Guild Wars 2

Malediktus.9250:

If people need more coins they should buy more accounts. I got 30 accounts so I produce way more coins than I can use for myself

Over 300$ in accounts. Yeesh. Grats.

I really am kicking myself over not buying an extra 10$ account for the benefits, though.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I think for a lot of people around here end game is the forum. I think some of them are even in a forum guild. Just look at many complaint threads, even if they are constructive and well worded and watch for the OP to get zerged.

Forum PvP is a thing. :P

It’s unfortunate that some people just feel compelled to argue rather than recommend improvements. /shrug

Ayrilana.1396:

Romo.3709:

Chris Cleary.8017:

If players are willing to pay more…

They’re not willing. They’re forced to as there is no other alternative to get them!

They do have another alternative: waiting. They accumulate mystic coins from the daily login and daily achievement. Players are making the choice to purchase the coins at that price so they are willing to pay for them at that price. Those who are not would not be buying them at all when they’re at that price.

The question becomes “what is a reasonable wait?” After perusing the forge recipes for Mystic Coins, I noticed a wild swing in the number required (some 30ish, some 100+) for the exotic weapon skins. So anywhere from roughly 6 weeks to 5 months for one gear piece, or accelerated with purchases.

The potential 5-month wait is really irksome, but at least the coin requirement is a static one, and they can be purchased piecewise. If you’re making 2-10g per day, buy 1-5 Coins, and you’re still getting there faster. Sure, it sucks, but it’s steady, definable progress.

mtpelion.4562:

Rauderi.8706:

But yes, very analogous to real life. :P

Except that in real life I don’t get 20 [insert valuable luxury item] dropped into my mailbox every month just for waking up.

Valid point.
I wish to start getting [20 Valuable Luxury Item] in my mailbox. I might have to set up a PO box for all the diamonds people will send to make this happen.

As it is, I’m still kicking myself from when I did a fire sale of the ruddy coins while I had a 500 stack in my bank. After a single legendary (curse you, clovers…), I dropped a good 200 of them, so I’m still building up again, but after about 300-400 in inventory, I’ll be selling again while the prices are worth it.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I find it hilarious all the 1%‘ers demanding that the government (anet) reduce the price of their luxury goods so that poor people can’t get ahead and only they can afford the items they want.

I suppose it’s just like real life.

It’s not the conspiracy you outline. (Though I do see 1%ers actually say “I have this and I don’t want others to have it.” It’s kinda creepy.)

It’s more that the +2 standard deviations of monied individuals simply have more money to pay the higher prices, and as they continue to do so, they out-price those who can’t afford it. As they’re competing among themselves for supply, those with less assets can’t keep up.

But yes, very analogous to real life. :P

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Players can get obsidian shards from there at a rate of 1 commendation for 5 shards. Sometimes the large bag is available letting you get 10 shards per commendation. I don’t see anyone making a fuss about them being available from a guild vendor.

Not every system added will be available to all players. If it were map rewards then players who don’t have the time to farm events would be left out. It also doesn’t help that the coins would likely not be that plentiful to begin with or as frequently available.

Anyone can be a member of a guild that does guild missions. It’s just one other source that can affect a larger percentage of the playerbase while giving them another reason to do guild missions.

It also allows players to get more mystic coins than from map rewards or increased daily frequency. There are several timegated in place to prevent a sudden flooding of the market and we can be sure that there will be future recipes that require them putting a strain on supply. If the price drops too much, Anet just has to release a new recipe for a skin that requires 50-100 mystic coins.

Oby shards are available everywhere. It’s a waste of commendations to buy them. I horfed up 200k karma on a whim to buy them. Oby shards are not equivalent.

Just because guilds are available, it doesn’t mean that’s a good place to put that extra content. A person who can’t do map rewards isn’t going to have time for guild missions either.
“Okay everyone here? Bob’s not here. Let’s wait for Bob.”
“brbbio”
“Ready check?”
“Okay, at trek location, anyone else showing up? I’ll wait.”
“Is everyone done with race? No, okay every help with race.”

Missions are not as fast as you think them to be.

Mystic Coins would be better served in a more generalized location. Laurel, Pact, Karma vendors, whatever. Even as map rewards, it would serve the population better as a windfall to everyone participating than locking it behind guild membership. Not a terribly difficult lock, honestly, but there are a lot of guilds that just aren’t.. good. I’m lucky I found a few that are pleasant and drama free.

As I stated before, guild missions take about an 1-1.5 hours to do and you get 12-15 commendations. How long does it take to complete one full cycle of map rewards? You’d probably only have like 3 or so coins available per cycle.

The problem with what you’re suggesting is that you will flood the supply with them.

Don’t quibble just to quibble. I already said a once/day purchase, so please actually read.

Where the details differ is in the currency. I’d actually be leery of having Mystic Coins as map rewards, there are several other currencies available to all players, and that’s what should be used to promote extra purchases.

