Guild Wars 2

They used to have candy cane weapons.. as in an entire line.

You forget though! Candy canes are hard to make… I mean..
My partner made one as one of their first projects in blender…

And they’d have to make a new model for every single weapon!

Oh wait they could just shrink them and bend them and stuff… Its not like the geometry is difficult.

Oh well?

Also, does anyone else feel the hammer is a LITTLE bit thin?

Ok, maybe the hammer is very very thin for a proper candy cane hammer. It looks brittle. It could have had a globe in it and been a staff..

I opened up tons of gifts, nothing.

I went ahead and bought it with a combo of gems and farmed gold. I -literally- hate myself for it but I don’t want to miss out on stuff as a protest of their business practices anymore like I did with the scythe and greatsaw. I wanted to give the scythe to my partner.

But yeah.. it should have been obtainable in some other manner.

They’d make 20 times as much money if they simply made these into micro transactions. People who get them at these prices are rarer than the bell.

Micro-transactions = profit. Lots of it. Enough to outweigh any meaning of rarity or people who get them at the inflated prices. Why do you think steam is how it is?

Certain things just have no quantifiable purpose in being rare. People might troll but there are plenty other ways to make noise that are far more annoying if they want to do that.

16 tries on golem tonic until I got it.

I have to say, I enjoyed it altogether.

I agree with the statements about the gift stopper achievement essentially rewarding bad play… why is that? I did it.

I needed the achievement so I simply camped near their base and let my teammates be overrun and then nabbed the guy (with scout or the snowball of course).

Other problem? The snowball is unstoppable in the hands of any decent player. You can stunlock someone from full hp to 0 and if they stand next to each other get both players downed completely.

Even with these issues, it was a fairly fun event. Please don’t bother with balancing it as it goes away soon. Increase the drop rates for tonics or choir bell or implement a way to normalize the rng so that success rates become more regular.

Currently if you open 500 chests it doesn’t help any more than 2. Focus on this stuff instead.

I agree Katai, but I have the feeling its not in their business plan. If they did this kind of thing it would appease pretty much every player but they won’t do it because people buy gold.

The doll isn’t half bad either. Ranged knock down and subsequent easy shots end up catering fairly well to ninja types. You still need to keep distance from the Mad King or dodge very well.

Opened 500, nothing but a princess wand skin and hundreds of sweaters and snowflakes, a few cheap recipes. I’ll try again after I farm more. Also, recipes are so uselessly cheap.. lol.

Any chance on a recipe (which will undoubtedly sell for less than 1s to disallow us recouping our costs for farming it), to create the bell using the hundreds of useless materials we obtained trying to get this?

Late For Tea.1846:

Sahfur.5612:

snip
THEY DID STEALTH NERF IT. It is an exercise in naivety to believe otherwise. I apologize but those are the statistics.
snip

Funny how you talk about statistics, but you base your conclusion of maybe 3-4 cases? Before the patch I got my princess on my 2nd, my Griffon on the 6th and Soldier on the 1st. After the patch I got my Ventari on the 7th, sounds reasonable compared to how others had to try over 20 times before the patch, don’t you think?
It doesn’t seem to be that bad, considering others can get it fairly easily as well.

Stop spreading your poorly drawn conclusions.

Except you didn’t prove otherwise nor did you have access to the statistics which I had access to. Before you make shallow assumptions let me shatter your attempt to sweep the facts under the rug. I have asked alot of people about the drop rates decreasing, I have read numerous forum posts, I have checked and checked and double checked.

However, one persons statistics (yours) is totally able to counter a logical and sound statistical conclusion based on facts we have. Also, it takes just one special bee to make a swarm. Except it doesn’t. You aren’t a special bee and you are the same as all the other bees in the swarm. Shall I mention that mainly people who post in other places and are neither censored nor fanning it up on the official forums (lets face it alot of us left to other forums), have had similar results?

You are an outlier. You are not the norm, you are a statistical irregularity. You are one person and your single case does not counter the dozens of other cases where the drop rate decreased afterward.

Its simple.. simple… simpleton math. Hows that for poorly drawn conclusions?

Edit:
To be clear, if I was merely complaining that the drop rates were low, it would be a case of random dissatisfaction. However, I am stating that after asking numerous.. dozens of people and reading around on less censored forums (and these of course), the drop rate was reduced after the patch greatly. Its science. Check it out.

I post to bring this kind of thing to the surface not because of dissatisfaction… not because of spite, not because of being rude.. I merely think you have the right to know the odds as a fellow casino goer. If I was a company and I put out a patch lowering chances (thus having the initial reaction that things are good and discounting latter tests as unlucky) it would be a very good business decision to increase attempts made, while decreasing success. This could lead to more gold purchases or what have you.. I sure wouldn’t mention the stealth nerf if people asked about it if I was that company.

Call me a pessimist.

Oh, and I -would- be overjoyed if ANet stated that drop rates were not decreased and gave us our actual chances. It hasn’t happened yet though. I want people to know their chances.

My apologies but I would like to sincerely confirm your suspicions that the drop rate was changed.

I made my doll tonic on first try, I made the griffon on second try.

Patch came..
I tried to make my ventari? It took 10 tries and nothing…

THEY DID STEALTH NERF IT. It is an exercise in naivety to believe otherwise. I apologize but those are the statistics.

