Guild Wars 2

Agreed, Vlad. :\
It’s like they don’t quite think things through enough and try to fix with a patch, assuming they remember there’s a problem at all.

“Gentt now trades Sandy Bags of Gear for Unidentified Fossilized Insects.”

It almost seems like someone was listening? o_O

If ANet needs a “metric” about how the trait stuff came out, they can assign the following task to one, maybe two, people:

Take each post and assign “approve” or “disapprove”. Then calculate a percentage.
Bam, instant negative feedback.

There’s a dozen solid replacements for this trash, so get on it, devs. Grr.

Behellagh.1468:

If you add a non-RNG way for a reward, it becomes farmable. ANet doesn’t want “special” items to be farmable.

Farmable doesn’t matter if the items are account bound, though.
If ANet wanted to do this properly, they’d answer one very simple question:

1. Do we want this item tradeable?
Yes – RNG, not account-bound, for sale on Trading Post
No – Account-bound, purchasable with tokens or guaranteed through skill rewards.

Honestly, that’s it. The ‘no’ portion can be resolved in various ways: crafting, tokens, other currency (gold, skill points, karma, etc), task-based, Personal/Living Story, and then controlled with how much/often they want the player to get the thing.

Bellizare.5816:

On the plus side, they nerfed PvE so much that I can pretty much solo all the lower tier content using just the junk that drops.

Added benefit, level 80s can steamroll lower content like never before! [/sarcasm]
That’s not a good thing, when you want to help out a character that’s lower than you without completely dominating the content.

Bring the old trait scaling back, so the encounters are actually ..kind of.. a little more difficult. Not that they were before, but we like to pretend sometimes.

Rayti.6531:

• The only problem I have with rangers is their excessive use of knock back in PvE that seems to serve only one purpose: knocking a boss/champ out of my Ice Bow 4

My friend does this to me all the time with his engi. …while I’m using my greatsword.
I’m trying to find the right way to let him down easy.

Oxidia.8103:

I have 100% map on 4 characters, and cringed everytime i had to complete black citidel, its a freakin iron maze and everything looks the same and usually get lost cca 10-12 times.

Confession: I hate the Grove. Hate. I would accept Scarlet Briar coming back to life, if it meant her taking a giant comedy law mower and razzing the place into timber. Flat timber. As in, one level. I hate, hate, how vertical the Grove is.

I think staff selection is really bad (skin wise).

Maces are worse. ;__;

Vayne.8563:

LMAO OP! Excellent stuff.

Once there was a guy who ran past me without rezzing to a chest, and then left. A later found the same guy dead. I rezzed him to 90% and walked away. lol

If only you could get karma for that~

I confess that I don’t revive people with stupid names. In fact, sometimes, I will stand there and watch you die, or train monsters onto your deer-like stare as you AFK.

To think about it, as long as RNG drops things like Cleric’s Handbag of the Wizard (totally made that up :P), we need account/soulbinding?

Why? Because loot drops create something from nothing. By removing the ability to trade in certain things, we can, nominally, ensure that resources are needed to keep an economy moving.

The bug RNG (and precursor and and…) is still garbage, of course.

Sytherek.7689:

After opening 82 chests…

…I finally got my frelling fossilized insect.

That doesn’t change my opinion s expressed in this thread.

I am, however, much happier.

Conkittengrats, sir and/or ma’am.

But yes, still no excuse for pure RNG-gates. Even WoW started coughing up tokens that gave extra loot drop chances. (Then again, WoW players never had to earn 250-500 of, well, anything. :P)

Mr Pin.6728:

For the most part I agree with the original poster that RNG only items are inherently frustrating for players. A little bit about me as the original poster shared his background bit. I work in the video game industry primarily as an animator. This said any good animator has a fairly good understanding of game design, at least as it relates to animation concerns. One thing I thought should have been introduced (or included) is a way to earn RNG skins.