Noted above, Chris has a strong point and some internal data to back it up. Which means it’s likely ANet is going to do some further data collection and decide what to do from there.

Malediktus.9250:

I enjoy the high price of mystic coins

I’ll admit to being selfish here. I sell more coins than I use, so I’m not exactly eager to lower their value. [/disclaimer]

Still, we could stand to have a secondary, limited acquisition system in place. As it is right now, we get 20/month. That alone has me re-thinking any sort of vendor purchase, even with daily purchase controls.

Major Domo.9250:

A psychologist would be giddy over this instant- versus delayed-gratification scenario..

- A tradable item that every player basically has equal access to, regardless of skill level
- Said item gives no real mechanical advantage, only used in luxury/vanity crafting
- Only two acquisition methods – the slow faucet (free) or the trading post (market value)

The price is what it is because everyone has the same slow but reliable access, some players must have it all RIGHT THIS BLOODY INSTANT, and some others see this as an opportunity to profit off of group A’s indifference and group B’s impatience. A unloads an otherwise worthless item for gold, B gets the latest greatest shiny, and C reminds us of something about fools and their money.

Somewhere out there, John Smith is giggling and adding another chapter to his book.

/2copperstakeitorleaveit

That’s the basics of it, is it not? :P

The sudden siphoning of coins isn’t entirely cosmetic, as Legendary weapons and the elite spec Ascended require them, and those are best-in-slot gear. Not to say you can’t get BiS by other means, but it does have a mild power component.

BrotherBelial.3094:

HoT is not hard, not at all. If anything core Tyria is too easy. HoT is easy mode if you play a ranged class. My ranger face rolled through HoT in exotic gear with some green trinkets. I only got the HoT pets after I had finished the story. The hero challenges only really need 2 people to do them, I did everyone on AB with 2 others and they where really easy to do with my warrior. Some can be soloed. As long as you have enough room to move and your only fighting the one mob. With my other warrior I soloed the arrow head, king mushroom, chak blitzer. It’s also about what weapons you use also. A lot of fights are easier at range. Like I said if you have space the fights are easy.

Most people’s problem with HoT is they think they can face tank everything like they did in the core game. People are unwilling to change tactics. I used to be quite rigid myself. I wanted to play with the weapons I wanted to play with. Then I realised that they would not always be the best option for some fights. So I changed my ways. I tried different things. And I found things a lot easier.

This I feel is the main cause of peoples frustration with HoT. There unwillingness to try a different approach.

I feel the need to highlight the importance of range in HoT. Over-importance, actually.

I started off in HoT with my warrior, and that led to some huge dissatisfaction with the expansion overall. I was jealous of how easy-mode it felt to do the same content with ranger and mesmer, or even a bowzerker. None of that felt like warrior play. Again, I’ve adjusted, and I’m doing well now, I can certainly empathize with the complaints.

But it’s that same over-reliance on range that’s keeping one of my friends from even looking at the expansion. It’s frustrating to see ANet’s creature designs constantly hate on melee. Yes, there is supposed to be more risk-reward in melee, but to look at some of the creature designs, it heavily skews toward “range only or tableflip”. Honestly, this isn’t just in HoT, either; core has a number of fights like that as well.

That aside, I’m approaching somewhat positive affect for HoT (after 9 months :P). In between some of the lazier designs of critters that have literally one attack, I find myself more active around Mordrem and the more intelligent foes, and I kinda like it. So I guess HoT grows on you if you stay with it long enough and adapt.

The HYUGE checklist on the achievements panel is my endgame.

That, and alts. Just got another to 80. >.>

Ayrilana.1396:

Players can get obsidian shards from there at a rate of 1 commendation for 5 shards. Sometimes the large bag is available letting you get 10 shards per commendation. I don’t see anyone making a fuss about them being available from a guild vendor.

Not every system added will be available to all players. If it were map rewards then players who don’t have the time to farm events would be left out. It also doesn’t help that the coins would likely not be that plentiful to begin with or as frequently available.

Anyone can be a member of a guild that does guild missions. It’s just one other source that can affect a larger percentage of the playerbase while giving them another reason to do guild missions.

It also allows players to get more mystic coins than from map rewards or increased daily frequency. There are several timegated in place to prevent a sudden flooding of the market and we can be sure that there will be future recipes that require them putting a strain on supply. If the price drops too much, Anet just has to release a new recipe for a skin that requires 50-100 mystic coins.

Oby shards are available everywhere. It’s a waste of commendations to buy them. I horfed up 200k karma on a whim to buy them. Oby shards are not equivalent.

Just because guilds are available, it doesn’t mean that’s a good place to put that extra content. A person who can’t do map rewards isn’t going to have time for guild missions either.
“Okay everyone here? Bob’s not here. Let’s wait for Bob.”
“brbbio”
“Ready check?”
“Okay, at trek location, anyone else showing up? I’ll wait.”
“Is everyone done with race? No, okay every help with race.”