I have heard numerous accounts of legitimate feedback that the forging drop rate seemed to have changed to a much lower rate.

They wanted you to not get it as easily because..
Honestly I don’t find myself capable of understanding why a company would want to dissatisfy its player base with such ferocious regularity during each event. They come so close to making perfect events then add in something RNG based that is poorly implemented from its base genetic level. Why aren’t people coming to the community in droves? Look deep and you will find your answer.

The material prices have all skyrocketed so good luck farming yourself more attempts unless you are in the minority that has plenty of gold either obtained through playing the market or other means (often either gameplay sideline based or shady).

Why can’t it be purely based on skill/effort to participate in the events?
Its bleeding xmas, not the national gambling holiday.

Anet, you were doing fine in so many other aspects! Also people really should have had a warning about forging the tonics and minipets. Its important we understand our options. If people are not alerted of their options ahead of time (I waited to make my pets), you cannot be surprised when they become dissatisfied with the status quo.

Is it really wise to sit back and let people get dissatisfied when it could easily be explained upfront? Why not cash in on the hundreds of brownie points and direct purchase we practically guarantee with every post?

I just don’t understand the logic. A great PR opportunity to satisfy your player base and keep us on the hook/reward us for our loyalty (and not leaving due to the previous debacles) was abandoned.

It could have just gone so much smoother than this – with such minimal effort.
The effort could have been practically microscopic.

Instead they get a free non-dyeable wizard hat, recycled events, wooden weapons and the opportunity to gamble for anything of worth.

And when the casino was losing due to bad drop rates? It tilted the odds with a patch.

Either way, its their decision to make. I simply think it would have been far wiser to go the route that appeased all parties.. skill based, holiday enthusiasts, and Anets pocket, alike.
All were possible, few were realized.

Hundred blades gets dodged by the A.I half the time by them simply walking behind me in certain areas. If you can’t dodge it.. you seriously need to use the dodge mechanic or.. WASD a little more. We are rooted in place the entire duration, and can’t turn.

Blah! I accidentally reported a post I meant to reply/quote jokingly and lighthheartedly to. Disregard it please. I meant to hit reply and was running through orr.

If they made certain skins with components a rare drop from each lower zone the areas would be more populated again.

Nah man, it was trolling yah..

Trolls be trollin yo.
They put some precursor in your troll so you can troll while you troll.

The fact is, if you don’t watch your opponent and bring ways to punish them for using a glass cannon build.. you will lose. Its not imbalance. Its not adjusting playstyle for a different situation.

In my experience, due to the fact that dodging is much better than armor/hp… a glass cannon build is going to be able to gank you only if you let them via not coming prepared. Some builds are just better at beating each other, too…
Theres a certain class in the game with GREAT condition removal.. Traits make it almost impossible to keep a condition on that class, but due to the core mechanic of the class allowing healing as well, it becomes a curb stomp moment..
And theres a certain class in the game that EVERYONE uses condition damage builds with, sacrificing many alternatives. I won’t name them but I am fairly certain its obvious.

Guess which class complains about losing constantly on the forums to the other class?
(neither class is warrior or thief)

Likewise, if you encounter a very defensive build, and you spec for defense but a bit less and still didn’t do very well because they have condition removal and you have no alternative options, you will lose.

Rock paper scissors is balanced because its cyclical. The balance in this game is cyclical.

Exactly, warrior sacrifices utility for dps and a bit of survival.. and on many glass cannon builds the survival does not outweigh the ability to dodge → life leech, → stealth → dodge.. etc. (thief..)

Stat damage mitigation is very poor for fighting endurance in this game. It does not provide longevity, only the ability to be hit in melee range by certain ridiculous champion attacks and be two hitted rather than 1 hitted if you dodge incorrectly. Being able to dodge or completely avoid damage will always be better for any skilled player and especially min/maxer.

I still honestly have difficulty understanding why my ranger greatsword build has better survivability during soloing champions and stuff like this.. but I analyzed it and it came down to damage mitigation and flexibility. My warrior greatsword build puts out the numbers FAST. The problem is, with less defensive traits to protect me, so does that champion. I tried building ranger greatsword to be as min/maxed toward damage but the simple fact is… it wouldn’t be fair if my ranger had the same attack power and armor. The utility skills that provide huge bonuses (pets, healing well)… are built into the class. As a result, the traits don’t allow as much of the game to be changed by the trait build.

When your skills provide stuff such as this, your ability for wiggle room via traits is decreased substantially to balance it. That explains the differences between those builds, at their core.

I have already posted many paragraphs and I have a method of saying very little with alot of words.. so I won’t go any deeper. I’ve analyzed it at the base level, and there is balance in these builds and most imbalance that occurs is a result of the player not optimizing their build for their playstyle. A build can be viable, but if the player does not shift the playstyle as well, it doesn’t work.

Proper glass cannon warrior in pve content is actually not in need of a nerf.
In essence, warrior trait wise and build wise is a duality.
You can build heavily in one direction or heavily in another direction.
An unstoppable wall that has lousy attack power and utility.. or a dps warrior with laughable ability to survive which has to use some degree of dancing skill to stay within melee range of any considerable threat.

Many classes simply do not have this as their traits give them nice things but my ranger plays roughly the same whether I have traits set to one build or another.

