Guild Wars 2

My 32 bits launcher doesn’t crash, but with every launch it generates an error report before it starts the 64 bit executable. After that the game starts (and updates) fine. Probably related.

Darkside.7182:

Wrong acts like always.. You should hold region servers at 1 like Baruch Bay (SP)

7 DE servers and 5 FR servers are too much. There is not enough region players for wvw. Make it 1 DE and 1 FR server. Force that players to joining EU servers and all things gonna be fine or will be better than today.

Did you miss this answer from McKenna?

Hello everyone,
I’d like to take a moment to answer some questions that I’ve seen asked frequently.

Q: Why do so many German worlds remain unlinked?
A: Most German worlds are around 70% of our target population capacity. If we were to link them they would be well over our target population capacity. This means that they would have long queues, and would be significantly larger than the other worlds.

If ArenaNet would merge (not link) some servers they could end up with 4 or 5 German servers. But good luck with deciding which servers to link

I don’t know if there is a better solution to the unbalanced WvW population then what AremaNet is doing at the moment. I can think of a lot of other solutions, but none of them are easy (or quick) to implement. With the current world system it will be difficult to make it better.

On a side note: Good luck to all the other servers with beating Piken Square again Can we conclude that at the moment PS is the strongest WvW server in EU? And that only linked servers are capable of beating PS?

Cursed Shore dynamic event See the Pact crash survivors safely to Meddler’s Summit is still bugged after almost 4 years. By now it should be clear that this event is not working (most of the time) and will never work reliable. Replace it by something else or change it so it would not bug every time.

Iason Evan.3806:

SarahWitter.2317:

Reading this thread, we understand your questions and want to share a little information: This set is designed to be a special, exclusive set and therefore it’s a little different than most. There are a couple of other interesting factors that you’ll want to know: The set is available for one ticket. It will remain priced at one ticket into the future, so someone who wants it now doesn’t need to be concerned about it becoming unavailable or about it rising in price in the future. Other sets currently available are not account bound, such as the Cavalier Weapon Set which was recently released at a price of 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket and remains at that price now. In addition, we do intend to continue to offer tradeable sets in the future. If you’d like a preview of the new set, go to your bank wardrobe and filter for “Privateer.” We hope this answers your questions, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

-Sarah

This is the type of info that needs to get out before it’s released so people know, this is a different thing.

Exactly.

One of the following two things happened here:

1. ArenaNet forgot to communicate in time with their customers. Most likely the case as that is a common problem for them.
2. ArenaNet is surprised by our reaction to this and made up an excuse. Wouldn’t be the first time they are surprised by our reactions to something controversial that anybody with a little bit of common sense would see coming. But not very likely in this case I think.

If this will be the last account bound BL weapon set will probably be determined by how well it sells. ArenaNet will analyse their sales data and make decisions based on that. They have to make money somehow and think that selling gems is the best way. There are probably not enough new customers to make money to support the game.

Only problem with this for me (and many others) is that I am not willing to spend money on this game until they deliver new and (for me!) interesting content. And they still have to deliver more content to make the €50 I paid for HoT worth while. Only after I am satisfied with the amount (and quality) of content I received since the release of HoT I am willing to spend money on the gem store.

Siobhan.5273:

ArenaNet responded to concerns about this event over on Reddit (of course). Here:

anet_mattp Wrote:

hey all, thought I’d respond to this thread (because it is currently the highest ranked of the few on the topic). The way this is playing out is certainly not intended, and we’re working on some changes to it right now. Not really sure yet when any changes will get out (the NPC’s are pretty dependent on the way it currently works), but hopefully we can have something soon.

Can I be very cynical about this? This event should have never been designed this way. What was the intention from ArenaNet for this event? It let players compete with other players in PvE over resources/nodes. The fact that GW2 does NOT let players compete in PvE over resources is one of the most important features of the game! It is the reason a lot of players like GW2 that do not like other MMO’s. How is it possible that an event that promotes competition in PvE even made it into the game?

The only good thing about this event so far was the short and very cynical discussion in guild chat I had 15 minutes ago. Where two other members showed their appreciation for this event

I guess OP is trolling. Or he (she?) is the developer responsible for the Ley Line Research Event. A total fail.

shadow.6174:

Also, I haven’t tested it myself as I had already been using the 64 bits client, but as far as I know an executable cannot contain both 32 and 64 bits code in it, what leads me to think that the command line switch causes it to rebuild/replace itself. If so, why that? Isn’t it easier to have two clients as we already had if, technically, this way they are also two different clients?

There are two executables (clients) in your GW2 folder, Gw2.exe and Gw2-64.exe. The shortcut to start GW2 links to the first one. That exe checks to see if you can run the 64 bit client and if so closes itself and starts the 64 bit client. If it can’t run the 64 bit client or if you have the -32 command line option it will run the 32 bit client. So you have two clients.

Also, why defaulting to 64 bits? If someone has been using the 32 bits client on a 64 bits system it’s most likely they must have a very valid reason for that. Why not doing the opposite where a param would be required to run the 64 bits version and it defaulting to 32?

