Guild Wars 2

It’s hard to find a good guild. Really hard.
Good news is that you don’t have to stay in them, or you can float several at a time until you find one or two you enjoy.

Agreed that our more gender-neutral ladies could use some chances at feminine flair from time to time. Problem is, when it comes to Charr and dresses, yeogh! It’s possible to design feminine things for a Charr body type, but ANet is totes bad at it, usually. (Exemplar attire. Seriously. They literally stuffed a cat in a costume.)

Beldin.5498:

Yunni.8296:

Please stop requiring fractuals to complete dailies. ><

Or make an extra category for dungeons and fractals.

It’s coming with HoT. Hang in there, folks!

Glad to re-bump. :P

I get that they don’t want keys going too cheap, since people would just gold→gem them too often. I’d say start the lowest bundle at 2 keys for 100 gems, or if the wanted to keep their “uneven gems” exploitation, 3 keys for 150 gems. The minimum buy-in doesn’t change, but the value triples.

Turamarth.3248:

Rauderi.8706:

/yawn
Welcome to “statistics” and outliers.
If I had infinite money and time, I could just Agent of Entropy grind my way to the top of the leader boards. But there’s no amount of time or money to make that worth it.

Agent of Entropy is capped at 250 ap.

[Righteous indignation at my play experience being capped, etc etc]

Still not worth fussing over AP, except for some of those sweet, sweet skins.

Ice.5162:

Maybe players can record their own warhorn sounds or any sounds in particular and give them out for free for Anet to use!

For the love of the game! * bwoooo! *

Though, I’ll (sadly) settle for the current, unobtrusive compromise.

tl;dr and still didn’t mention the biggest “casual” player insult:

RNG rewards.

When only playing a few hours a week, the notion of rewards per hour means more to those players with limited time.

So, what kinds of stuff do others get “kittened” for?

Isn’t & it
is one of the worst offenders. Sarcasm doesn’t pay, does it? :P

/yawn
Welcome to “statistics” and outliers.
If I had infinite money and time, I could just Agent of Entropy grind my way to the top of the leader boards. But there’s no amount of time or money to make that worth it.

I do tend to self-censor on the forums with “kitten.” It makes people think I’m more upset than I am.

Also, kittens are better than cupcakes!

Now, let it be said, just because there are filters, that’s no excuse for being a kittenstick to other people.

Bigger concern, why can’t gem → gold conversions (actual, paying customers) get the full value their gems are worth?
Why can’t they sell by the gems instead of targeting a gold amount?

Considering there’s barely 25 monsters to rub together to make one? :\
It was a major criticism my friend had after playing for a while. So many repeated monsters and all the same color. It smacks of weak monster design.

That aside, more features and lore is great. And I like the idea of having it as a collection. I hope the devs take this one seriously.

I’m actually surprised to see such a stanch capitalist kewing for ‘free’ anything. If the “hardcore” really want it, these one-time events should be paid invitation only. Then, it can at least justify the tremendous expense of producing and executing that content. 4,000 gems for the reservation should be sufficient. The “hardcore” should certainly have enough gold to convert or cash to buy in.

Money where mouth is, etc. If the event is successful, it becomes proof of concept, and maybe they’d even consider making more.

Zephyra.4709:

Thank goodness they changed it.

I’ll take the whispery barely noticeable sound over flatulent sounds any day.

I will admit though; if anything they could’ve at least listened to a batch of REAL war horn sounds being played as it feels like they haven’t even bothered. It is probably all electronically made up, too. Would be nice to have legit warhorn sounds.

I know, right? I doubt it would cost much to buy/craft one, less than an hour to record it, then finish the conversion with some editing.
Though a quick internet search suggests maybe it’s not so easy to actually buy one. >_> Maybe an enterprising player would be willing to send one?

Lord Trejgon.2809:

tbh I’m more concerned about why third party websites have already “reveal” of engineer elite specialisation while there is none of OFFICIAL news page….