For example take the old bounty system from GW1 and rework it with the Black Lion trading company. Let players have the option to undertake Black Lion missions a certain number of times per day at various difficulties. Depending upon the difficulty of the mission the player gains a certain amount of “fame” (XP) and at a certain amount of total “fame” the player receives a Black Lion Ticket scrap. This is really a modification of the PVP reward system brought over to PVE that would allow designers to direct players to unpopulated zones, allow them to work towards long term goals more then say a daily, adjust the rate of return, and keep the players logging in.

The downside is the potential loss of revenue and the potential for inflation. I don’t have any information as to how much gold is taken out of the economy via gem conversion but I cant imagine that he compulsive player base that wants the skin now would refrain too much from buying in favor of this system.

Just my two cents that isn’t worth that much on one way to approach the problem in the original post.

An idea like that would at least add something to the game by giving other objectives. Fulfill enough quests for a ticket scrap (even a consistent scrap would do) would be great. Even better, how about a crafting daily for the BLTC? It would siphon out excess materials from the Trading Post, reward players in some fashion (with silver and a chance at a ticket scrap maybe), and give us a reason to keep crafting leveled.
And it could be done completely by automation, scanning the market for low value materials in order to set up the quests.

Maybe a mini pogo stick mount?
So, y’know, I can have the same camera and platforming hit box as those itty bitty Asura? ]}:3

I find it so weird that Sieran gets hate, when Forgal was just.. blah, like every other Norn. Treated me like a kid, no matter how many fires I pulled his frozen northern behind out of.

And yet, that one time that Risen said “You should have died with Forgal.” …You can bet I turned right around and whupped its kitten. Forgal might have been boring, but at least he had a proper Norn end.

Unlike Treesus, whose purpose is done. Zhaitan’s gone, now plantboy can go.

Log on
Pick “character of the day” to work on. If that character is sufficiently pimped out, park at a jumping puzzle, then pick another one.
Equip permanent log tools
Do dailies
Occasionally harass guild or join guild activities
Wednesday is Warband Wednesday – random running around with post-April-15 characters to make the slough more interesting
Continue for a few hours
Log off

I’d do more, but I have other pursuits as well. /shrug

^ – ^ – ^ – ^ – ^
Funniest derailment of a thread I’ve ever seen!

Or, if something horrible happens to Treeherne, we’d have to find a replacement for the Pact leader! Whirlwind adventure ensues as the Commander refuses the position, but eagerly seeks to find his replacement.

It’s a fantasy HR nightmare!

Since Pookie’s updating, why not?

Ran around for Warband Wednesday with my buddy. Content isn’t even a challenge with two people in tandem. Still not feeling like I’m approaching a build at level 46. There’s barely anything to “explore”, except the vast, vast expanses of Lornar’s Pass. We’re in a 25-40 zone because completion is required for a trait one of us wants, instead of being in a level-appropriate zone.

Did I mention that Lornar’s Pass isn’t all that interesting? And it’s huge? And uninteresting? This is by far the biggest slough of the character’s career, and the reward isn’t even for me. (I kinda owe my friend back for dragging him through Harathi 9 levels too early. :P)

Meanwhile, I took my Mesmer to Lyssa, sat and waited for a defense event, called it, and spent cash/points to get the trait instead. I’m glad the option’s there, because 3 gold is much easier and less time intensive than waiting at a boring spot for a fight I don’t want to do.

And, eureka-facepalm moment.

We have skill point events. These events we can start at any time, can be participated by others, and give us what we need to progress.

Why are there not triggerable trait point locations?! They could even start event chains for some of the late-game challenges. If the event chain fails, NPC comes back (maybe after a short cooldown or ‘fleeing’ the area on foot back to the spawn point), and whoever’s around can start it again. Just treat it like any other skill challenge to where the creatures don’t give loot, and we’re golden.

Peeps? Devs? Thoughts?

Beldin.5498:

However other classes have to sacrifice maybe some trait points or a skill-slot, so you can also just sacrifice a little bit DPS and just use runes of traveller or speed.

