Guild Wars 2

Absolutely loved it!

The glider is hilarious and the revenant looks promising at this point.

Thanks for the punctual start and no connection issues whatsoever,.

(Guess I’ll skip some sleep this night for the 2nd opening)

While one can certainly debate the support role and what it is supposed to be, I don’t think it’s relevant here.

To me, it sounds like the group as a whole was neither very experienced nor overly skilled, with a very narrow-minded approach to how the boss battle should be done.

However, to me personally the main problem here is that you did not bring the required AR. I don’t particularly care how it “went well for you before”, actually after reading some of your posts, I arrive at the conclusion that the only reason it was so is because you got carried by decent players. This time however, the group wasn’t good enough to make up for your shortcomings.

Unfortunately, the encounter got the wrong kind of “sense” knocked into you: You abandon the class, instead of simply stocking up on AR. With the ascended gear being account-bound, laurels being easily obtainable and so on, I don’t really see how you can still make excuses about not meeting AR reqs.

Yeah, I understand this wasn’t the highest priority on the long list of things to fix, but an update on how this is going to be resolved would be appreciated nevertheless.

Very happy that I got an invite and looking forward to play on Tuesday

Vayne.8563:

I return to those zones because I enjoy going there. I think they’re pretty, or fun, or I go to do an event I used to enjoy doing, or find an event I’ve never seen.

Every time I pass through zones, I find stuff I never noticed before, or noticed once but don’t remember. That’s why I go back to old zones.

And of course, I’m in those zones when we do guild missions, I’m in those zones for jumping puzzles. I’m in those zones because guildies are in those zones and I’m hanging out with them.

Your focus is the carrot, so you assume the only reason anyone would ever go to a zone is for the carrot. kittenumption is bad.

I often wander around just TO wander around because I enjoy wandering around. Sometimes I just like to try to climb mountains, not because there’s a chest up there, or because there’s a reward up there. Just to see if I can do it.

I don’t know why you think I return to zones for world bosses, since the world boss train feels a whole lot like grind to me and as already mentioned, I tend not to do that.

The game is out for approximately 2.5 years. Which means you average a legendary every half a year. While I do not doubt that you do indeed engage in the activities you just described, you might want to consider how much of your game time is truly spent on it and how much you are actually engaged in the carrot-chasing.

As far as I’m aware, fooling around hearts and climbing mountains does not magically shower you in wealth. If it indeed did, a forum reader or two might be interested to learn more – including myself.

rhael.6317:

aspirine.6852:

You dont get banned because Anet screwed up something.

Tell that to the victims of Snowflakegate.

Precisely what I was thinking

But anyway, I think that in this case it would require a lot of manual effort to decide who actually abused this and who just happened to create a new char (and be it only for key-farming) by chance. They would basically have to check chat-logs and whatever on individual basis to see if the person somehow learned of this beforehand and acted with ill intentions, but even then you cannot be sure as the information could have been obtained from outside of the game once it got viral.

As much as I would love to see offenders being punished, at this point I’m just happy if they sort out the whole mess by reverting unjustified AP and title unlocks.

Vayne.8563:

I did what I want when I wanted. I never ran a dungeon to get a legendary. I ran dungeons to help guildies and incidentally got the tokens I needed for a legendary. I jump into PvP or WvW when I feel like it, not for a specific reward. The reward was incidental to me.

Once I had enough of the rewards I got incidentally I had enough to get a legendary. I had enough badges of honor, even though I wasn’t doing anything for badges of honor.

Simplest example is map completion. I don’t complete maps because I want world complete. I simply do stuff that happens to be around as I’m running past it. It’s there, it’s XP and it requires no effort. I might go into a zone 20 times and not complete it, and suddenly, I look up and I need like a vista and a couple of points of interest.

Grind implies intention. I very rarely do anything for the reward it gives me, unless you’re counting fun or helping a guildie as a reward.

To me, this sounds like the common delusion about what the carrot dangling in front of your face is all about.

Let’s look at your simple example of world completion: Why would you repeatedly return to the same zone on the same character over an extended amount of time? Encounters such as world bosses which encourage such behaviour are limited to certain spots. You don’t magically complete a heart on the other side of the map because of that. Just like you don’t magically complete a large majority of the hearts by “running past them”. As a matter of fact, you seek them out on purpose, you stop, you engage in that activity in a repetitive manner and then move on. You are as such guided by rewards, even if you keep telling yourself that this is “all fun”.