As there was no 64 bit client when GW2 releases you didn’t have a choice of running the 64 bit client on a 64 bit system. Now that client is there it makes sense to use the 64 bit client for 64 bit systems as default. So making running the 32 bit client on a 64 bit system optional is the logical choice. Why should you run the 32 bit client on a 64 bit system in the first place? The 64 bit client should run better. If it is not then there is something going on on your system.
As with every PC game how the game runs can be totally different between two almost identical systems. So having an option to fall-back to a 32 bit client is a good idea. Another reason to run the 32 bit client is because you use a 3rd party tool that needs Gw2.exe to run and not the 64 bit client. For example SweetFX and other injectors. And then there are those cases where an anti-virus program or an anti-malware program decides that Gw2-64.exe is a threat and blocks access to the game and Gw2.exe is fine. Something that should be solved by unblocking Gw2-64.exe and not choosing the less optimal executable.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Oh, thanks so much, Johan! My Game Booster FPS display won’t work with the 64-bit client, but does with the 32-bit client, so this is a big help. =)

I guess it monitors the executable with the name GW2.exe to show the FPS display? Because the game will now run GW2-64.exe if possible. Why do you run a FPS display? I am pretty sure you will have better performance with the 64 bit client, so I think you are hurting your FPS by using the 32 bit client to show the FPS display.

Having a bug tracker is great. It could help tremendously with keeping duplicate posts in the forum low. Not updating it for 2 weeks isn’t so great. Now we see a lot of duplicate posts again. And I don’t blame people. I often only check the first page to see if the bug is known due to the missing search functionality in the forum (a link to how to do a google search isn’t a proper search functionality!). If I can’t find it on the first page I make a new thread. So maybe you can assign someone the task of updating the bug tracker regularly (at least once a week)?

That bug tracker is not updated since April 28th I believe. That is 2 weeks ago. And I think this is still a bug.

Blude.6812:

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

Basically no daily reward for us folks, unless we want to do a loathsome jumping puzzle. The longer I play this game the more I am convinced it is ran by sadists.

Completely agree, I left todays’ daily JP in frustration. So much so I just turned off the game. (Ya ya, many will say do PvP then—nope hate it and will never play it. Do WvW—feel the same way after they changed the maps—I don’t wan to play areas of the game I dislike). HoT owners should have access to ALL the PvE dailys in the core game as well.
Maybe anet can get Cassi fixed but so far no indication they will do so (a message would be nice)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Cassi-broke/first#post6138449

You know this is a bug? That it is not intentional? I do agree that this bug is at an unfortunate time as the PvE daily includes one of the more difficult and long JP’s. I did the JP (and the Maguuma Jungle Forager) before I even knew of the bug so I can just do some events in Iron Marches and I am done. I also tried Master of Monuments in WvW, but that one seems to be (still?) bugged too.

About solving this bug today: Here in the Netherlands today is a holiday (Ascension Day). So not a lot of people work today. Isn’t that the same for the US (Seattle area)?

robotempire.2451:

A three-page demonstration of why being a game developer sucks.

I was going to write something about this being a beta and give the developers some slack and then I turned to page 4 and this was the last post No need to write that any more.

A few observations about the EU pairings (and an answer to an earlier post):

1. Only 2 English servers (Piken Square and Seafarer’s Rest) are not linked
2. In answer why these two servers are not linked: They are the two highest ranked English servers so that makes sense. PS is finally the number 1 server in Europe. It took us almost 4 years And yes, I play on PS (not a lot of WvW) so I am probably prejudiced.
3. But looking at previous rankings: Would it not have been better to link two more DE servers together? Abaddon’s Mouth and Dzagonur? Or is the population on these 2 servers so high that linking wasn’t a good option?
4. More in general: Are the DE servers so popular, and is GW2 so popular in German speaking countries, that they can fill 6 servers? While the rest of Europe (not speaking German, French or Spanish) only fill 8 servers (or server pairings)? I know for a fact that some German/French/Spanish speaking players are on an EN server. I just have to look at the officers of my guild and I see proof for all three languages of this.

I am curious about this. Maybe a developer can shine some light on this?

My first thought at seeing the Fortran and Cobol support was: How many players will even understand this. Then I realised that probably at least 20% of the GW2 players are even older than I am. Because when I learned to program Fortran and Cobol were already outdated and a knowledge of it seemed a waste of time. But then we got the millennium and the introduction of the Euro and Cobol and Fortran where in high demand again (for a short time at least). Those good old times

Mike O Brien.4613:

But as we’re locking in the contents of the quarterly update, there are some specific things I should tell you about today.

We’ll have to retire two of the current achievements, Casual Fractal Hero and Core Fractal Hero. While we’ll introduce new achievements to replace the ones we’re retiring, any progress made toward the old achievements will not count toward the new ones. If you’ve been working toward the old achievements, you have a few weeks or so left to wrap them up.

With the quarterly update we’ll also reduce scribing costs across-the-board.

I wanted to give this early heads-up about these areas.

First of all, thank you for using your own site to announce this. I hope ArenaNet continues to use this forum to announce changes and use other platforms (reddit, facebook, twitter) only as secondary sources.