Yes, it does good damage. However, other classes have variety and consistency which allow them to set the pace of the fight more effectively (thiefs ability to go invisible and play defensively, guardians heal, etc), while glass cannon warrior has no such ability and can get outright useless in melee in many encounters. You have to know what you can do safely before going into any encounter, whereas my greatsword ranger (yes I said it, it has terrible damage but it is able to simply survive better by having damage mitigation and other things, it is able to have a longevity in battle that outclasses my dps warrior).

Thus, I see no need for it to have a nerf, I’d rather have the builds/trait alignments of other classes balanced alongside it to provide as much min/maxing.

!!!!For clarity, trash mobs do not equal dungeon mobs and other mobs with mechanics such as rooting and high attack power!!!!

Certain builds of warrior have terrific longevity, but nerfing the glass cannon build is unnecessary because we are basically thief without the utility skills, cooldown specs, etc. Think of dps warrior as assassin class. Good on trash mobs, more sketchy on anything above veteran level.

An example:
Even though my build can burst damage entire enemy groups before a guardian can..
The guardian may be less efficient at ruining the trash mob squads, but its health is unlikely to drop to 0 during a boss fight and cause downed skills to come into play. Guardian has longevity here, whereas the same boss will lower the warriors health (with no proper healing mechanics unless you are a shout warrior IE Not glass cannon)
to 0. The warrior was capable of destroying a bunch of trash in seconds because the greatsword allows stacks of might to accumulate on critical.. if you have a high crit chance and you swing at a group of enemies, you will very quickly rack up might. This effectively makes the warriors attack damage increase in accordance to how many targets it has.

This is also why champions with adds are easier for warrior than champions who do not have adds, but still difficult to solo unless using a shout build or other non glass cannon builds. In addition, our downed skill is basically a suicide button unless you trait it. A glass cannon warrior who traits the downed skill can effectively CONSUME the adds to rise from the grave, either by damaging on the ground( not a great idea), or by holding out for vengeance and then using the burst skills to kill the add within 15 seconds to guarantee they stay “alive”. On a guardian, you can pretty much guarantee a win on most builds if you play your cards right. On my ranger, my pet can tank, I can root them, I can use my well which buffs both, bow has range and greatsword has damage mitigation. The fight will take longer.. but it will happen.
The balance is in the utility.. situational.
Glass cannon (healing shoutless) warrior vs. many balanced builds comes down to the same difference as..

Jogging 10 miles or running 1 and getting tired near the end.

DPS warrior is fantastic against trash mobs, but it lacks endurance which other classes have in spades. Even if you trait the downed skill, you can only use nearby mobs to rez yourself a limited number of times before the champion you are fighting runs out of adds and one shots you with a huge swirly attack of doom.

The signet is effectively something that limits endurance in battle but makes certain trash mob encounters easy.

Things will feel easier on many levels if you use burst builds on certain classes, but they are simply more direct in their approach while disallowing pacing.

I hope that gives you insight, I did tables and math and stuff for alot of this but I found out that actual play on a competitive level showed me the positives and negatives of these builds with more accuracy.

I don’t mind being utterly squishy and having a build that loses its breath quickly though… I love using a greatsword and running a glass cannon build. I’d have played thief but no greatsword and really its such a waste of potential to go pure dps on thief considering it has access to SO many awesome defensive capabilities (while retaining good enough burst damage to down opponents) in pvp if you build it properly.

\o/ I told you all that the weapon skins and more and minis would be in chests like in halloween and only available to either people with lots of gold (farmers, exploiters, botters typically) or a large disposable income. They simply made a new chest and renamed it. Now we won’t even have direct purchase from gem store minis like we did with the halloween event. They are putting MORE eggs in the black lion.. gambling basket? And its all because everyone was like “chill down, things will be ok.”

Noone, believed me and people called me a liar.

Yay I looked at the patch notes today and I feel like a winner, well.. I mean.. none of us win. At least I was right all along though..

I was right.
I was right. La dee da I was right.

Gonna go have a victory dance on my bed…

I told you there’d be vertical progression gear treadmills and another annoying black lion chest gambling thing.. I was right, weee. Told yah so.

I am sorry, I am just too busy celebrating my being right all along and everyone who argued with me and flamed me being incorrect at predicting the outcome.

I have a warm feeling inside.

Maybe since the facts have spoken about my being correct on this thing, people will realize in the future that I have experience predicting this sort of thing and listen? No?

Oh well, at least they won’t be able to have a victory dance like I am having.. unless its a victory dance for being incorrect.

I love me right now.

I have nothing against commander: as long as they have the presence of mind to hide their title. If they deserve the title, they should already be in possession of the tactical and respectful mind to hide it.

Anet will never get rid of it because it is a gold sink. They will never let you hide it because they wouldn’t want to offend their precious commanders which I could mostly burst damage to death (before their blood turns red) in any real pvp scenario other than a zerg. Whoopity friggin doo.

I want it hidden, and I never want to see you again in my game unless I go in WvW because you disgust me. Anyone can get the gold to become a commander, but only fools wear it in pve as a way to annoy other players and instead of supporting their guild they get the stupid title. Its like allocating funds away from your troops so you can wear a nice frilly pink dress to the ball.

