Guild Wars 2

Correct. I did have issues in-game around 08:00 UTC and stopped playing. I expected it would take a few hours for ArenaNet to solve the issues as it was night for them. I checked the forum again an hour ago and only saw the The maintenance is over. Have fun! message. Only after I made my post I realised ArenaNet probably used the same mechanism to show an earlier message. It is nice they also showed a message in-game.

The problem with this approach is that for me there was no relation between their message an hour ago and the issues I had this morning. On Twitter I could see the history, here on the forum I couldn’t. So it was a (very) good way to handle the issue for players who were active an hour ago, but not for players who just came back to see the status. Therefore I will change my suggestion: Make this kind of messages permanent so people can see the history and don’t (only) use this mechanism

Oh, and by the way: Thanks for the answer, I will try to play a little before the stream begins

I check the forum after I had some issues this morning (around 08:00 UTC) with disconnects as a lot of people had. And I see: The maintenance is over. Have fun! And I think: What maintenance? Nothing more can be found on the forum. There isn’t a ArenaNet post for the last 13 hours. On Twitter I could found a message that ArenaNet was aware of connectivity issues. But is the maintenance is over releated to these connectivity issues? Is it all working again?

Why are there Twitter messages and not one message on your own forum? I don’t mind you guys use Twitter, but you have a forum full of posts about connectivity errors and you don’t post anything there? Why?

I don’t know now where to post suggestions about using your own forum have to go. If this is not the right place move it to another place. But please: If you have access to the official Twitter account I expect you are allowed to post a message here about issues with the game. So do it!

Salvatore.4983:

I doubt, due the presentation later today this might require a while, plus it is around 3:00 a.m. in US

The 3.00 AM in the US could be an issue. I expect them to look into this as soon as they are awake. That is my experience in the past at least. And yes, that can take a few hours. My remark was more to reassure people that ArenaNet normally looks into this kind of issues as soon as they are awake. And that the issue will be solved for most of us rather soon after they look at it.

The presentation at Pax later today makes it more likely ArenaNet wants to solve this issue fast. I don’t think they want massive disconnects in the game when they are giving their biggest presentation in more than two years. That does not look good

Random disconnects happened to me and a few guild mates. I started playing 45 minutes ago, get kicked 10 minutes ago. There does not seem to be a patron. We had the same issue a few weeks ago, ArenaNet solved that pretty quick (at least for me). Hopefully they can do that again today.

I got disconnected 3 times in 30 seconds. A guild mate of mine crashed when he tried to accept his daily login reward. I think ArenaNet has connection issues or there is something wrong on the lines to Europe.

Since a few days GW2 shows the desktop for a short period every time that I change maps. As if it has problems with loading the new map. This is new behaviour for me. I have no idea when it started exactly. I did not change my video drivers so I don’t think it has anything to do with them. Are there other players who experience this behaviour? Is it also new for you?

Dibaryon.7469:

I probably shouldn’t be creating a forum post just for this, but congratulations to everyone on Arenanet! I loved the last chapter of the living story! These new champion/boss mechanics that have been introduced on the living story chapters are awesome! The cinematics are incredible! Excellent job! Best MMORPG there is :]~~

I don’t see why you shouldn’t make a post for this.

But I have to disagree with you. I thought the last boss was horrible. I will try that fight a second time and see if it is better this time. I now have read the story achievements and that could help. It is also possible that I ran into bugs. It would not be the first time I did not like a boss fight and some of my guild mates were surprised by my comments as they had a very enjoyable experience.

Repair has nothing to do with it. I had this issue an hour ago (just before 19:00 UTC), did not repair anything but got a semi-working connection after that. Semi-working as it still lags somewhat sometimes, but no disconnects.

You have to be kidding! Many players have connection issues at this moment, look at the other posts! I had 4 unsuccessful tries an hour ago before I did not get disconnected after a minute. This has nothing to do with individual connections, it is an ArenaNet issue!!!!!!!!

Players who got in the game (like me) also had (have?) issues with the connection. It took 5 tries before I did not get a disconnect after a minute (and ended up in the wrong map). So I don’t think this is an issue on your side, it seems ArenaNet has problems with connectivity.

You are right, there are still connection issues. I had issues inside the game. I got disconnected 4 times in Blazeridge just before The Shatterer event and ended up in Black Citadel (the map I was when I logged in into the game). Only after the 5th time I could stay in Blazeridge. Luckily in time for the event. One of my guild mates had the same issue. After that the connection still did not seem stable. I got my daily (one vista and 4 plants is not so hard to get) and decided to quit for the day (it is 9pm here). Hopefully the issues are gone tomorrow morning.