I quoted the most important parts (for me) from your post. Sadly, after seeing all the comments here, it took me a second time reading it to realize that it just wasn’t a wall of text. “I wanted to give this early heads-up about these areas.” These are the changes we need to know upfront to be able to react to them. Off course more changes will be included.
I was surprised that you also included a WvW part as it contains nothing we need to know now to prepare. But I guess it needed to be mentioned because of discussions with the WvW community I didn’t followed.

I will reconsider if I want to finish the Casual Fractal Hero achievement. I will wait with scribing until this patch. I will post a message on the forum of my guild about this early heads-up. And next time I will read your post more carefully

There seems to be an issue with the Logon servers at the moment. Got kicked twice from the game. First time without a proper warning. I had just finished SW meta and was on my way to get the rewards in the Hidden Depths. So you can image I was kittened! Second time was 5 minutes later. I hope ArenaNet solves this quickly.

Sartharina.3542:

Rose Solane.1027:

Morfedel.4165:

Mirta.5029:

Morfedel.4165:

Lord talk about rivers of tears.

Let’s talk about what’s the best thing for the game, we’re only a small fraction of people have legendaries but everybody plays content. What do you think is more important for the masses as a whole?

I am not saying they should have canceled legendary development, but if it’s coming down to a matter of more content or more legendaries, I think it’s pretty clear that more content is more important for the player base as a whole.

and those 6 people will speed up the other 120 people working on HoT by a mile right? So much better than moving those 70 people dedicated to the next expansion, or you know, HIRING SOME MORE.

Are you saying it’s a smart idea to slow down the development of the next expansion?

I don’t know if that is what Mitha is saying, but that is definitely what I want. I don’t want another expansion, I want this expansion to be finished first. If that is with or without extra legendaries is something ArenaNet has to decide. I am still waiting for the second half of HoT. The extra Legendaries I will not get, hopefully I will get more story and at least one other map. And better WvW. To satisfy other players the rest of the raid wings and extra fractals would also be nice.

I don’t think what they delivered so far with HoT is enough to call this a complete expansion, it is only the first half. I am sad that Mike O Brien seems offended by others who said this. Because that makes me think that he is satisfied with what ArenaNet delivered. And so far HoT is simply not good enough for me to consider spending any RL money on GW2. I bought the base core game when GW2 released and bought the extra parts later with gems. Even though I didn’t need most of what was extra. That was my way of supporting GW2. I planned to do the same with HoT, but at the moment it is far away from the state I want it to be in before I am going to buy the extra’s.

As much as I want them to finish the legendaries promised with this expansion before they launch the next, I can also see the point in NOT slowing down the launch of the next xpac: They don’t want to have the same content-drought fiasco that plagued the gap between LS2 and HoT. Especially if Expac 2 is going to have an ambitious amount of content to it (Such as a new playable race?)

The problem with Living Story was that it never did much more than give us “More of the Same”, outside of the story. Same mechanics, same classes, same traits, same races. Sometimes new maps… filled with same mechanics and same style of events.

It is nice to see my post is saved in your quote. Saves me the time to type it again

I don’t care much for the legendaries. But I care even less for the next expansion. HoT isn’t what I would call a complete expansion, whatever Mike O Brien thinks about that. Without the other half of this expansion (and that includes more story) I am not going to buy that next expansion. Hell, I won’t play GW2 by then if ArenaNet don’t deliver a lot more.

So I see every reason to slow down the next expansion. Who is going to buy it?

Not awarding participation after not scoring a personal point killed PvP now completely for me. After a completely one-sided match I did not get participation, because I did not scored a personal point. We had 2 AFKers and we got camped on our spawn point for almost the complete match. The result of this was that in the next match I joined all my team mates in capping close to get a personal point. That is bad game play. But who am I to blame?

The fact that the match before was between 5 pugs (me) and a guild team did not help to make me think positive about PvP. Even I can win PvP matches against pugs when I am in a guild team and can communicate with my team mates.

In the current form PvP is not fun if you are not a good PvP player. I need a team with decent players to get anywhere in a league. But these sort of mechanisms make for bad game play. I am not going to play a game mode that is not fun. Maybe that is what ArenaNet wants. But if they still want players to enjoy all three game modes I strongly recommend them to look at this mechanism.

And for kitten sake can we kill the kittens! I had to rewrite this post two times because it was full of kittens. And I removed the strong language before I clicked preview. This kittening is too strong.

Pandaman.4758:

I don’t care for legendaries, but I can’t agree with this decision. It’s a terrible precedent to set.

It was an advertised feature, people accepted the fact that it wouldn’t be ready on release and pre-purchased on the good faith that it would be delivered, this is a violation of that trust.

And you know what? If you’re not going to deliver features that were already paid for, then a partial refund is in order. You can charge for it when it’s done.

I know I picked a random quote from a day old but it voices my opinion quit nicely.

I don’t like the look of most current Legendaries or their look does not fit the character I would like to use it on. My main is a lovely Female Sylvari Ranger in cultural armor. She uses the Legendary Longbow Kudzo. It fits her perfectly. But it does not fit my second character, a female Human Guardian so she will not use the weapon if she is in Dragonhunter mood. The same applies for the new Legendary Staff we got with HoT. It is beautiful, but I don’t think it fits my Guardian. So I don’t care too much about new Legendaries.