Missions are not as fast as you think them to be.

Mystic Coins would be better served in a more generalized location. Laurel, Pact, Karma vendors, whatever. Even as map rewards, it would serve the population better as a windfall to everyone participating than locking it behind guild membership. Not a terribly difficult lock, honestly, but there are a lot of guilds that just aren’t.. good. I’m lucky I found a few that are pleasant and drama free.

Loboling.5293:

I made silver on my first try without knowing what to do. I decided against redoing it and trying for gold as I found it boring, and I am actually missing more xp than mastery points in hot. Not sure if it should be changed, but it felt very easy to get silver.

After a few tries, I got Silver, so the burr in my foot about it is only somewhat irritating. I think my record is around 19-21. Close-ish to Gold but nowhere near, given the amount of time it takes to do all the kicking and jumping.

My main argument against it is, as a few have stated above, it’s just poorly optimized for many players, to the point where it behaves like it’s bugged. The action doesn’t feel smooth, and one split-second of ping could ruin a run.

Pifil.5193:

How do you know “most people have access to the guild hall?” Everyone has access to map completion rewards.

It’s not even the guild hall access that’s the difficult part. There are enough random guilds that spam invites in chat that you can find at least a crappy one with 200+ members.

The contentious point about having them bound to guilds at all is the commendations. This puts a bias against unguilded or small guilds that may not run guild missions all that frequently.

It’s already fairly irksome that something unique like Sentinel pieces require guild/group play, but at least they’re available. It’s not good, but it’s possible to acquire. Best not to go down the same path with Mystic Coins.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Jahroots.6791:

This has got to be a free player issue. I feel like everyone else who owns the game is just…above all this.

It’s not a free player issue, since you have to own HoT to have the Pact Mastery line to get the loot whilst AFK.

And AFK material farming wouldn’t benefit them because they can’t sell (only buy) from the trading post. If they’re AFK-farming without masteries, they’re either botting or checking on their computer to press F once/minute.

Mea.5491:

Suyu.1597:

what??
Black Desert and Blade and Soul are dead already??
I thought black desert is doing pretty good…

I wanted to try Black Desert but the open world PvP at max lvl scared me away. In Blade and Soul’s case, that horrible loot auction system scared me away. So I’m still in GW2. It’s not perfect either but at least nothing scares me away from it, lol.

Right? XD

I might’ve joined the guild exodus to BDO, but right at the onset, it turned me off. Turns out there’s a lot more there that are turn-offs (including jailbait rangers, I hear?).

GW2 had a lot of flaws, so many flaws, but they’re all the sorts of things that could be fixed with the right attention from the devs. Add on that GW2 is, by far, the most convenient MMO I’ve ever played, and I still feel pretty good about it.

Ayrilana.1396:

They can just add it to the guild commendation vendor.

And ignore why the coins are made available to everyone in the first place? Or so big guilds can have greater availability? Sorry, no, not a purposefully considered idea. Especially since a generic vendor would allow certain players to overbuy and gush the market with them.

Not that I’m against the idea of having a vendor make them available, but it needs to be more carefully considered. Some kind of once/day execution could work nicely. It could be a karma buy (never enough to throw karma at, honestly) or a crafting recipe (to make use of some of that extra mithril on the market).

Those who need them can greatly accelerate their acquisition, while others can still use their daily purchase allotment to sell to the trading post. With lower demand and increased supply, the price comes back down.

Assuming the price needs to come down. Kinda open to debate on that one. Given the excessive number required for clovers (ugh) and the moderate amount for elite spec weapons and other Forge silliness, I’d probably lean toward needing a little more supply, but not a free-purchase faucet.

Danikat.8537:

I think it’s a very good idea.

They actually used to have this back when there were town clothes instead of outfits. I have no idea why it wasn’t carried over because it made using them much easier and therefore more appealing. Although it’s not difficult it is a pain to have to go through the menus each time I want to switch in or out of them.

It would also be nice IMO to have an option like GW1 has where you can set them to turn on automatically if you enter a town, or explorable zone.

Ah, I miss having that keybind. I’d love to have that back, instead of clicking on that little check box.

Astralporing.1957:

Maximus.8376:

If you see a boss with a metal bar instead of the blue one then that means that it’s immune to cc.

Problem is, they are always immune to cc. The only thing cc skills can do is to deplete breakbar, but their normal function never works on those bosses.

Players learn very fast that cc does not work on bosses, because it’s something highly visible. Learning that in some situations those skills can still be useful is for many not something that can be easily noticed just by observing, however.

Somewhere else in the thread, I think I saw the proposal of “blue numbers” when a player damages a breakbar. This kind of visual feedback would be great for getting players to do it more often, since they see an actual effect.