Always switch things off and then on before calling the IT department

That said it seems ArenaNet had some issues with their connectivity. I could download the patch after a restart of the GW2 process (got the connection error screen the first time) but could not get into the forum. Now that works too. Connection issues hopefully solved. There is a reason why a lot of GW2 patches go live in the morning Pacific time. Lots of people to solve issues

Gaile Gray.6029:

We don’t announce release times in advance, but historically it’s true that most have happened in the morning (Pacific time). The reasoning behind that is to allow the maximum number of developers (programmers, server team, network team, designers, etc.) to be available to monitor any situations that may arise. As you noted, a short-term issue did arise today, and because of the timeframe of the rlease, we had all hands on deck to correct the problem quite quickly.

And, as others pointed out, releasing on “off hours” in North America makes it “primetime” somewhere else.

Can I thank you (or the team) for this timing. I like the idea that you have most of the day to solve issues that arise from patching. It totally makes sense.

I can confirm that the connectivity is better. I missed the 07:15 UTC Great Jungle Wurm but since then I have no issues.

I got login issues from the Netherlands. Cost me my Great Jungle Wurm kill so I am not happy at the moment.

Sorry Gaile, I don’t have any understanding for this stupid change. Two years ago there was a lot of complaining about this and now you changed it back. If you had put this in the patch notes I would have had some understanding but not now.

Oh, and you don’t want to know the reaction from my guild mates when I read your post on TeamSpeak

I have been kicked from Sanctum Sprint three times in a row after the patch.

I will stop playing until the first repair patch hit, hopefully today (US time) so I can play again tomorrow morning (EU time)

Same issue for me for [Gwen]. I am the guild leader. My fellow guild leader has the same problem. I can access the guild bank of my own personal guild. A difference is that my own guild has 1 member (me) and Gwen a lot more from different home worlds.

After the patch Sanctum Sprint just kicks me out after a few seconds

Gaile Gray.6029:

Serophous.9085:

Gaile Gray.6029:

eekzie.5640:

~snip~

This is very, very helpful. Thank you so much for this info. I’ll see if I can find out anything about this. (But please know next week has other things on the charts, and there’s a four-day holiday coming up so it may take a bit of time.) Thank you again for these details.

OK, I do have one question. Just one I want to ask while your attention is here!

Can you ask about (doesn’t have to be today) on any word on tribal armor making a comeback to spvp? Just a simple “working on it” or “no”.

It taunts me every day when I look in my wardrobe and hate RNG more :’(

I can’t take a request from this thread. Would you please post a separate thread, or better still, post in an existing thread on this subject, so I have detailed context?

Thanks for understanding.

What? You can’t take a request from this thread? What policy is that? What more context do you want? He wants tribal armor back in PvP.

The whole problem this thread is trying to make clear is that a lot of players lost trust in ArenaNet when it comes to communication. About if ArenaNet has any idea where they want to go. And if that idea is to invest in this game or that ArenaNet is just trying to get the most money out of the current content.

It is this sort of reactions that make me angry. I will probably play this game until someone pushes the shut down button on the servers. I still like the open world PvE and I still walk around happily through Tyria every day. But I don’t believe that the game while be developed further. So I tell my friends on TS that it is unlikely that they want to come back. As they want new development. They left the game.

I can’t remember the last time I spend real life money on this game. I won’t spend any money on GW2 in the future unless I get the feeling that it will be used for development. So I hope you succeed in attracting new players to GW2 to get money. And let that be my (repeated) message to the GW2 veterans on this forum: It looks like ArenaNet makes their money with new sales and that is where their little development is focused on. Don’t expect anything crazy for veteran players.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I sometimes wonder if people want to kill this game. So let’s be clear: Loot. Loot is what drives players to play MMOs like Guild Wars. They do the quests and such to gain better gear.

That’s the goal.

The idea what anyone wants to ‘nerf’ something because it doesn’t go with their own personal goals or interests is just selfish. Look at what happened to Queensdale, the Coil, etc.

Yes, it’s selfish. And don’t feed us this ‘it hurts the trading post’ nonsense. How is getting items cheaper going to hurt you? Sure, if you’re a gold seller, it might. But you’ll get over that.

Please quit screaming for nerfs when you can’t get an achievement done because that same zerg, that you want help from, is now doing something other than helping you.

But, honestly, I expect ANet to nerf this to the ground regardless . . . if history is any indication.

I hope Anet does something about this if the “problems” I run into the last two days are also on other servers. Nobody is doing the events accept defend Amber. The amount of Lost Bandit Chests around Amber is insane. And as long as you defend Amber you have access to a merchant that sells the keys. There does not seem a lack of shovels so this can go one forever.

The reason I hope something is done is that it is very boring. It kills the game. If loot is only available by doing boring stuff players will stop playing sooner or later. So I don’t scream because I am selfish. I scream because an interesting map with nice events became a boring map. I don’t think there should be room in GW2 for repetitive boring game play. And if that is selfish, sorry for that.

