Guild Wars 2

egmancera.7264:

Sir Arthur.8905:

If I had known I would not have gotten them immediately, I would not have bought the ultimate edition.

Same here… I wouldn’t got the Ultimate Edition if I had knew that I have to wait son long for the gems… what a disappointment…

It was quite clear on the page where you bought them that it could take up to 72 hours for the gems to be given out.

Ohoni.6057:

What if i told you, you can reasonably clear the content ?

I would say that you are definitely wrong.

What if i told you it would take you some time and willingness to learn, like everyone else does ?

I would say that this is significantly more time than I care to spend on the task, which is why it falls outside the bounds of “reasonably.”

That if you want the rewards you’d have to earn them, like everyone else.

I’d be willing to, so long as I was able to earn them through content that I find as fun as you find raiding to be.

Just comes back to being a you problem, as proved. Accessibility for the raids are fine. If a level 30 can waltz into the raid, so can you.

Come back to me when you’ve cleared the raid on that level 30. Again, accessibility is not about walking through the front door, it’s about getting to your goal. In this case, it’s about beating all three bosses. If you can get through the front door but cannot beat the bosses, then the raid is not accessible to you.

That’s the thing. You can beat the bosses. You choose not to put forth the time and effort to do so. And if raiding takes longer than you have time for or can stand to be doing one particular activity or if it’s more difficult than your current skill level and you don’t consider it fun to raid at the current them, then that doesn’t make raids too difficult or inaccessible. Nor does that in and of itself make you lazy or a bad player.

But when you ask for the rewards from the raids to be given out for less difficulty than ANet designed them be given out for just so you can say you can get the reward, then it starts looking like you’re lazy or a bad player. And perception is reality.

Can is the ability to do something. You have the ability to learn raids. You have the ability to do raids. You choose to not do raids. That doesn’t meant they are not accessible. It’s like when you were a kid and you asked the teacher: “Can I go to the bathroom?” and they politely remind you that it’s “May I go to the bathroom?”

TexZero.7910:

Ohoni.6057:

Whether you succeed or not, has nothing to do with the raids accessibility

Lol, no.

Really ?

Let’s analyze this then.

At any point during any event in this game are you guaranteed success ?
Does that success mean you cannot partake in the event ?

Anyone at anypoint in time can access the raid, it’s accessibility is fine. It’s ultimately a you problem. You do not like the raids in there current state. That is not the same as they are Inaccessible.

Just to drive this point home….I moved my level 30 alt to the raid. It has 0 trait lines trained.

Inaccessible right ?

This.

And in other words:

Accessible to you does NOT mean you succeed. It means you are able to enter the raid and TRY it. Failing or succeeding does not change whether it is accessible or not.

Sindex.9520:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Earlier in the game’s history, the coins were as high as 13s, which seems cheap compared to today’s 30-40s, until you remember that most people had trouble putting together the 2g to unlock traits, i.e. 13s then was harder to come by than 40s is now.

You just proved my point. Right now we don’t have many methods in acquiring them, so they are on a stark rise, because of the demand. Arena Net wants new players to come into the game and spend as much time as they can in game. However some of these “corrections” to old systems and new sinks have made it equally hard for new player to get these older items. Which can turn off some people wanting to get these items altogether, and go play something completely different.

As vets we had an easier time, because the older system allowed us to take advantage of the once undervalued Mystic Coin. So I understand why most of us don’t complain about it being a non-issue. As some of us have thousands of mystic coins sitting in our in game bank. Simply because we have no use for them anymore. Except for profiting off the higher demand.

And maybe ANet decided that things that are made by Mystic Coins are supposed to be long term goals instead of short term goals.

Whether ANet’s got that adjusted currently to how long on average it would take players to get those items where it wants it sitting at, that I do not know.

And it could also be people seeing these threads and hoarding and buying up for when they run up in price to sell them and in reality it won’t ever run out even if they add in a few more recipes that ask for it.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

It also comes down to perceived value vs actual value. If you’ve spent 100hrs playing HoT content, and you went full-whammy on the expac, then you’ve spent $1/hr of play… way cheaper than most AAA titles or the theater. I feel that at that point the player has gotten their money’s worth, even if they’re no longer enjoying the content now; but that doesn’t seem to be the perception. I suspect that many of the people who’re complaining about HoT have played more than 100hrs… And, playing HoT content includes playing with elite specs (in all modes, not just in HoT maps), time spent gliding, exploring HoT maps, etc.

Those who spent only (for example) 10 hrs in HoT and then said, “kitten this kitten,” AND haven’t touched gliding, elite specs, or anything else since… then, yeah, I feel bad for ‘em. ANet can’t please everybody, but they are trying to please as many people as they can.

~EW

Different people calculate a game’s value to them in different ways. You and I do it by $/time spent and if we can get it down to $1/minute then we’re golden.

But others look at quanity of content/$. And HoT was low on quantity of content. Those players aren’t too happy because they haven’t reached the ratio that they view is worth it.

Ashen.2907:

maddoctor.2738:

Swagger.1459:

maddoctor.2738:

Swagger.1459:

It’s going to be ok people. Everybody will happy when difficulty settings are introduced. Plus, the raid community will grow 10 fold and the devs will throw even more money and person power at raids.

Do you really want this?

All game modes should be supported and do well.

I meant mostly the

devs will throw even more money and person power at raids

part. Do you/we want to make Raids more important in the game at the expense of everything else?

If a large (or at least significantly larger) portion of the playerbase engages with raids due to difficulty settings then expanded resource allocation wouldnt really be at the expense of anything else if kept proportional to total play time per game mode ratios.

This.

I just don’t think this is something that should be started before all of the raid wings are out and ANet’s got the difficulty honed to where it wants it. So that there isn’t too much additional work that has to be done.