MithranArkanere.8957:

This adventure was clearly tested only on site. Never with a range of pings. It was also likely tested only by one person, if anyone at all. Instead being tested with many people at the same time.

This shows a lot, making it literally impossible for some players.

• Too often there’s a collision above your character stopping jump. This is a widespread bug in which trying to jump against the steps of a stair will stop your character from jumping up the stair as if you were under the step instead against it. This is easily fixed by turning those collisions into a series of small slopes instead, and avoiding right angles in the collisions of the steps altogether when designing maps.
• Too often you just don’t jump when using the clusters, even if there’s nothing anywhere near your characters. Nothing at all. The cluster gets used and the character stands still.
• Because of different latencies, not everyone glides the same distances, jumps the same heights and starts gliding at the same time. Yet the minigame is clearly designed considering shortcuts that not everyone can use. Because of this, certain shortcuts are just impossible for some players, as even if they keep Space pressed, the glider won’t open until it’s too late, and they will crash against the wall.
• Tested all races. And altough the kick animation lasts the same across all races, it doesn’t last the same for all players. Some can resume movement faster than others who are stuck longer in the kick.
• If a player is defeated right next to anything other players need to use. The system will give priority to reviving. So other players around can on purpose troll your attempts by getting themselves killed on key spots. If they do so on the floor, other players will have a hard time reviving them, because they will get the effect too and suffer damage.
• There’s a mushroom near the entrance that is often lured into the adventure to put players in combat and slow them down.
• When resetting, the Corrosive Spores effect is not removed, forcing players to wait there before starting, adding to the frustration.

My recommendations:

• Increase time even more. At least 2:20, preferably 2:30.
• Force teleport of anyone defeated to the area behind the rocks near the start, with no delays, right as they are defeated. That or disable revive within the adventure area if possible.
• Adjust collisions so they match visuals better. Someone mashing space up a set of stairs should go up, not jump in place when there’s nothing over them.
• Remove the kick animation on the fruits.
• Do not cause the Spores effect to players not participating, and remove it at the end and start of the adventure.
• Make the fruits and clusters trigger without having to press F, just running through them.
• Remove the hostile mushroom near the entrance, or make it neutral, or add some rocks so it can’t chase players into the adventure.

Very insightful recommendations, MA. I hope the devs take this advice.

Random Wax Orc.7695

Add Random Adventure credit to be purchased from the Proof of Heroics vendor in WvW. Fastest and easiest fix that Anet can do to address the insanity.

No lie, this would be the fastest way to get me into a WvW map…

Ayrilana.1396:

You can get the VB bosses one at a time. You don’t really need an organized map.

Allegedly “can”. No one does Axemaster because of its bad design.
But that’s not for this thread.

Zaxares.5419:

I finally got Gold on this adventure after about 2.5 hours of trying. Even with the increased time limit, it was still an incredibly difficult adventure. (I finished it with just half a second to spare!)

The problem with this adventure, just like with Haywire Punch-o-Matic, is that your performance is highly dependent on your ping. (Shooting Gallery was also affected by this to some extent, but the very generous time extension of 30s more than made up for it.) I was encountering constant problems with things like your character failing to launch when picking up spores or landing on mushrooms, or your glider not closing in time (causing you to miss pinpoint landings used by many of the Gold routes). Another frequent cause of frustration was how I constantly seem to take damage from landing, something which the Gold videos almost never seem to do. (I believe this is because, due to lag, the game thinks your character has been “in the air” for a longer period of time and thus the fall damage kicks in.) This results in me being put in combat slowdown a lot more often, slowing me even further.

Furthermore, there is usually a split-second delay between your key presses and your character kicking the fruit. Over 25 fruits, it all adds up to a significant loss of time.

So, yes, getting Gold IS attainable now even for folks like me on crummy pings, but it’s a lot of frustration and repeated attempts before you’ll make it. My advice to ANet is to increase the time limit for this adventure (and Haywire) by an additional 5 – 10 seconds to make it more fair for us overseas players.

2.5 hours. Yeesh. Bravo.

Though, this does highlight my points from this and other threads about Adventures. They’re poorly tuned for the controls that GW2 (or any MMO) have to work with. And that’s without having to divine some developer’s “secret path” in order to get the highest marks.

I’d like to be able to start a fight by sending in the minions first. I need an attack command that doesn’t involve pushing myself to the top of the aggro list.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Orpheal.8263:

Massive Long Rant

I recommend you try to relax every once in a while. A system we have in place that you personally don’t like, doesn’t make it ‘dumb’, ‘idiotic’, ‘ridiculous’ etc. etc..

But with a numbers system of .1234 we can have a whole 10,000 Sephiroths!

…I’d gouge my eyes out, honestly. I’m so glad FF14 gave me the option to abbreviate player names to just the initials.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Two things are puzzling me about this now.

