Guild Wars 2

NewLogic.3480:

Also trying to feel the groove helps a lot, if that even makes sense.

It can help as well as hurt. A good sense for the song and tempo will give you a great feel for when to naturally hit the notes. However, even the slightest misstep in following this, such as unconsciously perceiving the tempo to be faster, can throw you off mark. Even if you get it right, that natural place to hit the note might not always be where the server lands it.

That said, I would be much more inclined to listen to the music for the beat and what notes I should play if I’d actually heard all of those songs before. It might have been nice if during the small intermission between songs, the original performance of the next song would play, giving players a better feel for what they’ll be playing next and how all three players’ parts are meant to fit together.

This puzzle is incredibly easy in comparison to Clock Tower, and the bulk of that is just in how the timing mechanic works.

Clock Tower is very unforgiving. If you start to fall behind at any point in the puzzle, you get sucked up immediately. This means that you need to be on your toes for the entire puzzle and hardly ever get a chance to really see where you’re going. You’ll have to fail three or four runs to really understand a difficult jump, and each one of those failures sends you back to the lobby for another minute or two.

In contrast, the Wintersday puzzle allows for much more freedom. If you take it slow on the beginning, then sure, you’ll not have enough time left at the end to get the prize. However, you’ll at least have had the full amount of time to make yourself familiar and comfortable with the first section(s) of the puzzle. With less pressure on you to always stay ahead, you have ample opportunity to practice until you’re fast enough to get to the later sections and, eventually, to the finish.

I was able to do it after three or four runs, maybe all of ten minutes spent there. Compared to the hours of agony I had to put in to champion the Clock Tower, I would consider this festival’s puzzle to be much easier.

I just recently completed a perfect run of the middle part.

When the note comes into contact with or crosses the blue, you’ll see it disappear and leave behind a small white flash. During that small white flash is when you should be hitting the note.

Congratulations on finally getting a feeling that 90% of the community should have been allowed to reach two months ago. Unfortunately, most people are still stuck dealing with the impending influx of vertical progression.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

I changed the title to reflect that it is a personal opinion.

Yes, a player made a post about their personal opinion of the direction of the game.

A personal opinion post, just like every other post you will read on this forum.

Would you like to add words to everyone else’s topics too to reflect that their views are also their personal opinion?

Personally, I think you’re doing a great job of indirectly belittling the personal opinions of posters whose personal opinions are in conflict with your own.

Don’t take it so personally.

I, too, would rather see a better version of the current game than new tin foil props to chase. In fact, I’d rather see the game that existed three weeks ago than the one that exists now.

Achievement points should never have been something that could be earned by indefinite repetition of any particular action.

Romeo.4378:

Are you going to give Anet a second chance?

I’ve played Guild Wars for over seven years now. I’ve seen some blunders by ANet in that time. I gave them plenty of second chances to make right. Guild Wars 2 itself was like the ultimate second chance to have given them, an opportunity for them to set everything that they wronged me on in their first game to be righted in their sequel.

It’s not even three months past release, and they’ve already put themselves in position to take a direction that couldn’t be farther off from where I had hoped they would take me.

No, it’s going to be very hard for me to forgive them this time around.

I agree wholeheartedly with the OP. The introduction of Ascended gear has trespassed over the most important reason for why I purchased GW2, why I played GW2, why I spent so many years in anticipation of GW2, and why I thought ArenaNet was a team that I could stand behind and support in creating the game I wanted to play. Their position on vertical progression moving forwards feels like the highest betrayal of my trust, and gives me great incentive to reconsider logging in in the future.

IndigoSundown.5419:

While this is a fine approach to playing a game, fighting a mob when he cannot fight back was obviously not intended by the developer. This makes it an exploit which is a violation of the UA/ToS.

I don’t disagree with you.

kineticdamage.6279:

The definition of a game is to “play by the rules”. If you break those rules by purpose, you’re not playing that game anymore. That, even a child does know it.

Now, from an adult standpoint, anyone knows that breaking a game’s rules will have negative consequences on other concurrent players.

Now what if you and I were engaging a friendly fight in real life, and you say “only punches”., but after a minute I suddenly started using a crowbar ?

An exploit in itself is not a breach in rules. It’s an action that can be seen as capitalizing on poorly defined rules. Your analogy is poor because in that case, you’re breaking our one rule of “only punches”. However, if I started using brass knuckles, I would still be within the bounds of our rule and also be taking advantage of the fact that the rule wasn’t declared to be “only fists” or something more well-defined.