But it was part of the content you promised us with HoT. And you always said that you didn’t want to promise us more than you could make. I believed you. Looking at all the content you delivered with HoT I am disappointed. You can argue if 4 new maps in HoT is enough maps for a expansion, but it is on the very low end of what I find acceptable. Even when the maps are big (partly because of multiple layers). You can argue if the new story was good or long enough. I was disappointed, I don’t think it is good. Positive parts are Revenant and Masteries. Elite specializations I am less content with, but you made them. I like Stronghold, but it is an isolated part of PvP so I don’t see it as a strong point for HoT. The new Borderlands are horrible. WvW was in a better state before HoT then it is now. Guild Hall (and specifically the mechanics around it) is mew. Not what I had hoped. I don’t care at all for Raids, but you delivered and you are still delivering more content for that. The new Fractal system is an improvement.

Am I satisfied with what you delivered with HoT so far? No I am not. Was it worth €50? Not really. And now you cut back on promised content. You better deliver a lot of LW3 content, or I will not buy another expansion. Talking about another expansion, I would rather see you focus all of your developers on making HoT better and deliver the missing content. I don’t want to hear about developers working on a new expansion if the current one isn’t yet finished. If you sell an expansion with the promise that the initial release is only the start you better deliver more. Besides more Raid wings you delivered nothing and HoT is 5 months old. I am starting to loose trust in you.

I don’t want a (partial) refund. I want (a lot) more content. I expect a lot from what you are going to deliver in April, I hope you won’t disappoint me. Core GW2 is now a great game, one of the best ever, I recommend it to anyone who wants to play an MMO. It is a lot better than it was at release. I really hope I can say the same about HoT in a year from now.

Was this fix part of Update – March 09, 2016 (“fixed server crashes.”) or an hidden patch? Or just server side and not in the Game updates list at all? I don’t know how many players were hit by this bug, maybe/probably not a lot, but it would be nice if bug fixes like this are visible outside one forum thread. So all players are informed and not the few that happen to see it by accident!

I also got a daily reward for doing Ascalon Vista Viewer today (March 9th). Difference is that it wasn’t in my list and I did that Vista yesterday and got a reward then. But still I should not had the daily reward today. Did a Krytan Vista too today (to check if it was a error with any vista) but that one did not counted for the daily.

Same problem for me this morning (UTC+1). The position of my character in Malchor’s Leap was reset to where I started yesterday evening. At the end of the evening I died foolishly to more NPC’s I could handle so I WPed to the Pagga’s Post to repair my armour. This morning I started almost next to the cluster of Cypress Saplings, armour fully repaired.

I think my character at the flax farm at Jakka Itzel WP started where I left it yesterday, but that was probably close to where it started that day. I will test my other characters.

A hour later: I don’t see a problem with my other characters. They started where I left them yesterday.

Got this message too, started a few days ago. Never had it before. I get the message once per minute. Guild related stuff seems to work fine.

It seemed to start after I changed character from a character inside the guild hall to another character. Relogging removed the message. Trying to replicate it after the relog failed. No message. So it happens sometimes. Good luck bug fixing

I am happy to see ArenaNet wants to make changes to the cost of scribing. I understand that they had a certain cost for scribing in mind. That it would take a few months before the cost would balance is something I totally understand. Now that prices are becoming more stable the time has come for ArenaNet to act and make the necessary changes to come to the cost of scribing they had in mind.

I don’t really understand why some players think that making these changes is unfair. Wasn’t it clear for them that the cost for some scribing components would change after the prices would be stable? That they would pay a lot for the “privilege” to be one of the first to level scribing to 400?

I do understand complaints from guilds in WvW about the advantage rich guilds had (or still have) in the game because they could afford some of the nice stuff. Stuff that isn’t cosmetic but influences the way the game is played. It is just one of the examples of why I think scribing is very badly implemented.

Because even though I like that ArenaNet is willing to make changes to the cost of scribing I think that scribing is a fundamental mistake. In my opinion the main issue with scribing is not the cost but the fact that it is a player based crafting profession that only benefits a guild. There is no incentive for most players to level scribing. As most guild hall related content I have the feeling it is only designed for economical purposes and not so much for the social purposes. And that is a shame.

Saiyan.1704:

Kazel.9857:

This is one of the cheapest, most horribly thought out -lazy- fixes I’ve seen in a long ti…..

Snip

Your “idk what’s going on” rant is so off base, it’s unreal.

They have to do an extensive test run before implementing a balance patch… that’s how balance patches gets implemented…. Throwing a PvP Season means Anet will see competitive players running optimal builds on the highest, competitive, TPvP level. What this means is, Anet have been seeing what’s optimal and what isn’t because… well.. it makes for a more efficient balance patch for Anet to implement.

snip

Highly inaccurate. ArenaNet did not do an extensive test run before implementing a balance patch before PvP season 1. They did not do a balance patch at all! After HoT came out the game was highly unbalanced. Instead of doing a balance patch after a month or so they started a PvP season almost immediately. Probably because they hoped to get audience for their e-sports directly after the expansion when everyone was looking at GW2. That came at the cost of not so fun game play for most players and very boring game play to watch.