ANet ‘leaks’ to popular sites to generate buzz. They’re masters of the Hypetrain, even if they let it run too long.

I’m curious if this lightning shtick is going to sustain with the gyro-drone thingies. Like maybe a line of electricity in between Scrapper and gyro that does damage to targets in between.

Etien.4601:

Why not replace the luck from monthly rewards with keys. This sounds more convenient to me.

By all sacred, yes. It’s consistent, and it still fulfills the “hey would you like some more” drug-pusher mentality ANet seems to want out of these keys.

Heh, funny notion.
GW2 tried to break convention by avoiding “how it’s done” in some places, but they seem firmly entrenched in their crappy keybox ripoff strategy, just like every other Asiagrinder MMO.

Of course, now I wonder how I’d find peer-reviewed articles about how to con people into buying keys, and what the findings were. “That’s how we do things” isn’t the most suitable mode of course in design decisions.

Just gonna assume the latter.
They seem to believe that their cost:profit curve maximizes at 125 gems.

When did I buy keys?
Sale time. When those keys were sold either with other substantial bundles or at a significant discount. That also wasn’t a one-time notion.

As of right now, the value per key is excessively low:
1 key: 125 gems. $1.56 (or 1.56 euros, which is $1.76, even worse)
25 keys: 2100 gems. 32.8% discount, pretty hefty. Problem is, that’s $26.25! And that’s still over a dollar per key! ($1.05)

The 125 gem cost is also a blatant tactic. Don’t put the amounts in values even enough to spend in the 800-chunks we by them in, so we always have extra gems that can’t be used. Even converting gems to gold, you can’t get rid of that last few gems, because the value rounds up in gems per gold, instead of selling gems for the exact amount they are worth.

So, question is, how to make keys worth it without breaking ANet’s cash flow?

1. Price keys at 50 gems (or 2 for 100).
   This puts the cost at roughly 63-cents per key, which is much easier to fritter away. It also puts it in a manageable chunk that can be given away easily. (Buy outfit and two keys for 800 gems! I’d have actually bought keys at that point.)
   20 keys for 800. Another nice, round number that offers a +25% value!
2. Dramatically increase content value.
   To be frank, stop with the ticket scraps. Or change them significantly. I’d much rather see full tickets drop much more often. If ‘scraps’ are honestly so needed to randomize rewards, then have the scraps available to turn in to a vendor for a random skin of that type. If scraps are common, then unneeded skins can go to market in greater numbers, adding value to the seller and opportunity for the buyer.

Would have preferred Forge better. Connotates creation, appropriate to making drones and such.
Scapper, as pointed out, is pretty cool for its survivalist and melee-focused themes. I’ll forgive the added Charr connotation.

But maybe something for the Asura instead?

Linfang.1087:

Dangit, Now I want Skritt as a playable race. A Skirtt Scrapper. Say that fast 5 times.

Did. And all it made me do was make me want to play a Skritt.
I shall call him, Chivik The Shinymaker. ;__;

Linfang.1087:

The old exchange was better. The new exchange rounds to the nearest gold. In the old system if I had 803 gems and wanted to round it down to a even 800 for OCD sake. I could put in 3 gems and get the exact exchange in silver.

I’ve yet to understand why ANet is screwing over its paying customers this way. If the gold→gem conversion is intended to entice us with higher and higher values of gold in gem→gold conversions, stop rounding it down.

And as a major UI criticism, who converts gems to gold based on the amount of gold they want? None that I know of. Sellers plan around the gems they have to sell.

Tapioca.9062:

Oh, Ten Ton Hammer didn’t have the exclusive reveal this time? What a surprising turn of events. I wonder what happened there.

They didn’t reconcile Scrapper with Hammer, apparently.
Oh well, having a teeheesilly name doesn’t always get you positive attention, apparently.