If Easy or Hard Raiding are supposed to be X times easier or harder, then if you change how hard Normal Raiding is, then Easy and Hard would have to be adjusted. That’s three times the work.

I’d rather Easy/Hard Raiding be done right the first time and not rushed out just to appease players. If that can be done in a week or so, great. But if it’s months before they can get to that due to other priorities, then that’s what should happen.

Ohoni.6057:

You weren’t talking in general terms though.

You said it would take them a few hours. That’s not general.

No, that was an estimate based on the scope of the problem, the minimal basic changes necessary, and how long it’s taken them to accomplish similar feats. That much I feel is a fair specific estimate. I could not, however, tell you which specific employees would be best assigned to the task, without knowing exactly which employees would be capable of it, and to what task each of them is currently assigned. All I can say is that if my assumptions are correct on the time needed, then pretty much anyone capable of it could do so without upsetting the timetables of any projects more than a few weeks out, and that if my assumptions on the time needed are wrong and it would take more than a few days of work, then it might be more difficult to borrow that time from other projects, but it would again be impossible to guess the specific employees needed or the projects to which they would be attached, without knowing what projects were currently underway, and how their schedules are currently progressing.

Being unable to guess at specifics does not make it a reasonable goal to pursue. ANet knows these facts, and can determine the best specific course of action if they decide to pursue that goal.

You said if if it would take them more than a few days they should move people in from other departments. That’s not general.

That’s specific.

Your confusion might come from a misunderstanding of the terms “general” vs. “specific.” " if if it would take them more than a few days they should move people in from other departments" would be a general statement. The specific version would be, say, “if it would take them 27 man hours to produce then they should move Jim the Fish off of the Legendary Crafting overhaul, Susan K off of the new WvW map integration, and Alfredo Q off of the Cantha intro sequence for two business days, they can get it done and then go back to their projects.” That would be specific, but of course it would be impossible for an outsider to produce an accurate answer like that, since we lack the basic data necessary.

Seriously, does someone have to link that dev quote every time you say this? You are not at liberty to make an educated guess at what Anet can or cannot do unless you are in charge of developing the game itself.

No, of course I can. That dev quote doesn’t remove anyone’s right to speculate, that’s an inalienable right. All it said of any merit was that Gaile didn’t know herself at the time and was going to find out for us. In the meantime, all we can do is speculate.

Oh, so now you know how long it took them do other tasks? Please tell me where you heard them say how long it took and how many employees they had working on it. Link the threads or posts or tweets. I’d love to read where you’ve learned how long it took them to work on previous projects.

And your statements were not general. They weren’t super specific. But they were still specific.

Legendary weapons are not meant as short term goals. They only feel grindy if you try to get them quickly. You treat them like the long term goals that they’re supposed to be and voila, no more grind.

Yoroiookami.3485:

Gator.5729:

Without posting any crash or disconnection details there is nothing anyone can do to help you. You can think the issues are with the Anet servers and refuse to look any further but it’s not. If it was a server issue everyone would be disconnected or crash, not just some. There is a drastic increase in system resources needed at meta events and world bosses due the the very large number of people that are there. This puts a huge strain on your PC that you don’t see at other times. Are you running the 32-bit client or the 64-bit client? If you are running a 64-bit OS then use the 64-bit client.

Anet can help me by getting better servers. And just because it works like that for some, doesn’t mean the problem isn’t on their end. Just the way some people seem to lag on some days and usually in large groups.

Think of the route the data takes too and from your computer and ANet’s servers like the route you would take to work or school.

You own your computer, the router, and the cabling that goes into your wireless set up (or wired).

ANet owns their servers, their routers, and their cabling.

Other people own the parts in between.

You own your driveway. Work/school owns it’s parking lot. Other people own the roads in between.

You’re dropping off somewhere between your computer and ANet’s server.

The school parking lot could have one lot out of commission due to vandalism. Or someone caused a huge wreck on the highway owned by the state.

Same when you get disconnected. It could be on property you own. Could be on property ANet owns. But there’s a LOT more property that other people own. Until you give details on exactly how close to ANet’s server your signal goes before being dropped, there’s no way to prove that it’s ANet’s server that’s causing your disconnects.

Ohoni.6057:

See, I told y’all that eventually they were going to merge this into a completely unhelpful superthread of nonsense. That’s just how they roll. It basically translates to “clearly there are a lot of you that care about this, but we don’t, so we’d rather put you into this tiny ghetto where we can more easily ignore you.”

For many Raiders that happens naturally but I guess beating content doesn’t hold value to some players, they are just in it for the end reward.

Exactly, hence the need for different versions of the content for different players.

Just so everyone is aware, Ohoni just said repitition and failure are bad for the learning process..

Here is Ohoni teaching some maths;

“And that was integration by substitution, do 1 question and never try again because if you do more than 1 you’ll damage your understanding of the topic, you should also never attempt a question you don’t already know the answer to or you’ll end up damaging your understanding of the topic too.”

I said that repeated FAILURE is a worse form of learning than repeated SUCCESS. Giving kids a very hard math test, scoring it a failure if they get even one question wrong, and having them do it again and again until eventually they get it right might work eventually, but it’s a far better teaching method to give them a test that they can pass, then another test, and another, until they not only pass it but do so with a perfect score because it builds confidence rather than destroying it, and positive reinforcement gives better results than negative.

If you need easier content, you have the rest of the game to enjoy. You can dungeon or fractals. I’d rather have developer resources go to that content. I don’t want raid resources tied up in easy modes.

I’d rather have those resources put into easy mode raids than into dungeons or Fractals that I won’t be doing. Since I would be the one actually doing the content, shouldn’t my vote count for more?

It’s ok to have content you don’t enjoy. Let raiders have content that they like. You have the rest of the game. Focus on the content you enjoy playing.