I don’t know what the results of the proposed changes of Jan 26 will be. But I lost faith in ArenaNet when it comes to balance patches. They have to earn that trust back by focusing on the players instead of dreaming of a big e-sports future.

Dara Potocska.8196:

Hey friends,

We are investigating the issues with the guild missions, but I cannot give an eta on any fixes for them them currently. =(

That said, thank you all for continuing to look out for guilds and the guild halls content! And as the holidays approach, I wish you all a very Merry Wintersday!

May you all be Faren well this holiday season. =p

I am happy we get a response from a dev on guild missions problems. Something we don’t see often. But the response came around 06:00 UTC on Saturday, that is almost 5 days after the GM reset and 3 1/2 days after the Tuesday patch.

I am really disappointed in the quality of the Guild Missions. They have been more bugged than working in HoT. For most guilds Guild Missions were in a much better state before HoT than they are now. The only thing I really like are the changes to the Guild Trek. And it took several weeks after the release of HoT before Trek worked OK.

Merry Wintersday to you too!

Great! So besides the old bugs and bad design we now also have a Guild Bounty bug? So no reason at all to start guild missions on Sunday Or does anyone believe ArenaNet will fix this before the weekend?

We really need an option to report players in PvP. I had the same idiot for 2 matches in a row who blamed the other players in the team for loosing. At the same time this player was standing in the base for half of the match.

I don’t mind loosing PvP matches. That will happen a lot as I am really bad. But I refuse to play PvP with this kind of idiots without the option to report them.

I agree with disabling Stronghold until this bug is fixed.

On the topic of not be able to do guild missions (or dailies) because of a bug: This isn’t something new. It seems ArenaNet is unable to influence how guild missions (or dailies) are chosen every week. Really stupid and something they should look at. It is very frustrating for guilds to have several guild missions that they cannot do because the content is bugged or disabled. It demotivate members and makes it harder every week to do the guild missions. This is my main issue with GW2 at the moment from a Guild Leader perspective.

Gaile Gray.6029:

HwaRyun.1807:

It seems kind of silly to let people speculate and get their hopes up about the fractal changes dropping today when you guys knew it was never part of the plan. A simple “It won’t be the coming with the December 1st patch” would have done.

To be clear, speculation isn’t something we can control, nor will we bounce into every thread that contains a speculative comment to try address it. We did not announce, and never planned for, a drop on December 1st. If you are disappointed, I really am sorry to hear that. I’m familiar with speculation — we had a lot of it as we prepared to release Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Guil… well, you follow my drift. It’s part of the nature of our sharing info about upcoming games, features, or improvements, that someone will speculate a date and that the date — even while never stated by us — may come to be seen as “obvious” or even “official.”

In this case, we wanted to share the news that good things are coming, but as in other cases, a date was not tied to that info.

I just checked with Production, and everything is on track to see the introduction of fractal changes later this month.

Vissarion.6509:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

I know that some of you were thinking that we’d be releasing updates to fractals today, but that was not the plan. There’s still a lot of stuff coming in December — this is, after all, only the 1st of the month -- so hold tight and you’ll see the fractal changes soon!

thank you for the communication, at least it was a bit quick (better late than ever).

But the frustration from many of us waiting for a fix to the rewards is over 9000!!!!!!

I understand and sympathize. I like what’s coming, but I do know it’s difficult to wait!

If reacting in a thread you started yourself on speculation on a release on December 1st is too much work you should find an other job. So ArenaNet can hire someone who is willing to communicate. Or if it is not your fault but your bosses preventing you from reacting in a thread you started yourself finding another job with a company that takes communication with it customers a little bit more serious would be a good idea.

Especially the “never planned for, a drop on December 1st” made it worse. You knew from the start that release on the first day of December wasn’t an option so nothing stopped you from communicating that. It should have been in your first post in this thread!

To all the players: ArenaNet always throws out this kind of “information”. If it looks like some sort of vague promise, it is a vague promise and just send into the world to keep us quit for a few days. When will we learn this?

We had the same issue with Scratch Sentry Defense yesterday evening (UTC+1). We tried the challenge several times. One time we tried for at least 5 minutes. So if it should clear up it takes at least 5 minutes to do so. That is too long.

Blobbing all in the Trek didn’t work for us last week. Maybe if we all stand inside the yellow circle and then activate it we will all get credit. Will try that the next time we have a Trek.
Half of the guild didn’t got the personal reward for the Puzzle. I carried the last orb in the maze and got my reward, the other guild leader carried the first orb and did not got his reward. One member who we left behind at the start (my fault, I wasn’t paying attention) got the personal reward. So how the game determines participating isn’t clear to me.

In general I am not a big fan of the new system. Leading guild missions was always a lot of work in the old system, it seems to be a pain in the kitten in the new system.

The first part of this post will have no spoilers. I will not explain what happens in the story. Only the last paragraph contains something some players would maybe see as a spoiler. That paragraph starts after my rambling about this being a story step or I wouldn’t bother with retrying

There are (at least) two story steps for HoT that suffer from bad design. The kind of bad design I see for over a year now from ArenaNet. Those two are Prized Possessions and Hearts and Minds. Hidden Arcana (Living World season 2) is another example.