Today’s article was a bit sparse, though. I’ll be glad to wait for tomorrow for an actual in-depth review. >_>

I think I know the events you’re talking about. I’ve had two, though I think they were more in Orr. Either way, I stomped some undead smack-talkers for that.
I hope those events are still in the game.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Events that cater to the 1%ers is just a way for Anet to give back.

And what are 1%ers giving to ANet? It’d better be money. Because designing throwaway content is still costly, and the selfish “I want only me to have this” attitude isn’t worth putting money toward.

I suppose it could be funneled as a gem store item. It’s like reserving a ticket, and it takes you an instance where the event takes place, to group up with 25-50 other people. Big enough event to see people as if it were open world, but you’d know they were obviously rich, because they could afford the ticket. And when the event succeeds, a vendor shows up to trade the ticket for the shiny, exclusive reward. (That ticket reward from Fire & Frost was brilliant, by the way.)

But, in all honesty, if a content locust eats his entire buffet meal in two months, it’s not exactly anyone else’s fault when he’s complaining in month three. That player didn’t budget his resources and spent it all too early, leaving him dissatisfied; too bad, so sad.

actarus.8319:

OK, the warhorn sound has changed in the today update, now it’s just … WIND ! Seriously Oo

Wait whut? I’ll have to find out when I hop on for dailies today. Still, anything could be better than farthorn.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

O really? Then explain to me how I managed to save up gold for 3 precursors without much grinding or farming.

Just because you didn’t consider it grinding or farming doesn’t mean it wasn’t grinding and farming. Or playing the trading post, which only works because not everyone does it.

Scarcity is a good thing. It makes items more valuable. What matters is how to achieve such scarcity.

What Anet does now is locking items behind insane RNG numbers or even more insane grind walls. Some people prefer RNG and others prefer grinding. GW2 has plenty of that and that shouldn’t change. However, there is another way of creating scarcity.

Another, much more enjoyable way of creating scarcity would be to lock items behind insanely challenging content. That way you have something to strive for and when you finally manage to beat that challenge you’ll be rewarded with a valuable item.

Like I said, some people prefer RNG and some prefer grinding, so that shouldn’t go away. But GW2 would go a long way in feeling much more rewarding if it also had really challenging content with really good rewards locked behind that content. I’d much prefer trying and failing a difficult raid a bunch of times than to mindlessly grinding my kitten off in the Silverwastes or trying my luck at the Mystic Toilet.

RNG-based artificial scarcity is bad. Not for the economy, necessarily, but for the players. It is a meritless reward structure that causes more frustration than it does enjoyment. A combination of RNG + Tokens was generally well received when J. Smith put up the forum post on it. But flat RNG or gold-grinding to moving targets? Demotivating and drives people out.

I’m with you on the idea of skill-based rewards. I’m not sure how well the Adventures thing will go, but I’ll likely give a few a try. I don’t know if I’ll do raids, but I fully support them existing for people who want challenge and rewards.

This suggestion isn’t about being Elitist. It isn’t about being a Special Snowflake.

Yes it is. When you recognize your problem, you can take steps to correct it.
Embrace it, and use that to consider design decisions that are acceptable to time-dedicated, high-skill, and casual players alike.

The 1% are people too.

But they’re not worth designing for. Literally. Unless they pay thousands of real life dollars. But what kind of players are the GW2 whales? That’s who they need to design for. If a player gold-grinds to get Gem Store items, I don’t fault him, but neither does he directly contribute.

Though, there’s something about the Microtransaction statement that bugs me. $50 to re-spawn the event? That’s a huge slap in the face, even if there are players willing to pay it. dotdotdot, Inspiration!
Spread the cost around to players who want the event. I suppose it’s like the bandit crests in Silverwastes, except the currency would come from gems or gold. For each player that invests, the event becomes available again.
…and, I lost it. Because it’s better just to have raids.

When I asked support about it, I was told there was nothing they could do. :\

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

…so the physical body of my toon gets in the way. I can’t see the miniscule tells that enemies have behind all of these effects.