If a commander has the respect to hide their title, I will have respect for their accomplishment. If they have no respect for me, I have no respect for them. Respect in this manner is a true mark of an actual tactical minded individual. If they have none, they might as well have “I spent all this money on the game and all I got was this stupid title which befits my tactical prowess” written on their armor shirt.

I will not respect you if you don’t hide it in pve. If you are incapable of understanding why I will not respect you, you are even less deserving of having any tactical advantage than before.

Does blocking players cause the title to disappear? If it does, I’d be totally fine with blocking all players who do this to irritate me when I am trying to find map objectives. I want my mini map back. You are not a landmark and you do not matter. Get off my minimap.

Alot of players agree with me but they are too polite to state it. They lack the need to clutter everyones map that half the commanders have.

Again, if you are respectful and disable it in pve, I will respect you back. If not, I hope I am never in the same zone as you because I gain no personal entertainment in staring at your name among the throngs of other commanders with their blue icon cluttering the streets of LA like garbage.

You can wait to be put in an overflow and have them join in with you in the overflow sometimes. I partied with several people on other servers this way.

Only problem lately is that Lions Arch is completely abandoned compared to how it was due to degrading interest in the game because of the repeated gaffs in the patches.

I tried finding an over flow the other day, not even anyone in the place had any party member who could invite me to the over flow.

There weren’t enough people in the game to have an overflow… in Jade Quarry Lions Arch.

If you CAN get into an overflow, you can try several ways to get them placed into your overflow and then travel as a party.

I hope that helps.. it worked during the mad king event several times for us and during some item acquisition quests.

I would like to bring it to your attention that all cooldown sigils even ones with hidden internal cooldowns conflict.

If you have a sigil of flame + sigil of leeching for instance.

Sigil of flame cooldown is 5 seconds. sigil of blood cooldown is 2 seconds.
Sigil of leeching is 9-10 seconds I forgot.

so, you decide to switch weapons every 5 seconds (for burst skills or stuns) or so because of your trait to switch weapons faster if you have one.. For warrior weapon switching is default 10 seconds but can be traited to 5.

at some point during the battle you switch to your sigil of leeching weapon:
The leeching hits, you steal health (well possibly) the cooldown sets to 10 seconds or so.
You use all your skills, before five seconds pass, you now switch to your sigil of blood or flame.

Sigil of blood/flame has a 2/5 second intenral cooldown but because it shares with the leeching, it is still on a 5 second cooldown so you use your skills, switch in 5 seconds…

Sigil of blood/flame NEVER triggered. Leeching will however trigger once it goes out of its 10 second cooldown.

If you use a weapon swapping build this can be a pain.

Also, if you have two axes, one with sigil of quickness (or whatever it is witht he 45 second cooldown) and one with sigil of flame..

if the quickness hits, you will not see your sigil of flame go off for 45 seconds as opposed to the 5 in its icd.

Yes, all cooldown sigils share the same cooldown rather than by group.

It needs to be explained in the game and not researched by only min/maxers like me.

edit: You can however have a 2/5 second cooldown and a 5 second cooldown on the other weapon set and just realize it won’t always proc. That gives you flexibility but slightly degrades your spamming efficiency.

Sometimes I honestly run sigil of flame on one weapon to aoe heavy then switch to a weapon with sigil of blood (2 seconds) when my health starts getting lower if the fight requires more pacing. Both are five seconds so I can reasonably get a “fair” amount of procs if I time everything correctly.

edit 2: sorry I forgot to clarify sigil of blood is similar to the 5 second ones except its every 2 seconds but you get in the same boat when going with sigil of leeching. In other words sigil of leeching/blood will conflict if you switch too often.

For great justice has the three stacks of might constantly if you hit it on cooldown.
Most everyone hits it on cooldown.

Why can’t it simply be a signet or have a longer cooldown on the audio?
At the very least, add different sayings?

I am driving my friends crazy with this thing and avoid using a good skill because of it.

Either route, signet because of how it works (the three stacks of might being the passive, everything else on activate), or cooldown on audio or alternative..

I’d appreciate it either way, I think I am wearing thin on peoples sanity with it. It gets as repetitive as most 4chan memes but they are forced to listen to it constantly. I fear they will go crazy.

Haha I love the one with the asura kid and the charr, maybe they should add other things he says to spice it up rather than just removing?

I’d REALLY LOVE some sort of cooldown or something on for great justice or alternative sayings. I use it as my auto attack and just spam 1 to ensure I can be spamming all my skills the most efficiently (even though it somehow has to queue behind some attacks it doesn’t need to.. it can activate mid attack but it will wait until the end. I guess micro managing only goes so far.

I am driving people insane… every 25 seconds " for great justice" and now people call me justice..
Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if people who didn’t understand you can change the highlighted skill by auto attack would report me for it thinking its on a timer.

So yeah, some repetitive sounds just need to be removed.

Lets be honest here though, For great justice should be a passive signet 3 stacks of might and only activate the rest upon activation. You can in theory keep those 3 stacks constantly so theres no reason it shouldn’t be a signet and theres no reason we should have to hear our characters spam the audio.

It isn’t important to them to build the community otherwise there would not already be gear tiering. I would very much love to have guesting but it doesn’t seem to be on their priority list in light of recent events. Apologies.