The problem with these story steps is that they have at least one mechanism that punish you for failing without the option to learn from what you did wrong. On top of that they have many bugs (at least Hidden Arcana and Hearts and Minds). So it is difficult to know if you hit a bug or simply didn’t get what to do.

Even without all the bugs it is really frustrated to have mechanisms in the game that if you don’t get it the first time there is no way of finding out how to do it. You just fail over and over again. It has nothing to do with learning to play, if you do not see in a few seconds what to do next you are death and have no way of finding out. And you have to restart, do the same part again and hope you catch what to do the second time. Or die in 5 seconds and still have no clue what to do. I really hate this kind of designing. If it wasn’t the story I would not have bothered to try again.

I finished the last part of Prized Possessions (after 6 fails) by looking at Dulfy what to do. That helped and made it easy. The time pressure made it impossible for me to see where I had to go. And after you fail you cannot see that. Really frustrated.
I will finish Hearts and Minds by letting somebody else do it. Maybe if I see what I have to do in-game I can do it myself next time. Looking it up at Youtube didn’t help. Because I did the right thing it seems (the one time that instance didn’t bugged!).

What a very strange decision. These sigils and runes were obviously made for challenging content. Nobody would use them in other content as any other sigil or rune would be better. And now you disable them in the most challenging content. So they are useless and should just be removed from the game. Including refund to players who bought them. This is just a kitten move.

To be clear: I don’t think these runes and sigils should have been in the game in the first place. So removing them would be great. But ArenaNet isn’t making that move. That would implicate that they made a mistake. Instead of taking the time and effort to rectify the mistake they just disable them. That is just a kitten move.

I have to agree with the post above. Guild Missions are great, but not in the current state. We did 4 PVE missions yesterday evening. As a guild leader I am happy that the guild got flavor for all 4 missions. As a player I am reasonable happy that I got 3 out of 4 personal rewards. I only missed a reward for the easy trek as I wasn’t one of the members who activated a point. As a guild leader I am extremely unhappy with the personal rewards in general. Many members didn’t got rewards for the puzzle. Even the ones that carried an orb in the maze! One member that got left behind (error on my part in watching for lost sheep) didn’t finished the puzzle at all, but got the personal reward. The personal rewards for the trek didn’t work either for all members.

To end with a positive note: Spectrehaunt Socket for the Trek was amazing! I play this game since the pre-release and had never seen that place. I managed to click the button with only a few seconds left on the clock to finish the trek successfully

I think most people here misses the simple point that OP is making: GW2 does not seem to free up memory very well. Having 8GB of RAM available just makes the game uses almost all of that with the 64bit client. And I am not using extreme high settings. It doesn’t crash the game for me, the 32 bit client didn’t either. My OS seems to manage memory allocation fine. But it makes me wonder if the GW2 ever free up memory.

Throwing more memory at the problem will solve some crashes (great for some players). But I would rather see the game free up memory when I swap maps. But maybe the engine isn’t capable of that. If so I fear for all the players that have OOMs at the moment.

Restarting the client every few hours will also solve OOM issues. But I have not seen this simple solution mentioned by a dev. Maybe because they don’t see it as a valid option? Hopefully they will find a solution for the memory hunger of GW2.

Rococo.8347:

Im a filthy Casual and a directionally challenged one at that ( so vertical maps full of dead ends is hell for me) – I haven’t set foot in the Jungle yet because the horror stories of the first couple of days just put me off. Megaserver issues doesn’t help…

I don’t want to die a.l.l.t.h.e.t.i.m.e

I going to give it a go tomorrow though – can anyone suggest bests stats for beefing myself up? Im taking in an Engineer and Ele was thinking of swapping out to defensive stats in a couple of armor pieces and rings etc – Knights for engineer?

What are the stats you use now? If you use a Power build Knights could work or even Soldiers if you want even more defense. With a condi build you could go Rabid or Dire. I did not change my build on my Ranger and that build isn’t tanky. Having a pet helped somewhat. I always try content first on my normal build and only change it if I die too much.

Exploring in the first map is much easier at day time. And if you stay at a (busy) outpost at night time you probably survive without too many problems. Some outposts are really close to a WP so if you die you can get back easily. Some areas in the second map have a high concentration of mobs, I try to sneak by the mobs there or find another path.

I would definitely give it a try as the maps are gorgeous. At least what I have seen from the first two maps. Particularly in the second map I had some moments that I just said in my chair looking at the beauty of the view (hint: view on city).

fireflyry.7023:

VaLee.5102:

Please think on a big scale and in the long run. HoT will not always be end content.

…and as such it’s open to be changed in the future.

I think it’s too early to call.

The whole thing was rushed, that seems pretty apparent. Some elite specs still need a lot of work, raids aren’t even out yet, etc, etc.

You have to give the players that wanted harder content something at release. Some “casual” players really are showing some real selfishness this early after release, to make it clear I consider myself part of this demographic. At least wait till raids are released before worrying about the long term effect of the new open world content.

VaLee.5102:

Everyone payed the money for the expansion, not just a certain group of people. And you can’t blame them for that, the expansion was never advertised to be challenging in it’s entirety, just that it will have challenging content.