That’s my argument. Let people who want easy mode raids have them, you focus on the content you enjoy playing. Nobody is coming for your raids. . . .unless you keep blocking alternatives, of course.

Rather, they would affect the pace that future raids are released.

Not necessarily. I still assert that they would take very little time to produce, but if they do take more time, those resources should come from other areas, not from the existing raid team. I officially do not support any easy mode raid that would slow down development of the currently planned raiding schedule. Does that satisfy you?

I see easy mode raids as unnecessary. If you want easier content, you have it. Fractals, dungeons, open world.

I see raids as being unnecessary, but some people clearly like them, so I’m fine with that. Just because you see something as unnecessary is completely irrelevant if someone else does see it as necessary to them.

1. Minimal rewards (it should be ‘training’ mode to get people used to the idea of raids, and in no way possible should it let people get raid-exclusive loot).

Nope.

So you can’t tell ANet what to do with the resources it has. Because you don’t have all of the necessary information. So stop saying how fast they can do it or how ANet should allocate their resources.

I can speak in general terms based on information available, it’s their job to work out the specifics, OR to be more open about their projects so that we have more information to work with. It’s unreasonable to say “you can’t talk about anything because we don’t know enough because they don’t tell us enough.”

“Easy mode” might make some non-raiders happy but it would ruin raiding for a majority of the raiding community, whether you agree with it or not.

If that’s true then raiding should not be a thing. End of story. Either learn to play nice with others or be unhappy.

Now, who do you think ArenaNet wants their raid content to appeal to more: raiders or non-raiders?

Whichever leads to more players in total being happy. If they can make 100% of raiders happy, while annoying even 10% of non-raiders, and if raiders only make up 5% of the total players, then that would be a net loss for them.

My 2 cents is having an easier version, with the sole purpose of doing it to experience the story and lore, and providing 0 rewards, would be fine and a good idea.

Agreed, and also it should have the rewards, because otherwise nobody would replay it and it would be a complete waste of resources, designed more to spite players than to make them happy. But you were mostly on the right track.

You weren’t talking in general terms though.

You said it would take them a few hours. That’s not general.

You said if if it would take them more than a few days they should move people in from other departments. That’s not general.

That’s specific.

Ohoni.6057:

So which project should it be? What if that project is just as important to another player as Easy Raids is to you?

Again, too many unknowns. We don’t even know what projects are being worked on. If it’s something that would take more than a few hours, then the best likely place to cut would be one of those things we haven’t even heard of yet. Me not being able to specifically allocate their resources does not mean that the project would not deserve a reallocation of resources, I’m just not in a position to get overly specific about it.

So you can’t tell ANet what to do with the resources it has. Because you don’t have all of the necessary information. So stop saying how fast they can do it or how ANet should allocate their resources.

Ohoni.6057:

So what other part of the game that would have knowledgeable employees should suffer just so you can have your easy raids?

That’s an impossible question to answer without knowing exactly what time it would take, exactly which employees could possibly work on it, and what elements those employees are currently working on, but the simple answer is “they are a company that makes MMOs, they have to have some people that can do this, and if not, they should hire some.”

There are certainly plenty of potential things in development that could stand a little delay for a good cause. If as I believe it would only take a few manhours, almost anyone could spare that. If it would take days, or weeks of work, I don’t know, there are still likely some projects that could absorb that delay. If it would take “months” of work, which would be pretty much impossible for something of the scope I suggest, then it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort, but then they’d need to do something completely different.

So which project should it be? What if that project is just as important to another player as Easy Raids is to you? Should they get delayed satisfaction even though their project was implemented first just so your project can get done first?

Until you’re able to answer that question, do not tell ANet to shift their teams around to work on your project.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t enjoy raids but I don’t see how killing off raids would make stuff I like doing any more fun. I’d rather they keep the 4 people working on raid on the actual raid than anything else.

Sure, and nobody’s talking about doing anything to change the current raids or the current raid team’s resources in any significant amount. My assertion is that these changes would only take a few man-hours to complete per raid, and would be negligible no matter who works on that. If that turns out to be incorrect, if it would take a day or more of solid work to implement, then I would expect people outside the existing raid team to be assigned to that project.

So what other part of the game that would have knowledgeable employees should suffer just so you can have your easy raids? The other teams will not be sitting around doing nothing. They have things to work on with deadlines. Which of those things should get a delay so you can have your easy raids sooner rather than later?

ANet can’t make people magically appear and they are not a large company. No where near as large as Blizzard.

Ohoni.6057:

I designed it for you. You want easier raids. It’s easier raids when there aren’t as many mechanics to worry about. It’s less frustrating when you can figure out the last boss without having to spend long time at the other bosses.

Well, setting aside that I think it would take longer to implement than my suggestion, I still assert that what I want is to have the same complexity of the current fights, just with less penalty for failing them. A fight that only involves the first phase of the battle would not be satisfying to me.

Yes, it would take longer to create.

I’d rather they take the time and design the best possible easy mode, than come up with something quick.

One mini-raid would have the mechanic for fight 1. Another would have the mechanic for fight 2. Etc. They can be toned down, they’re mini-raids. And the lock out would be specific to each mini-raid OR the maximum rewards you’d get from The Raid.

So someone learning it could do Mini-Raid 1 enough times until they learn that mechanic. And Mini-Raid 5 enough times until they learn it after being in the Raid and finding Fight 1 and Fight 5 to be the most difficult. Without having to do Fights 2-4 over and over and over again.

But it would also be something that hard core groups could use when testing new builds when new skills are released or balance patches are released.. Or raid guilds could use as part of the application process without having to dedicate several hours to. When the skills added or balanced would only affect the final fight.

And small guild of casual players who only play for a short period of time each day can do the raid in small little bites with the mini-raids, even if at less difficulty.

