everytime I look at the followers list, I know I could simply not look at it, But then what’s the point of it in the first place.

That’s actually why that person ended up on my block list in my case …

Zok.4956:

Of course a popup, when someone gets a “friend-request”, would also be nice…

I’m glad we don’t have one, nor the need to accept/decline friends requests. I see the current friends/follwer implementation more like a favourites list. I can add people to my list that I actively want to see if they’re around or not, without cluttering up their friends list. Of course, it works the other way around, too. There are several people that are somehow interested in my online status but that (for whatever reason) I’d rather not have cluttering my (already rather full) friend list.

And sometimes people turn up on my followers list that I didn’t even think would be interested in my whereabouts. This gives me the opportunity to add them to my list and find new friends that way (or not if they are more of an “aquaintance” than a potential friend).

First of all, let me say that a group laughing at a lvl 41 learning the game (and the combat system has to be learned, if you’re good at kiting and dodging enemy attacks on your first character at lvl 41 you are already a good bit above a lot of other people with similar experience) doesn’t sound very welcoming to me. You won’t improve just by blindly hunting skillpoints/traits/experience because others tell you you need a certain amount of each to be participating in their game.

That said, as a lvl 41 first-time player, you have a lot to learn about this game, and you should take your time to do so. Explore the maps, find every waypoint, poi, skill challenge and so on, try to participate in as many different events that you find, and take a look at the enemies you meet. You will not only gain experience (in the sense of the moving bar at the bottom of your screen) that way, but also get more familiar with what you can do in this game and what the game throws at you.

Skill challenges (the blue upward-arrow like thingies on your map) give extra skill points in addition to those you gain when reaching new levels. Traits can be unlocked through a variety of activities, and 100% exploration of mid-level zones (pretty much anything between lvl 25 and 45 I think) is one of the ways to gain traits. Check out the traits panel in your heroes panel. The telescope thingy icon next to a locked trait will give you a tooltip that explains exactly which activity/quest/whatever you need to complete to unlock that trait.

Make yourself aquainted with your weapon and utility skills. Each weapon has different ways you can attack. For mesmer, for example, greatsword is good for ranged combat, but note that its auto attack does less damage, the closer your target is to you. It may be benificial to weapon-swap to one-handed sword with an appropriate off-hand weapon if you can’t outrun/kite around your target(s) efficiently. The main-hand sword is riskier to use (since it’s a melee weapon), but the damage you can do with it is considerably larger, and the #2 skill offers you an extra evade in addition to your dodges, as does your F4 skill (Distortion).

Experiment with different utility skills. Condition cleansing is always helpful, although the mesmer’s utility on this front isn’t great. Check out null field, mantra of resolve or the disenchanter to figure out what is most helpful for you in what kind of situatione. Same goes for all your other utilities, check each one out, see which can do similar tasks, and find out what situation is best for what utility combination.

Leveling is also a great time to try out different stat combinations on your equipment (armor, weapons, jewellery all contribute extra stats). Currently you probably have equipment with two different stats available, later on it will be three different ones. Popular for PvE endgame is the full direct damage combination of Power, Precision and Ferocity (“berserker” if power is main stat, “assassin” if precision is main stat), but there is a variety of other stat combinations available with condition damage and/or defensive stats, up to the full defensive “nomad” (toughness, vitality and healing). Check out the wiki for more information about what stat combinations are available, and figure out which suits your playstyle. My own mesmers (I have two at level 80 that are probably my most-played characters for dungeons and WvW at the moment) currently wear full berserker for dungeons and full rabid for WvW, but especially the berserker gear took a while to learn, since no defensive stats means you really have to know how to use your defensive skills and abilities.

Once you have a decent grasp of your character and the game’s combat you will probably be way past level 80 several times, and able to access all parts of the game. There is a ton to learn about surviving and contributing in different situations, from huge PvE zerg events (where you, as mesmer, mostly kite around with your greatsword) to 5-man dungeon content (which is a lot less forgiving than the open world, I mostly melee with sword and two off-hands of choice in dungeons these days) to WvW (zerg again, but totally different combat situations) to soloing veterans and even champions. Take your time, and if the people who “play” with you don’t care to help you learn but just expect you to know everything, don’t hesitate to find other people that help you learning. For dungeons, for example, there is a great player mentoring initiative stickied in the dungeon subforum (look out for the thread about the guild “noob”).

Good luck in this game, and take your time to enjoy it as well as you can!

Phoenixlin.8624:

(see above for post)

I get it, you don’t care for the way the game currently matches players on maps, but please accept that I, and a lot of other people, actually enjoy the way it works now a lot more than the way it worked before.

You don’t like to play with some people the game puts you on a map with, and I’m sure that most if not all players around have people they don’t care to be on a map with, either. Some people don’t enjoy seeing people that don’t speak their language, others hate on people that do speak their language but simply refuse to communicate at all. Some people don’t like having “noobs” around that play events in a (perceived) non-optimal way, others would rather not have people around at all. It’s not just the language, there’s a multitude of reasons why people don’t like other people around, and they still deal with it.