I believe it acts as a second roll for a second chance to steal health. Apologies.

I feel that even though certain game elements encourage me to help players like I try to, I am being encouraged to be a shark on every other level in order to be properly competitive. Am I wrong in that assumption? Does anyone else feel the same way?
I’d really prefer not to be an elitist, but even once every party member has ascended, we will need to grind out the gear to afford the next gear coming in three months.

Its better to get started early, with an efficient party. Correct?

To be honest, I don’t see myself becoming one of those sharks.. I just feel that every shark that does exist is pretty much going to have an edge. People do what it takes to have fun or survive or accomplish their goals. I don’t think people have an in built reasoning system that places karmatic aid above self progression. I think people will become sharks like in every other mmo and the community will be further tiered.

Ok, so if I am in full exotics and go to this new content to grind out ascended, and people don’t accept me to the party because I don’t have any ascended, is that fair?

Likewise, once I get to ascended gear I guess its only fair I treat everyone else the same way? After they get ascended gear, why should they let my alts into the party? What about once my alts have ascended and their alts don’t? After all, after being used to companies who don’t have to keep their word solid about the design of the game from pre-launch I might as well go ahead and just be an elitist because at least elitists aren’t
retroactively changing the promise about the future of the game. With no shred of empathy left because I grinded it all out, I can also be elitist at that point. Is it wrong at that point? Where does the bar get lowered to?

So, if we all do this maybe it will all go down in flames, because the game will lose the ironically small amount of community it once had. Whereas once the tools to build a community existed, the gear grind will have gotten rid of the last shreds. How is it that the community seems to get worse and worse with time? I haven’t seen anything being built and don’t foresee any community progress with such content. Gear is soulbound so its not like I can allow my neighbor down the way to borrow a cup of exotic sugar. Everything is localized to your player. The game wants you to be social and nice in some ways but in other ways it encourages you to be a shark.

So, what if it happens? What about the next expansion in three months? What about the holiday events in the future that will be scaled to be difficult for higher and higher tiered players while everyone who doesn’t participate in the gear rush every 3 months doesn’t enjoy it? (well, less, lets face it once this starts it becomes addictive for the companies).

“Once hand is in the cookie jar, no longer an honest man..
Will stick it back in very far, every single time they can.”

So, then if gw2 gets rid of the promise to not have a gear treadmill, what differentiates it from all the other mmo? Yes, no subscription fee, but other than great asura storyline writing what will get players to pay 60 dollars? Why should they bother spending money on holiday items and gem shop stuff when they have to spend all their gems on the gold to keep up with the gear creep?

Also, the few people who are placated by the gear creep will be only active until they get their new gear, leaving like seasonal locusts between every expansion for … WoW.

I guess what I am wondering is… why do you think every action made seems to be capable of distancing the community rather than bringing it together? Does this have some sort of tactical advantage for them? Am I missing something?

Is there a reason gear that has no bonus to existing but has plenty of problems with existing exists? Is there a reason this stuff is worked on before cross server guesting is?

Why no real community? Why am I logically supposed to voluntarily participate in it and help, knowing that every action toward it distances me from my goals?

Example: I help everyone find orichalcum, prices tank and go down. I have no problem with this, but its an example of how every mechanic seems to encourage sharks.
Example: If I had full ascended gear and a party with full ascended we could run 4 dungeons in the time it took a normal group to run 2.

Why bother slowing down and helping people like I have been? I am genuinely concerned for the state of the game after ANet has changed its stance on gear above the exotic quality.

Warrior sort of has the increased effectiveness while hitting multiple enemies if you use procs on crits and a crit g/s build because you get might for each crit and thus go up to 25 stacks quickly while also stacking a ton of bleeding, vulnerability, possibly either proc healing or aoe flame.. You should have plenty of power and crit damage and % to essentially curbstomp anything in a few seconds. the longer the battle lasts and fewer opponents you have, the worse it gets though.

Hope that helps. Also theres the spin 2 win attack and hundred blades and the other pvp combos. You end up giggling like a maniac if people have the unfortunate idea of standing next to each other.

Other than that, most builds don’t scale with how many things you are hitting at the moment but I haven’t played every class and every build yet. All I know is it takes me less time to kill 6 orrians standing next to each other than 1 orrian.

Yet possibly 10 to 20 more people would fork over 10 dollars for a weapon skin which means the one gambler probably doesn’t offset the price of the dozens of people who wouldn’t gamble but would buy directly, also that purchase was with gold and direct purchase tends to get more gem purchases done. In other words, welcome to the world of micro transactions. Thats how it works where I work, and its the reason we are able to do better business than places that have prices 20 times as high as ours. Especially when theres no cost to create new items, it becomes lucrative to get the increases number of sales, not the increased price on sales.

Please don’t support it. If we don’t support it they will get a clue and stop using it to highway rob us and instead offer direct to purchase skins like they should have for the halloween event.

Edit:
I would like to add that its good for every single one of us players to not support the chests as a way of stating we want direct purchase methods for all of this.
The only one who would want it in the chest instead of direct purchase is ANet and I think they have other more legitimate methods they have to obtain money by direct purchase minipets and skins. No gambling.