I realize there’s all kinds of ways to get speed boosts. My thief has Traveler runes so I don’t have to use the signet. Though I haven’t played him enough to find out if he can ever get swiftness on his own. Thief isn’t exactly big on self-buffs from what I’ve seen.

My ele air-swaps and holds on to a signet for his max speed boost. Uptime isn’t as optimal on my warrior, but it’s there. etc, so forth.
/digress

Thing is, travel is a very basic component of an MMO. That’s why other games have mounts, to ease laborious travel times and keep them equal. And they don’t provoke players into dedicating build options to get them.

I wouldn’t even be worried about it if we had alt-specs we could easily switch to, since we could have our travel spec and our wtfever spec. (Pursuant to another thread: not available in PvP or WvW, etc.)

Azrael.4960:

People have missed out the one argument against mounts.

Introducing mounts will bring all the whiny WoW kiddies over to GW2….

…because the QQmunity doesn’t whine all over these forums? =P

Or any forums?

It ain’t mounts making the tears flow~

+1 for the idea.
It’s a grind enough to make the Ascended piece, and it’s not an instant Legendary.
It’s even a step back in gear, since Precursors aren’t on the same tier.

So, being willing to take days of time to make an Ascended, then go through a conversion process (which probably involves some wine to get Zommy drunk enough to take such a strange request), and then still have to go through the work to get a Legendary.

So, yeah, “precursor crafting” solved, right here. Get on it, ANet.

Xenon.4537:

I know I’ve been reading the forums too much when I realize the guy I’ve been arguing with for 7 pages has been goal post shifting the entire time and ignoring half of what I say.

7 pages? Not the AP thread, then. Yet. =P
But I feel your pain.

So maybe you knowing you played GW2 too much is when you go to the forums with helpful, awesome, game-improving suggestions, knowing full well what hell awaits you.

Also, when }]:3 becomes one of your standard emotes.

Not to fuel the fire, but honestly, not every class/build has a way to get +25% speed and Swiftness. I wanted fast movement, so I did both on my warrior. Builds are easier to change now, thankfully, so that’s not even much of an issue.

But, having something that gives both isn’t such a huge sin, from a fairness perspective.
Keep them out of WvW (or give an item mount at each home base that only works in WvW) and out of PvP.

Bonus “lore points” if the mount actually has to run to you, instead being a magical thing that just shows up between your legs when you toot your horn. Or maybe a 3-5 second summoning.

Not completely against it, but there’s a lot of technical and PR issues that need to be sorted out, so I don’t see it happening.

Every time “P2W” is called, a kitten gets kittened up the kitten with a stainless steel kitten. Just sayin’.

Typically, Pay to Win implies a significant power boost. Bonus skins, not a power boost. Legendaries? …eeeeh, slight power boost, also a very expensive one. I’m not shelling out close to $300 for one.

( By the way, refer to the always awesome Extra Credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhz9OXy86a0 )

At the same time, making too many of the game’s exclusive items tradeable means that people are paying to skip content. People play to get the rewards they’re after, and/or the emotional fulfillment of the experience as they do so (which is also a reward). Removing play time by allowing content items to be purchased possibly reduces the chance that players will, well, play. Devs don’t necessarily want that.

Do I agree that the little bugs should be like that? Nope.
They don’t offer power, and there’s dozens of other skins in the game, not to mention it still requires some involvement to get the recipe, etc. Making those rare but tradeable isn’t such a bad thing. The devs should probably up the drop chance, since again, those items don’t provide power, only cosmetics, and that’s actually the kind of thing cash-shop games should be in the market of, anyway.

Evans.6347:

How much “skill” do you need in dungeons anyway?

Let’s assume that mister 20k AP is the epitome of skill in his chosen profession. Blindly knows his recharges, damage chains etc etc.

So what good will this super player be in a dungeon if it’s his first time? Fairly little.
Because it’s not about skill, it’s mostly about knowing where to stand, where to run, what to skip, what to abuse.