This remains the same for all kind of content: You may tell yourself that you have fun doing that dungeon for the 101th time because you’re helping out a guildie this time, but in truth the game-related rewards attached to the activity influence your decision-making and willingness to be helpful.

Your intention is there, it may not be as bluntly as “I want that legendary now”, but it still affects what you do. Do you stick around and keep doing hearts-related activities once the heart itself is completed because they are so much fun? Do you keep running the same dungeon paths or world bosses past the extra daily reward because they are so much fun? The carrot usually takes you elsewhere…

Well, after a couple of days, my GW1 legacy is still in ruins, I’m hearing even stranger voices than normal and the pet is refusing to behave. To me, these things matter because I cannot really avoid them. If an activity doesn’t work, I can do another… but the current bugs affecting me are universal.

Sure, I’m confident that everything will be resolved in time, but what I’m not so confident about anymore is the quality of the updates. Hopefully, this turns out to be some kind of wake-up call though.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not congratulating them for fixing what they broke. I’m offering some balance on a forum that has over-reacted for ages, using hyperbole like a sword. It’s a silly think for someone to say this is the worst patch in the history of mankind, so pointing out that much of what was wrong is fixed in two days would seem warranted.

It’s called being reasonable.

Since this is only a balancing act, shouldn’t your thread be removed as well then? :P

metaldude.4132:

Interesting approach…Is grinding considered being based on “time spent”, “number of actions” or being “repetitive” ?

Imo, repetition naturally goes with time spent. The more repetition, the more time spent. There is no “or” here. Number of actions depends on whether they are the same (or similar) ones or not, with the former being repetition..

Olvendred.3027:

None of the examples you listed required doing something 500 times. The only two that required repetition are map completion (which, as you said, was only 3 times), and forging for Mystic Clovers (which, though repetitive, is different thing from playing the game, imo. In any case, it’s far fewer than 500 repetitions).

Unless of course you count “Kill any mob” as the thing being repeated. But if you’re going to take such a broad definition of what’s repeated, the entirety of almost every single game ever created would be considered non-stop grind.

No need to take the 500 that literally. You’re not doing map completion “only 3 times”, you’re completing 3×303 hearts, with some of them being more repetitive than others. Given that those hearts are not unique (some kill, collect, move something from A to B… the actual activities remain the same, just a different visual setting), you end up with a whole lot of repetition. There is no way to avoid this as their completion is mandatory. You also don’t just happen to complete them as you pass by in many cases. As such, this is grinding to me.

Lastly, I’m not talking about broad definitions such as “kill any mob”, as I agree with you that this could be applied to anything basically. The hearts and the mystic forge usage are very specific activities within the game that in the case of obtaining a legendary result in a grind as explained previously.

Olvendred.3027:

You’re confusing “large/time-consuming task” with “grind.” Simply because it takes a long time to get all the requirements for something, doesn’t mean that doing so is a grind… unless you play in a grindy manner.

No I don’t. If you have to complete something 500 times, if you do it 500 times in 1 day or once a day over 500 days is not relevant. You still did a repetition. All examples I listed qualify as such.

Vayne.8563:

I have five legendaries and I didn’t grind for any of them.

Strange, I have five legendaries too and I cannot recall that they magically appeared in my inventory. On the contrary, I recall following a very specific agenda in order to obtain them.

How is doing world completion three times and with that completing all the “amazing” hearts three times as well not grinding? When playing a character, neither do you just stumble over all of them, nor do you always complete them by just passing through the area.

How is obtaining 77×5 Mystic Clovers not grinding? There are very few options to obtain them outside of the MF, so you either repeatedly push your RNG-luck or you repeatedly complete one of the PvP-tracks that qualify.

How is obtaining the precursors not grinding? There is no reliable way to get those, so you will likely end up buying them off the TP. While you can obtain the gold through all kind of activities, the fact that a large majority of the playerbase will have to mandatory spend it on the precursor because they are simply not getting a drop “naturally” is grinding.