Please, I implore you to not feed them money through these means. Maybe feed them money in other ways but do not buy keys because they will take it as a positive reinforcement of their actions and we need to communicate to them that it will not work again like last time.

It would be fantastic if we could simply ask them for direct purchase versions of the gambling items but the fact is.. they aren’t open to it. They make more money by scamming us with the gambling fiasco. Support direct purchase, don’t gamble.

Thank you. Hopefully with enough feedback that we don’t like skins as random gambling drops from chests, they will add the stuff to the trading post for a direct fee. They will do better business this way in the long run anyway in my opinion.

Essarious Quw: “Oh and realising that the invader armour for over 14k badges of honour was not a unique skin… that was pretty de-motivational too haha.”

I totally agree.

Yeah! Why are they doing content updates like ascended armor when the armor in the game often doesn’t even have its proper icon or even a unique skin. The charr t3 and many other cultural skins can be obtained off the trading post for small amounts of silver typically.. and the stats are horrid compared to proper exotics.

Why haven’t they polished the edges and fixed content that already exists instead?
Alot of us skimmed over the stuff with design flaws and would be practically experiencing an expansion if all the things were fixed.

I don’t wvw because of two things. I was going to do it tonight because I now have full exotic gear. However, I don’t want to get used to doing it when they add ascended. I won’t have those and I spent my gold on my exotic so I will not be playing WVW even though I believe I have the skill to do it based on my few forays into pvp being complete curb stomps upon my opponent.

Fact is, I don’t want to be in a situation where my gear is why I lose. I did an experiment today and checked the level of all next players I saw for 20 times. Each one was level 80 until the last. They almost certainly all have exotics and some had sunrise.
Why would I have bothered with wvw when I had no chance of winning due to being out geared?

The other reason is, as a Jade Quarry player, it seems meaningless to me to fight blackgate simply because they are the enemy. I wanted factions.. a story.. something. The writing staff did wonders for the game and they could have worked magic here.

WVW to some extent has gotten in the way of guesting and divided the community and I’d rather there be something like was in gw1 with kurzicks and luxons.. We choose a side philosophically and fight for a purpose.

tldr; no honor fighting if I have better gear, or they have better gear.
I was in a situation where a warrior burst damaged my entire 5 person team because they were real lvl 80’s with exotics most likely and we weren’t at the time. I am fine with this but now that I have the gear to wvw I don’t want to have fun doing it because after the 16th there will be more people with a pesky edge and I don’t want to feed their massive egos.
no reason to fight them except marginal bonuses.

Guesting should have been implemented but the mechanic has stalled ANets production of guesting.

Hope that explains it..

I did spvp and was good at it nearly every time.

Also, If I have anything less than the best gear I feel I am taking up someones wvw slot who could have the best and do better for my server. Its pointless to bother.

Another reason is sometimes I feel guilty about killing people if it wasn’t a fair fight somehow. In spvp at least its somewhat fair I guess. If I have better gear and traits than the other person they are as defenseless as a rabbit to be honest.

One last post, you should have built your community instead of having it torn apart.

Server versus server, you let it get in the way of guesting and it had no proper point to it. No faction, just meaningless names.

Halloween items separated the community further, black lion chests were a quick cash grab. This didn’t build community, it made it difficult to have one.

In a treadmill environment, people are at odds and must either farm market manipulate or exploit to get ahead and its not right.

Why wasn’t the first step to build community? Why wasn’t the first step simply guesting and such?

The community will just get worse when everyone is required to have full ascended to do certain dungeons.

Why should I bother playing a community oriented game with no community?

Yeah, I agree and guess its time to pack up. If this ends up being another tier, I will just go play another game that is coming out and will be better and get all my friends to play it instead. I loved asuras though! Too bad such a great writing staff had to get involved with these folks.

So thats the consensus? We defended them a while but they kept changing their stances on what the game would be after launch?

Its pretty sad but hey, other games to play I guess.

You are right though, even if we try to provide feedback it will be removed or buried under other posts so it doesn’t matter. We have no way to teach Anet what we want and no way to remind them of their promises. They are too busy with this stuff to even add guesting. Why? WVW? It seems meaningless, to me, a Jade Quarry person to fight blackgate people. Why should I? Why didn’t they have proper factions like luxons and kurzick type thing? Why no reason to fight? Why no reason to not have guesting?

The game is ripping itself apart and I’d rather remember the asura fondly. Buh bye! I liked helping players but gear treadmills aren’t my thing.

Don’t bother posting here, if its anything except flowers and sweet words for what they are doing then it will be deleted and censored. This is why community forums exist. I think we should all move there.. except maybe the admins there are white knights.

So basically your feedback will only be skimmed over for an excuse to ban and NEVER be mentioned to the devs of the actual game. Either that or post on a community website where the devs won’t go (not safe enough) or the admins will white knight you and ban you for using logic to explain why some things just shouldn’t happen and why certain actions constitute a.. lie.

The thing is, you blathering sheep who support ascended, that it doesn’t raise the level cap based on skill. It raises it based on who has a bunch of friends who still play the game and are max level and good at it. Thats a handful of you. All my friends left when ANet kept screwing the proverbial pooch and ruining their game with each giant buffoonish movement.

My friends are all either in different games that the devs actually treat the players correctly by not lying to them, or they are on at different times.