Some of the bombs in Caithe’s Reconnaissance Squad mission won’t go off. Particularly the 3rd bomb (the one at the start of the small passage) never goes off. This makes achievement Not Under My Command very difficult as the two Vigil soldiers attack anything that comes close and they are made from paper. And by close I mean even mobs that my 1500 range Longbow Ranger can’t hit!

I really like the ideas behind the LW missions in this patch, but the implementation is very poor. I needed 2 hours for Hidden Arcana due to bugs with the last boss and now bugs make it very hard to get the achievements. I hope you will solve these issues very soon.

/edit: Thread title is stupid but the 45 character limit makes it very difficult to make it meaningful. ArenaNet, can you please improve the forum (software) as it is really bad. I gave up hope for a proper search tool a long time ago.

Diva.1476:

First off amazing update overall!! Loving it whole-heartedly and thrilling achievements!!! I really think we need more of these.

Echoes of the Past Story – Exposed Weakness: Redux achievement

This is quite an easy achievement, I didn’t see any bugs as people have been complaining about. They might just be confused or something so I decided to record the fight in between

A mini step-wise guide:

1. Look for the white shield on the floor, quickly grab it
2. Go near to the Vertex to transfer your 1 hp boon over it (i.e white shield buff)
3. Once the vertex has 1 hp boon, kill it immediately as it will damage the main boss
4. When a facet spawns in between, kill him first, it will give you a random color buff, take it to the vertex under same colour but before going to vertex don’t forget to take the white shield (because transferring 1 hp buff to the vertex is important)
5. Repeat all these steps until the boss is dead.

Important: You have to make sure you don’t use any kind of boons from either major/ minor traits, sigils, runes or utility skills, otherwise, vertexes would steal your boons and this achievement will fail.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ5BJUyQXSA

I hope it would be be helpful to some of you.

Sorry to tell you but some people were not confused but had bugs. This fight can be a royal pain in the you know what (had to remove the word or a kitten would been hurt) if you are unlucky. So maybe you can remove that part of your post. The fact that you didn’t encountered bugs does not mean other players are confused.

Chrispy.5641:

When I did it as Ranger, my pet got the protection when I got it, but switching to a new pet removed the buff for it. Any creature/minion/etc. you summon after you receive the buff doesn’t seem to get it applied to them either.

(Also, yeah, Invulnerabilities really help a lot in that place)

Well, more bugs for me. My pet did not got the protection and died instantly every time. I found Hidden Arcane very unfriendly for my Ranger, but now I think of it my Mesmer would hate it even more. And the last boss was just bugged for me. I killed it, but it took soooo long it wasn’t fun any more.

/edit: I think part of the problem is that this story part seems to be very buggy for some players and not at all for others. Some members of my guild told me it was very easy and it took me 2 hours. And I am a much better player than most of them. When they explained to me in chat what to do I had to tell them several times it simply didn’t work for me. I am not certain about the first three bosses, but the last boss was bugged for me.
I can’t say I liked the fights. Maybe in a few days I will try it again and see if it works better for me and I was just very unlucky taday or that some of the mechanics are just lame.

I had the same frustrating experience with the Hidden Arcane. I am not sure if the first three bosses worked as they should be but the last one definitely did not. Several times I had all crystals spawn inside deadly AoE and the last 25% of the boss I had shields but no crystals. The crystals were probably in the wall. Marjory, my pet and me managed to kill it in the end, but this story part took me 2 hours. No fun!

I had also (many) bugs with the final boss. But luckily the missing vortex crystals (maybe hidden in the wall) happened to me when the boss was at less than 30% health. With the help of my pet I managed to damage it 100 points with every attack. After 15 minutes (only the last 25% of the last boss!) I had killed it.

I encountered so many bugs in the Hidden Arcane world that several times I thought about just giving up. Particularly the last boss had many bugs. Crystals during the colour phase spanned all inside deadly ground target AoE. One time I had to wait for more then 5 minutes before a crystal was outside the AoE. The boss lost magically 20% of its health in 1 second. At that moment I thought that happened because I was already fighting it for more then 30 minutes, but I now think it was just another bug.

/edit: I found another post about this bug: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Hidden-Arcana-story-quest-bugged/first#post4543695

I have the same issue. We will probably not see any reaction from ArenaNet until it is Monday morning for them. And even then I don’t expect any reaction. It will hopefully just disappear when they restart some servers.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

People keep claiming this is being farmed, I have yet to see it farmed once during this event.
The thing is that during last year’s Halloween, I was seeing the Lich being taken down. Either something’s changed or players have become more disorganized. So far I have witnessed numerous attempts, all stacking in proper locations (the house or around the corner) and they end up failing.
Players are just avoiding this encounter from what I have seen. That’s fine with me. From what I remember from last year, it was a boring, tedious encounter anyway.

