Guild Wars 2

I assume they do the base time, multiplied by a “speed up / slow down” number. Without effects, like so:

10s * (1) = 10s

With slowdown:

10s * (1 – .66..) = 3.33..s

With speed up:

10s * (1 + .66..) = 16.6..s

With both:

10s * (1 – .66 ..+.66..) = 10s

If the dev says they cancel each other out, it doesn’t take mathematical wizardry to figure out how that’s possible.

Thanks for posting this! I didn’t have time (or enough interest) to watch the entire thing, and then I thought, “Hey, I bet Dulfy has a write-up on it.”

Aaaand I was right!

It’s a bit strange how it works out. I’m currently using Final Shielding→Elemental Attunement→Evasive Arcana, and now I’m going to have to pick between my former-master and current-grandmaster traits if I want to stay in Arcana.

I kept with Arcana after they changed how it affected attunement recharge rates, mainly because Evasive Arcana is some ridiculous utility, but I might have to try out some other builds if I’m going to lose Elemental Attunement.

That said, I’m not too torn up about it. I can’t speak for PvP or WvW, but I’ve always felt really powerful in PvE as an Ele.

I just don’t see the appeal. It’s very expensive, compared to just starting a new character (if you have an open slot,) and you seem to get very little in return for it.

Would people still do it? Probably. But a lot more people are going to look at that and say, “Anet has no idea what they’re doing, that’s ridiculous.”

I’m not opposed to people having a “story reset” option or a “profession swap” gem store item, but if they’re going to implement those things, I’d rather see them done in a more appealing, less convoluted way.

If you want to do PvP, you can jump right in. PvE is one way to unlock skins you can use across all game modes, and it might be an easier way to pick up the basics than fighting other players, but you don’t need to level up or acquire gear for PvP.

Unless you have a serious need to collect EVERY EVENT ITEM EVER or compete for achievement point leader boards, I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t start out now if you’re still interested. I don’t PvP, so I can’t comment on how that scene is coming along, but PvE is still lively.

heartless.6803:

-snip-

I know there are people who don’t like all the coats in Medium armor, but as long as this set exists, it might as well be made available. Having one less coat option isn’t going to give us more non-coat options.

There are several old PvP sets that could use a reintroduction…although, if they’re added as Personal Story rewards, that’s not very convenient for people who have already completed the story, but want those skins. Hrm.

Jumping puzzles are a pretty frequent culprit for this, since they require a decent amount of space and usually don’t have POI, waypoints, or hearts in them.

If you’re looking for unexplored areas where you have all the map items, it might be a jumping puzzle, and those can often have tricky entrances.

What game mode really needs more HP? Is it a particular problem in PvP, WvW, PvE, Dungeons, etc?

Is low HP keeping Ele from being viable somewhere? Do they compensate for it in other ways, and would those ways have to be nerfed to make up for increased HP?

I don’t WvW, so I have to ask: What’s it used for?

I get why you might want to do this, but there isn’t an option for it. Once something unlocks or is achieved on your account, there’s no way to wipe or undo it. You can delete items, characters, mail, guild, etc., but achievements and account unlocks (dyes, skins, etc.) are permanently linked to your account.

Still, if you’re looking for a fresh start, simply deleting your characters should be pretty close. You might not get the quick buzz of early achievements, but you’ll still unlock skills, level up, have a fresh story, etc.

The Fort Mariner waypoint really had me confused for a while, since I figured it was just bugged from the event that happened there during the evacuation of Lion’s Arch. Living Story Season 2 talked about Mordremoth and waypoints, but it wasn’t until someone pointed it out on the forum that I made the connection.

Of course, if you haven’t played Season 2, it’s just confusing to have waypoints on the map that are always contested, even if there is no event that takes place there. You can see the waypoint is broken if you visit in person, but that’s easy to write off as a part of being contested if you’re not paying close attention to how waypoints look while they’re event-contested. (And who is? There’s an event going that demands attention.)