And don’t tell me that PUGS will be a viable solution for the new content because I highly doubt it will work out 99% of the time.

I am tired of you Dark Souls hugging elitist sociopaths who gauge self worth based on being “hardcore”. The fact of the bloody matter is that I wanted to have fun and I started this game on the premise that ANet said that exotics were top tier. I spent all my gold I spent all my time getting on getting to that max stat tier so I would be able to have fun and slowly farm for skins. I didn’t sign up for WoW, I signed up for what GW2 was going to be.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game and would love it if the developers gave a nod to Nightmare before christmas and made a special instance.. a woods instance, where each door led to each holiday realm.

Please? Everyone could get the items and titles and explore and it would add more content.

Keep enough of this content around and you have more overall content which means more incentive for people to buy the game and play it. Server costs might be an issue but..

I quite like the labyrinth as well, but mainly just love the inquisition game.

I’m rather interested in the list of things that were added under the hood during the last few patches. There was an endless makeover and hair item added.

I would love to purchase these in the future… but I doubt it will be direct purchase set priced.

I could almost guarantee you they will be in the chests also… the permanent banker is.

Oh well, maybe someday! At least they will add the possibility of a shadow of a doubt of getting them.

As long as they don’t time limit (only available for a week…) the permanent makeovers when they come out, I guess we can get them eventually?

Either way, I saw alot of interesting things from the gw2db files and its piqued my interest for the next acts.

Maybe things will get better.

Or maybe they will add all this stuff to the chest because people have been buying those en masse.

Lets just wait and see I guess.

And the progeny… really they should just sell us all the trick or treaters as mini pets because having them follow you would be beyond hilarious.

I’d definitely buy the halloween quaggan and the progeny as minipets if they allowed them…

I have decided to add a seventh question:

7. Have you bought any of the direct purchase, set priced halloween items. If so, will you be buying more?

side note, these are awesome and I highly recommend at least the Mad King outfit, regardless of your stance on the other items. I might be partial though because I wanted to select Mad King as my deity when I made a human.. hah. side note over sorry

I would love to explain more but if I put the things they are doing in the forum post here (you can probably google it) I could get banned and it would show other people some of the exploits, which they would then use. I will not mention the forum that is the headquarters of the people doing these things but I’ve been following it for a little while in an attempt to know what they will be up to next. To be clear, its not about the account bound gold gems stuff. It goes deeper than that. I will say that it is a result of several bugs, several gameplay mechanics the bots are currently taking advantage of.. etc. I believe Arena Net has an idea what is going on but I don’t know if they can fix it easily. Every option they have to fix it, also negatively effects other people. Kind of a double edged sword. So the Botters win until ANet finds a way to fix it. I hope that clarifies slightly but I can’t afford being too clear at this point. I guess its not great to say nothing but at the same time it would be bad to say too much. I hope you understand my situation on it. XD

Unfortunately, a mere binary factor of whether someone bought it or not does not provide them some of the information that they can gain from reading things such as this if it is organized clearly. If someone does not buy it, they don’t know why. Silent customers who decide never to buy the chest again but would buy something else are not helping them. That hurts business in the long run. Its easier for an otherwise silent person to post if its simple and fast. If someone does, they don’t know the other extraneous factors. I disagree that nothing is to be gained from discovering the other tendencies and patterns. There are entire industries built around this sort of thing because they aren’t able to effectively gauge the entire spectrum by binary sales data.

I hope that helps you to understand the point.

Splendid idea, I will add a question asking whether or not a skin was obtained.

Whether or not I agree with the other stuff or not, I believe the fact that botters who incorrectly obtained the gold to get some of these things, (other unlistable things) and then are setting prices and further exploiting the event need to be addressed.
It has slowed down slightly but a ripple in the pond continues far after the initial rock falls in.. and especially in an economy.

A gold to gem type event can’t really succeed when you gauge the economy on people who simply aren’t reflective of the normal player because they aren’t playing fair.

I feel that its simply more bait for them to exploit and ruin the general balance of the event. Arena Net has tried to make it less profitable and viable for botters to capitalize on the event but they have still found ways. Hopefully the Mad King chest can slow down a bit of this but it still seems that on certain forums they are using these techniques.

I can’t really list the ways because some of them are less obvious and I don’t want more people doing them.

That being said, I can’t think of any way that ANet can realistically deal with the situation without punishing the average player other than the antibot code already in the game.. and its not very effective either.

They really can’t fix the problems that are happening and they are resulting as a product of the overall structure of the event.

I guess it will work out though.

Thank you everyone, for providing clear, concise and simple answers so far with no argument or page long posts.

Lets keep it going like this so it doesn’t degenerate into the flame war that most other threads have become.

I think seeing them as archetypes and suspending disbelief about times linear progression helps a bit with the experience of wondering if they have a 2 minute memory or not, haha. Either way its hard to implement more than this in a game that isn’t linear.

My favorite line has to be the progeny talking to the charr guard though..

Asura Progeny: “Your face looks funny, its all squooshed and weiiird.” said obnoxiously
Charr Guard: said threateningly “No! Your face is funny… its like a little raisin.”

I get the sense he is tapping his claws together as if to pretend squash the progeny’s little head and it just makes me LOL every time I hear it.

I like the line as I think it perfectly reflects how a kid might react to the holiday. However, I can understand why some people might be annoyed with it.

