Guild Wars 2

Farzo.8410:

It only appears if you save citizens.

So save a lot of citizens!

cough cough

This would be more appropriate if I hadn’t already been leading the troops to 1200+ in every single event I’ve run for the past two days. :P

Backward Sass.6791:

Seeing the Assault Knight roaming Lion’s Arch is neat, but I’m not finding any secrets. Maybe they’re time-gated? I’ll check back later.

Yeah, this is new. I’ve never actually seen the assault knight in-game thus far, and I’ve done LA’s event about a hundred times. Is it there or is this new stuff?

Lucey.1452:

(…)

1. 1k tokens – Catacombs Dweller
2. 2.5k tokens – Catacombs Explorer
3. 5k tokens – Catacombs Adept
4. 10k tokens – Catacombs Master
5. 25k tokens – King Adelbern Pays Me Rent

6. 50k tokens – Ghostbuster

That’d be me.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

eww I didn’t realize this hopefully the original southsun minis aren’t included in that loot table I still have a set to sell…ty for the info

I hope they are! I’ve wanted a bloody mini reef drake since the beginning of time, but when they were cheap I was too poor and now that I have the money they just aren’t worth what they cost to me.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

The AP is a weird one. I understand being wary of a person with less than 1k, but I think the 5k requirements are a bit steep.

This is basically how I feel here.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would like us to start of by listing the top three things we would like to see evolved in Fractal Design. Idea proposals can come after this stage.

Chris

I’ll start with my contribution in this vein. A lot of people have already submitted proposals along the lines of what my foci are, but I want to list the three most important things to me with regards to Fractals evolution based on what Chris asked.

1. Fractals rewards must be improved substantially
2. Fractal length / difficulty equality
3. New fractals

1) Fractal rewards must be improved substantially

Fractals are the hardest content in the game when you get high enough, but the rewards do not even come close to being appropriate for that difficulty. You spend an entire fractal chain on the hardest available difficulty and have a significant chance to get absolutely nothing. The gold reward is negligibly increased compared to lower fractals, and the RNG completely removes the feeling of actually rewarding rewards.

• Fractal Weapons drop too infrequently and rely too heavily on RNG to acquire

They should go to a fractal currency. Consider the following:
Fractal weapon skins remain account bound and the ones you want can be purchased from a vendor in exchange for 250 pristine fractal relics. You are awarded more pristine fractal relics for each difficulty tier you go up, so…

1. Level 0-9: 0 Pristine Relics
2. Level 10-19: 1 Pristine Relic
3. Level 20-29: 2 Pristine Relics
4. Level 30-39: 3 Pristine Relics
5. Level 40-49: 4 Pristine Relics
6. Level 50: 5 Pristine Relics

In addition to this, they should also drop randomly so that players can still get random awesome rewards, but can always make progress. Given the difficulty of the higher levels, I don’t think ascended ring costs would need to be rebalanced at all.

• Gold rewards for completing fractals are not difficulty-appropriate and need to be increased

This one is easy, in my opinion. You earn (1g + 5s / level), which is 1.05g at level 1 all the way up to 3.50g at L50, which is without a doubt harder than the hardest Arah path and totally worthy of that level of gold reward.

2) Fractal length / difficulty equality

This isn’t to say that every Fractal must be treated equally, but this totally encompasses the fact that the Dredge fractal, for instance, is terribly long and painful compared to every other fractal in that slot. There must be some measure of balance between the difficulty and actual time investment required for all third fractals, all second fractals, and all first fractals. For instance, Cliffside should absolutely be a third fractal only, not a second fractal. I would be happy to go over which I think belongs where and which should be updated (Dredge, absolutely) when this topic is decided.

For the record, every fractal should be equally rewarding in loot if at all possible. Cliffside is a terrible fractal because so few mobs provide loot, and you kill two legendary bosses and don’t even get champion bags from them. Meanwhile some fractals have incredibly good loot, such as the molten facility fractal.

3) New fractals

New fractals are key to keeping fractals interesting in the long term and are ideally suited for capturing awesome events in the Living Story that are otherwise temporary content. Events like a modified Marionette, a modified Lion’s Arch Siege, and so forth are perfect candidates for this down the road.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

On the live servers, special Dev abilities (like immortality or teleportation) are limited to GMs, and all dev commands are logged and reviewed to make sure no one is abusing the system. The integrity of our live servers is very important to us.