Ohoni.6057:

Guys, you all know that Ohoni wants only one thing, the legendary armor.

Incorrect. I do want the legendary armor, I do not only want the legendary armor. I also want to be able to play and complete the raids themselves without the constant repetitive head-bashing.

Dungeons were hard when they first came out. People didn’t know what to do. But they learned, and dungeons became easy.

So you are saying that the raids are no more difficult to complete than the dungeons? That has not been my experience with them. I spent three hours trying to clear Gorseval last night and didn’t get even halfway through it. I don’t recall ever spending that long on a dungeon boss.

What they should do is have mini-raids. One mini-raid per major tactic in the raid that players would need to learn. Gives 1 shard. Does not drop any of the legendary armor items, that’s the reward for graduating to raids. But it does have like 5% of the raid drop rate chance to drop the other items.

No interest. You’re designing a system for no one. What would be the point of that?

But you are right overall. Everything is a Matter of Practice. And I think that most People here in the Community have the capability to beat the Raid with enoug Practice and a bit of Determination.

Not true, but close enough to being true to not bother arguing it. The real issue though is that a lot of players don’t HAVE that determination or WANT to practice it enough. That is not gameplay that they enjoy, and there is no reason why they should. If people like that, hard mode is there for them and they can continue to play it, but for those that do not enjoy that sort of experience at all, why not offer a mode that is more to their tastes? Just because you enjoy something does not mean that everyone else should have to do it too.

I designed it for you. You want easier raids. It’s easier raids when there aren’t as many mechanics to worry about. It’s less frustrating when you can figure out the last boss without having to spend long time at the other bosses.

And it is something that both the casual players and the hard core players would benefit from.

What they should do is have mini-raids. One mini-raid per major tactic in the raid that players would need to learn. Gives 1 shard. Does not drop any of the legendary armor items, that’s the reward for graduating to raids. But it does have like 5% of the raid drop rate chance to drop the other items.

So it’s like the homework and the raid is the quiz/test to see if you’ve learned it.

And it would be useful to raiders looking to test strategies against specific bosses but don’t want to spend hours to get to the boss they want to test against.

Ohoni.6057:

But some of the problem may be that the casuals that are more forgiving don’t want to sift through the endless other things in the LFG to find the raid group to PUG with.

I think any player too casual to sift through the LFG to find a group are probably too casual to be of much use in the current raids either. It’s probably a helpful sifting mechanism and maybe when they do improve the LFG raiders will be like “change it back, some real idiots are finding us now!”

Seriously though, I think improving the LFG tool is a good thing in its own way, I just don’t think it’ll make anything better when it comes to those who want an easier difficulty setting. It’ll really be more useful for open world maps, finding people doing HP trains or specific metas.

I also don’t think they would have to split easy/hard in the LFG tool, although that might be nice. I mean they would be completely different modes, so it wouldn’t be like dungeon “speed clear” it would be more like people advertising “CoF P1-2,” if someone joins up and says “so are we doing path 3?,” well that’s on them.

The casual that doesn’t want to spend too long finding a group might get discouraged around reset time due to the number of groups being formed in the general area. Especially if the groups towards the top are wanting more hard core players than they are.

But no, the LFG change in and of itself will not make things drastically easier. And will increase the number of players trying raids to a small degree.

And given the difficulty difference, I think it would be more around if they didn’t split up the Fractal difficulty. Swamp 12 is much easier than Swamp 79. If there wasn’t a split and someone said Swamp LF experienced.

Short of TA Aetherblade path, the different dungeon paths are equivalent to each other. CoE P1 is in the same range of difficulty as CoE P2.

Ohoni.6057:

They will be making it easier to find Raid groups by making the LFG tool a better tool for everyone.

That will be nice, but I don’t see it making a huge difference. I mean, you can already find raid groups on LFG, they’re just in the general sections instead of in their own sections. It’s a little more hassle to find them, so UI change will be nice, but I do not think any UI changes will actually increase the number or quality of PUGs available. It is no solution to the problems being discussed here.

But some of the problem may be that the casuals that are more forgiving don’t want to sift through the endless other things in the LFG to find the raid group to PUG with. Especially with the speed at which that can move during prime time.

It’s not a complete solution, but it is definitely part of the solution.

It makes finding a group easier. And if they do add in easy mode, it would make it a lot easier if there was a Hard Raid tab and a Easy Raid tab under the Raid category. Wouldn’kitten So you don’t have Easy radiers trying to get into Hard raids thinking they’re easy raids or vice versa. That’s just asking for the whole speed clear vs smell the roses thing to come to raids. Not that it won’t, but having them split will help lower the ones that aren’t paying attention to what group they’re joining.

DGraves.3720:

This doesn’t surprise me. People play PvP and PvE with different mindsets. PvP is something you do that is more or less fun and PvE is the grind that people do for funds. Esp. true of dungeons and fractals; impatience is mandatory.

Do not speak for me. I do not find PvP fun. I find PvE fun and I do not do it solely for funds.

rrusse.7058:

I will buy the next expansion for sure, but I am less keen on the idea of pre-ordering. I really have to disagree with the notion that Arenanet “lied” about things that were coming with the game.

However at the same time I cannot deny that the game was released in a state where things that were suppose to be in the game simply were not there yet. There is the issue with legendary weapons not coming out in a timely manner, raids not quite being there.

HoT requiring a number of changes and adjustments like elite spec skill point requirements or the game not fitting with core Guild Wars 2 design philosophies as we still are waiting on the details for what they are changing for HoT in April.

I overall like HoT, I love the game and I am still confident Arenanet can and will do a great job with the game and whatever else comes afterwards. I am disappointed that things felt like and still feel like some things were rushed out the door before it was all there.

Sort of feels like Street Fighter V honestly. Solid foundation but there is a lot of gutted or incomplete things for a full priced title.