Have you considered that maybe Arena Net rides the line on annoying/entertaining sometimes in order to realistically show a living world/town?

We have enemies because it would be boring to have only friendly characters, likewise its reasonable to assume the world would be boring with quiet and polite npc only.
Certain npc being annoying somehow simulates that irritating feeling you might get when you hear a crowd of people being obnoxious. I like it.. all the dialog has variety, even if I hate a certain line.

I hate the “theres no profit in the eternal alchemy line” but I think the voice actor did a good job on it.. it makes you think that there are other npc with different views from yourself in that town and so it brings it alive.
It mixes things up, adds some spice. How do you know what tastes bitter without tasting the other flavors first? That kind of thing.

I have no interest in discussion other than simply the reply of whether you plan to buy into the black lion trading chest random number generation again or not.

The idea of this thread is to give them a better idea on whether or not the majority of their player base will buy into this from a financial standpoint alone. No morals, no discussion. Pure data.

I want to keep this thread very short and hopefully very long detailing nothing other than your response and no extra information or argument. The idea is that maybe they will see this and gather an overall idea of what the player base is wanting or sticky it. Gauging customer likelihood to buy things is difficult so lets make it easier on them.

You may copy paste the section below to quickly reply and state your general views on the subject in a yes/no pattern. No extrapolation.

Five main responses are acceptable, please:

1. Will you or will you not be buying black lion trading company or random number generation materials again?

Example: Yes/No.

2. Did you buy them in the past?

Example: Yes/No.

3. If you would not buy trading post material/gamble, would you support direct to buy weapon skins and what general price do you find acceptable from a business standpoint both as a customer and realizing that they must make money as a business?

Example: Yes/No. I would/wouldn’t buy them even if they were direct purchases.

4. Do you believe that future events will also be handled with random number generation to make profit based on limited time item acquisition?

Example: Yes/No.

5. If you believe that the future events will be handled in the same manner, does this realization negatively effect your trust of Arena Net in regard to handling micro transactions for permanent content?

Example: Yes/No.

6. Did you obtain a skin or whatever it is you were looking to get from the black lion trading chests? From the Mad King Chests?

Example: Yes/No I did/didn’t obtain the item I wanted from the chest. I also did/didn’t obtain the item I wanted from the Mad King Chest.

7. Have you bought any of the direct purchase, set priced halloween items. If so, will you be buying more?

Example: Yes/No I have/haven’t purchased the direct purchase halloween items. I do/don’t plan to buy more.

Keep it simple, keep it civil, keep it short: My gratitude.
Yes/No answers to the above questions are alot easier to read and faster if ArenaNet wishes to gauge their audience. I am not taking sides even though I have my own opinion and wish to act as an intermediary within the confine of the thread.

TLDR; Copy and paste the section above with yes or no answers, please. If you are incapable of keeping things short and QQ (in either direction) we will all assume you have the inability to follow directions in order to give ANet another way to gauge customer satisfaction and the desire to buy gems or purchase other things.

If someone does start ranting and/or making page long arguments I ask that you please simply ignore the fact and move on in the short and objective manner.

Easiest thing we players who supported the game can do is just stop buying stuff from them because we learned the valuable lesson they were trying to teach us. You are doing it wrong, try learning and paying attention to their example.

We can all be as well suited for pure survival against (not with) the other people of this world, if we just act the same way.

Again, I thank ANet with all my heart and soul for teaching me the right way.

The spirit of Halloween is definitely about gambling.

I remember all my childhood, I’d go to a door and pay 20 dollars in order to possibly open it and maybe get a piece of candy. Its a legitimate business practice from all the people at those houses! Free candy because its a celebration? Are you daft?!

Its a proven fact that gambling improves your life and enjoyment of the celebration.
If you gamble enough, you learn to expect less in life. Pretty soon ANet will help us all realize just how completely horrible and unreasonable we were to expect them to give every player an easier opportunity at getting the permanent skins.. I mean.. this isn’t…

WoW, FFXI, PW, the list basically goes on and on to all mmo with either a sub fee or a nice event where you have better access to the content.

Why would they want to do like those companies? They didn’t invent it… if ANet didn’t invent it then they won’t add it. Not made here… No player to player trading for you! Its not like they are supposed to be competitive with those other mmo which offer a fulfilling permanent reward for doing the quest. Why build community when all we are doing is zerg rushing everything? This way is alot better.

Thank ANet for making the drop rate of these items equivalent of most six month subscription fees in other mmo in gold or money.

They are teaching us to care less and/or expect less in life from other people (definitely Halloween spirit material) and I am coming to the conclusion that its a good thing to have misanthropy and a general distrust of mankind.

Thanks ANet! You managed to do something that the real world, job, school, etc couldn’t do! I will take this lesson with me and treat everyone else accordingly from now on. I used to buy into that karmatic nice person “help every player, support the companies you like” hogwash.

While I was learning that lesson, I learned something else. The exploiters of all those bugs and people who gamed the market were able to afford these items while the people who supported the company didn’t get them!

Wow, I have been doing it wrong all this time.

130? Hows that invisible new graphics card treating you?

I’m deeply.. deeply sorry. Hope your luck improves. That sounds just awful. Lots of cash or the equivalent.