That’s not skill, that’s simply information you need to have. And that goes for the larger bit of the dungeons.

As much sympathy I have for those 5 minutes a speed runner loses out on by taking less experienced people along and explain the dungeon path to them, I certainly don’t think verbal abuse is warranted for that. Especially when those players have usually clocked over 4 – 5 thousand hours.

How horrible for that 0,000016% of your time.

Ayup, +1, and all that such.
But then, I play a patient game, and I’m not all that loot-focused. Shrug, half-dozen of one or the other. That’s probably why I agree with the above.

Honestly nothing against the speedruns themselves. People like loot. It just needs some PR help, and a lot of that comes from getting players on either side to:
A – Use full disclosure in their LFG.
B – Only join groups they meet requirements for. (And don’t be bitter, folks. Make your own groups. You’ll be surprised how quickly they fill.)

It’s really that simple. Don’t be a troll. Please. We’re all just trying to enjoy the game. Don’t join a quick-run group just to spite them so they’re forced to kick you. Don’t join a casual group and complain or start kicking so your friend can sneak in.

(That’s all generalized-you, not fingerpointing-you, by the way. I can only hope no one in this thread could be such a kitten.)

Kohlteth.3715:

Next thing we know it GW2 will have a Tardis and go back in time to stop Scarlet before she is born ……

( in best Arnie voice) " she will be …baaak"

1. A TARDIS mount would sell like friggin’ mad.

2. I think you misspelled ‘stomp’ about Scarlet~

Rabe.2456:

… You don’t want the number too low, because then this whole discussion wouldn’t make any sense, but you also don’t want to make it too high, because players will be upset again.

What do you guys think?

That is, in one form or another (methodology varying) what we’ve been asking for. Some kind of incremental way to know that we’re getting what we’re eventually going after. Using a true RNG gives no feedback on the effort-reward assessment, no attempt at influence. It’s not just gambling, it’s winning and losing with every chest, and no one likes losing all the time.

Behellagh.1468:

Then it’s not RANDOM CHANCE.

If it’s 10% chance that an item is in a chest, it doesn’t mean you are guaranteed to get one out of every 10. There is still over a 1% chance of getting none after opening 43 of them. There’s never been a guarantee that everyone will “win” but overall, 10% of all chests will have that item. You may get it on your first chest, you may get it on your 1,000th chest but everyone has a 10% chance per chest.

And that’s just not very good. :\
And we all know a 10% chance is WAY too generous for GW2 loot.
So, odds are, it’s 1%, or .1% (400 chests = 1% or ~4500 chests =1% respectively)

To repeat that, expect 4500 chests. That’s abysmal.

I do have to wonder how much difficulty to code (probably not much) or game load (maybe?) it would take to add increasing gains to loot boxes and the like. So, take 0.1% and increment it by 0.1 for every “miss.” By the 90th box, you’ve got a thing. Then the gains reset, and it starts all over at 0.1%
Number, of course, adjustable for how expected loot is supposed to happen.

Harper.4173

Sadly, it’s much easier for people to complain about various problems they encounter rather than try finding solutions.

It’s very hard for people to accept that ultimately part of the problem might lie with them too.

I’m still pretty sure the solution is do the work, research a guild, and guild up. There were even links above to the guild sections.
It’s especially dissonant that, not a few posts earlier, I see the “go Dulfy/YouTube the dungeon” as a method of research and self-improvement, but the same work and investment to improve the situation just isn’t there. By building a guild, there is a network created that, eventually, won’t even see a pug at all.

But, instead, the refrain. “It’s all we have.”

The undertone of everything that’s been said so far is “I’m entitled to dungeon loot, but I’m too lazy to optimize for speed.” Which sounds really familiar.

So, in that next 5-15 minutes of waiting for a zerk/80/15kAP group to come along, instead of flailing at mobs in Frostgorge for T6 mats, alt-tab to research some guilds. Then join one. Or start one and promote it.