When I play to complete content, I see only the most efficient or quick solution and always opt for that route. If that involves some sort of “exploit”, so be it.

Instead of asking how exploiting could be fun, I would ask how it wouldn’t be. Or rather, what would be uninteresting about searching for and discovering ways to break the game or clear content? I’m a mathematician and frequent puzzle solver, and I take great interest in exploring the limits of what I can and can’t do, understanding where they put me, and using that knowledge to make solving problems much easier for me in the future.

What is the status of Polymock and what can we expect for permanent additions and/or changes to minigames in the next three months?

Congratulations on finally fixing Legendary Survivor, but this title is still bugged.

If you have another Orb, I can show you a way into the Polymock Arena that won’t get you jailed.

In opening a large amount of ToT bags, I’d wager you’re more likely to get the endless tonic than rack up 250 of each of the one-time tonics.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’m super interested in learning what you guys think you should be getting out of activities. Trick or treat bags were sort of a trial, but I think it worked out pretty well so we may do similar things in the future. Keg brawl doesn’t have anything like that, but it does have achievements. Would that compel you to play? Something else?

Keg Brawl is supposed to give a title for playing it enough. That was a great incentive for getting me to play it, but I’d appreciate it even more if the title actually worked.

When I played GW, I spent much of my time during the holiday events in arenas like Dragon Arena and Rollerbeetle Racing because they were different from the standard fare found in the rest of the game. They also gave decent holiday rewards like tokens, and they all allowed you to accumulate points towards a title track. Of all of these, I’d say the title points were the greatest reward that kept me playing. The freshness and uniqueness of the arenas was what got me in the door though, and was more of a contributor to me staying to play them than any reward.

Given how the achievement tracks for the holiday events are set to disappear after the event, I’d rather see the token rewards for participating in them rather than any achievement rewards. Conversely, for things like Keg Brawl that are always in the game (or bar brawls, shooting galleries, and Polymock when you get around to it), I’d prefer achievement points and titles I can work towards.

I’ve beaten this once for every race. Took me a couple hours for my first success. After coming back to it the next day, I got the other for successes in maybe a little over thirty minutes.

The Kegmaster track is bugged. The title track is supposed to work much like Emissary of the Mad King, another title track recently bugged, in that you earn progress for completing certain related achievements.

Two costumes in Costume Brawl have stuck out to me as being exceptionally powerful, so powerful that my desire to play CB dries up immediately upon seeing anyone using them. These are the Mad King’s outfit and Boxing Gloves. The reason I can’t stand playing against these is because it is next to impossible to do anything to these players due to the skills they possess.

The Mad King’s Outfit gives a player a toy which has two skills in particular on it that cause trouble. One skill deals one point of damage and inflicts fear upon all other players near the user. The other skill dazes and deals a point of damage each second to nearby players for a few seconds. These skills on their own are probably not that lethal. However, my experience is that the cooldowns of these skills are so low that they can be chained together with little downtime. The result is that anybody close enough to the user will be prevented from doing anything. Other players will spend most of their time either being dazed or having fear, both cases not allowing the player to use skills. Fighting this costume at close range is near impossible. Fighting at range is not much easier either, because few (if any) costumes have good ranged attacks. If the Mad King player closes the gap between themselves and the ranged user, they chain their fear and daze skills and shut down the ranged user completely again. While not having a totally impenetrable defense, this costume offers a great deal of control and combines it with a lot of damage as well.

The Boxing Gloves take a slightly different approach of being impossible to defeat. Instead of controlling other players with fear and daze, the Boxing Gloves offer skills that allow the player to permanently maintain Brawler Protection. With this buff, others players are unable to do any damage to a player with that buff. Boxing Gloves allow this buff to be on the user all the time. While this buff is in place, the boxer can still use skills to damage other players, such as their knockdown ability or their rapid punches. Their protection skill alone makes them impossible to defeat, but having these great damage skills on top of it all makes every boxer a complete bully to every other brawler around them.

While Costume Brawl is likely intended to just be a casual and fun format, that doesn’t mean it should be devoid of balance. I can not imagine that there are many players in the game who would appreciate playing CB or find it fun if they understood just how much stronger these two costumes are than anything else in the game. For me, I can say that there is nothing fun about playing CB when I face these players against whom I can do nothing. Each of these costumes need to be toned down so that they at least offer some window of opportunity for players to attack them.