To be fair on the legendary weapons, they may have had originally planned on more being released, but held back due to the concerns and issues that have come up with the current batch of legendary weapons. So instead of having 13+ weapons to go through and fix events after they’ve been launched, they’re making sure the events are fixed before they release them. And any other issues that have come up in regards to them.

As long as the easier ones do not have the ability to get legendary armor parts, I’m fine with it. Or at least not until other aspects of the game have it and it would need to be a different skin. So that players can tell who did the hard mode raid and who did the easy mode raid. You want the hard mode raid skin? Do the work and get a group together or farm the heck out of gold and buy raid runs.

And as long as if there is a shortage of manpower and time, the hard mode version gets priority with the easy mode version coming in later when there is more time.

So given the low number of employees on the raid team, I would not want easy mode worked on at any length until all of the HoT related raid wings have been released.

Sartharina.3542:

Redenaz.8631:

I’m all for giving Eles/Engis weapon swap outside of combat, but in-combat weapon swap would be nuts, and I main an Ele.

Which you already have.

No we don’t. We don’t have one button we can press that will swap out our weapons when we’re out of combat. We have to open our inventory and double click on the weapons we want to swap.

The former is what is being talked about.

Funny, I don’t seem to recall needing anyone to do most of the content in this game.

And this is an MMO. While it’s nice that they made it where you don’t need to have anyone around to be successful in the game, you shouldn’t expect to never have to group together.

And I haven’t grinded anything. And I’m making my legendary myself, including making my precursor through the collections.

You have to have all of the non-elite specializations fully unlocked to get access to the Specializations. A refund of the spent points will not help at all.

You should have enough to unlock all of the non-elite specializations when you’re level 80. The Hero Points to unlock the elite will come from Hero Challenges. If you play WvW, you can get an item that can be used to unlock Hero Challenges (you’ll need more of the item to unlock the HoT Hero Challenges than the Core Game Hero Challenges).

Might. Might not. And may depend on what they offer for pre-ordering. The game itself will be the same whether I pre-order or not.

Teaniel.9052:

It seems like a lot of gold sellers have a very similar ‘pitch.’ I wonder if Anet could implement a system to flag accounts who send messages including certain phrases: ‘and we reduced the price!’ ‘selling legendary cheap!’

Then they learn what catches the flag and they reword their messages to avoid the flag.

Play the parts of the game you enjoy. Don’t play the parts you aren’t interested in.

If you get bored. Take a break. Come back when you want to. That’s the beauty of this game. You won’t be that far behind if at all.

quagganzilla.6450:

I love how the devs say “RNG is even” yet I known several players with under 3 months with 1-5 pre drops form both in game and forge yet many many long term players who have never gotten one.

You do realize that when you kill something or use the Mystic Forge it doesn’t care what your result was the previous time?

The chance of getting a specific item out of a drop or the Mystic Forge is the exact same no matter how many times you do it.

And true RNG will have most people around the average number of successes (getting the drop you want), some people at the high end (getting the drop you want a lot), and some people at the low end (not getting the drop you want). Look up statistics and bell curves.

And remember that Apple made the shuffle on their iPod shuffle LESS random in order to make it appear more random. Our brains are wired to see patterns a bit too well and we have a tendency to see patterns where none exist. And we’re prone to confirmation bias.

ImTasty.2163:

Dantert.1803:

I keep seeing posts from people complaining about stuff that needs to be fixed and the importance about fixing the game first before releasing new content like the expac 2.
And they talk about it like it is something game breaking like if the game was a big mess…
I understand… I understand that people like complaining in the first place, I mean I find myself complaining about people complaining about stuff…
But anyway let’s try to take it seriously… what is the problem here? I really enjoy the game, I’m playing it from the release and still having fun. I’m not blind though! I see that there are many problems and a lot of stuff that people could not agree with but it’s nothing that completely blocks the progress… ok wvw is a mess, but they are working on it!
Also is nothing strange in the videogame world, always a bunch of problems, some will get forever ignored, but the game stays and maybe with time it will get better…but here on the forum I see more complaining than interesting stuff and constructive suggestions. Prople screaming loud that “the end is nigh!!” “if anet doesn’t realize this the game is doomed!!” …I mean c’mon, it always seems to me like “sempay notice me!!” or a bunch of children kicking harder and harder because they want the thing that bothers them in that moment to be fixed now. NOWWW!!!!

But maybe I’m wrong… someone please! Open my eyes!!
..I know I will probably get some hateful replies and some puncy lines just because is cool but yeah…. is there a way to revive the community in a better way?
I was enjoying the forums some time ago and it was not like the game was perfect at all…

To be honest, you will never NOT see complaint threads. I get really tied of the complaints myself which is why I rarely come to forums. In my honest opinion, from what I have observed since all the way back in the BWEs most of the complaints are not needed. By not needed I mean that the complaint in question has been addressed/acknowledged and a fix has been made/is in the making.

A prime example of this are all these complaints about raids. Clearly these people have done no research into the topic before they complained which is really not surprising. The majority of the complaints I see about raids were addressed in the AMA. For example, people think that Anet seems to have made raids their primary focus. That is not true. Mike stated that raids were close to being finished and as such they were focused on releasing that because, well, it’s done. Another thing is I guess people think Anet has devoted a lot of people and resources to raids which is also not true. The raid is 5-6(don’t remember which) devs working on it. The last one I see is where is the content for players that don’t like raids, which again, has been addressed. They said it was coming after they release all the raid wings and since they released them all, the next content update will be LS3.

As for the whole the end is nigh what not is just completely untrue. The end is nowhere near coming. It’s the same as the whole X game is going to kill GW2. I remember when people were claiming the Archeage, Wildstar, Blade and Soul, Fallout 4(was actually surprised someone was saying a singleplayer FPS game was gonna kill an MMO), and more recently Black Desert Online. All of these have done nothing to kill this game and I promise you no game that gets released will kill this game. A fun game I like to play is get a list of MMOs coming out this year and start making bets about which one is going to be the next GW2 killer.