What starts off as a buildup of running pugs turns into a fast lane to finding groups and running dungeons even faster. That is a solution, and one completely based around the player seeking a better dungeon experience.

Aline Castro.9820:

=o, so I read the three pages thus far and I still don’t understand the topic being discussed. Is it to tell people who whine about being kicked from groups because of low AP, that they shouldn’t whine? Or am I wrong?

Yeeeah.. I’m not sure what the purpose of this thread is either, other than to unapologetically apologize for using AP to kick people?
/tilt

The pro-AP arguments so far have all been “best we have” with no desire to look for better ones. :\

I find that very dissonant.

Research a meta build? Check.
Exotic or better ‘zerk gear? Check.
Grind WvW, PvP, dungeons, dailies, etc for AP? Check.
Suffer through bad groups or sigh at kicking because some people don’t read requirements? Check.

Research or make a guild and use time running pugs to invite good players to populate it? OH KITTEN NO THATS TOO MUCH WORK. The best way to get a group without undesired configs is to establish a pre-approved population. The odds of having to kick trolls and stack-unfamiliar players drops to a very favorable number.

Cliff.8679:

Killing off Trahearne would be great. It could open the doors for a storyline in which the Pact falls apart and the fight against the dragons becomes focused on the different nations working together rather than the orders.

Bonus if he gets corrupted like Scarlet and Aerin and we get to put him down ourselves. I’ll be the first to say that the hate surrounding Trahearne isn’t so much his fault as a character and it is more a failing of the personal story itself, but the two have become so heavily associated there really isn’t any escaping the stigma anymore.

Trahearne standing in battle stance , facing right at the player, with an army of undead and corrupted plants behind him…
Could you imagine the Squee Heard Round the World when that trailer got released?

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Case closed.. This kangaroo court is adjourned.

Psh, like the thread is over just because you say it is.

[/thread]

NOW it’s over. =P

Kidding aside, the complaints about the too-RNG nature of rewards has been nigh-constant on the forums. (So have Traits since April 15th, but I digress.)

It’s been a very disappointing way of holding players back from things they want, even when they do the right things to get them. (Black Lion chests….)

And there have been threads that asked for more task-oriented or challenging methods, rather than just cleaving through (sometimes literally) a thousand chests to waste time on. I’d like to see it addressed, especially in favor of a token-oriented method.

In thinking about it, having a “piece” guaranteed with a very small chance of getting the whole thing, at least gives us an opportunity where there isn’t one. Add an expensive component to it as a gold sink. Make skill points a thing to use. Buy parts with karma. That makes things good for the economy by filtering out money.

Since I did precursors as an example earlier, how about the fossilized bug thing:

250 “amber drops” + 250 silky sand and turn those in to the vendor for a bug. Bug gets traded at the same vendor for the specific piece you’re looking for (if I recall correctly; I took a glance after I think I got one), then go from there.
Or start with 500 of each and decrease the amount according to Zephyrite favor.

Or if you wanted to be more rigorous about it, Mystic Forge:
Again, 250 “amber fragments” + 250 silky sand (or geodes, just thought of that) + the skillpoint wine bottle + 50 Thermo components from the craft vendors = 1 prized bugthing for making amberite weapons.
…or 250 geodes + 250 sand (500, the numbers don’t overly matter) + etc.

There’s options that are easy to execute.

Isn’t there a speedrun megaguild somewhere? That would solve most of these “I’m selfish and don’t want to nubpug for my loot” requests.

You could even call it “Advanced Procurement (AP)”, in honor of this thread.

Harshness aside, if it’s so much work to filter out non-practiced people from speed runs, just build up a sufficiently large pool of approved individuals. There’s even a separate section of the forums just for guild recruitment.

If there’s a guild that doesn’t already exist, then do as suggested for LFG and make your own.