Again it was rushed, Anet are at fault for that. It would not surprise if the original plan was to make the open world content easier with the understanding raids would also be good to go. Then something went wrong and they seemingly freaked out, at least the HP saga and changes seem to indicate as much.

“Just ramp up the open-world difficulty and make specs 400HP, that should keep the hardcore happy till we get his sorted…hopefully the “casuals” will be ok with core till then"

This is blatant assumption but it really “feels” like this maybe the case.

Anet may have screwed this up by releasing it too early, by all accounts they seemed pretty nervous when the date leaked and they had to lock it in, but’s whats done is done and really whats a better scenario:

1.Release the expansion with something for those wanting a harder challenge while those not wanting it still have a festival and core content to entertain themselves with till they sort it.

2.Release the whole thing “easymode” and completely ignore one of these two player demographics.

It really seems to be the lesser of two evils till they get it sorted. This may scare many casual players away but again, whats done is done, and in the non-subscription model it’s not like they won’t ever come back after paying a fair chunk of coin. If casual players can’t at least find something to do till raids come out with all the other available content and ditch the game entirely…well….not sure what to say to that.

I hope you are wrong. But I cannot deny that what you say makes sense. I had my doubts about the whole time line of the expansion before. I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised about the quality of the content. If this is rushed content than they made at least certain that what they released had quality. Maybe to difficult, but quality.

What OP is saying is what I read in other places. And what I hear from some players. Why is the expansion only for hardcore players? You can argue if that is true or not but if too many players think that ArenaNet (and we) have a problem.

I think Helequin.2608 made a very good point here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HoT-Players-New-Info-for-you/page/2#post5671845

It is not the cost (400 or 250 Hero Points) that is the problem. The problem is that leveling your character to the elite specialization can only be done by doing one specific activity (in PvE, I know you can get Hero points in WvW). By just leveling your character to level 80 you can unlock all specializations. That is great. You can level in any way you want. But to get the elite specialization you need to do Hero Points.

I hope we will get a response from ArenaNet on this point. I can see the problem, I don’t know the solution.

To be clear: The change from 400 to 250 means that my main unlocked the Druid now. My other 4 characters are very close to their elite without having set a step in the new maps. The change to 250 wasn’t needed for me and I will probably do all the new Hero Points anyway. But having my elite not depending on that is nice.

AngelExtreme.4872:

its not moving again, first its was 30% now it remained here for like 3- 4 hours

I just downloaded the last patch in seconds so this is probably a issue with a specific server. And you connect to that server. Have a look at the bottom of this page https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/93290408-Problems-Downloading-or-Patching to connect to another server.

Alcina.1860:

I can’t speak to Scout Acan in the “In Their Footsteps” quest. When I glided over to him, the quest marker moved from “Glide over to Scout Acan” to “Speak to Scout Acan” but there’s no option to interact with him.

I’ve tried everything—switching characters, restarting the game, switching maps—nothing works.

This is a (very well) know bug. There are several Dev posts about him. Look here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Scout-Acan-bug/page/3#post5663933 for the last post.

Nonimo.4592:

I’m not entirely sure if I should be posting this here or somewhere else but…

I’m now stuck at 100% on my mastery bar. Now I understand I need to go through HoT to progress this but I had wanted to play through my season 2 storyline and some Halloween stuff before hopping on HoT.

Am I being denied the experience I’ve been gaining thus far or is the 100% actually banking experienced that I’ve gained past the 100% point?

I think your XP bar will stay at 100% and you will loose all excess XP. I don’t think your XP bar will reset to 0 when you activate the Mastery system. So you have two options I think. Do the first story step of HoT to unlock Masteries. But this will spoil the end of season 2 story. Or accept that all extra XP is lost.

As far as I have seen excess XP is always lost until you activate/lock a mastery point. I am pretty sure I lost quite some XP when I finished a HoT story step when my XP bar was very close to 100%. Or that step did not give a lot of XP, but it was the last step of Act 1 so I doubt that.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I might be misunderstanding the issue, and if so, I apologize. But I wonder if this update note may apply:

• Fixed a bug that prevented Adept and Master Elite Specialization achievements from completing in the Heart of the Mists. For characters who had their elite spec achievements broken, a “Specialization Achievement Repair” NPC has been added to the heart of the mists you can speak to who will repair the achievement.

Again, sorry if that’s completely irrelevant, but the discussion reminded me of the note so I wanted to share it in this thread. (IOW, the Repair NPC might be helpful.)

Shouldn’t you not be on your way to your bed Gaile? Or going out doing something nice instead of reading grumpy posts from us? Isn’t it Friday night 11 PM for you?

Gaile Gray.6029:

Eponet.4829:

The difficulty isn’t too high. The fact that by the time you get it, you’ve already gone through more than half the maps is the issue. If they were all put in the first area, there would at least be three maps to experience at our own pace and explore for the sake of exploring instead of because we’re forced to in order to get the class mechanics (Which were designed to fill holes in the base classes) to function fully.

I feel that’s very valuable feedback. Thanks for that insight.