It is definitely possible to kill the Lich. I did it several times in the last few days. The first time it took a very long time as we used mostly ranged attacks (me too). I think we only succeeded in the end because we got 20+ players and some boon removal. The second time was much easier. There was a commander who got us all stacking in a corner and I was with several guild mates so it was somewhat more organized.
The last time was without a very organised group (no one from my guild). I activated my commander tag to just get people together and I got most players stacked on top of me attacking the Lich. As I was on my PVT Guardian with some condition removal I could stay up and motivate the others to keep attacking in melee range. It wasn’t as easy as the second successful attempt but we killed it.

So I think you were unlucky so far. I wont say I farm this boss but with a commander I have no second thoughts about attacking the Lich. And if I am the commander and I see players following me (and doing what I ask) I will not hesitate to attack it again.

Dawntree.7246:

ConcreteExist.3426:

I like the UI, but I’d like it better if you put at the bottom or top a section to Fill in Your Own values. Best of both worlds, you know?

^ this, I’m posting it again and I will post it again on devs working time (more chance of them seeing it)

And I will quote it again. Please give a big cookie to ConcreteExists and Dawntree. Personally I would like to add an extra button to the screen, Show price history. I think that graph should be on the page itself but that is probably to confusing for some. But a button we smart people can push to get that vital information would do the job too.

I hope this change will come soon as I am not willing to buy gems before this change is implemented.

Your location: The Netherlands
Time and date of incident: Saturday October 4th between 16:00 and 17:20 CEST (14:00 -15:20 UTC)
Game World: Piken Square
Brief description of what you’re seeing: Strange skill lag, particularly with harvesting (ore, wood, plants). Three times a skill did not react and I got kicked to the character select screen. The last time I managed to run between Rat’s Run and Frostland WP in Dredgehaunt Cliffs with a pulsing 5 skill before I got disconnected. After reconnect I was back at Rat’s Run. That is a 1 minute run!
The first two disconnects where with another character in Mount Maelstrom. The first disconnect was just before the Golem Mark II fight of 14:00 UTC, the second after the fight. The strange thing is that the fight itself went smooth. No lag at all. And I would notice as I move and dodge a lot during that fight.

After the last disconnect I stopped playing for today as it is unplayable. I really hope you can fix this. During the whole period I was able to browse the wiki and this forum without any problem.

Let me start with saying that I am not sold yet on the Alliance idea but I am happy a Dev made a suggestion for a possible solution. That said I would like to empathize some points:

snip

A few of you noted that things will always be changing over time so the system would have to be dynamic. There are a couple of ways of addressing this discussed in this thread. An idea that would be a small incremental change to how the game plays would be to create a new set of worlds then fill them up with our Alliances of guilds and players that are guaranteed to always play together. This would happen at regular intervals, the intervals were all over the map as were the size of the worlds in this thread so I will propose this cadence:

• Off Season
• Tournament
• Restructure
  • Create new Worlds
  • Redistribute Alliances

This cycle would take a few months given the cadence of tournaments we have had which is about the time that we would want to rebalance populations. After the restructure, players could transfer like they do now if they so desired.

I made the most important part for me bold. An Alliance will fight as one for a few months. This is very important for me. I don’t like the suggestions to changes alliances every week or even more often. Some of the coordination issues are less big when people stay together in an alliance for a few months. And I want WvW to have some continuity.

Alliances would provide continuity for the community. I see the server pride of today becoming Alliance pride because of that continuity. But I also see the off season as a time for the newly formed world of alliances to develop their own identity as they head into the tournament. Keep in mind that if an alliance was big enough to fill a world that mapping becomes one to one. If that became the case maybe the world could just take the alliance name. It’s interesting because that time together gives everyone involved a chance to see if they all want to ally together to truly solidify into a world. If not, you are still playing with your community for the glory of your alliance in the next restructure. But your community would be playing with other communities new to you and maybe this new bunch is a better fit for you and an opportunity for your alliance to grow.

John

This time the bold is not mine Community and Alliance are separate in this part, at least that is what I understand. Your Community (whatever that is at the moment, maybe your guild, maybe the group of guilds you are running with in WvW at the moment) forms with other communities an Alliance for a few months. After those months you can decide to continue the collaboration (maybe make your Community bigger by merging your community with other communities?) or go separate ways and form a new Alliance with other communities.

The more I write and think about it, the more I like the idea. But only as John described it (or at least as I understand it) and not the many wild ideas I see floating around here. No offence to Dayra.7405, I really like the fact that you participate in this discussion, but I really don’t like your ideas. It is definitely good that different people shares their ideas and I don’t hope you take offence that I strongly disagree with your ideas (or what I understand are your ideas).

Behellagh.1468:

Don’t you get that they aren’t ever going to revert this. Tweak it here and there but it’s never going back to the way it was no matter how much noise some of you make. This was done to retain new players who in the past left only after a few weeks because they felt they were dropped into the deep end and told to swim. Doesn’t matter if games like Wildstar is 10x worse in terms of complexity dropped on the player, but this is was the result of play testing in both the US AND China and not just China.