While it’s easy to get to WvW from the menu, Fort Mariner is also home to the only Guild Banker in Lion’s Arch. The plot about Mordemoth, ley lines, and waypoints makes sense, but it’s confusing, inconvenient, and I’m not sure it’s adding much to the game in this case.

Edit/Correction: Apparently Guild Registrars also give access to the bank, so there might be another one in Trader’s Forum in LA.

If an achievement has a title, it will say so, letting you know which achievements give titles.

I’m sorry if you actually killed that many giants by mistake, though. That’s impressive. o_o

As J.a.f.w. says, it’s a technical difference preventing people from mixing armor weights, not just a “classes should look like their weight” restriction.

Outfits let light classes look heavy and heavy classes look light, so it really does seem to be a technical problem, rather than a policy one.

Has it only been a year since the April 2014 Feature Pack? Feels like it’s been longer since the town clothes change.

As much as I’d like to see town clothes tonics turned into outfits, at this point, I’m not optimistic. I think the other requests (toggle-hide head/shoulders/gloves, hot key for outfits) seem pretty reasonable. Particularly the hotkey. I used to swap town clothes on and off all the time, but now I tend to spend longer periods in one of the other, usually my armor, because it’s a hassle to go through the hero window.

I also miss outfits coming with costume brawl toys. Maybe I’m spoiled by the old outfits, but I don’t feel like I’m getting the same value for a costume without a toy as I did with one. Even if I don’t use it for costume brawl, I get a lot of fun out of the effects.

I think a forced name-change seems like an appropriate response.

When you choose an obviously controversial name like that, you should know what you’re getting into. This can’t possibly come as a surprise.

You might argue that there are worse names that are allowed (or you might try to argue that, anyway,) but that doesn’t make this name acceptable.

…Silly question, but you crafted all the way to 500 without noticing that unlocked recipes were character-specific?

10 laurels and 6g isn’t something to sneeze at, but I’m not sure I’d call it a small fortune, compared to the costs incurred crafting to 500 and building an ascended weapon. By that point, I think players should generally understand that crafting progress and unlocks are all character-specific.

Could more warnings be beneficial? Sure. But that’s the case with anything that doesn’t include explicit hand-holding, and crafting as a system seems to clearly establish its rules long before a player should be buying ascended recipes.

Sorry for your misfortune, though! Mistakes can happen to anyone.

Really hoping this gets a gem store treatment. It was awesome.

^_^

When I notice I’m approaching the limit, I just rename the folder and move it to my screenshot archive. (Renaming is enough. I keep my archive on another, more spacious hard drive.)

Something I like is the way my goalposts keep changing. Many of these goals weave in and out of each other, but at various times I’ve felt a sense of completion for…

- Reaching level 80
- Finishing all the dungeons on Story Mode
- Finishing all Personal Story missions
- Crafting all-celestial armor
- Running characters through storylines for each of the three Orders
- Seeing all of the post-Order / Orrian story missions
- Crafting an ascended weapon
- Crafting Mawdrey
- Map Completion (2% to go!)
- Reaching Fractal Scale 10

Eventually, I might shoot for running through a storyline for each race, and a level 80 for each profession. I still have unexplored dungeons paths, +10 fractals, and I’ve only done the bare minimum amount of WvW. I’d like to craft ascended armor, too, if I can ever choke down the damage that’s going to do to my gold stash.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Serbianwolf.1652:

Please, think about this seriously!!!!

They did. That’s why it’s a cool looking skin-skill which is only useful for low-level newbies and does not make those people who paid for the Deluxe edition more efficient than others.

I think it would be fair to compare it to Hounds of Balthazar, or, as the OP does, to Warband Support, since racial skills are widely accepted as being weaker than profession skills, so that there’s no significant advantage to creating a character with a particular race/class combination. The Sylvari skill Summon Sylvan Hound is an even closer comparison, and someone wrote up some of the pros and cons of each on that page.