Personally, I don’t care for people that try to force their preferences on other players, or try to give their own opinion more weight by shouting in all caps or inventing/using derogatory terms for things other people enjoy but they don’t. You get them in forums, as well as in map chats all over the game. Should I go demand of Arena Net that they change their mega server algorithm so all people that have been known to use ingame chat (or forums?) that way are put on different maps than me? What about other people, who like to play with “people like them” just as well as “people like me”? Is it fair of me to demand it so they have to go out of their way to choose one of the two available communities each time they want to play, just so that I have things my way?

I like the way the mega server is implemented, and I find it vastly superior to the server map implementation we had prior to 4/15. I couldn’t play my way before, I either had to choose which “community” to play with each time I logged in a character (and playing with friends was always a hassle because someone would surely forget to guest on switching characters) and being restricted to three server communities a day due to guesting restrictions, or had to accept that each account was pretty much confined to their home server community (plus the occasional overflow that had a lot more inter-language conflicts than I’ve ever seen on the megaserver).

Bottom line: I understand that the way megaserver matches players is not always optimal for each individual player, and if you have objections to the way it works, say so. But please accept that there are just as many players who see things differently, and that sometimes you may just have to deal with it instead of dismissing everybody else’s opinion as inferior to yours.

Excuse me for voicing what may be an unpopular question, but:

For each dungeon opener that is (more or less) protected from kick in the current system, aren’t there four other people in the group not protected in any way or shape? What makes the 20% that happen to be the lucky ones to step into the dungeon first more important than the 80% that weren’t quick enough to click on the “start exp mode”?

I have been pugging quite a bit, and so far I was only unlucky once, loosing my progress in a CM story mode in the final video sequence when the instance owner decided to leave the party before the reward screen came up. I did kick my group out of an instance by mistake once, but that was fortunately at the start of a dungeon.

For me (as a person who often joins groups but rarely feels the need to start them) this change looks pretty neutral, bringing the 20% of “instance openers” in line with the 80% of other dungeon runners that have been playing under the same rules since the start. On the plus-side, it will help some groups not lose their progress for whatever reasons.

And the reasons don’t have to be kick/foul play, there are a lot more likely rl reasons. For example, just recently I had to abandon a dungeon run I had started for rl issues (had to pick up my youngest from a vacation activity), because the dungeon took a lot longer than we expected. We were able to salvage the instance, but the group had to live with my inexperienced 11-year-old taking over from me on a class she had never played before (and in a group where nobody speaks her language ). The alternative would’ve been for me to leave the group and thus disband the instance. With the new system, I could’ve just left and made room for a person who would’ve been able to contribute to the two remaining boss fights instead.

I guess it is a choice of the lesser of the two evils … I’m just very undecided which the lesser evil really is for the majority of players.

BrotherBelial.3094:

kokiman.2364:

I still dont understand what’s the problem.

I don’t under stand what people are talking about? Has GW2 got a built in twitter or something that I didn’t know about?

The friends list has an extra tab for “followers”, as in people who have put your account onto their friends list, but you do not have them on your list. It’s the third tab (after friends and lfg, and before blocked accounts).

Some people like to use this tab as a kind of “aquaintance” tab and find it irritating if it’s filled with people they won’t/can’t play with (for whatever reason), but don’t want to block those people to get them off there (since blocking adds a whole different level of communication block).

Personally, if I were in the thread opener’s situation, I’d probably solve it by putting a note (a simple “na” behind the account name should be sufficient) on each of the accounts I don’t expect to play/interact with for whatever reason, to keep things oranised.

Hannelore.8153:

Last I checked, block players can still contact you in many channels such as party and guild chat

I don’t know about party chat (haven’t had that problem yet), but I can tell you that if you block someone, you won’t see them talk on guild chat. I currently have one person on my block list who is also in one of the guilds I am in, and I never see any of his messages on guild chat (only the responses of other guild members).

I’d like to add a related question: How are guild upgrades/banks on “orphaned” servers (as in servers where members of the guild played but have since moved to other servers) handled?

My account is part of two guilds that are both located on different servers (none of them my home world). Lately I have considered moving this account to one of those servers (mostly to be able to WvW with my guild friends there). If I do so before the global guilds upgrade, will the collected influence and upgrades/guild vault content still be transfered to the main guild after Sep 9?

(if there is a global questions/feedback thread for the guild changes that I didn’t find, please don’t hesitate to point me there)

Does anyone know if the skritt in this event drop any loot? I recall fighting them, but I didn’t look out for loot at the time.

I’ve got SAB withdrawl, to the point where all my charaters have grabbed their SAB backpacks (only have blue and green unfortunately, I sucked to much at jumping back in September to finish the world 2 meta achievement) and their SAB title to remind me constantly that they are still waiting to go jumping again. Dry Top jumping is all nice and entertaining, but it doesn’t even come close to the joy of bashing a pixelated toad with a stick .