There may be more tweaks to come with the LS but reversal isn’t happening. The forum equivalent of pouting, holding your breath, stamping your feet isn’t going to change it. You’ve seen how well that’s worked with protesting the new trait system.

Too many people complained that the game was too “easy”. Some asked for traits to be discovered as they were in GW. Gee, not that easy anymore with most of the traits locked up now right?

I hope more people understand this. The NPE changes were not made for veteran players. We have level 80 characters so we “survived” the previous NPE. These changes are made for all those people who didn’t made it through the previous NPE. After 2 years most gamers that wanted to start playing GW2 already did. So ArenaNet has to find another public to sell the game to.

In a way the more we veteran players are complaining the more ArenaNet has achieved their goal. I think it is better to focus on the parts of the new NPE that aren’t working for veteran players and can be changed without removing the NPE for new players. Like making certain unlocks account bound. Exactly what ArenaNet did with the last patch. And keep sending bug reports when things are obviously bugged.

Maybe after the dust has settled ArenaNet will start a CDI about gated content. I really like to see changes to the traits unlock system they made this Spring. And after a few weeks of playing with the new NPE we can probably point out some level requirements that did not really worked out the way it should be. It will be a long term process. But that is software development always.

I just read a thread on Reddit that reminded me that I still had to make a post here. It is about the confusion around skill challenges on low level characters. For the reddit post see http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2gb2tm/cant_obtain_a_skill_point/

This new player ask why he cannot activate the skill point and if this is a bug. Luckily someone explains to him that his level is not high enough and that he has to come back later. The problem is that this is not really clear, confusing for new and old players and seen as a bug by many.

Just after the patch went live and before I knew of this new level requirement for skill challenges a guild member posted a help message on guild chat. Having just finished a group event with a party of three we decided to portal over and see if we could help. As we were all level 80 we could start the skill challenge and help him. We were all really confused and thought it was a glitch.

I really don’t think that the current way of handling this level requirement is working. I can see why it can help the NPE to not show skill points on the map before a certain level is reached but if a new player stumbled upon a skill challenge he or she should be able to start it.

Ironically the skill point we helped with was the Effigy Core in Plains of Ashford (level 10). And that skill point killed two level 80 characters when I tried to solo it in the past. It is one of the most dangerous skill challenges outside Orr if you ask me. So for this specific skill challenge making a new player come back later is a good idea. But that does not make the new mechanism in general a good one.

/rage Can you please look into decent forum software. The piece of crap you are using here drives me bonkers every time I have to use. You can type in as many characters as you want in the topic title but it only accepts 45 characters. Just don’t allow more than 45!!!!!!!!!! And the search functionality of the forum is broken since the start. Everyone is complaining about it and you simply refuse to do something about it. There is very good forum software available. When are you finally going to use it?
/end rage

I was just going to make some general remarks about what would make my life as guild leader easier and link to Devata.6589 for more in depth proposals and he added a lot more I still refer to his posts as he has a lot of experience as a guild leader and has good ideas.

What can be easier

Build queue management:

1. I almost always build the same boosts and functionality (guild missions) so why not give me an option to automate it.
2. Nobody likes to manage the build queue (at least not in my guild). When building is automated hopefully other leaders and officers will find it easier to activate what is build.

Management of inactive players:

1. Give me the option to send a selection of my members the same mail. For example all members who did not represent for 2 months to ask them if they still want to be a member.
2. Show the last representation date. Together with the last login date this would give me more option to manage activity. Not necessarily visible to all members.

Message of the Day

1. Not visible enough. Maybe add a short welcome message to the guild chat. This evening I would have used this message: “To help you start with the Fine Dining Collection we made some steaks available in the guild bank”. Now I had the option to add it to the MOTD, but I did not as it is not visible enough.
2. Add a calendar function to it.

Guild commander tag

1. The account bound commander tag chance from the last patch made this less important but it would still be nice to have the option to activate a commander tag only visible to other guild members.

Build mission activation

1. Maybe not so much a change as a bug fix but currently it is totally unclear who can activate which guild mission. There is arelated permission you can assign to a rank but it doesn’t work. At least not as I think it should work. So bugfixing or clarification would be really nice. And yes, I made several bug reports for this issue in the past.

Probably not in the scope of this CDI but I would like to see other (changed) guild missions. Most of our veteran members have seen the current missions. I would love to do guild missions twice a week, but my fellow veteran guild members refuse to join more than once a week (some of them, the rest does not join GM at all lately).

Odeezee.7362:

Carbon Footprint.3421:

A quote from the Forbes website on customer retention:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexlawrence/2012/11/01/five-customer-retention-tips-for-entrepreneurs/

“Never Underestimate the Value of Retention

For those who feel that customer retention plays a relatively minor role in helping a company grow a healthy bottom line, here are a few statistics you might be interested in. According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. And if those numbers don’t impress you, Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. Still not sold on customer retention? One final statistic provided by Lee Resource Inc. should give you plenty to think about: Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer."