How the Mistfire Wolf compares to those generally, I really couldn’t say. It does at least have a better active time to cooldown ratio than Hounds of Balthazar, at least, and I use that all the time on my Ranger since I don’t really like the Ranger elites.

Edit: Also, you don’t unlock the Elite slot until level 30, and there’s nothing to stop you from unlocking a class elite right away at that point. The idea that it’s only useful for low-level newbies just doesn’t make sense. (Unlike, say, the Hero’s Band.)

There’s some great advice in this thread.

It definitely gets easier, both as your character gets stronger and you learn the game, making you a stronger player. Remember to dodge, and watch enemy animations for clues on when to dodge. Some attacks, especially strong, heavy ones, become predictable when you know what to look for, so you can roll out of the way.

Try not to tackle too many enemies at once early in. Even late in the game, you can get into trouble if you have attacks coming at you from all sides, with stuns and other conditions tripping you up. With the right build and experience, you can run into a pack of foes and rain fiery death around you, but it’s not a good way to start out!

If you’re still finding yourself getting hammered, it might be good to try a tanky class, like Warrior or Guardian. My first character was an Elementalist, and when I created my second, a Ranger, I was surprised by how much sturdier I was. (That said, I powered on through with my Ele first, and it’s still my favorite.)

I assume this is all accurate, because most of it sounds reasonable.

For a relatively low-key update, this sounds awesome. I’ve been wanting a first-person camera for screenshots and video for a long time, and it never made a lot of sense to me that WvW was required for World Completion. I’m ambivalent about Stability changes, but 3-to-kick sounds like a good change.

It’s mostly little things, but I’m really looking forward to this update.

For a little further clarification, the Chalice of Glory now gives 5,000 PvP rank points, which are different from Glory. Glory was the old PvP reward currency, which has been removed from the game.

The problem with Glory was that playing a lot of PvP and getting a lot of Glory didn’t really progress you in the rest of the game. Armor/weapon skins you earned in PVP couldn’t be used in PvE or WvW, for instance. They phased Glory out early last year in favor of the current system.

For what it’s worth, if you don’t PvP, your Glory wouldn’t have been very useful under the old system, anyway. Since Glory vendors had rank-gated tiers, you’d have been able to buy a limited range of items, and a lot of those (armor/weapon tokens, PvP salvage kit, etc.) became obsolete when the PvP reward system was merged into the system we have now.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glory

You could have bought three Tomes of Knowledge and an eight slot bag, basically.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the Flamekissed Armor on sale. (That is, at a discount. It’s always available.)

Thank you, Dasenthal, for elaborating on what precursors do for the economy, frustrating though they are. There’s gotta be a gold sink somewhere, and they’re a major one.

Personally, I hope the 3rd Birthday Gift has something unexpected, like the Birthday Blaster. It’s goofy, but it was a lot of fun to open it up, have that moment of WHAT IS THIS, and then run around blasting cake everywhere. Really didn’t see that coming.

Eh, while temporarily increased spam is a consequence of the sale, I think it would be mistake to throw out the sale completely just for that reason. As Seera observed, $10 is a pretty easy sell if you have friends who might try the game, or you want an extra copy for yourself or a friend.

There’s no good way to make this work. If the precursors are tradeable, it would tank the market, and if they’re not…it would still be pretty damaging to the market. Maybe if they’re account bound and randomly assigned, it could limit the impact, because not everyone wants to make the legendary <insert weapon you wouldn’t use or don’t like> even if they had the precursor. (And couldn’t sell it.)

Kinda hard to see birthday precursors as being so awesome, in that light. Many people, myself included, can’t afford the precursor for a Legendary, so they might not mind the precursor market tanking, but I’m wary about the other economic effects that would have. I make most of my money selling rares and exotics on the trading post, and I have to wonder how much of their demand is fueled by people trying to forge precursors.

Just giving out tons of precursors is a reckless solution to a complex problem. Hopefully the upcoming precursor crafting will show the amount of time and thought the developers have spent on it.