How is the large amount of materials required for the gifts not grinding? Even with respectable MF (200%+ base), the amount of mobs you’d have to repeatedly kill in order to get enough drops yourself is grinding. Same as with the precursors, that you can obtain the gold elsewhere is irrelevant.

Final note, I don’t actually mind the “grind” attached to the legendaries at all, they are the pinnacle of cosmetics after all. I just found your statement completely absurd.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

Believe me, the devs are aware of this issue and it has been and is being taken care of.

Thank you, Gaile, that is good to know.

I’m starting to eye every GWAMM title suspiciously now (and surely the same happens to me in return), that’s really not how it should be

Hope this can be resolved (reverted) without breaking anything else.

Scribbin.2307:

Anet could always make a new title for those that earned GWAMM in GW1 legit.

Absolutely not, the point is to have the name reference carrying over from the first game.

Personally, I would rather part with my legendaries than losing the exclusivity of this title. Yet even worse, I don’t want to be mistaken for one of those free-loaders who got it through the bug…

Seriously Anet, fix this… or at least tell us that it’s being worked on till it happens. Don’t just ignore your loyal customers.

Theorick.2713:

Anet simply aren’t going to upset the rest of the player base because GW1 players object to an unearned title and 400 AP. As unfair as it is, I suspect they will cut their losses on that issue and work to prevent others from exploiting it.

Let’s not forget that these GW1 players are long-time loyal customers. I hope Anet thinks twice about ignoring them.

Anyway, not sure how easy an AP-deduction really is, but I cannot imagine how removing the undeserved titles can be a major technical issue…

Been displaying the GWAMM title since launch, partly in memory of the great hours spent with GW1, but mostly because it’s something I considered as exclusive and hard-earned.

Having this handed out for free due to a bug is greatly upsetting and I sure as hell hope that it’ll be removed from the accounts who got it that way.

The great jungle wurm lost its textures.

:)

Displaying the health-bar in red not only implied urgency, it also meant that you could notice it easily out of the corner of the eye without really focusing the party-window too much.

This darker green lacks visibility – I sure hope that this was an oversight rather than intentional.

Shinoobi.1259:

I’ve no idea why everyone is being so negative and dismissive. This guy has tons of followers and can have a positive impact on the game’s PvP scene, which it desperately needs. Obviously the majority of the people in this thread do not watch twitch, and that’s sad, because if Gw2 wants to become an esport, twitch is the most powerful avenue to make that a possibility(it went from maybe 1000 viewers total to soda making it a top channel. Phanta almost doubled his followers in one night because of helping soda).

I suppose this boils down to a generation-related problem mostly. To me personally, the concept of (regularly) watching some random kid playing GW2 (or any other game) is utterly alien.

While I do understand the benefits of a video-guide (over a written guide), exactly why I should waste my limited free-time with something I can only think of as a reality-TV-show-version baffles me. Maybe if I was in my early teenager-years desperately looking for some sort of idols or kinship I might, I can’t really say at this point as I’ve left those years behind me a long long time ago.

Ultimately, to me this feels like it has the potential to attract the wrong kind of crow: Youngsters which are easily being manipulated, this being the kind of people I have no interest to interact with in my gaming. Furthermore, they are likely not in a position to be able to regularly support the game beyond their initial purchase of the game. Meaning the regular sum I invest into the game has to be distributed further amongst these new free-loaders.

Personally, I would prefer different sorts of marking for this game.

Well this sounds almost too good to be true.

I was about to take yet another char to WvW for map completions sake, guess now I won’t have to. Also the 3-person-kick-system should make griefing a bit less likely, even though it still cannot be ruled out completely of course.

Also hoping for good-looking shadow-weapons…

warbignime.4610:

Anet really should get in contact with Blue, not to pay him or anything, just talk about pvp portion because he seems to be interested in that.

Yeah, Anet should totally re-allocate valuable resources in order to get in contact with some kid I’ve never even heard about. The mere hint that he seems to be interested in PvP makes this of the utmost importance and should even get prioritised over trivial stuff such as camera-changes, stability or even HoT.

So… any further word on this?

Haven’t been back to the Silverwastes in a while, but I would think that popularity decreases over time and therefore the RNG not only continues but increases to be a problem.