ArenaNet employees can join the ArenaNet guild, and when we’re representing it, we get the special ArenaNet tag by our name. We don’t have any special abilities, though, and we don’t necessarily represent all the time, so the tag isn’t always visible. (I often rep another guild, since it has a lot of my RL friends in it.)

Thank you very much for this information. This is exactly the sort of thing I was curious about. I’m also happy to have some word on the matter of the GM commands; I honestly had no clue that was even a thing!

Bumping up for a new week!

We’ve all been participating in saving Lion’s Arch a lot, and have been in servers helping to reach the 1200 mark and succeeding pretty regularly. SBI main has been doing exceptionally well all things considered, which is great. We’re also doing all of the other things like guild missions and Tequatl, though I have to say that we’ve been primarily focusing on the new Living Story content! That said, if anything we offer interests you, do not hesitate to let one of our officers know and we’d be happy to talk to you about joining.

Cheers!

I’m not averse to action being taken against leechers, but I am sort of at odds with this:

Vol.7601:

GW2 Dev characters have in-game powers.
GW2 Devs playing on their personal characters don’t.

What is the difference? Devs’ personal accounts are their ANet accounts because they are in the ANet guild on those accounts. These characters are the same. There isn’t a distinction as far as I can tell.

Furthermore, these kicks are apparently happening not during work hours, implying that the developers aren’t sitting in-game at work and looking for people to kick. They are doing this in their spare time on the side. That sounds a lot like in-game powers to me, honestly.

Essence Snow.3194:

It’s a bad thing in that it creates massive disparities. For the economy in this game to work drops have to be altered, which tbh has a negative effect on most normal players. The 2 fold issue with regulated drops and creating disparities will most likely be lost on those who gain interest with the current system. Word such as “handouts, free, jealous, even communistic” are commonplace amongst extreme sides.

The only really viable reason for such things to exist is to act as a gold sink. More creative tools for curbing inflation would have a much more positive effect on the game as a whole than what we currently have. Unfortunately those with the ability to alter things seem to care less about the numero uno philosophy in gaming………“fun”.

It’s never a bad thing. Markets like ectos are too high volume to be effectively manipulated, and even 53000 ectos as a buywall will be eaten through if the demand is high enough. Like you said, it’s also never a bad thing because every listing and sale on the TP is acting as a gold sink. Traders are doing the game good. If people are moving items in high volumes, they’re doing even more work for the good of the game. Just because some people can capitalize on the market and make money from it is nothing to be worried about, and certainly nothing to attack players over.

Some people play the game for the economy, and to them that is fun. Who are you or I to say whether that is a viable way to enjoy the game or not?

Relevant: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1yrm9u/anet_employee_chris_cleary_kicking_afkers_in_bg/

We’ve been told repeatedly by Gaile and other ANet developers here on the forums that developers have absolutely no special powers in-game, and yet apparently people have been kicked for an assortment of things by developers. This happened during wurm attempts, and is now happening in LA. I don’t really mind if it’s true, but what bothers me is the lack of transparency and the lying that goes with it. If you can do these things, ANet, then tell us you can (and do) do these things, don’t tell us you don’t have powers and then go back on it. If these reports are false, though, then quell the rumors by saying so; inaction here only makes it worse. Either way, I really just want to know what the truth of the matter is.

Thanks.

Acrisor.8097:

If I buy this item, will it be removed, modified or replaced because it was not intended to be sold for 25% off?

This I can answer with absolute certainty. No, it will not be removed or replaced. If it’s their mistake, you just got it for 200 gems cheaper and you get to keep it.

I absolutely agree with the OP. The restrictions are horribly annoying and totally ruin the experience of the items. Not to mention the Halo is solid and almost unnoticeable; I mean, really, the GW1 Halo was perfect. Just copy and paste that over to GW2 and we’ll be happy.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

27000 listings? (different items per page). Seems like price manipulation is also your cup of tea (call it reselling if you want a cleaner word for it). Nobody can ever have 27000 listings from farming alone. You need to buy stuff at TP to do so.