Reminder to anyone reading this topic: Most of it is nine months old. Anything before Darksteel’s post is old, and it’s likely that many or all of the old posters are unlikely to see anything you say to them.

Regarding Darksteel’s question, RoseofGilead is correct. It can, at least according to the Wiki, but you’d probably be better off just buying a new updgrade component.

1 Upgrade Extractor = 250 Gems = 28g48s

Even the most expensive Jewels don’t cost more than 63s, so the only reason you might want to use an Upgrade Extractor is to transplant infusions without destroying the ascended gear they’re attached to.

High-grade agony uinfusions might be the most compelling use for the upgrade extractor, because they actually can cost a large amount of gold. A +9 Agony Infusion goes for 26g25s on the Trading Post, and a +10 costs 54g99s.

Edit: I stand corrected. Refractors are jewels worth much, much more than the ones I linked.

The problems with the Living Story episodes being obtainable out-of-order, with or without playing the Personal Story first, are pretty clear. It works fine if you played through everything as it came out, but I can see where it might be confusing if you start or resume the game during a LS release.

Let’s talk about options that would improve upon it: Yakez, are you suggesting the LS updates be released as one big chapter, instead of gradually over the season, or are you suggesting that, once the season is over, they be sold as one bundle, instead of as individual chapters?

Is that better than selling individual chapters? Why?

If I’m just running around, obviously there are a lot of faces I skim over.

If I’m in a party, however, I see faces in the party lineup, and if I see an interesting character who catches my eye, I’ll often make an effort to get a close look at them. I’ve got more than a few screenshots of characters waiting around for bosses, or at crafting stations, or wherever, that I passed and thought, “Hey, that’s a cool look for a character.” Face, hair, armor, weapon, dyes, etc. all play into that overall look.

If you don’t like being in a group that skips mobs, say so in the LFG window. “P3, no skipping” for example, or “P1, killing all mobs.”

It won’t make it competitive or anything, but it might help you find groups with like-minded players, or players who don’t care whether they zip through the dungeon as fast as possible.

I do this all the time with dungeons/fractals, except I label mine “casual-friendly.” I’ve had great success with it so far.

Sieg.8439:

Legendary jewelry would be pointless, as Legendaries are only there for cosmetic effect as a trophy of achievement. Legendary stats aren’t better than Ascended, they just match it.
What would be the point of Legendary jewelry if you can’t see it and it only matches existing Ascended jewelry?

Last Halloween did have some experiments in jewels that change character appearance. Whether they ever use this concept for 500 jewelry-making is anyone’s guess, but the tech for special effects jewelry is available, at any rate.

I’m not sure if Mike O’Brien said “never,” but we won’t be getting a raised level cap or another gear tier of Heart of Thorns, at any rate.

I don’t think they’ve announced anything one way or the other about crafting in HoT, but I’d be very, very surprised if they raised the crafting cap. 500/Ascended crafting is still extremely expensive, and if they’re not introducing a new gear tier, it’s hard to see what the point of 600 crafting would be.

I would be less surprised if they raised jewelery to 500, but it’s unclear what that would even be useful for.

I think it’s mostly to prevent manipulation. I don’t want to be placed in a round of Crab Toss where a group of friends have agreed to let one person win while everyone else protects them, for instance.

It can be frustrating, though, especially for less competitive activities like the Halloween and Winter jumping puzzles.

I was expecting this thread to be a typical beating of the old dead horse, but it seems like a pretty reasonable complaint. A month seems like a long time not to be able to mail ten gold. I don’t know what kind of process goes into lifting that limit, but evidently it could be better.

If it’s actually a good system and this is just a weird situation that slipped through the cracks, that’s where more information about this system might come in handy.

I’d say there’s a big difference between “pay to win” as most people would understand the phrase and paying for an advantage usually labeled “a convenience.”