Soda-who? Never heard of…

(… and regarding his fanbase: Sounds like they’ll fit in just fine)

colosiss.3041:

I was having issues buying gems also, over the past 2 days. I tried again this morning and still was not able to. I then tried to buy a different amount. I was trying to buy 8000 with no success, but it allowed me to purchase gems at the 4000 amount. I then bought it again to get the amount I originally wanted. Hope this helps someone.

Thanks – oddly enough, this worked for me as well…

Having finally finished my luminescent collection, I’m gonna throw in 2 more cents:

Overall, I like the Silverwastes map and how the collection required different activities ranging from achievements, doing bosses for parts as well as just collecting tokens.

However, that this many weeks after the patch still nothing has been done about the coat-box availability disappoints me greatly. Since getting my 3rd box, I’ve done around 15-20 more vinewraths and haven’t seen any further boxes. That people have to try up to 50ish times to get a drop is nothing short of ridiculous. This can so easily ruin the overall experience of the map and the luminescent collection. Personally, I would not have had the patience to retry this many times.

I’m not even sure what the problem is here – are some accounts bugged? Or are they just this much unlucky? How can some people get box after box after box and others none at all if the drop-chance is anywhere near reasonable? Has this been looked into? Why no more updates from Anet? Just add some token-vendor after a successful vinewrath kill and let those “unlucky” players trade for the box…

Muffy.8569:

Maybe you just stop regreting yourself for a moment and think about word “rarity” and its meaning? At my oppinion, drop chance must be much lower, than now, because normally i want at most to possess things, that other people don’t have, but want to. And the complexity by obtaining such items is direct that, what make it “rare”.

May I ask how many kills it roughly took you to get your two additional boxes? It would help – at least me – to add some perspective to your opinion.

Until then, I will limit my reply to a comment about status and rarity:

How exactly would wearing the chest-piece give you any kind of status in its current implementation – or even if it was much rarer?

Do you believe that I would look at your char and think “wow he got that chest-piece, he must have personally commanded the entire map by itself and due to his exclusive heroics and unbelievable skill got the other players through the event and rightfully got the skin to drop”?

Sorry if I’m about to burst any bubbles here, but I would much rather think: “great, another simpleton lucker who /afk’d till the breach, then died during the first few seconds of the vine-champ-encounter cause he had no clue what was going on, yet leech’d his way back in time to luck on RNG and get a box while other people who put far more effort into it went home empty-handed”.

If there was indeed any complexity or at least some personal effort involved, I would see your point about rarity. As it is atm, I do not.

Furthermore, this is part of a collection. From a consistency point of view, I would appreciate if all pieces had similar (as in: multiple) ways of being obtainable. As it is now, I feel that this is a rather cheap method to keep players busy with this map.

Tequatl is a very poor example in order to try and justify RNG.

To me personally, Tequatl was never about the weapon-skins as I find them quite ugly (I have 2 unopened boxes in my bank, but I’ll come to that later…). However, even past the achievements, Tequatl happens to be a great source of karma. Having played the encounter since its rework, I still do it these days whenever I happen to be in need of said karma.

However, having done it a great many times since its implementation, I’ve “only” ever got 2 of the weapon boxes as well as 1 Tequatl minipet. I did not actively count, but I’m guessing I’m well over 200 kills. 200+ kills for… 3 actual decent drops? Where exactly does this add up?

This is the same as playing the game since headstart and never seeing an actual precursor drop, even though I’m actively playing dungeons, word-bosses, etc. and looting all kind of chests where they should potentially be in and so on.

So, nope, RNG isn’t what keeps someone like me playing… decent content is… and a feeling of steady progress. Locking stuff behind RNG that never works in my favour clearly isn’t.

Prior to this recent patch, I used to love the Silverwastes map. It used to be a place of steady progress with a touch of working together for a map-wide goal. It didn’t matter so much if you succeeded in killing all 5 underground bosses or not, the rewards you got from both the events (token system) as well as the breach (RNG, but with extra extractors for older content) made it worth your while.