Links to get y’all started:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/recruitment
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/lfguild
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/recruitment/Small-PvE-guild-lf-non-casual-zerkers

Having a whitelist is much, much faster and certain than gear pings and AP gates.

Considering the way that FF14 works, because of the console set, no thanks.
It is, by far, the most sluggish game I’ve ever played. In order to keep “optimized” people from spamming commands far more quickly than any controller input, nearly all the global cooldowns are 2.5 seconds. It’s maddening to sit there doing nothing while waiting for all my skills to come off cooldown.

Ox See Sox.3687:

Suggestion: On future expand the system for New Skills, Armor Skins, Weapon Skins, Titles, Consumables.

This would have been loads better than forcing players to grind out traits through laborious and questionable objectives.

Olba.5376:

…

1. The thing is, it’s not quite that simple. Keeping a log of the drop history of all items on every single character (or even account) is not a feasible solution. And you cannot just categorize things into “rare” and “common”, because then you’ll run into issues where people end up getting the rare items they don’t want, which is no different from the current situation. If anything, a token-based system like what we have in dungeons would be better.

I’d been recommending that in the various “precursor unfair” threads for a while now. By turning it into a Mystic Forge recipe, you can get players to invest in rares and exotics, instead of having these horribly inflated precursor prices.

Example similar to what I posted before:

Every Level 80 weapon flush at the Mystic Forge yields a Precursor Token. (Or knowing ANet, 0-3 tokens.) I’d recommend a chance at 1 for every rare and an almost-guaranteed one for every exotic, 50% and 90% respectively. It takes 250 Precursor Tokens for the recipe.
That satisfies a financial component. Spend gold (or gems) get components.

The actual recipe is done at 500 crafting for the weapon’s type. This requires similar investment to Ascended gear, and can even use Ascended materials.

Similarly to Ascended, there is a recipe as karma-purchase item.

Recipes for Ascended Dowel and specific precursor type (karma)
Precursor Inscription (Precursor Tokens) + Ascended Dowel (Ascended materials from various game participation)
Orichalcum and Ancient Wood parts (head and handle)

Kinda shorthanded it a bit at the end, but a method like the above would give slow, but guaranteed success in building a precursor. It also uses a spread of the game’s resources.

Consider it a QoL issue, but the Transformation skills are bad. Bad, bad.

Sticky movement and animation, a host of skills with barely any time to read them, and short effect times with punishing long cooldowns.

Granted, the second issue is easy(ish) to resolve by using them out of combat and staring at them a bit, so it’s not a huge concern. But anyway…

Point is, they’re just very unwieldy. Auto-attacks are turned off, and their combat isn’t nearly as fluid as standard weapon attacks. In a reflex-oriented combat system, that ranged from undesirable to a death sentence.

So, my hope is that the Transform skills get an update, but I also guess that starts question.

Do people use transformation skills (thus justifying dev time to smooth them out), and are there people who would use them, if they weren’t so clunky?

It was mentioned before that, instead of specific tasks for specific unlocks (which are not conceptually related anyway, unlike the elite skills in GW1), finishing tasks could apply points to a trait pool that lets you unlock any traits you want.

This keeps the tasks but gives players the freedom to choose how they advance.

Just as an example:

Have three tiers of tasks to represent each tier of trait skills:
Adept skills cost 1 point. Adept tasks give 1 point. (Zone completion, is NOT a 1-point task, I’ll just say that now.) Master costs/gives 3, Grandmaster costs/gives 5.
This lets a player decide how many tasks they want to invest toward a skill, or if a player accidentally gets one, it’s a happy bonus, instead of a worthless trait he never had any intention of finishing.

Alternately, make the time/risk investment decide how many points it’s worth. Zone completion is huge and should be worth 3-5, regardless of zone level. Fighting off a champ, 1 point. Temple defense, 3-5 points. And so on.

The skill trainers can even be left in, exchanging trait points for 3 skill points and 50 silver each. Or, since the above is more fluid, it can become a larger resource sink at 4 skill points and 65 silver each. (Fiddlybit details, honestly, proof of concept is there.)

nexxe.7081:

Those Norn shapeshifting skills should just be tonics. They are pretty much useless as elite skills.