And when a game gets no complaints after a decent amount of time, THAT’S when the game is on it’s last legs. Because no one cares enough to go tell the devs what they would like done differently.

People give complaints in constructive format when they care about something.

You’re going to have to wait for Support to get to your ticket.

I would contact your bank when you can to see if they blocked or charged back the transaction on their end while you wait. The payment would possibly come in under Digital River as that’s the payment processor that ANet uses.

I’d ask where you bought the keys, but only ANet sells the Ultimate Edition.

When Support does reach out to you, you could suggest to them adding in an automated message to the email as to why with details where appropriate (obviously don’t want to tell the botter what got his bot caught and reported for instance). I know I wouldn’t mind knowing if my account got hacked and banned if I took an extended break. That way I can get it back and back to where it was before I want to play again.

Which if you and your wife had taken an extended break from the game, it could be that both of your accounts got hacked and banned for botting. In which case, as soon as you prove you own the accounts, you’ll get your access back and then you can ask for a roll back to get the account restored.

And you may want to get your wife to submit a ticket with regards to her account. Only the account holder can square away issues with their own account. Your ticket for your account can’t cover her account even though you’re married. You could update your ticket by saying that the same issue is likely affect her account and her ticket # is ######. And she can also reference your ticket as well.

You do realize that ANet is a smaller company than Blizzard right?

Even if they put the same % of funds into their support system, they won’t have as much money to put towards it as Blizzard.

Which means they do not have enough people where tickets are handled almost immediately for issues such as this. And no one’s ticket is more important than someone else’s. They do have divisions in their support so you’re not behind the players arguing about getting a character restored because they deleted them in a fit of anger/were drunk/brother deleted it.

Have you contacted your bank to make sure they didn’t do an automatic charge back on your behalf for one or more of the charges? Some banks do that if they suspect fraud (if you don’t do a lot of large money transactions online, the purchase may have raised a red flag or two). And that would like the same as if you asked the bank to do a charge back to ANet.

DGraves.3720:

Flapjackson.1596:

DGraves.3720:

A moment’s frustration should not be the basis for a game changing proposition.

Perhaps you misread my comment to say disable all NPCs as I fail to see the game changing nature of stopping the various npcs hogging space at the bank, or a bear shaman thinking I want to talk while using the MF.

No, it’s not a misinterpretation so much as it is an understanding in world design. Fewer characters rapidly makes cities look empty.

[Where’s the line? How many moments does it take to qualify? And who decides?

As the OP points out, these npcs don’t add anything to the game experience. At best, they are ineffective. At worst.. well, they’re downright annoying. One-line automatons don’t make for a living world, be they wandering or not. More violets, anyone?]

Aesthetics is everything. <3

No one’s saying to remove the NPC’s. They just don’t want to hit F to talk to the Banker the moment the NPC walks into range and end up greeting the random NPC instead.

And I’m sure players would be happy for the disabling of the greeting just to happen around the important NPC’s.

Or hold onto the gems in case something you do want shows up in the store or goes on sale if the item(s) you want are worth more than 400 gems.

If you really want to gamble and have an empty slot, each week do a key run. A key run is when you make a character and run them through to the end of the Level 10 personal story. You can only do this once per week, but you get a free black lion key from it. Then when you get stuff you don’t like/want, you don’t feel cheated out of gems.

If you don’t want the gems to just sit there, then do what Behellagh suggests: convert to gold.

Personally, I wouldn’t spend my gems on gambling items when I can get the gambling items for free.

WvW buffs include boosts to health.

Check to see if your server has any boosts in WvW. Just hover over the WvW icon and it will tell you which boosts are active.

You’re not accounting for having the ability to have more stacks of the condition.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t wait until my 1 bleed is gone to apply another. So please, do calculations based on how people actually play the game. Not to make the numbers fit your conclusion.

Qugi.2653:

Seera.5916:

Qugi.2653:

Seera.5916:

Qugi.2653:

Conncept.7638:

Which only makes sense, GW2 doesn’t have a real physical copy, just a cheapo case with a download link, the exact same download link you get if you purchase a digital copy.

You can buy one with CD some place. This person buy one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Dream-Come-True/first#post5642345

Given that that post was in October of last year, near when the game launched, I would not put a high expectation on finding a copy with a disc. Given the number of patches, I highly doubt ANet released too many copies with a disc and not a download link.

http://www.amazon.com/Guild-Wars-Heart-Thorns-PC/dp/B000WJQXQE/

If you look at question customer ask it come with a CD. Of course update on CD will not be current. But other person say they do not exist. They do.

I didn’t say it was impossible to find one. Just that the OP shouldn’t have a high expectation to find a copy with an actual CD in it.

And it take me 20 second to find one on Amazon Anet approve seller. Good grief I not going to argue about this any more. You win what ever it is.

I’m sorry if you took what I said as argumentative. I truly didn’t mean it that way. I was just correcting your interpretation of what I said.

It can take upwards of 12 seconds for the switch to happen where Condition Duration gives more damage per second than Condition Damage. And don’t forget that most people don’t attack, wait until the condition goes away and then attack again. Players continuously attack, so any calculation you do needs to account for new stacks being added over the fight.

Please look at the timers of longer boss fights and use times more relevant to those bosses when telling us which is better.

Because I don’t know about everyone else, but I build my characters for the harder fights that last longer. Not the under 10 seconds and dead enemies.

Fixing the forum bug

You’re missing the point where we said that Condition Duration is better for LONG fights. 1 second does not make a long fight.

Please come back when you test for the length of long fights. Look at the timers for various world bosses and raid bosses for inspiration on how long your trial should last.