The daze and fear skills on the Mad King’s scepter need to have their recharges increased by about two to five seconds each. The daze skill in particular should be toned down in an additional way, such as only dealing daze on the initial hit.

The Boxing Gloves should not be able to maintain Brawler Protection indefinitely. Good ratios of protection to recharge would be anywhere between 1:2 and 1:3. Alternatively, use of this skill could daze the user for as long as the protection lasts, effectively preventing the user from both blocking all damage and dealing some damage at the same time.

In the future, I would hope that new costumes and toys do not offer the same levels of control, protection, and damage as demonstrated by these two costumes.

1. No, I will not buy lottery keys or chests from the online store.’
2. No, I never bought these in the past.
3. Yes, I would support direct purchase of these cosmetic items.
4. Yes, I believe more limited time items will be offered during future events.
5. Yes, I am concerned that some future elements of their microtransaction model will impact the game negatively.
6. I have not opened any Black Lion Chests or Mad King Chests.
7. No, I have not bought any set priced Halloween items. The reason for this is not related to the existence of Black Lion Chests.

Remember when BLCs were worth like 3c on the trading post? Because everyone thought they were useless and didn’t want to buy or didn’t have keys to open them? And yet, even with that lack of demand for the item, ANet decides to introduce limited time items to them to explode demand.

So even if players demonstrated that they weren’t interested in these chests, ANet would find some way to make players interested rather than scrap the gamble.

Kegmaster has the same bug as this, and I suspect Legendary Survivor is also bugged in a similar way.

I thought this is what they had fixed when they said “Fixed counts for Halloween achievements”, but apparently not.

Any chance we could get some of the update notes before the update comes out? I’m personally very interested in potential bug fixes and profession balances.

Alverad.3167:

Don’t even know where to start – are you trying to eliminate the multiplayer aspect of an mmo ? It’s a social game, a whole bunch of us enjoys the very tools you find invading your privacy. Why would you want to hide? Why would you not want people to be able to contact you, why would you not want to see where your friends are? As a guild leader, why would you not want to see which members are representing your guild, which ones you can count on most, which one actually contribute to the community?

OP gave many reasons and scenarios in which, from their perspective, they want to have the option to not advertise their presence or activity. Did you not read his whole post?

There’s nothing wrong with friends being able to know what other friends are up to or what other guild members in a guild are doing, so long as those other friends and members want you to know. The issue is that being a part of these groups forces you to offer up information that you don’t always want to share. Part of why they do this is because the systems for feigning inactivity don’t completely prevent information when they’re asked to do so, in a sense (offline mode).

It’s a game. You are free to do what you please, in a company that you find suitable, or even alone. You do not need to hide in order to do that. Those tools are there to help people socialize.

Perhaps you don’t understand why it’s important to some people that they have control over their personal information and activity.

These systems, while fulfilling their function of helping people socialize, can’t be switched off at a user’s whim. As such, they encourage and almost force some players to socialize in order to use them, the only alternative being to not use them at all. These things need to facilitate and not force socializing, and should give real control to its users about who knows what they’re up to and who doesn’t.

I got a repair orb from one of my dailies. So, I scaled down the walls of Rata Sum, jumped off, got back up, and took another tour of the Polymock Arena. I managed to get on top of each of the arena cubes in one life before I died trying to get from one to the other.

Webpage:

Never one to miss out on an opportunity, Evon Gnashblade has stocked all new items at the Black Lion Trading Company, including Halloween costumes and new transforms that will allow you to play Costume Brawl with fellow costumed players.

Does this mean that only people who buy costumes in the store will be able to participate in this event?

Or can I expect there to be some way to earn a costume through gameplay during the event?

Yes, it would be nice to finally have another side activity to do. I’ve just about exhausted myself over Keg Brawl, and I’m ready to conquer something else.

There are three exploitative methods of getting points/stats in Keg Brawl that I shall outline below:

Method 1: Recoveries

Using this method, a player can obtain large amounts of recoveries in a short period of time without playing the game as it may be intended.

Requires:
- One keg
- Two players of one color
- One player of another color

Setup: Let two players be on Blue team and one player on Red team. Choose one player of Blue team to hold the keg. This player is the “carrier”, denoted player C. The other player on Blue team stands on the same spot as player C. This player is the “receiver”, denoted player R. The Red team player stands next to but not on top of players C and R. This player is the “fumbler”, denoted player F. Player F always has player C as a target.