If their movements weren’t so chunky and the auto-attack was set on, they’d be.. okay. I pulled out of a bad melee situation with wolf transformation before, but all told, all the transformations suck.

Victory.2879:

I find all this amusing. What happens is this. Players form more and more elitist groups to avoid having to teach new players/less experienced the ropes so that they can complete in the least time possible. This carries on for a while, then the most experienced get bored of this aspect of the game and move on, leaving a smaller and smaller pool of ‘elite’ players, who become more and more vocal about the lack of experienced players.

Guess what? They are complaining about something they themselves helped create. If you are forming pug groups, be willing to take longer and have to train up new people- occassionally you will find a real gem who in a few runs becomes better than you could ever hope to be.

If you want elite runs then join a dungeon running guild as one of your guilds or form one so you can play with the people that suit your style. Don’t expect to be able to form the perfect group from a bunch of pugs.

Using AP as a measure of whether someone will be any good is a bit like using height to measure whether they can wash my car the best. They could play bearbow for their 18k AP and then be joining your group on a zerk built warrior that they have played for 3 days.

AP doesn’t measure skill, and certainly not skill at a certain build/profession in a dungeon instance. The only thing high AP tells you about a players is that they chase AP- which reminds me of all the free kills we got when AP farmers came to WvW with their legendaries and shiny gears. Did having a high AP make them better at playing in wvw? Nope.

Fantastic insight, Victory.

I think that’d require a dev response.
Not to be cynical, but lolno. :\

But yes, I think we should have actual dev-stickies about their current policies and lines of thought on common matters.

Djinn.9245:

…He would be required to report it to the authorities who would appoint an experienced and trusted expert to examine them.

Unless Taimi has no one to report to. That’s why she hooked onto Braham so quickly in Season 1. She needed someone to get help. Thusly, biconics.

I’d love to have a switch to go between traveling and actual combat. The whole reason I ended up with Discipline/Warhorn on my warrior is so I can march significantly faster across the map.

I’d be more than content with 3 slots, so I could have:
Traveling (for whatever speed traits/skills/utilities)
Standard combat (for melee and clusters)
Ranged combat (so I can quick-swap before a boss encounter)

But mostly a way to give some characters a travel config that I can stop using when I get to my destination.

I’d have to say no for using it for WvW though.

Orangensaft.7139:

Rauderi.8706:

I somehow managed to transmute my breather. o_O

you probably just took one of the aquabreathers from the karma merchant in the bloodtide coast which have the look of land helmet/mask etc

Newp. Wasted a charge on it and everything. =P
I might have to double check to be sure (I think I turn off helmet appearance on my mesmer), but it had something to do with me being underwater at the time I tried to transmute.

I find that offensive!

..nah, just joking. =P

I really don’t get all the fuss. Well, maybe some of it.

Marjory/Kasmer (Marmer? Kasjory? What is their Hollywood name?) mostly felt rushed, and there is definitely that perception of constantly being all over each other, while I have to feel like a pervy voyeur for watching.

As for Taimi, I loved what she was, at first. I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't love a spunky girlchild historian who travels back into the past to study/stop Scarlet and her plans to empower an elder dragon? But this squee she has for Scarlet is fifteen shades of guild by association. We didn’t like Scarlet, and we don’t like seeing Scarlet portrayed in any kind of a positive manner, so when Taimi fawns over her, it’s really aggravating.

[Moderator note: this post quotes a post that was deemed inappropriate and removed, and therefore the quoted portion has also been removed.]

I somehow managed to transmute my breather. o_O

I’m still not seeing the point of this thread in the first place.
AP-gating is a flimsy methodology, but people are going to use it. There’s enough anecdotes that say “it works okay; it’s the best we have” and “lol 18k AP no dungeons.” So, conceptually, it’s a wash.