Qugi.2653:

Seera.5916:

Qugi.2653:

Conncept.7638:

Which only makes sense, GW2 doesn’t have a real physical copy, just a cheapo case with a download link, the exact same download link you get if you purchase a digital copy.

You can buy one with CD some place. This person buy one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Dream-Come-True/first#post5642345

Given that that post was in October of last year, near when the game launched, I would not put a high expectation on finding a copy with a disc. Given the number of patches, I highly doubt ANet released too many copies with a disc and not a download link.

http://www.amazon.com/Guild-Wars-Heart-Thorns-PC/dp/B000WJQXQE/

If you look at question customer ask it come with a CD. Of course update on CD will not be current. But other person say they do not exist. They do.

I didn’t say it was impossible to find one. Just that the OP shouldn’t have a high expectation to find a copy with an actual CD in it.

Qugi.2653:

Conncept.7638:

Which only makes sense, GW2 doesn’t have a real physical copy, just a cheapo case with a download link, the exact same download link you get if you purchase a digital copy.

You can buy one with CD some place. This person buy one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Dream-Come-True/first#post5642345

Given that that post was in October of last year, near when the game launched, I would not put a high expectation on finding a copy with a disc. Given the number of patches, I highly doubt ANet released too many copies with a disc and not a download link.

DGraves.3720:

Seera.5916:

Modeling? No one would be modeling anything by doing the experiment. They would be using the actual system to gather data on what dropped and noting down the possible variables that might affects drops as they played. A model is a representation of the system. That would be people developing a computer program that would randomly generate drops based on what players thought the loot table was in the game. How they thought things like magic find or time spent playing in the zone affected it (we don’t know how exactly DR affects the drops or exactly when it takes hold).

The group of people who have the ability to look at the code and know the intent of the code says there is nothing about a person’s account that makes them unlucky or lucky in the drops they get in the game.

The burden is on those who claim otherwise to show that that may not be the case. That there may be a bug in the system.

Analysis of the data would require some form of model. Whether it be averaging or regression or prediction or something else. That’s why the burden lies on the modeler.

Yea, and the people doing the experiment can do that and present their results to ANet and then ANet can decide if the experiment was in depth enough to look at if the results show any abnormalities.

Which is what the person who discovered the ecto salvage rate bug did. They did an experiment with a large number of samples. Not enough to conclusively prove there was a problem with the ecto salvage rate, but enough to make ANet look into it and they got enough evidence to discover that there was a problem with it.

Different builds have different strategies. Not all builds focus on let’s see how fast we can kill it. Condition builds are not builds for those looking to end fights fast. Those people should be using the Direct damage builds.

Condition damage builds take time to ramp up to their maximum DPS.

Fights against normal foes are so easy it doesn’t really matter if you favor Condition Damage or Condition Duration.

However, in a long fight where you need to do X amount of damage compared to everyone else or there’s a timer on the fight and the fight lasts more than 30 seconds (world boss fights, end boss of a map meta event chain) Condition Duration is king. Because eventually, it starts doing more damage per second than adding Condition Damage.

I would imagine condi damage is king if you expect short fights (you end the fight before the max condi damage/second is reached if you favor duration).

Condi duration I would expect to be king for those who expect longer fights.

For example:

Base attack applies a bleed that does 10 damage/second. It’s the auto attack and you can attack once per second. The bleed lasts for 5 seconds unbuffed.

We’re attacking a dummy that can’t attack back or move so no interruptions occur.

We get a buff that multiples the damage by 1.5

Attack 1: 15 d/s Total damage: 15
Attack 2: 30 d/s Total damage: 45
Attack 3: 45 d/s Total damage: 90
Attack 4: 60 d/s Total damage: 150
Attack 5: 75 d/s Total damage: 225
Attack 6: 75 d/s Total damage: 300
Attack 7: 75 d/s Total damage: 375
Attack 8: 75 d/s Total damage: 450
Attack 9: 75 d/s Total damage: 525
Attack 10: 75 d/s Total damage: 600
Attack 11: 75 d/s Total damage: 675
Attack 12: 75 d/s Total damage: 750

Now instead of the double damage, we get a buff that adds 5 extra seconds of duration (so 10 seconds total)

Attack 1: 10 d/s Total damage: 10
Attack 2: 20 d/s Total damage: 30
Attack 3: 30 d/s Total damage: 60
Attack 4: 40 d/s Total damage: 100
Attack 5: 50 d/s Total damage: 150
Attack 6: 60 d/s Total damage: 210
Attack 7: 70 d/s Total damage: 280
Attack 8: 80 d/s Total damage: 360
Attack 9: 90 d/s Total damage: 450
Attack 10: 100 d/s Total damage: 550
Attack 11: 100 d/s Total damage: 650
Attack 12: 100 d/s Total damage: 750

Any attack past 12, and the duration buff does more damage overall.

So it all depends on whether you’re building for long fights or short fights. If you’re building for short fights, favor damage over duration. If you’re building for long fights, favor duration over damage. But there’s probably a sweet spot of a combination that would work best for the average length of fights you get in due to your playstyle.

DGraves.3720:

Seera.5916:

DGraves.3720:

Seera.5916:

Then get a decent number of players (20-30) together to do tons of testing on RNG. Have everyone note down EVERY possible variable that your group feels may affect the results. Magic find, the boosts to Magic find, what enemies they fight, what level and what type of items they throw into the Mystic Forge, etc. Have everyone record EVERY drop. Even note down the trash or when no rewards are given (if you go after drops from enemies). In the order received. And note down chests and then what was in the chests And have everyone then share the data on a public site and link to it so that everyone, including ANet, can look at the raw data and the variables accounted for. And make sure everyone has at least 250 items (trash or better, so keep going if they receive nothing for drops from enemies) on their list.