Process:

• 1. Player F uses Disable to knock the keg away from player C. Player R immediately catches it. Player F gains one fumble, player R gains one recovery.
• 2. Player R steps aside such that no players are between players R and F and that no players are between players F and C.
• 3. Player R uses Throw to quickittenhrow the keg to player F. Player F gains one interception.
• 4. Player F uses Throw to quickittenhrow the keg to player C. Player C gains one interception.
• 5. Player R returns to standing on top of player C.
• 6. Repeat steps 1-5 as desired.

Result: For as many times as this process is repeated, player R gains one recovery, player C gains one interception, and player F gains one fumble and one interception. The speed of this method is determined by the longest recharge, which is how fast Disable recharges. Considering wind-up time, this process can be repeated every five seconds.

Method 2: Interceptions

Using this method, two players can very quickly earn interceptions.

Requires:
- One keg
- Two players of opposite teams

Setup: Let one player be player A and another player be player B. Let player A begin by holding the keg. Both players should be standing very close to each other, but perhaps not on top of each other.

Process:

• 1. Player A throws the keg to player B. Player B gains one interception.
• 2. Player B throws the keg to player A. Player A gains one interception.
• 3. Repeat steps 1-2 as desired.

Result: Players A and B each get one interception for as many times as this is repeated. This method is extremely fast since Throw has no recharge and is an instant cast.

Method 3: Steals/Fumbles

This method allows two players to gain steals and multiple players to gain fumbles.

Requires:
- One keg
- One (or more) player(s) from Blue team
- One (or more) player(s) from Red team
- The number of players from each team should be equal.

Setup: Let Blue players be denoted B1, B2, …, BN for N Blue players, and Red players be denoted R1, R2, …, RN for N Red players. Let B1 hold the keg. Player R1 stands on the same spot as player B1 (melee attack assist should be turned off for players B1 and R1). Players B2, … BN, R2, …, RN stand next to but not on top of B1. Blue players should always target R1. Red players should always target B1.

Process:

• 1. Player R1 uses Disarm on player B1. The keg is immediately caught by player R1. Player R1 gains one steal and one fumble.
• 2. Player B1 uses Disarm on player R1. The keg is immediately caught by player B1. Player B1 gains one steal and one fumble.
• 3. Repeat steps 1-2 for (N-1) times. Disarm should be used in sequence for players R2 and B2, …, RN and BN. Players B1 and R1 each earn (N-1) steals, and the players B2, …, BN, R2, …, RN each earn one fumble.
• 4. Repeat steps 1-3 as desired.

Result: For each time this method is repeated, each player earns one fumble, and players R1 and B1 each earn N steals. This method takes about five seconds to repeat. However, there are more rewards earned in that time if more players are involved.

Suggestions:

• Remove kegs that are taken “out of the arena”, which could be considered as any area outside of the fenced area that players normally fight within.
• Prevent players from earning same stats from same players for some period of time. For example, a player that earns an interception from another player can not earn an interception off that player for the next 10-15 seconds.

There’s a lot of infrastructure that still needs to be established before GW2 can even be remotely close to an eSport. Of all the things ANet has chosen to speak about and claim to tackle first, private servers are probably the last thing that would cross my mind as bringing this game closer to a sport. Observer mode and a ranking/rating/ladder system are two that right off the bat would jump to my #1 and #2 priorities to do.

You might be able to get away with saying that PvP is ready, but it absolutely isn’t eSport-ready. Seeing that custom rooms have been placed higher on the list than those two other features has me feeling that the team is misguided and that we won’t be seeing the critical features until some many months down the line. I hope we still have players by then that want to make the game successful as a sport.

The number of recoveries you need to max out the track for Keg Brawl is too many and should be reduced. This can be done either by reducing the amount per tier or reducing the number of tiers.

Scoring is an innate part of the game and is an integral part of winning. Such is why there is an eighth tier for kegs scored for Keg Brawl, because you will typically score a lot of kegs after lots of play. Recoveries, on the other hand, are borderline unnatural for this game. There are any number of things that players will do with kegs that other players are holding that prevent recoveries from ever showing up. This includes and is not limited to:

• as a carrier, throwing the keg while on the move before it is knocked out of one’s hands;
• as a carrier, throwing the keg while knocked down;
• as an opponent, standing directly on top of a player while knocking away their keg.