Even with the camera changes, this is a perpetual problem for me. I generally play larger characters, so things like jumping puzzles and fighting smaller mobs can be a real chore.

I generally don’t have the “too much shiny” problem, except at world bosses. Then it’s ridiculous. Map populations are often way too high to support them all coming together like that.

Sorry, Peng, but no. It wasn’t fun for Season 1, and it’s too easy to get hedged out.
Bad idea is bad, and feelings should follow the tautology. :\

Nevermind that one-time events are generally a grandiose waste of development resources. Not to say that all things should always be available ever, but seasonable returns are the most appropriate venue for this sort of exclusivity.

Daharahj.1325:

Vayne.8563:

There are as many people against dueling as for it. For the OP it’s a feature. There are reasons some of us don’t like dueling, but it’s been rehashed so many times already why bother?

I’m just having a hard time understanding your point of view, this feature would only affect those interested in it positively while not affecting the rest whatsoever. It’s such a selfish mentality coming from a self-proclaimed nice community, “I don’t want it so we can’t have it”.

It’s just as selfish to demand it (as has been done in many shutdown, locked threads) without considering what it would do to the community. Turning a blind eye to the increase in trolling doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen.

A long, long while ago, a dev said (I’m sure someone could find the actual video) that he’d like to get dueling in there, but it’s not practical at the moment. It probably never will be practical.

In the meantime, there are private PvP duel areas set up where people can gather and, funnily enough, duel. It doesn’t have to be open world. Dueling would be just fine in Heart of the Mists, since people lounge about there anyway.

PopeUrban.2578:

What it doesn’t need is a use that would compete with using it for MF.

Basically, creating any incentive for players that haven’t maxed their MF would throw off the economic balance of blues and greens.

I’d suggest adding a repeatable achievement for it in stead, similar to agent of entropy. once you max MF, you unlock the achievement. Now every X amount of luck consumed grants 2 AP, say whatever the number is for the last 1% of MF.

The trick here is to not make the amount so low that people can supercharge their AP overnight, but low enough that occasionally they’ll see that AP gain. After all, having 300% MF and continuing to eat luck seems pretty in line with other repeatable achievements.

Now you still have a reason to consume luck, but you’re not really that much more incentivized to acquire it than you were when you were getting MF for it, and since achievement points are already designed as a sort of capless total, luck retains its status as a thing that’s generally useful and desirable, but not so much more useful and desirable than simply selling or using the things you had to salvage to get it.

You are consistently spiffy, Urban.
Very well thought out idea.

Saving gold to get a precursor to build a legendary is trying to hit a moving target. The artificial scarcity is also a huge problem for some exotics, but ANet rules itself based on its economics, instead of what would be rewarding for the players.

ShelBlackblood.7826:

I’ve finally gathered enough gold to buy my first precursor and start to make a legendary. I was uncertain until recently if I should try to make Howler, Rodgort or the Minstrel.

…but a few ppl at Anet don’t want us to make Howler anymore…? Helping me with my decision, huh? Oh my, tyvm…! I guess…?

maybe if I bump this topic, someone pushes the warhorn audio feedback for me?

Out of all the legendaries, the only one I feel I’d want is Howler. But hearing how dissatisfied its owners are after putting in all that work… Just not worth it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Anet knows all about our concerns and is handling it in their own way.

Y’know, in small image format, it looks like the ANet-allegory dog is turning away from a dirty diaper.
Apropos, considering the noise our warhorns make. -_-#

Nutjob.9021:

What annoys me most about this event is that there were several quick, easy fixes that would have taken a trivial amount of time for a programmer to implement, but nobody could be bothered to do it.

That’s what gets me. Simple things to do: Make rewards better.
That’s most of what people’s complaints were.

Getting 5 measly blooms unless you hit a threshold of being a kitten just isn’t good. Especially when the top rewards were 450 blooms.

That’s 90 full-round events. If you did well, half that to 45 for getting 10+. (I’d include 20+, but that involved not-as-intended behavior.)