Just sayin’

no one is arguing that ANet should not retain customers, what people such as myself are saying is that ANet are going after the WRONG people to retain first (non-existent/brand new players) and not their current customers.

This is probably not something you want to hear but from a business point of view ArenaNet is probably going for the correct group of people. I don’t know how your situation is but I spend much more on gems in my first year than I did in the second year. And the same goes for a lot of my friends. So making sure new players stay in the game long enough that they start buying gems makes more sense business wise than entertaining the veterans who don’t buy gems any more.

The problem with veterans not buying gems is something ArenaNet should address in a different way. But you are probably aware that ArenaNet does not want to do that. And they probably have the numbers to back that up. I guess the current pricing is more profitable. I don’t like it (the gem situation and the focus on new players), but that is what it is.

Vayne.8563:

All this patch did was change 1-15 zones to tutorial zones, so people can relax into a character. They’ve greatly increased the speed of leveling. It took me an hour or so to get to level 7. So level 1-15 you level through super fast (or use a 20th level scroll if you have to) and most of the major unlocking is done.

But what this has done is given people more information about what happens when they level.

Anyone who doesn’t think this was necessary hasn’t spent much time on player helping players forums.

Didn’t read the rest of the posts after this one so maybe it was said before but I don’t have the time to read the rest right now:

You made a very good point. The changes to levelling were made for new players. For veteran players who want to level an alt some of these changes are probably annoying. But with a experience scroll you skip the first 20 levels and that should solve most of these issues.

One other thing: I played for an hour today on my main char who was standing in Plains of Ashford (logged out yesterday after an AC run). As this is a starter area I expected it to be easier (as that is what I read in the blog/patch notes). But the harpy event next to AC (Break the morale of the harpies stealing the Durmand Priory’s supplies) was definitely not easier. Two waves working together downed my character. And Defend the Ash Legion’s camp (level 8 event) is still very difficult to succeed unless you have 20+ players. So, starter areas easier?

Ceridwen.6703:

I play regularly with my 7 year old; in the basic low level PvE asura-based stories we’re enjoying, there’s no content I’d consider inappropriate. In fact, it’s even expanded her vocabulary (and my kid’s bilingual by default, and doesn’t come across advanced English every day). In our sessions, my kid has been “educating” me in the tutorial stage: “it’s good to get all 3 weapon skills before you get to the boss.” I imagine she’s going to be somewhat unimpressed when we log in today to discover the second skill slot we’d just earned yesterday (which was a small victory for her, she was very proud to have achieved it), was for naught.

For what it’s worth, I won’t let her play all aspects of the game, and she’s not allow map chat or to speak to anyone. We’re in a guild of our own, which she has to rep 100% because Mummy is a draconian tyrant with respect to representation. Doing this, there’s not a whole heap of difference between this and any of the Lego games she’s been hammering for the last couple of years. The only issue is with some of the costumes some of the characters wear: “Mummy, wouldn’t that character be a bit cold?” “Uhh… yeah. Hypothermia incoming for them! Learn from this and always dress appropriately for a cold climate.”

I also laughed hard at that last part. I still have to stop myself from shouting at some guildies that they really should give there characters more clothes. A Norn ranger in the most skimpy clothes I can imagine, the poor girl must be very cold.

For the rest of your story I agree that with the proper guidance some parts of this game can be played with younger kids. Particularity the parts were you change to a animal I think are a lot of fun to do with them. Running around as a fern hound makes me happy every time

Same problem here. Had no other disconnects today (Wednesday morning CET). I can change to another LS episode without a problem. I tried to quit both parts of “The Dragon’s Reach”.

Oh, and I will not react to posts that say stuff like: Yeah dude, just hit the boss, it is all your own fault. I will just report these posts.

How is it possible that after two years the game is still not able to recognize if you participate in an event

The situation: I join the fight against The Shatterer. That is an example of a boss fight where 95% of the people just auto-attacks the boss. But the fight has some interesting mechanics that most people probably don’t know. I join the few players who are standing at the cannons and mortars. Because we have one player more than there are mortars I man a cannon and shoot one or two volleys in the direction of the boss. When the Shatterer spawns some of his lieutenants on top of the mortars I defend those by killing the creatures. I also destroy an Imprisonment Crystal that spawns a few meters away from one of the mortars. And than the fight is over. I don’t get the event completion and I don’t get the rewards. I checked my combat log. It shows that I killed quite a few branded creatures and it even shows two hits from The Shatterer. So there can not be any doubt that I participated in the boss fight.

This bug makes me so mad that I don’t want to play the game at the moment. I even consider quitting the game. Earlier this evening I made a positive post about next weeks feature patch. I defended ArenaNet the last few days in several fora against all the criticism they get (feature pack is not big enough, they suck and whatever other stupid comments people have). But getting punished for not auto-attacking a boss kills all the enjoyment I have in the game.