Players do those things naturally, and good players do the first two so much that kegs are hardly ever fumbled. It’s even less often that other teammates are standing nearby and are lucky enough to catch something knocked out of their ally’s hands. Good players know better and would rather go where new kegs spawn than walk beside someone who would carry the keg. As a result, hardly ever does someone manage to get recoveries unless the specifically play for it, the only method for doing so being to play amongst two teams that don’t know better and rarely throw. Playing in this way often runs counter to winning, as a player doing this would put more importance upon putting kegs in their allies’ hands than actually scoring them.

Recoveries should stop at the sixth tier at most, or perhaps even the fifth tier. They’re just too infrequent within natural play, and going for them promotes poor play.

I also have encountered this bug tonight.

• A player activating Pour Ale does not become interrupted by the loss of their keg when they are struck by Disarm.

• Pets, when they exist, will intercept kegs. Instead of dropping at their feet, the kegs are lost similar to how a keg disappears when it is thrown into a wall.
• Two players of opposite teams can stand close and pass one keg back and forth to each other to quickly rack up interceptions.
• Two players of the same team can stand close and pass one keg back and forth to each other such that scoring the keg will grant the non-scoring player multiple (often two) assists.

I have finished uploading a video which showcases some things you can do in Keg Brawl pre-game. This video is unlisted and may be found here.

• When a player holding a keg that has been knocked down uses their Throw skill, the keg will follow the path set by their camera at the moment that the player was knocked down instead of the path they set when using Throw. Irrelevant due to update on 10/1/2012.

• Players can score kegs on the enemy keeper for points and score. This will also count towards their achievements.
• Assists do not count if the scoring player takes too long to score after being passed the keg.
• Doing things before and after the game will count towards the achievement tracks. For example, kegs scored before the match begins count towards your kegs scored.

• Players can spawn consumables in the arena and use them. Seen in the attached file (gw269), the player has spawned some sort of ice rifle and used it to damage and chill other players. They were also able to kill the Ale Keeper in this way, preventing one team from scoring for some time. Green Fireworks were also brought into the arena and were usable.
• Dive Roll while holding a keg allows players to dodge. Dive Roll while not holding a keg does not dodge.
• Player traits should be checked to make sure they are turned off. I have seen at least one instance of a ranger with Opening Strike. That, to me, is an indicator that other traits may work such as those that give extra speed under certain conditions (elementalists attuned to air) or extra endurance for more dodging than others. After checking myself, it seems that traits do not work, as desired.
• At the beginning of the game, very rarely is it possible to pick up a practice keg and still be holding it when the match starts (I have seen this occur once only and am unaware of how to duplicate it). by passing a keg to another player who is already holding a keg, the keg that falls at that player’s feet will not disappear when the game begins.
• At the beginning of the game, if you throw a practice keg to the keeper and score, the chute will launch a new keg into the game that will not disappear when the match begins. This allows a second keg to be introduced early into the game.
• Kegmaster does not increase in progress when other keg “skills” have been maxed out. See attached (gw274).
• When struck by Punch, the daze effect
• * prevents kegs from being picked up;
• * sometimes locks players into motion, often because they try to do things (pick up kegs, use a skill);
• * can bring knocked-down players back up faster than normal;
• * does not prevent the use of the Throw skill.
• Charge sometimes reaches the target before the channel expires, idles the player, and then knocks them down as if they had not reached the target.
• Assists are not given when players who have been passed the keg by another teammate score the keg by talking to the Keeper NPC instead of tossing it in with a Throw or Lob skill. Fixed 9/25/2012.
• The autobalance mechanic does not take into consideration the contributions of players. This means sometimes that players who score many kegs for one side may be balanced to the other side near the end of an almost complete game. See attached (gw260). Fixed 10/1/2012.

Currently, if I engage in dialogue with an NPC that brings up a dialogue window, it prevents me from using my “F” key to interact with objects around me. I would like this to not be true, since there are many instances in which there are these NPCs around things I’d like to interact with, but my character becomes locked out from them because I accidentally engaged an NPC in dialogue instead.

If a keg gets tossed in between the NPC norn that stand around inside the Keg Brawl arena, it gets hard to pick up the gift without accidentally tying up your character by making small talk with them or weaving your mouse around to click the keg. It would be much better if those norn would be removed so that they don’t clutter the space.

Tuco.2419:

A player with a full 3 orb bonus has only a small advantage over you. The block for you is mental and you’re responsible for overcoming it.

Sure, one person with a 15% health and 150 stat bonus over another player might not be a big deal. A whole world of players with a 15% health and 150 stat bonus however is a huge advantage. The little things add up, and the greater in number the enemy force is, the greater the bonus.