And that’s a bad thing? This attitude is as priceless as the “stacking / skipping / berserker dps is an exploit” mentality in the dungeons forum, and equally as toxic. Guy makes money on the TP and he’s guilty of the ever-dreaded market manipulation (oh noez)? What? No, as a matter of fact, he’s just a speculator, and if it bothers you, it’s probably got a lot more to do with jealousy on your own part than anything else.

There should be other uses for these things besides the bladed backpieces. Let us use them for obsidian shards and level tomes as well and I’ll be as happy as a clam. I currently have over 15 stacks of them and fear getting rid of them because if I do, I can’t earn them back in the future if I do want the bladed backpiece down the road.

Shiren.9532:

That’s a total of eight heirlooms per run if you get 1,200 citizens (which I am seeing main servers do without organised guilds running the show).

Nine. You get four standard bags (100, 300, 600, 900) and one ultimate bag (1200).

And for anyone interested, yes, it’s totally doable to get multiple of these horns/halo potions in the LS time period. I’ve already nearly gotten my second and the first weekend just ended. I expect to be able to get two more in the time remaining.

I was so excited, too…. Now I’ll have to go back to being disappointed. Ah well. Hopefully you guys take some notes from the change list in either case.

Razor.6392:

This guy doesn’t get it.

Au contraire, I just disagree with you and the reasoning you’ve used thus far is unconvincing. I’m willing to discuss it further, of course.

As the title says, the Halo and Horns that came out with this Living Story cannot be used in Dungeons or when using a Tonic, and they absolutely should. These are purely aesthetic items, like the representation buttons, and we need to be able to show them off in all formats in the game.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Healing skills need to have cast times so that there is an opportunity for the opponent to interrupt or prevent it.

They have a cast time so there is play and counterplay. Long cast times mean that they can be interrupted, and that is the counterplay. Defiant Stance is different, however, because it’s counterplay is in how much damage you take during the activation duration. Thus, it could viably (and fairly) have no cast time and create just as expert a play/counterplay interaction between two or more players.

It is an amazing heal, I agree. But that’s the thing: Using it correctly and in perfect situations requires you hold your heal for those moments, which may not be exactly when you need HP. There is a lot of play and counterplay in that regard, and if the enemy is wise to your having the skill, they can hold up their burst and deny you hard. It’s very good, but very, very situational. My proposed change to the skill is minor, but has value in giving the skill more play to balance the immense counterplay. This change doesn’t make it amazing in all situations, it simply makes it more apt for the situations (and by consequence builds) that do use it in a way that would be fair.

Julie Yann.5379:

Defiant Stance is already borderline OP. Making it insta cast would make it impossible to interrupt and would start another wave of OMG OP WARRIOR threads. No thank you. Just leave it the way it is.

I disagree with this. It’s currently only used in very specific cases because Healing Signet is significantly better in basically every context. With the upcoming nerf to Healing Signet, we’ll be hopefully seeing more play of the other heal skills, but Healing Surge is more reliable, reloads quicker, requires far less successful play, and is more on-demand life than Defiant Stance. Outside of a WvW middle-of-a-zerg context, I can’t see situations where “borderline OP” even comes close to describing this skill.

Defiant Stance
Healing: 1,853 (0.4)
Defiant Stance(3s): All incoming attacks heal you.
Activation: 1/4s
Cooldown: 35s

This skill invokes good play and counterplay right now, but one of the worst parts of it and the thing that really keeps it from seeing more play (besides Healing Signet being so incredible) is that it activates after you cast it by that 1/4 second. It sounds like it shouldn’t make a difference, but because it’s not an instant cast, there are a few problems with it:
- You cannot use it while CC’d
- You cannot activate it without interrupting another action

These limit the value of the skill immensely in all formats. I also don’t think this skill sees a lot of use right now due to how strong Healing Signet is (nerf is well-deserved), and also how powerful Healing Surge is as a direct heal. In order to encourage this skill’s use, the proposed bonus to its base heal in the new patch is a start, but it also needs to have its activation time removed.