Two threads in this forum about trading 2.0 and both are pretty negative. To add something positive: This seems to be exactly what I hoped yesterday when I saw “Trading 2.0”. A better BLTC.!!!!

The second to last header of the blog post says: Better Technology for a Faster Trading Post. A Faster Trading Post I made it bold so anyone who did miss it the first two times cannot miss it the third time. The single most annoying aspect of the current trading post is that it opens slowly and sometimes does not open at all. So making it faster is a very important change.

And yes, this should have been in the game when the game launched. And yes it took them two years to make this change. They admit in the blog that the current BLTC isn’t the best product they made. They also admit in the blog that they had a very small team to develop BLTC v1. We veterans complained about that. And ArenaNet did something about it. Too late? I don’t think so.

The complains about the small insufficient changes we will get in these feature patch can be found everywhere (on this forum, on reddit). I disagree. I think ArenaNet announced some fine QoL changes and some nice features. I don’t like anything what they announced. But I like a a better, faster TP. Better MegaServers. I see some interesting changes to collectables and miniatures. The Commander tag change is small but convenient for me. I look forward to next Tuesday.

SLthethird, if you want the servers up just to “complete” the game then the lifetime will be long enough and does not matter.

The lifetime will be long enough as for completion you don’t need a lot of players. Due to the Megaserver system ArenaNet should be able to scale the infrastructure (servers, network) to the amount of active players so no need to shut down the servers completely unless the last player really left.

Does not matter as the Living World concept means that the game constantly changes so to complete the game you have to play daily (well, very frequently). So completing the game will not be possible. LW season 2 does cut down so far on the permanent changes so maybe completing the game will be less impossible.

I am a veteran player of this game. My Sylvari Ranger has a lot of fun shooting cake and my Human Guardian is jealous she still has to wait a few days. After these two ladies I levelled two male characters to 80 before April. I levelled a 5th character to 80 after the new system became active. So I am probably not a player for who ArenaNet designed this new system. But I fail to see what you think to achieve with it.

What I did: I looked at all the traits, made a list and decided which traits I wanted to use on my new Necro. Then I looked at how I had to acquire these traits. I bought the ones I was not willing to wait for. Having already “bought” one legendary I could afford to pay some gold for traits. I did the necessary thing to unlock the other ones I wanted. So I got 100% completion of Gendarran Fields and Lornar’s Pass. I killed Sharky the Destroyer in Harathi. As veteran player I know how to get these unlocks. All of my characters try to get map completion of the WvW maps as soon as possible as I don’t want these maps to slow me down if I want the 100% world completion. So I got 3 of the 4 EB unlocks. But that Overgrown Grub I did not kill. Nobody wants to do that and the one time I tried I was an easy kill for some roaming enemies. The rest of the traits I am not actively going to unlock. Some of them I will unlock automatically. The rest I won’t bother.

What I want to say with this is that for me as an veteran player it was very easy to get the traits I really wanted. I just bought them. But new players cannot do that. Some of the unlocks are really stupid (Overgrown Grub), others are tedious (map completion) and quite a few are to difficult for the level of trait it unlocks (Sharky). So if you want to help new players with this trait unlock system you failed in my eyes.

Electro.4173:

I’m kind of torn about this update.

On one hand, its kind of a neat idea to give achievements for groups of collectables, and its also kind of a neat idea to give other unique skins for such.

However, depending on the groupings of these things, some of these are going to be insane to get. Heck, the one they showcased in the blog itself, the spirit weapon crafter… that’s thousands of gold right there, if its what I think it is (craft all the weapons which have the spirit weapon skins… Azureflame and the like). Which… I mean, I guess its a way to have “prestige skins” and I know plenty of people love those, but personally, I dread the day the patch goes live and I find an amazing skin locked behind such an insurmountable (for me, anyway) wall.

At the moment there are several achievements I will never get. To start with all the GW1 related achievements as I did not play GW1. And no, I am not going to play GW1 just to get achievements in GW2! Also I will never get the Emperor’s clothes achievement (or whatever that thing is called). I simply refuse to buy all the cultural armor. So this patch will just add a few more unreachable (for me!) achievements. Is that bad? No, not really. I don’t need to get all the achievements. I do the achievements I think are fun (JP, dive, dungeons) and when some of the other achievements are almost finished (slayer) I finish them.

If you are not happy with what is announced for the feature pack so far you will not be happy. Because I don’t see Trading 2.0 will contain anything you will like unless you are a dedicated trader. I hope Trading 2.0 will be the announcement of a proper in-game trading screen instead of the crappy browser we have now. I don’t expect it, but I can hope.

The features in this Feature pack are mostly QoL (Quality of Life) changes. I am happy with these changes (well most of them) as they will improve the game.

Now, new skill slots for weapons will be unlocked for all weapons simultaneously as you level up. This means that if you pick up a new weapon for the first time after already unlocking multiple weapon skill slots, you’ll automatically learn the skills for that weapon, rather than having to learn each weapon’s skills individually.