I don’t even disagree with some of the conceptual steps: AP correlates to time in game, time in game correlates to experience, experience correlates to skill, if the time invested is spent in challenging situations instead of routine execution. (I really should find and link the actual study for that last part, hm.) I merely disagree with the notion of its utility, when there are other measures that are used (gear, build, stated experience).

Tman kinda hit the nail on the head. There’s sufficient blowback against AP-gating that, somewhere out there, someone felt the need to defend it. Which means there is some discontent and cognitive dissonance.
Is it about assuaging guilt for perceived offenses? Feeling rejected by the general population for being exclusionary, an outsider? It is, by and large, not on the side of social acceptability.

And I wonder how much of the kittenhurt could be eased if people would just use the word “please”. Zerk, experienced only pls comes across a little better than 10kAP ZERK PING WAR/MES ONLY. Though I suppose the addition of all-caps is a bit hyperbole. Kind of.

Zardul.3952:

make people use mounts and stop being lazy.

Isn’t the point of a mount so you can be lazy instead of…
…walking?

Also, as Xenon pointed above, 100/1.33 is smaller than 100/1. Mounts make the world tiny. If you really want to enjoy Tyria’s vast expanses, walk.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Still waiting for my chocobo with chocobo theme from FFXII.

Nah, Vama’ Allo Flanco

. . . I’m really digging my FFIX soundtrack lately.

All the +1s, sir.
~kweh

Behellagh.1468:

It means that you’re probably going to have invested enough time to be up to date with the latest builds, have ascended/legendary gear, and generally played through most of the game lots of times.

I have over 7,500 AP. I don’t know a thing about builds. I picked traits that I understood what they did, not how well they may interact with each other or other character builds. I have three trait lines at Tier 2 and one at Tier 1. That means I don’t have 2 at Tier 3 thus my build is “broken” by current standards.

I don’t care. It works well enough for me soloing PvE.

And I don’t have any ascended gear. Again, Exotic is good enough for soloing PvE. I don’t do fractals (at all), don’t do dungeons (often), don’t do PvP (at all) and only occasionally, when working toward map complete, do WvW.

So your “assumption” of what a high AP means simply doesn’t apply to me and I don’t think I’m unique or rare in this regard. Fear us you hard core fanatics. The dedicated “casual” player.

Unfortunately, OP isn’t interested in actually providing numbers, just anecdotes. Anyone out there doing double-blind studies on whether AP is a valid measure of this, hitherto undefined, “skill” which isn’t about speed runs, yet totally is?

Skill should not be correlated with the “fast dungeon runs” since fast dungeon runs don’t only take skill.
-
In this case getting the loot in the fastest possible way.

I would (unsarcastically) actually be interested to see methodology and metrics.
A group of 4 can steadily run dungeons, taking any person that comes along. One measures AP, another takes note of gear. Particular dungeon and path familiarity is asked. Poll about build and meta-adherence. Mark uncooperative responses as such, and note any ragequits. Take count of dungeon clear times.

As much as I loathe this kind of backhanded elitism, if AP is actually a metric, instead of wishful thinking and rosy nostalgia of good runs, I am curious how the evidence would actually stack up.
And then we can have that as reference, instead of seeing the same unsupported arguments over and over again, once every other week or so, about whether AP is or is not fair.

And again, common sense, time:
If someone’s using AP as a limiter, you probably don’t want their group anyway.
If you want a group that isn’t listed in LFG, make one.
To all: Be clear about your requirements when making a group.

That’s it. Seriously. AP, yea or nay, doesn’t need defending.

[quote=4225255;Teofa Tsavo.9863Well, to be fair, the dailies have led to a number of folks achieving mastery at dodging wurm spit. Ya know.. in case there is some endgame thing involving that.

Not me. I cheese it with an underwater thief. If I bother.
[/quote]

I tend to use blowdart hyleks. One roll, 5 dodges.
Or a Mesmer sword. Effortless dodging.