If right now there are 100,000 players online and each one gets a loot bag on average every 5s your sampling is worthless. The problem is not that the sampling cannot be taken but that without extensive sampling it’s all too small.

Players won’t be able to conclusively say that there is something wrong with the sample size. But it may show that there may be something wrong with the system.

But until the player base that claims something is wrong with the system gets off their butt and documents findings from players who claim to be on both sides of the luck spectrum and players who are in the middle, then there’s no proof that ANet is lying. And ANet has access to the code and knows what the intent of the code is supposed to.

The person who exposed the ecto problem didn’t prove that there was a problem in their findings. They proved that there might be a problem.

. But all modeling places the burden of proof on the modeling party. If I tried a sandwich and got sick, concluding it made me sick, does that mean the sandwich was poisoned?

In many minds, yeah, but saying I got sick because of the sandwich leaves out the possibility that it could have been something else. Such as the old egg salad I had with it, homemade, but not well refrigerated.

People jump to conclusions way too rapidly. Extensive testing doesn’t prove anything. It just shows a pattern which can be made to assert something. You could be right about hidden variables or totally off. Who knows?

Modeling? No one would be modeling anything by doing the experiment. They would be using the actual system to gather data on what dropped and noting down the possible variables that might affects drops as they played. A model is a representation of the system. That would be people developing a computer program that would randomly generate drops based on what players thought the loot table was in the game. How they thought things like magic find or time spent playing in the zone affected it (we don’t know how exactly DR affects the drops or exactly when it takes hold).

The group of people who have the ability to look at the code and know the intent of the code says there is nothing about a person’s account that makes them unlucky or lucky in the drops they get in the game.

The burden is on those who claim otherwise to show that that may not be the case. That there may be a bug in the system.

Eidolonemesis.5640:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The style/look I am going for is Seifer from FF8 (check out the attached screenshot),

It looks like you can achieve the style/look in the ‘attached screenshot’.

And, the Devs have posted why it’s technically not possible to mix/match armor weights.

I am lead to believe you did not read my OP beyond the part you picked out. Physique-wise, yes, I pulled the look off in the face and the body, yet without the right clothing, you are wrong… I did not completely pull off the look due to said reasons in the OP.

Furthermore, the Devs CAN make it where the stats of Heavy Armor are intact even if a Heavy armor were overwritten with a Medium or Light Armor Skin. So you are telling me it is possible for the Devs make it where a Medium or Light Armor Skin can be overwritten with another Medium or Light Armor Skin, but not the other way around like I am suggesting? Link source, please, because I do not believe that at all.

You are not reading what Inculptatus is saying.

He is saying that he feels that the look in your screenshot matches heavy armor more than it matches medium or light armor.

And he is NOT referring to the stats.

He is referring to people choosing light armor skin for shoulders and heavy armor skin for chest and the clipping issues that would result from that. The current armor sets are not designed to be interchanged between armor types. Therefore it would be way too much work to make them be able to do so.

And since new heavy, medium, and light armor has to work well with existing ones, there will never be heavy, medium, or light armor that would work while being mixed.

That’s what Inculpatus’ saying.

Halvorn.9831:

OK, so I misphrased that.

Suppose now you have to have 3 reclaimed metal plates to buy one of the weapons at DS. They have an abnormally low drop rate. Now what if the drop rate was increased by a factor of 10, but on the other hand you needed 30 to buy the same weapon? On average it takes the same amount of attempts, but you feel progression.

That’s what I meant.

Ah, ok. That I wouldn’t have an issue with. At least for things that already operate on a token system like that.

Sartharina.3542:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I generally find that people love Sunrise or Twilight or Eternity, but rarely more than one of them. The very things that make each appealing are less interesting on the alternate legends.

I prefer Twlight for my darker-color-themed characters, notably the mesmer. I prefer Sunrise for my lighter-oriented toons, e.g. Guardian.

That’s what I wanted Sunrise for. Unfortunately, Sunrise isn’t light-colored. Instead, it’s a very dark blade from most angles aside from “Directly behind the player”. Unfortunately, there aren’t any other “Daylight”-themed weapons. Sunrise is that daylight-themed weapon. Unfortunately, it’s very dark, and looks like you have explosive diarrhea if seen from above.

So why don’t you ask for a new legendary with a better skin for you instead of asking for a skin to be changed and taking away a skin someone loves.

Halvorn.9831:

John Smith.4610:

Ironically, the randomness of the system is significantly contributes to these posts continually popping up.

With all due respect, I disagree.

It is not the randomness of the system. It is the homeopathic low drop rates.

If I have a chance for a drop that averages at 20%, you will not very likely see me complain about RNG, since even an unlucky streak will not be that terrible.

If otoh I have a chance for a drop of about 1%, it is quite likely to see me complain – simply for the fact that a bad streak can be completely demotivating up to the point where I believe that the item in question does not even drop at all (reclaimed metal plates anyone? I did not have a single drop in 2016 so far, and I am playing on a daily basis).

Solution: rather than have a single complete drop of 1% or less, require 10 drops of 10% each and let players advance towards the final reward.

Not all items are meant to be common. Some are meant to be rare.

Increasing the drop rate makes items more common. Maybe more common than ANet wants them to be.

The problem is, if the they change the looks based on your personal taste, then every time someone says “I don’t like the looks of X, please change it”, they have to change it. Precedent would be made.

And what if the look they change to Sunrise to you love, but someone else hates and then in the future goes: “I don’t like the look of Sunrise, please change it”?

There’s no way they can get every skin to appeal to every player. Therefore they should only fix graphical things that are in error (and given the number of players who own Sunrise, I’d doubt the issue is a graphical error). There are more important things that need dev attention than changing the looks of old weapons.

Like coming up with the new legendaries. Or new weapons that will be in future content releases.