Can somebody please explain to me why ArenaNet is planning to destroy the best weapon leveling system I ever found in a game? You picked up a new weapon, hit something a few times with the first skill, learned what that skill did and you got your second weapon skill. You hit another thing a few times, learned the second skill and got weapon skill 3. I loved it. If anything I sometimes thought you got a new weapon skill to soon. The current system learns a new player what his new weapon can do in a reasonable time by using it. The new system gives him all the skill of his 4th or 5th weapon immediately so no slowly learning every skill. This is in my opinion not an improvement.

Now I do understand that learning all weapon skill for an elementalist took forever as you had to unlock all weapon skills for all attunements. (I don’t play an elementalist). But I think that problem could have been solved without throwing away your awesome weapon leveling system.

I have my doubts about some other changes. We’ve moved the downed state to unlock at level five so players have time to learn the basics of combat before they experience this system. I think this is silly. The downed state is such an integral part of the combat system of GW2 in my opinion that I think the downed state should have been part of the Tutorial mission. But that would have been much more work and I don’t have the feeling that ArenaNet wanted to put in that work. I am fairly positive about the announced features of the September 9 patch but this blog gave me the idea that ArenaNet just took some features from the Chinese version to “solve” some issues instead of developing really working solutions.

Well, OP should be very happy as she/he got an ArenaNet employee to respond to anything WVW related. That means there is at least one person doing anything WvW related by ArenaNet. Because is there still anybody who believes that there is a WvW developer team?

On the other hand I am not so happy with the response. It is another one of those typical ArenaNet responses. Just bad communication. As bad as the software behind this forum is. I think the suggestion to move the WvW forum to another place (outside the reach of ArenaNet) is a good one. That gives us the option to use proper forum software and not the crap ArenaNet is using. And the lack of response from ArenaNet would not make a difference as the only response from ArenaNet on WvW related topics are threats. (Another reason to switch is to avoid all the kittens. I had to rephrase the first sentence of this paragraph to avoid a kitten.)

EdwinLi.1284:

I doubt they will ever make S2 Living World Storyline unlock replay acount wide style because Living World S2 storyline is Arc 4 of the character’s main storyline.

Also each of your 5 characters are different people with their own Story they follow differently despite the path being the same. There is also the fact they have made Arc 4 have some class based and race based dialogues as well.

Chapter 1 of Arc 4 currently have some class based dialogues being Engineer classes will take notice to Engineer style dialogues and Race dialogues being if players are Sylvari the members of the Investigation team may show some hostility in their dialogues when your character talk to them but if he or she is a Asura there will be some Asura related dialodues with Tiami.

I know there is class based dialogue. Although my Sylvari did not met hostility when speaking with other members of the investigation team. That is still not a valid argument for me too not make it possible to skip parts when you replay or to replay with another characater. I don’t want to take away the option to replay the complete episode on another character as I can see that some people will do that (and like it). I just don’t think most players will, as they will replay only for the achievements. That argument was in my original post.

Probably part of my problem is the bad implementation of the replay function. If you ignore the “open your mail” at the start of the replay you can replay the three parts in any order you want. But it seems that if you click on the mail the game forces you to do the complete episode in the correct order. A guild mate of mine was complaining about that as he only needed one achievement in the first part and was forced to finish the complete episode before he could start the first part again. Maybe this is a bug, or the fact that I could replay it in any order is a bug. Communication about the replay functionality is not very clear. I was certain before Season 2 started that you could replay an episode on any character after you unlocked it with your first character. And I am not the only one who expected this based on communication from ArenaNet before Season 2 started.

My first point, give me the option to remove the annoying green star, still stands. If ArenaNet adds that I will be much happier. And don’t tell me that is to complicated to implement.

Deli.1302:

You’re a couple months too late to make a suggestion for something that is releasing in 2 days.

That is really wise of you! I should have used episodes in the thread title. Did you really take time to write this remark? ArenaNet will not make these changes in the second episode unless they were already planning that, I understand. But hopefully in an episode after that. It is hard for me to make suggestions for further episodes before I played the first one. And as I only replayed the first episode yesterday I could not make these suggestions before. Or at least most of them.

1. Make replay of an episode account bound after you finished it once. I am not going to play each episode on 5 different characters.
2. Give an option to remove the annoying green star in the right top corner. It stays there for me because I did not click on my old mail when I replayed the episode for the achievements. Now I got the ones I want I am not going to start the episode all over again. The story was nice to play once, much less the second time and I am definitely not going to play it a third time. Most players will replay an episode for the achievements, not for the story. I want the option to tell the game I am finished with the replay without having to complete it (again!).
3. As most players replay for achievements, not story, give players the option to skip the cut scenes and all the talking when they replay. Now I had to wait for the cut scenes and click through all the text.