This all changed for me with the addition of the vinewrath encounter and placing the chestpiece-boxes into a RNG-chest. As it is now, I simply detest the map and have no desire to return there anytime soon. I will try to explain why that is so:

Assuming that you play the map from the very start to the very end, you can easily spend about an hour now. Considering I used to be a frequent visitor, I have plenty of tokens as well as all the champ parts. So the only thing that is left to me is getting 2 additional chest-piece boxes out of the vinewrath RNG-chest to be able to obtain the final luminescent armor piece. Having nothing else left on the map, this encourages:
1. map-hopping through the lfg-system
2. afk-ing till the final event

Neither of this is what I feel the game should encourage. Should the final event fail, I lost up to an hour I could have spent elsewhere.

Furthermore, we’re talking about open-world content, this means I’m sharing the map with a large amount of other players I have no direct control over. Praying that the megaserver algorithm isn’t putting me into a map with incompetents is not exactly what I feel the game should encourage either. Sorry to say, but if you want raid-like encounters, stop putting them into open-world maps where we have little to no control over who is present.

That said, let’s look at the actual problem: The previous 5 armor pieces are obtainable through the token-system – why not the chest piece as well? Is this recent LS update really this small that you have to keep us playing the map through such a blunt RNG-mechanism?

I lost count in the end, but I think it took me about 18 vinewrath chests or so to get the two additional armor pieces. Some may argue this is not much and it took them far more, sorry for you guys, to me personally, this is far too much. I did not pick this MMO over others to deal with RNG-garbage like this.

You had an awesome system for 5 out of 6 armor pieces. Why screw up so badly on the last?

The gaming-hours spent getting GWAMM and 50/50 were certainly amongst my best. But that was long before GW2-release and I would suggest that if you don’t actually enjoy playing the game now, don’t bother just for the points as its beauty will be wasted.

(but if you do, make sure you check out that 7 hero link above, that’s closest to auto-pilot you can get)

Anyway, I likely got some spare minis myself if you’ll still be short.

I think what the OP is referring to with the ascended crafting is the time-gated refinement such as Lump of Mithrillium, Glob of Elder Spirit Residue, etc.

Mithril and elder wood comes easily and I find that having a stock of the refined materials is never a bad thing

The Flameseeker Prophecies
It has lore, it has looks and even though it was the first legendary I’ve created quite a while ago, I still marvel at it today.

< a long gap>
< like, a really long gap >

The Juggernaut: Not so much the weapon itself, but rather the neat effects it puts on the wielders armor
The Predator: Generally like the looks and the firing sound

Initially, I planned to buy this.

However, then I ended up with another player using this throughout a fractal. By the time we were done, I’ve come to the conclusion that I won’t be buying this after all and that I would very much love to see an option to turn it off.

Annoys me ever since.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hey everyone,

While this is currently working as intended, it’s definitely something that we’ll be working on and tweaking in the future. We want you to be able to enjoy your minis so hang in there!

Not good enough.

Obviously, with the slot being there, it’ll be used by the players. Why develop such a feature in the first place when the additional load caused by the minipets cannot be handled?

Minipets have effectively been rendered useless for me in a large majority of the content as I simply cannot see them anymore. This is a drastic change which – in case of the gemstore minis – limits the items I’ve purchased and which have not been advertised as having such limitations at that time.

As far as I’m aware, not even the minis currently being sold in the gemstore refer to such limitations – which I’d say is close to (if not) false advertising. Pay for something you’ll have to search an empty corner/instance for to even see it… no thanks!

With that said, either provide more information than “tweaking it in the future” or offer us a refund. The current situation is unacceptable.

GM Talon.8726:

Tachyon.5897:

I can’t see my mini-pets, when I activate one all I get is “Miniatures have been hidden due to rising player population”. That’s across all characters in a myriad different locations.

This is a feature that is working as intended. If you have feedback regarding the feature, I would recommend creating or joining in a thread to discuss your thoughts about it.

I would also like to know the procedure for requesting a refund for all previously purchased minipets from the gemstore.

When making these purchases in the past, I was not told that I would not actually be able to use them anymore in a large majority of the content when this feature pack is being implemented.

Furthermore, as this “feature” of hiding the minipets isn’t clearly advertised when submitting them to the wardrobe, I would also like to have non-account-bound minipets restored so I can at least sell them on TP and therefore end up with something I can actually use – currency.