45 full-round events is 22.5 hours of playing just that content in one weekend. Which also involves half-hour periods of waiting for the next event to start, and an additional hour in ‘downtime’. That’s a total of 60 hours of gaming. Two and a half days of orienting one’s life around digital rewards, over a single weekend period.

How to math, ANet?

I’m normally fairly lenient with ANet in light of mistakes, but I consistently see poorly planned designs that are often waved away by simple math and earning/hour calculations. And it makes me worry for HoT. :\

It’s something worth considering. As the population ages, more of us will reach that 300% max. It doesn’t even necessarily warrant an “eater,” but some other way to expend them without feeling like a waste.
Agreed with the above idea on expanding their use as crafting material. Perhaps a new recipe that fuses several exotic lucks into spirit shards. (I think I recommended that in the other thread too. :P)
Or perhaps a once/day vendor that uses several exotic luck and a payment of gold and returns some kind of MF-enabled chest. Or something akin to the skritt vendors, without the silly ecto-gambling that (briefly) disrupted the market.

We’ll probably a use for luck currency in the future. Just on the forums, we generated plenty of ideas, but ANet is obviously going to be more careful about it.

cadmiumgreen.8712:

Nike.2631:

You are officially invited to my warband.

Only if you provide paper bags and glittery pompoms as recruitment benefits.

I’m to assume the guild hall will have as many bunks as necessary. Window sills for Blood, keyboards for Iron, and cardboard boxes for Ash.

Nike.2631:

Rauderi.8706:

Also, Charr are much more steam-era Romans than the noble tribal-savages that are in the Horde. It’s a refreshing distinction, actually.

I usually describe Charr culture as “Klingons without the %*&@$ing stupid. Not so much a ‘warrior culture’ as a ‘military culture’ that respects logistics and technical know-how, and appreciates that without ranchers, nobody fights… Now pass me some meat!”

I like them quite a bit and the non-human posture is a significant’ plus in my eyes.

Part of the reason I bring up the Romans. They were the military complex state of their day. Even the names occasionally speak to it. When the names aren’t “Slash Killbite” or something more visceral, it’s common to find Latin roots in their terminology and names: Legion, Imperator, and so on.

And yes, those names! I pity Sylvari for their one-word names, and for such an intelligent, research-driven race, the Asura are implausibly dense to choose one- or two-syllable names. Their research papers and patent systems must be a mess.

Charr names? Those tell stories. In a simple three words (well, two: one word plus a compound word), you know a good deal of who you’re dealing with.

Kravick.4906:

Nike.2631:

There is no MMO universe where making non-human races look and act more human is a good thing. We get FAR too many watered down pseudo-humans as it is.

This. Archeage is probably the worst in this regard.

GUH. Creepy uncanny valley nekoboys. With only 3 fur patterns. Three. “But ArcheAge has the best customization” dotdotdot. I called BS on that well over a year ago. :p

Meanwhile, if one comes from WoW enough to make the Orc-Tauren comparison, you should be used to the slouching. Getting awesome armor on half of the Horde is useless, because you can’t see the chest piece. (Wouldn’t mind the option for upright Charr, but I don’t consider it a must or kew about lore one way or the other.)

Also, Charr are much more steam-era Romans than the noble tribal-savages that are in the Horde. It’s a refreshing distinction, actually.

Still, OP has a slight point in aesthetics. The clipping. By the tank-mangled gods, the clipping. And most of the older styles just don’t work with their bodies, at all. But, ANet’s learning, so hopefully we’ll have some good options in the future.

I always go to the southmost bank stop when I’m in LA. Further up, there’s an NPC blocking the way, spouting some tired Sylvari nonsense. It’s worth the extra few steps to get away from it.
My major gripe is when craft masters are too close to the craft stations. I try to do some crafting, but nope, apparently I have to buy something instead.

Side note: Not getting rewards for frantically running around for 20+ minutes?
NOT FUN.