1. People are risking their accounts with a type of farming they know to be controversial, but go ahead and do it anyway (and some are then confused as to why they receive a ban afterwards).

2. Why it’s still being argued by some as an ok way to farm despite people actually being banned for it.

I was unaware of temp-bans going out. That’s as much of a policy statement as anything.

I have to wonder if the bans were from actual botting behavior or automated measures that were overturned in appeal.

I recall my walk through Dredgehaunt on my yet-another-walk-to-Orr, and I saw two farmers. One AFK-necro and one ranger that was running very directly at mobs to engage them. Reported the latter and figured the former would get made dead eventually (if rangerbot hadn’t come and killed the attacking mobs).

Ayrilana.1396:

Etienne.3049:

Ayrilana.1396:

Etienne.3049:

But it’s obvious you’re only gonna read what you want to read rather than what is actually written.

it’s actually the opposite here. Those on the side that it is fine are the ones reading only what they want to rather than what was written.

Not really, I don’t particularly care either way (on the one hand I don’t want people AFK farming but on the other I think banning for it is very excessive) and I read it as clearly allowing it. And the way I read it is a lot more sensible then I’d have given Anet credit for, given some banning decissions early on.

You were reading to much into what they said.

I guess we’ll see if they ever decide to address this. I’m pretty sure they are aware of it.

Of course they’re aware of it. There were several forum and Reddit posts kewing about it, several making the front page on each.

Sure, it’s cheap and smarmy, but it’s also passively countered by Diminishing Returns. If ANet decides to do something about the AFK farm, they’ll probably sneak it in that way, rather than going out of their way to ban players for an ‘exploit’ that is working as intended. A change like that won’t even make the patch notes.

I’d rather they take a more amusing method of dealing with AFK farmers by summoning a champ mob with an AoE death-smear ability. And it could come at any time, in any place, someone sits there and lets minions kill for them. Because “he can attack anywhere,” you know.

Nero.8047:

New York didn’t change its name to “Not so new anymore York” either. (<— Joke ^^)

But it was once New Amsterdam.

Why they changed it, I can’t say.

Additional side benefit to GW2 that extends the play experience: Alts.

GW2 is incredibly alt friendly, which means I can experience the entire breadth of the game without groaning about hours and hours of sloughing through 100+ levels of zones or spamming dungeon runs.

So, if I’m not in the mood to play my ‘main’ for some reason, I have a ton of other play experiences waiting for me.

Ayrilana.1396:

TwoGhosts.6790:

Ayrilana.1396:

TwoGhosts.6790:

Tbh I don’t really see what the big deal is about.
Personally, I prefer to play the game I paid for by actually playing the game.
If other people prefer to play their game by being afk, so what?
It impacts me not at all.
It provides them no meaningful advantage; progression in the PvE environment of GW2 is almost entirely non-competitive.
shrugs
Bit of a non-issue really; more important things out there.
~TG

I can make 20G/hr most likely with 7 accounts AFK farming. Are you telling me that I wouldn’t have an advantage over other players?

Not meaningfully. No, not really.
Certainly not one that would bother me.
So, you have, what? More gold than me? Lots of people have more gold than me. And that gets you ahead, how?
You can afford the skin you want, that I can’t yet? So what?
You can afford to fully craft your ascended armour for all your characters before me? So what? That’s only gonna be an issue (and not a very big one) if we run up against one another in WvW and you win as a direct result of the marginal stat gain you have (and not because I suck at PvP, which I do).
But no, by and large you having more gold than me makes no difference – certainly it makes absolutely no difference to my own enjoyment of playing the game.
Dude, if you wanna invest in 7 separate accounts for the purposes of 24/7 afk farming on your necros… fill your pants man. Got no issues with that.
~TG

So if someone were to bot to teleport across the map to various nodes and such, you’d have no issue since they’re just making more gold than you but you don’t really care as it doesn’t affect you? Imagine what would happen if it became common for people to AFK farm and what impact it would have.

Depends on the nature of the teleport. Is it illicit hacking of the game to adjust character position, or waypoint spamming and running to those locations? Is there botting involved, in violation of one-key, one-action policy?

AFK farming doesn’t exploit anything, beyond basic minion AI and reward design. It might be why WoW, a long time ago, decided that pet-only kills don’t count toward drops, but ANet hasn’t made that decision. What AFK farming does is use the game’s own systems (pet/minion AI, pet-tagging rewards, Pact Commander Mastery) to get loot.

I seem to recall (can’t find link and too lazy to care) a dev on Reddit basically saying “working as intended”.

TexZero.7910:

Engineer, if not playing a braindead FT/Turret style build.

It’s gameplay is almost completely reactionary and requires you to know all of the tools at your disposal along with how each tool can interact with eachother.

Ayup. Kits have huge utility and I hear tales of some absolutely sick skill rotations to get self-combo spam. If you want a high-skill/high-reward class, Engi’s the one.