I agree with that this is valuable feedback (looking at most of the other posts in this thread) but I disagree with the content of it. I believe that mastering an elite specialization is something that should take time, just as it takes time to level a character and get the “normal” specializations. The only “valid” point of this post is that it takes exploration to get the elite specialization. I do like to do map completion so that doesn’t bother me, but I can see the point. What I don’t understand is why it is so necessary to rush through three maps to get your elite specialization. But that is probably the main issue here. I believe that the elite specialization is something to work for and will come in time. Many here believe it should have been available at the start of HoT.

Daddar.5971:

I need to be more observant, since I just poured over an hour into the labyrinth before noticing this problem. I appreciate the communication, but I am also frustrated. This reminds me of the last special event, Mordrem Invasion… which also didn’t go well.

The Mordrem Invasion events was a one-time event that was terrible. Or it was designed by an intern (popular theory on Reddit) or we were used as beta testers for some content without being told (another popular theory on Reddit).
Halloween is a yearly event. This is the 4th year. A lot of the code is reused from previous years and ArenaNet forgot to change the XP part. Stupid, should not have happened, but just an example of “old” code a developer forgot to change when he releases a big update. More importantly I think is that the developers change the XP for the next holiday event, Wintersday. So we can level masteries in that event.

McViolin.8547:

Care to give us examples of you caring about the community because all I can remember of your company is the feeling of being spitted on. (F2P and the royal guard outfit, gutting core content/rewards like needing masteries for full fractals rewards, Halloween XP bugged yet just won’t fix it. etc,) I’d also disagree with your interpretation of the OP and feel you are just using that as an excuse to keep negativity of this game to a bare minimum. But you are pretty much the face of Anet’s PR team and just doing what you are payed for, so I can somewhat understand. I would also love to be able to refute any counter arguments, if it weren’t for the fact that I have to wait an hour between each post as punishment.

If you are disappointed you should give your opinion (maybe a little less salty) but it would be nice if you look at things in perspective. Halloween XP bugged yet just won’t fix it. Halloween event released 22 hours ago, at midnight for the developers. Together with the new expansion. You should give them at least a little bit of time to solve bugs. There is no reason to believe the Halloween XP bug will not be solved.

ArenaNet choose a long time ago to concentrate their resources on a few specific areas. Dungeons are not one of those areas. Now their economist gives an honest answer on a question about dungeons and this topic derailed completely. It is suppose to be about the economic changes of which the dungeon part is only a (very) small part.

A short economy lesson (fitting for this thread): ArenaNet is a business. They want to make money. They have to pay their employees. They have to satisfy their stakeholders. So they need us players to pay money for the game. Without a subscription fee they need other sources of income. Gems are one source, selling an expansion is another one. So they want us to buy the expansion. So they are going to spend their resources mostly on HoT and HoT related content. So they are pushing us slowly in the direction of HoT. They have ideas about keeping existing content attractive. But only the existing content they want to focus (resources) on. Dungeons are not part of that.

Dungeon running for gold will probably be a thing of the past after HoT releases. That will probably stop most speed dungeon running. Speed runs in dungeons is content that ArenaNet probably doesn’t really like (and maybe want to get rid of).

For players that do dungeons for another reason than getting gold (fast) the change will probably have a negative effect. That is a shame. But without infinite resources ArenaNet has to make choices.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

I hope one of the newer Legendarys is a Staff Version of Kudzu

That would be assume. I have Kudzu for my Ranger, Staff for my next Legendary would make the most sense and I am not sure about The Bifrost.

I played Druid for 3 hours in total, all in Verdant Brink. Ranger is my main class. My findings:

• Staff has very weak damage
• Staff skill 2 is nice if you have a pet that tanks (or at least is in melee range)
• I used staff skill 4 a lot, 3 and 5 not so much
• I have to play more with Glyphs to really get a feeling for them. Maybe I am going to use them, as I am not that impressed by most of the utility skills of the Ranger. I use a Sylvari-only utility so that will tell you enough :-)
• Celestial Avatar didn’t really worked for me. If you don’t use Glyphs it is very weak in my opinion.
• In spite of all the previous points I had a lot of fun playing with Staff (and Druid in general).

Druid is another example of a very situational elite specialization. The fact that I have to dedicate one trait line for it makes it less useful for me. That said, I hope Druid will give me more options in more difficult content, like high level fractals and probably raids. Or in an organised Tequatl or 3 Headed Wurm.

I only played Scrapper for 90 minutes or so in open world PVE:

• Function Gyro useless (at least in open world PVE)
• Hammer skills are decent, felled less powerful than pistol (main weapon for my Engi) but looking at the skills that is only a feeling because they are not bad. Skill 3 is nice, skill 5 more useful than the shield skill 5 in open world PVE. Auto attack isn’t bad. Didn’t use skill 2 and 4 much, but I need more experience with the Hammer to determine why.
• Gyro skills are decent, but I don’t see me using them for my utility skills

Scrapper is one of those elite specializations that is very situational. The fact that it locks one of the trait lines is for me a weakness (as it is for most elite specializations). The trait line isn’t that good if you don’t use Hammer and Gyro’s.

I found the Function Gyro in open world PvE useless. Maybe I have to get used to the functionality but I wasn’t impressed at all.