Removing its activation helps it by making it:

- More reactive
- Able to be used while CC’d, giving it serious value in countering bursts
- Instant, meaning you won’t be messed up by having to activate it
- It won’t interrupt other actions
- It will be consistent with every other stance skill on the Warrior

Please consider it, balance team. Cheers.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

40 AP later, I’m holding on to them now in case any of my friends wish to borrow them for the achievement.

Can I be your friend? No, seriously. I’m like 40 AP from my 15k chest and it’s one of the few achievement tracks I need, but none of my friends collect them, I hate minis, and I’m actually trying to build Incinerator so I can’t just go buying stuff. I GM a guild (see signature) and have played the game for thousands of hours; I have no intent of scamming anyone. I’ll send them right back when I am done.

/hoping you’re on an NA server…

I can’t tell if Tyler’s account just got hacked or if he had too much coffee today, haha.

Neural.1824:

They must be really desperate for people to look at their precious gem-store if they are giving stuff away.

It costs them nothing to give things away for free. If they do this, and then even a few hundred people decide they want to buy more after the fact, then this giveaway was totally worth it.

I played a lot of EotM during the living story and I haven’t received this email. What are the qualifications? If those are met or there are none, then are these being sent out in waves? It would be a real shame if this were just to a select random assortment of people; it’d hardly be a representative survey of anything.

Jrown.2049:

Boom #3? I think so

And how did you get your stack of heirlooms so quickly? Did you do every event, or what?

Missywink.7162:

This is not a one off occasion, this is becoming the norm now. Where it first came to light was during the Nightmare Tower where scores of people were left for dead. I’ll accept a one off, it happens.

Maybe its just my server or the overflows I end up in, I don’t know.

The Nightmare Tower was one of the worst places to stop and try to res anyone. If you were solo running through it, there was no way you could kill the mobs successfully enough to keep them off you as you res someone. I only ressed dead people if I was on my Thief because I could stealth the whole res, as otherwise trying to res people got me killed. In a lot of solo cases that’s true in LA as well. When I am running around soloing civilians, I always weigh the options available: “This guy could WP, or I could spend the next five minutes trying to save his life, probably dying in the process.” Trust you in me, I’m leaving that person behind, and if they ask me to res them, I will tell them to WP!

If someone resses me when I am downed in the middle of a zerg of mobs, I don’t say TY because I need to immediately get moving so I don’t get fragged again. I only say TY if it’s a non-combat situation or if a person went to inordinate effort to save my life (like burning an invul skill or something).

Missywink.7162:

All fine and well if there are mobs too tag. Alas one of the times I was downed I just killed the last mob and was downed due to a bleed effect. The zerg turned up and ran straight past me. However I was then targetted by the laser.

It happens. Maybe they didn’t see you, maybe they had a new plan, maybe they had bad computers and were getting 2 FPS and barely even registered what was going on, who can say? I think it is improper to simply assume that they “don’t care”. I’m sure that’s true of some people, but it is what it is, and certainly isn’t the majority.

If you’re dead, WP. If you’re downed, tag mobs so that when they die, you rally. In zerg combat, that’s how it works.

Syhnz.4928:

Avengor.9147:

Server populations are fine. In case you didn’t notice, a new Living World just came out. Try going to Lion’s Arch and look for people.

so u mean to say people will not go get their first kill on the 2 boss’s wich award Dragon chest’s to have their guaranteed Exotic all to farm LA?? I mean I got my darn tempered spinal wings in 1 night

People are doing LA because it’s temporarily available while those dragons and such are available forever. Besides, LA is way more fun than half the garbage auto-attack-to-death world bosses. The servers are more alive than ever, they’re just congregating in one place because it’s new and shiny.

Bifrost is one of the best looking legendaries and I know many people who absolutely adore it. Your legendary looks incredible, but you’re dissatisfied. That sounds like your mistake for making it to me.

I’m at 97 heirlooms, and I’ve tried bouncing overflows, guesting, using alts, creating new characters, the works. None of it gets you extras. How the heck did you get a full stack already?

EDIT: I guess the theoretical limit so far should be:

(38 rubble/day * 3 days) + (5 heirloom/event * 24 events/day * 2 days) + 5 heirloom/event (just before daily reset first day) = 359 heirlooms.