Even though I’m one of those lazy Shamethrower users, I respect the high end of what the profession can do. :P

:\ If you need to kill them, Go HOT. They live there.

Or wait for them to be playable and go to PvP~

Agemnon.4608:

Pengu

I’m dyin’. XD

The usual votes of Tengu (closest to being playable), Skritt (closest to being shiny), and Kodan (closest to being… balanced #sunglasses)

Redfeather.6401:

Because the Tengu are literally just standing there in the game world and haven’t done anything since release. If they won’t do anything, let me control one! I’ll do all kinds of stuff with them.

Username Redfeather.
Wait a minute…
BIAS DETECTED.

Really though, give me Tengu, and I will, guaranteed, sacrifice $90 upon the altar of our avian overlords. (That’s more than an expansion price, hint, hint, ANet.)

Sariel V.7024:

Endless Soul.5178:

Chop down an entire forest to make one match stick.

Measure once, cut 5000 times.

That explains so much.

Reality small log ~ 3+ planks.
I guess GW2 technology just chips all the wood and we’re making plywood instead.

Ashen.2907:

People have different preferences. That is very different than gating basic character progression behind specific content that devs know that players dont like for the purpose of forcing them into content disliked content. At that point the devs’ actions are intended to cause players to be unhappy with the game.

[If] you feel that you have to force people to play your content, it might be bad.

And again, there is a huge difference between offering optional rewards for completing certain tangential content, and gating basic character progression behind the same.

Ah, this topic again. Glad to see a few other people understand good game design and recognize that the decisions going into Adventures does not qualify as good game design.

It’d be different if the Adventures had smooth controls and properly tuned difficulty. But they don’t. Half the time the controls are choppy and prone to latency issues. RNG weighs down and ruins some of them, due to excessively tight time/score requirements. Even with some of the belt-loosening with the April patch, they didn’t resolve some very basic, game-killing issues.

• Terrain shapes and general collision in these adventures are garbage. Full stop. Two seemingly identical maneuvers in a set of jumps can snag on different pixels and force you to start a 2:00+ run.
• Mentioned before, latency-prone controls are not as smooth as GW2’s regular combat experience. Characters are sluggish and the skills even moreso.
• Iteration time after failure is fine. I love that reset command. Iteration to failure is still inevitably too long. Aforementioned 2:00+ runs on some Adventures means spitting teeth after hitting a terrain snag and needing to restart. The ones without RNG are often do-or-die (do-or-reset?) tasks where one slip ends a run because it won’t succeed.
• RNG in some Adventures goes counter to the notion of iteration-training or record-keeping.
• Forced interaction with a “voluntary” system. Adventures were advertised as a ‘fun thing to do,’ not a part of the leveling/progression experience requirement. If any sort of coaxing was needed for these design-questionable items, why Silver and Gold ranks for progression rewards? It ought to be Bronze and maybe Silver, with Gold given a unique reward (minis, skins, nodes, etc).
• Adventures require Masteries to… earn other Masteries with the points they give, especially for Gold ranks. I realize there was some Metroidvania love going into the design here, but such a loose, obtuse, and poorly conveyed system didn’t need the extra complication.

I’m not even saying to take them out, but re-work the reward design and polish the kitten out of the controls, so that they’re actually enjoyable.

I got a note from ArcheAge that they were going to purge my name.

I lol’d. They can have it. XD

Substance E.4852:

Completely ignores that mats went up at the update because that’s when a new legendary dropped and that gems probably went up because they released another wing set and every stand alone mini that was in the store was just retired for now and they brought back every one of the baby animals…

But, y’know, don’t make sense or anything. :P

Prices were spiking well before the April update. Legendary availability from precursor crafting has been a part of a lot of material prices rising.

I’m less worried about a gold sink (TP will take care of that) and more worried about certain materials growing grossly out of control (ecto, leather… gawd never thought I’d worry about leather..) while other materials hit the basement (mithril).

Yeah, don’t die at Axemaster, by the way. By the time you get back from respawning, you’re “inactive.” It’s actually extra irritating, since one wipe makes everyone doing the event quit.

Mithril count use another decent sink. It’s not vendor trash, yet, but with its prevalence, I don’t bother salvaging heavy/weapons. If it’s trade value goes up, it can be used more efficiently to get other materials on the market.

(lol copper > mithril, imma loot under your houses for pipes because it’s worth more than your jewelry.)

I usually have at least a few crowbars on each character, so I never noticed this. But I did have a friend doing Verdant Brink and regaling me with comments about how he wasn’t getting any crowbars for doing events. We were both flabbergasted.

I don’t see a harm in adding it to the vendor stock, but I don’t see a big reason to rush it.

I wish I could remember the player who had a really awesome prototype of the thing I’m talking about. It only had one style of data point, and it would be visible through terrain (not necessarily a great idea at all times), but it kept a separate log area where one could store their map pins.