Yeah, someone with a bunch of bag slots, or a portable merchant, a clockwork mining tool, etc. can spend less time than I do with some aspects of the game, like inventory management. However, while it might take me longer than them to obtain some things, I can generally still compete with them.

Compare that to, say, an endless runner, in which I might just continue buying lives to force my way to the top of the charts. For a lot of pay-to-win games, the difference between paying and not-paying is enormous, and not just in an “it becomes measurable over time” way.

I have mixed feelings about convenience items in general, whether they’re XP boosters or the old instant trait reset items, but I think it’s an overly broad usage of the phrase “pay to win” to label GW2 as such. If your goal is, for instance, to have the best skins, and your favorite skins are all purchasable with gems or gold, sure, you can pay to win that goal. At that point, though, you’re basically tossing out the microtransaction model in its entirety, and whether we can buy bag slots with gold for cheap becomes a very minor question in comparison.

IS THAT A THREAT?

I’LL HAVE YER INTESTINES FOR GARLANDS, MATEY

Unless it’s not a threat against me, in which case, I didn’t hear anything.

I liked Season 1 better, but, frankly, I also had a lot more spare time during Season 1, so I didn’t feel the blistering pace of it like a lot of people did. Now, however, I’m tighter on game time, and it’s been a big convenience to pick up and play the smaller story chunks. I still get frustrated by the story sometimes, moving by inches instead of by feet, but that was generally true of Season 1 as well. We did get some cool instances along the way.

As for the two new zones, I really like Dry Top and Silverwastes. I think they’re well-designed and fun. -shrug-

Season 2, like Season 1, isn’t without flaws, but without writing a very, very lengthy post detailing and explaining them, I had a pretty positive experience.

I’m okay with it. I know a lot of people had their heart set on more races, weapons, and classes, but I’m not really sure what I’d want from a new race or how I’d want it integrated into the Personal Story, I don’t personally use all the weapons I have now, and I still haven’t finished all the current classes, or even started a Warrior.

I don’t want to make it all about me, because I know other people play differently, but as long as I’m saying whether I’m personally interested or not, I mostly want new places to go and new things to see/do with my favorite existing characters.

HoT doesn’t seem to fit a lot of expectations for a traditional expansion, but I don’t mind that. I’m glad they seem to be pretty up-front about that.

Next election?

For the Captain’s Council?

WHEN SOMEONE DIES, YARR.

I don’t mean to knock the September Feature Pack, because there are more than enough threads for or against various parts of it elsewhere, but it wasn’t exactly brimming with new content. I’ll leave its merits and flaws to other threads, but I think it’s a mistake to assume that a Feature Pack necessarily includes a big content addition to keep people occupied.

I think Riku is right on the money here: What would you like to see in the next feature pack, before Heart of Thorns, if it were possible?

I think it would be interesting to compare this shared bag concept to the Banker Golem (2 Weeks) or the Permanent Bank Access Express. If you have one on each character, it’s very similar to the shared bag idea in functionality.

Of course, that would cost you $25 / 2000 gems a month to do that for two characters, so it would obviously be very expensive.

Knowing what’s currently available, how would you price the sharing bags?

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Redenaz.8631:

I’m skeptical that SteamOS, or Linux in general, would be a highly profitable market to port GW2 to. Linux has a whole only has about a 1.34% market share, and I’d say (completely anecdotally) that a not-insignificant amount of those users run some form of Windows on the side, especially if they’re gamers. SteamOS will definitely encourages some growth of Linux-based gaming, but “only able to download beta from some secret website” isn’t exactly a firm foundation at the moment.

There’s an easier way to say not-insignificant: significant. Just for future reference

It’s written that way partially for emphasis, partially because I’ve read too much Douglas Adams, and partially because I like telling grammar what to do, instead of being told what to do by grammar.

To expand a little on what I wrote previously:

Linux is a market very lightly tapped by AAA-style games, so one might think that putting a big MMO there would be a lucrative endeavor. You have to consider, though, that it’s a lot more complicated to port a big game like GW2 than an indie game, and the market is really, really small.