This assumes you NEVER ONCE missed a single event, your overflow scored 2000 citizens every run, and you found all 38 rubble in the hour before the first daily reset before a map came out. Sounds pretty impossible, but I guess there’s at least a 50% margin for error there. You could be at 220 if you stayed awake (or botted) for every single event thus far and got at least the 600 citizen reward (3 heirlooms per event).

(38 rubble/day * 2 days) + (3 heirloom/event * 24 events/day * 2 days) = 220 heirlooms

Someone showed a screenshot on Reddit of them getting a mini cobalt jungle wurm head mini from the 5th tier bag.

EvanTeicheira.3962:

Thanks for the additional information, everyone. Scarlet has been convinced that the LFG tool is not essential to her plans. A fix for the crash is inbound, though it’s still up to you to deliver a message to Scarlet from the free people of Tyria.

Thanks again!

I will be sure to tell Scarlet in person when next we meet. cracks knuckles Good job on the sleuthing!

Holy Security.9724:

In case you were saying it was fixed: it wasn’t.

His post indicates that they’ve found a fix and it will go in with the next possible build. As no new build has been released yet, of course the fix isn’t live yet.

No new features are coming until the March feature update. Just wait until then.

This is a pretty good approach to making the proposals manageable and digestible to the casual (and more interested) reader. I think that a suggested word count of 150 may be unnecessarily limiting, but I agree that we don’t want things being so long that people approach it with a “tl;dr” mentality. Terseness is generally rewarded by being responded to. I also think there should be flexibility in case there are a lot of problems that can be addressed by a single proposal… It should really depend on what is being put forth. I think you could get rid of that part and play it by ear.

Also, for the record, I look forward to the next CDI topics with baited breath.

You get 1 out of every 200 or so of the alliance bags that drop, but that’s it (including the ones you listed).

Sandpit.3467:

I would be happy if char didn’t revert to that stupid tigger-bound running mode. Sick of having to tap 1 from time to time just to get the kitten ed thing to stand up. I’m guessing that someone at ANet had a stupid idea and forced it on everyone. Some will like it some will hate it, give us the choice.

The charr non-combat run animation is one of my favorite things about the race. All they need to do is fix clipping issues which are objectively bad and that’ll be fine.

Let’s just remove aquabreathers altogether and use our helmets underwater.

Let’s not forget these things cost 2 obsidian shards thanks to the necessity of refining that Bloodstone Brick. Totally never making these, hah.

Rod.6581:

There are over 30 places for Rubble Pile all over Lions Arch where you can dig them up.

And they reset daily!

My assumption is that they will work just like the permanent representation buttons. You double-click to activate, turning it on, and if on and you double-click, it removes it. Similarly to those buttons, I envision the halo/horns lasting an hour.

Either way, we’ll find out! If you’re not ballsy enough to check it yourself before knowing, wait for me to grind it out and I’ll post letting people know!

They were up due to speculation over the patch. They always go up with patches.

Come help save Lion’s Arch with us! Also guild missions!

We’re all trying out the new LS event and having good times doing whatever it is we need to do in it. If you’d like to tag along with us or what-not, let one of the officers know! Also, as always, we’re looking for potential friends who are into being chill and relaxed and generally casually enjoying the game while being awesome at it. Give us a holler if that’s your thing!

If he told only us, but we didn’t tell Kiel or the rest of the council, then what does that make us?

EvanTeicheira.3962:

Did Scarlet do it?

Yes, this is definitely the cause. I’m glad you’re on the right track!

I think you guys are largely forgetting the premise upon which politics in LA has always been founded since it’s rebuilding: mercantilism and piracy. They do good things for the city because it, in-turn, benefits them. It’s why LA has a bank, and why it has a lot of things that we now take for granted (lore-wise). Of course Evon would be self-serving as a leader on the council, he bloody well should be. In looking out for himself, he’d have fought to look out for everyone else because that would be in his best financial interests. Because he’s not on the council, though, things are very different and he is neither obligated to support the city nor should he care. He is trying to tear Kiel down for her failing and wants to get himself on the council so he can turn the financial distress Kiel is causing him into financial gain, which simultaneously would help Lion’s Arch out a lot. It’s a whole different world in LA compared to real world politics, and to treat them or the leaders the same is naive (don’t be naive!).

This isn’t the U S of A we’re talking about, this is the L A. Please remember that crucial distinction.