It’d be a huge boon for the game as it continues to promote vertical space in its gameplay.

BrotherBelial.3094:

There are mobs in Orr that have boons, most in HoT had boons. But people complain when the content is too tough. Remember when mordem wolfs had retaliation? People complained they where too hard to kill. They no longer have retaliation.

I remember that. They really did have less teeth after the Retal was dropped.

There were two things that made it irritating.

1. They attack in groups, so the retal damage was usually 2-4x as much. For as much damage as they could churn out with backstab and retaliation, they still had too much HP.
2. The moment you stripped it, they added more stacks. Boon clear/corruption was a uselessly token effort at that point. Like many monster abilities, the cooldowns are far too short for the effect given.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Zeivu.3615:

Randulf.7614:

Lions Arch

No Lion
No Arch

That’s because the Lion was blown up and destroyed by Scarlet.

Hamfast.8719:

I miss the central lion statue too. We no longer have a central gathering spot or focal point for festivals. The world has grow a bit colder.

You know how that guy in Silverwastes has constant fundraisers for some cause or another? Why couldn’t we have a “Put the Lion Back in Lion’s Arch” fundraiser for Lion’s Arch?

I miss that statue, darn it! When I came across it in the ruins in the bay, I honestly welled up. LA is the heart and soul of Tyria, after all.

Oh and good finds, OP. This is a fun thread!

I have a 100G to contribute to the cause! Bring back my lion!

Expected more (rightful) Black Lion Chest anti-sentiment.

Got risky, humorous click. +1

Kitty.6219:

I saw Gaile in LA and I asked her who do I have to hug because the new outfits and armor skins don’t clip and even have sensitive tail flaps.

She told me it would be weird. So instead I’m making a thread here

Thank you developers and artist people who make beautiful armor for charr! We do notice and thank you for your brave efforts in making something pretty that doesn’t clip or looks super bad on charrs!

Kudos! Kudos to everyone!

We also still notice when newer designs don’t accommodate our characters as well as they should (coughBanditSnipercough).

The nifty tail covers and the switch to some more pants-like options have been nice, but I would like for the design team to be held to a consistent standard, so players can see less clipping and actually play more Charr.

If I’m angling for a map improvement, I’d want the ability to set my own map markers. The map itself is muddy and insufficient, and it’d actually be a little fun to do my own sort of cartography.

Some example markers I’d like to have:

• Elevation changes / Tunnel ingress/egress (Up and Down arrows)
• Dashed lines for underground pathways
• Jumping Puzzle / Vista start points
• Map transition points (why are these not marked by default?)
• Special vendor locations (handy for marking Pact vendors or frequently visited vendors)

Ardid.7203:

I tend to simply avoid the “do events” dailys. Too much stress without good reason. I pick another PvE daily or go into WvW for a while.

The reward for all that event stress is really paltry, too.
Farming? Get a bunch of extra mats, possibly T6.
Daily boss? Bonus rare.

Runruntagtagruntagrun? …XP scroll for your sub-80 and a tiny karma tonic.
There’s nothing wrong with splitting the megazerg into several zones by making the event daily regional.

Ardid.7203:

Why are adventures needed to get masteries? Aren’t there enough mastery points outside of adventures?
(I ask this as a genuine question. I really don’t know about this)

inb4

There are enough mastery points to net all of them, so you don’t need Gold rank specifically on all of them. The problem is some of the other mastery points come from group-only content like Verdant Brink bosses (need a very org’d map to do anything other than Matriarch) or ridiculous, time-wasting achievements in story mode like “don’t get hit, not even once” that we see as poorly-executed repeats from Season 2.

Ayrilana.1396:

I disagree about less specific as it just turns it into a secondary login reward system. Rather than do specific content, they would just go with what is the quickest. Any JP, well they’ll do the ogre one in LA and only that one.

It is known.
Source: I used to do this. A friend and I would compete to see who could finish all their dailies without leaving capital cities.

I’m also glad to see the jumping puzzles added to dailies. I’ve completed roughly 4 or 5 JPs I’d never done before or known existed. The dailies are actually highlighting content I don’t normally do. [Good thing.]

The JP dailies are good design for a second reason: always available and non-competitive. This is not true for zone completion or daily specific boss. I agree that those should be more generalized into regional completion or any boss. The latter for nixing the potential two-hour wait, the former for not requiring guardian loot-sticks and engi-turrets to get credit among the see of non-visible mobs that die the moment their Determined wears off.

Vyrulisse.1246:

They need more skill variety. I’m afraid of getting smacked down for saying it but I wish mobs were more like they were in GW1. They tended to roam in packs and higher level ones had all sorts of nastiness that blended together.