It’s not just small because of Linux’s market share, either. Even among people who use Linux, you have to factor out business or otherwise non-personal setups, and then from those you have the market of people who want to play an MMO, but don’t already have Windows or OSX. The slice gets smaller and smaller.

Obviously, “It’s a small market” isn’t the whole story. OSX isn’t a market giant, but there’s a version of GW2 for it, so that line has to be drawn somewhere. Considering the OSX version isn’t on quite the same standing as the PC version, it stands to reason the Linux port would be even less supported, and after a point it doesn’t seem worthwhile to invest in one at all, not when you have a large, already-invested market you can cater to instead.

RoseofGilead.8907:

dietzero.3514:

So borderline pay to win.

lolno. You don’t need 8 bag slots on every character, or even on one character, to win anything. It’s “pay to hoard”.

All right, how many gems did that punchline cost you? Because you just won the thread, far as I’m concerned.

Kitt.2567:

Redenaz.8631:

Kitt.2567:

SteamOS has not even released yet,(only be able to download beta version of it from some secret website that isn’t publicly announced) but now become like top 20 among many linux distros and its amount of population is still increasing.

I’m skeptical that SteamOS, or Linux in general, would be a highly profitable market to port GW2 to. Linux has a whole only has about a 1.34% market share, and I’d say (completely anecdotally) that a not-insignificant amount of those users run some form of Windows on the side, especially if they’re gamers. SteamOS will definitely encourages some growth of Linux-based gaming, but “only able to download beta from some secret website” isn’t exactly a firm foundation at the moment.

Android is also another linux distro for just ARM cpu(not x86 but actually there is x86 version of Android as well that can be run on desktop PC), so it becomes
47.06% (mobile) + 1.34% (desktop) = around 48.40%
In fact, around 48.40% of all the people in the world use Linux actually. you just don;t realize it lol

I mean, SteamOS is based on linux as well, so it has a lot of probability. it just needs some killer games.

Unless you’re suggesting they make GW2 run on phones/tablets, that 47% isn’t relevant. And I don’t mean niche gaming tablets, either, but the low-to-high range of devices that actually makes up that 47%.

It doesn’t matter if 48% of the market uses some form of Linux, but 47% of those are devices wildly unsuited to running GW2.

(I’m not even going to question you adding percentages like that if I can avoid it.)

Honestly, making a storage guild and filling up my alts with large bags solved most of my storage issues. Making Mawdrey solved most of the rest, clearing out some of the materials I’d been hoarding and the related scavenger hunt items.

I’d have even more space if one of my characters wasn’t whole-heartedly hoarding all my Dragonite Ore in the hopes it’ll eventually get a disposal device.

dietzero.3514:

Currently having to buy ~1000 gold worth of gems to max bank tabs and ONE character’s bag slots is ridiculous.

While that’s a high number, that’s also, in my estimation, an enormous amount of storage space. While I don’t doubt that some players will use (or want to use) that much, I wouldn’t expect that to be typical.

As alternatives to paying for expanded storage in gems, I’d recommend making a storage guild and, especially, filling out your alts with 18/20-slot bags.

I would recommend trying them both for a while, then sticking with the one you find the most enjoyable.

For most groups / content, people don’t seem to care what your class is as long as you can play it competently, and you can always go back and raise a second character if you want to change up your gameplay.

Kitt.2567:

SteamOS has not even released yet,(only be able to download beta version of it from some secret website that isn’t publicly announced) but now become like top 20 among many linux distros and its amount of population is still increasing.

I’m skeptical that SteamOS, or Linux in general, would be a highly profitable market to port GW2 to. Linux has a whole only has about a 1.34% market share, and I’d say (completely anecdotally) that a not-insignificant amount of those users run some form of Windows on the side, especially if they’re gamers. SteamOS will definitely encourages some growth of Linux-based gaming, but “only able to download beta from some secret website” isn’t exactly a firm foundation at the moment.