The stack thresholds are just dumb. 5 for every 10? I can barely get 8 for all the waypoint tagging and slough of a run to get to each event, assuming it’s not already finished. Last event I only got five (5).

Friggin’ 5.

Unless the gap between earnings and costs comes down dramatically, there is absolutely no point in me participating in this sham of a zerg event.

What’s more, this merely highlights some things we’ve been griping about for years:

1. Megaserver caps are too high. Too many people on each map. No matter how many shards you make or zones you spread events into (as what should have happened), each map will be too full when you force the players into them. It sucked for condition damage, it sucks for daily zone completion, it sucks for this event.
2. Travel speed is abysmally slow. Even with Air/Arcana swapping for 100% Swiftness uptime, I couldn’t reach some events in time. Roughly a 60-80% success rate, depending on time of day. Some of the problem is related to Item 1, above.

Thought I heard the old sound from someone’s horn.

I was wistful. ;__;

Valento.9852:

If the event could last more time… but I appreciate all the honesty.

I’d be fine with this going several more days. Maybe, say.. two weeks?

nexxe.7081:

These “eaters” are just a band-aid solution. They could just add it to the currency wallet instead.

Also true. The ‘salvage and click’ wasn’t really necessary. Buuut, they kittened the pooch when they added it as a requirement for Mawdry. >_>

Most common complaint? Lack of rewards in general.

I like the stacking mechanic, and it would be useful, if it weren’t so arcane and, well, use_less_.

I would have recommended:

• Each stack has a (stack)% chance for defeated enemies to drop a bloom. Granted, that contributes to tag-and-run, but there’s other ideas.
• At the end of the event, instead of 20, the granted blooms = Stack x Map Victories x modifier (10%). So a really active player on a coordinated map (12 stacks, 55 victories) would secure a lot more blooms, rather than the minuscule amount we get in comparison to the costs.
• As someone specified above, rewards show up in a chest per map completed (the central bloom in the middle is an ideal location). This stops a fair amount of the tag-and-run.
• During invasions, always have locations refreshing. Later into the invasion, it was hard to find locations that weren’t fully crowded. When the timer’s done, set the final reward after the last event is completed.
• Possibly have smaller event cycles. 20 minutes on, 10 minutes off. And for Gaheron’s sake, use more than one map. Probably use all 3 maps at once.

Long, hopeful post, Orpheal. I like it.

Other possible uses for Luck Essence (exotic):

• Vendor to convert Luck essence to spirit shards. Some players have gotten a little salty about the spirit shard change, so this would give them something to work with. And since the relationship would be blue/green → luck → spirit shard, it would give spirit shards an indirect market value.
• Add Luck Essence recipes to craft Ascended materials faster. Example: Mithrillium = 70 Mithril Ingot + 1 Glob of Ectoplasm + 12 Thermocatalytic Reagent + 10 Luck Essence (exotic). Like the regular Mithrillium but with no cooldown. (The cloth version can stay the same… 100 bolts, ecto, 25 thread, 10 luck)
• Mystic Forge recipe: 250 Luck Essence (exotic) + 10 Mystic Crystals (6 spirit shards) + 3 Mystic Coins + 1 rare gear / Mystic Forge Stone = 1 Exotic of rare gear’s type (or entirely random for MF Stone). [Buuut, I suspect that would ‘break’ the economy. :P]

To be fair, if this never gets a red post, it’s whatev.

…So long as that dreary, satire-worthy sound gets changed.

We all do?

Not so much, but it is a good plan for the future, as more and more veterans hit 300%MF.
Especially since the game gives out Essence of Luck as a reward for daily log-ins. >.>

Though, now I’m curious, what should a luck-eater do?
Spit out a loot chest that Magic Find actually works on?
Or would it work more like candy corn gobblers and spit out buffs to Magic Find?
Or maybe it spits out a guaranteed exotic? (Better chance to find those rare-skin exotics or precursors!)