I’d rather have 2-3 regular mobs in a pack that synergize instead of a single vet/champ/elite with 5-sec CC skills and one-hit-KO attacks.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

• Activities were bugged today generally. That is bad luck, bad timing (and possibly bad QA), but doesn’t make it bad to include activities in dailies.
• When I choose to do the PvE 4-event dailies, there is always a spot that I can camp that has 2-3 events that respawn within 5-10 minutes. Plus JPs now count for the event total, so aside from the extra travel/WP-usage, they really don’t take any longer than getting into place for a WB. (Definitely faster than Shattererererer.)

There are a few philosophical questions about dailies that people keep raising and maybe ANet should discuss them:
The main one is:
Should dailies be trivial? Or are they serving a purpose beyond rewarding frequent flyers (and so won’t always be)?

• If they are meant to be trivial, then shouldn’t they only include quickly-achievable goals? (That would exclude certain JPs, certain WBs, and maybe some 4-event maps.)
• If they are meant to be trivial, why are there only 4 options for PvE-only players?
• If they aren’t meant to be trivial, then why are so many so easily accomplished by farming a home instance or camping particular locations?
• If they are meant to encourage people to try new things, then why do they include the sort of things that most people already do every day?

My personal feeling is that the login rewards already serve as the trivial component of frequent-flyer rewards and I’d prefer that dailies be a bit more interesting. At the same time, I confess that I like being able to finish dailies within 30 minutes, even if I’m not paying much attention.

tl;dr are dailies meant to be trivial? or are they meant to be something more? (and if so, what’s that “something”?) In the meantime, daily activities were bugged and some JPs are a lot more difficult than others.

I’d say that dailies should be accomplished in under an hour. That’s enough commitment time to say “yes, I did something and got a reward” and not the old “omgomg I have to do ALL these things and it takes me 3 hours to finish” that some players put themselves through before. They’d spend most of their play time doing dailies and ignoring the rest of the game. So, yes, interesting dailies, in moderation.

We’re getting toward a good spot with dailies. Sort of. To echo something I’ve said for probably over a year, region event completion, not zone.
Region farming ought to be the more specific one, changed to zone farming, and use that as a tool to guide players to underplayed zones or rising material prices.

I’m seeing much less of “wait two hours for a specific boss” dailies, but those still aren’t good, especially when you still have to /wiki the event timer. There really ought to be an event recruiter in major cities to guide players toward the upcoming boss.

DoctorDing.5890:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

• Activities were bugged today generally. That is bad luck, bad timing (and possibly bad QA), but doesn’t make it bad to include activities in dailies.

Actually, I think activities don’t belong in PvE dailies at all because they are not PvE. Players compete against players. That’ll be PvP then.

Been saying this for a while, too. I loathe Daily Activity because it’s PvP. It’s no fun unenergetically ‘trying’ for 5 minutes while some other player runs away with the game because he’s got 1000 games under his belt.

reikken.4961:

The only mobs that use notable boons are those dredge gong player dudes, and they spend like 10 seconds buffing up

They’re one of the better designed core enemies for that, though. If they just had a 1/2sec cast shout, you maybe get an interrupt off. The longer execution time, which also grants longer boons, allows more opportunity to interrupt with an appropriate player-side penalty for not doing so.

I agree with the OP, overall. More boon-casting enemies would allow for more skilled play and add benefit to those character builds that play on boon stripping/corruption. They could be more dangerously synergistic with their allies and reduce the need for singularly powerful monoliths that the game seems so fond of.

Think of it, instead of one champ with overblown attacks that, for some players, is an “easy” dodge/aegis/block/dodge/repeat string, there are 5 veterans with lower damage but launch into 25 Might stacks, Protection, Fury, and Regen. (Side thought: Regen doesn’t get used enough by enemies in general. Poison is mostly a semi-laughable PvP condition..) The damage potential amps up and is controllable, vaguely similar to the risen abominations (except the “control” there is “don’t get hit for five seconds”).

Stitch.1794:

Sadly, one was recently removed from the Cliffside fractal – the veteran novices.

I giggled when I saw that change in the patch notes.

And Ancient Sapling still gets me. :\

Zeivu.3615:

Randulf.7614:

Lions Arch

No Lion
No Arch

That’s because the Lion was blown up and destroyed by Scarlet.

Still mad about that, by the way. I did see a lion as I went looking, but it’s nowhere nearly as glorious or prominent as the old statue(s) were.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Here’s the quote from the Reddit AMA. Basically it’s because they’re too busy right now, but it’s not ruled out for the future.

Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet
It’s a cool suggestion. But, sorry, we’re not working on a key ring. We’ve got a full plate with other development, and as I said above, my priority is for us to do a great job on the things we’re already tackling.

At least it’s “on the table”? I’m okay with a “not now” reply, given the restructuring and focus on getting LS3 content ready before the 1-year mark.

Patiently, but not very patiently, awaiting that keyring, though.