Guild Wars 2

And here we are again with one of my old favourites.

The new items you get when levelling up are not salvageable (and can’t be sold to a vendor, for that matter). They behave just like equipment bought with karma (or badges of honor).

And still there is no warning label about that.

So much for helping new players understand the game better. Unless of course. since we start getting unsavalgeabe items so early now, it is supposed to teach people about some stuff being not salvageable. Then I guess it has to be considered a good idea….

So a little warning as a side note: Don’t even think about putting an expensive rune or sigil into one of those once you hit 60+, despite how alluring it might be to put something nice into the exotic pistol your engineer just got for hitting 63.
Unless this is a new funny gold sink. “How to obliterate gold by having people put expensive upgrades into even more items that can only be destroyed.”
Or it is a promotional feature for the upgrade extractor.

Either way I still think karma items, the new level up rewards and items bought with badges of honor should get a warning label about being unsalvagable. And may another that badge of honor items can’t even be used in the mystic forge.

An afterthought: I might be a little hard with my choice of words right now, but all the trouble and uproar in the community the new feature patch has created alongside some of the reactions we’ve seen from Arenanet staff (or not seen in some cases) has probably made me a little cranky…

The dungeon forum without Lilith is like strawberry cream pie without cream.

You will be missed.

Some Renown hearts have become quite the core to do since bundles became deactivated in lower level zones.

It is for example impossible to pick up the mines in Assist the Blood Legion on the Diessa Plateau making said renown heart incredibly longwinded because of the few enemies that spawn and the comparatively long distance you have to carry the metal bars.
Which oddly enough can be picked up and they constitute a bundle as well I believe. I guess there are similar problems with other renown hearts that rely on bundles as well.

So rethinking/reworking/bug-fixing that particular little feature would be much appreciated.

I had the same problem. I think this is because they might be classified as bundles and those have been deactivated in low level zones making it impossible to pick them up.

Edit Nevermind, if you had this happen in dry top as well, I have no idea what caused that.

Poor little wing. Have a cookie to make you feel better.

I dare say it’s fantasy.

Chris Cleary.8017:

I’ll go ahead and clarify since there has apparently been different information coming from different sources in the past. Customer Service is not able to support party politics unless they involve cases of targeted harassment in-game. This is because of the number of different reasons that certain party politics happen. Since CS only has access to actions that occur in-game, we are unable to verify specifics for incidents in a large number of incidents. Specifics are the most important part of these situations.

However, we do view player reports via CS tickets, and if a player can be verified as a habitual abuser of the LFG system or parties in general, we can take action against them.

This is not some sick, weird joke i’m not getting, right?
You’re actually saying that someone who “only infrequently” abuses the lfg by stealing instances for example will go unpunished?

I am aware that in some cases it might be difficult to discern what led to a kick, but what Jerus describes here is how a dungeon steal (formerly a dungeon destruction) usually will look like:

Jerus.4350:

[…]

• 2 people join a group, they kick the rest of the group within 30s of joining the party which was already at the end of the dungeon. I don’t see how there is confusion there

Could you clarify how scenario 2 could be something other than abuse and “stealing an instance” which is “bannable”?

I cannot believe that the logs you have about group formation and kicks won’t give you access to the kind of information to see that this is what actually happened. And how the bloody hell could you possibly interpret an occurence like that in any different way than an abuse of the lfg?

Selling or no selling has absolutely no impact on that in my opinion. If someone steals another persons dungeon for whatever bloody reason, that should be a bannable offense. Like Ryan Diederich stated.
And it should be the first time it happens and not only if someone fulfills their bloody monthly quota of lfg abuses.

The power of Necromancers aside, the new system opens up a different and funny new scenario:
5 people in a dungeon who don’t communicate. Five people who decide to relog at the last boss… Great fun for everyone!

I’ve actually been waiting for something along those lines to happen already, only with 3-4 people swapping characters. But the best I got so far were two who did that without announcing it beforehand in Cof 1.

That’s one of the few things that would get me to kick someone. Blatantly refusing to slot a utility that will make the fight a lot simpler for everyone involved for no other reason than being stubborn.

Zenith.7301:

RedStar.4218:

There was a lot of complaints regarding Aetherblade Retreat because it was supposedly way too hard. I don’t know if Molten got it too because I didn’t pay any attention back then.

Battle for LA was, like a big chunk of LS1, a huge farm and Marionette was a great way to show how low the playerbase general level actually was.

It wasn’t way too hard. It was just badly designed with more imbalanced mobs and yet more mechanisms that favored warriors/guardians.

Silberfisch.3046:

Blaeys.3102:

[…]

As for rewards, I dont see a need to offer anything unique. This suggestion is more about wanting the experience and the challenge more than anything else.

Alternatively, they could offer a one-time achievement reward for finishing all of the 5-player instances in a season – a title or a skin that looked like a reward from the main story with a different color, possibly.

While the sense of achievement for having mastered something difficult will probably be enough for those who simply look for a chellenge, I think additional rewards might be a good idea to get more people to try it aside from the completionists and those looking for challenging content.

Of course, as I said, that is a two-sided sword because it will also invite complaints about something being too difficult – see liadri.

With that in mind, you are probably right, a one time achievement would be better and the idea of a repeatable for multiple rewards might be going too far.
Although that would be a step into the direction aof skill based prestige skins. Something quite a few people seem to be fond of.

Another post confusing “difficult” with badly designed.

Liadri was a dps race that one shot ranger pets. That’s kitten mechanics, period.

On my warrior i could bull’s rush, aoe fear the adds and finish liadri in one single knockdown with 100b>whirlwind.

On my thief all you needed was to spec into acrobatics and caltrops on dodge+ weakness/cripple removal on dodge and it was easymode infinite dodges.

Guardian was also fairly doable.

Classes like ranger/ele/necro had it far more difficult because of again, gimmicky mechanics and a really terrible camera view.

I’m afraid you missed the point I was trying to make. I was using Liadri as an example as to what happens on the forums if something shiny apparently can’t be obtained by everyone due to time limitations, perceived difficulty or whatever reason you can come up with.
I know the only trouble with Liadri basically was that you could get unlucky where the black orbs spawned and the rest was just learning the not-too-complicated pattern. And that some classes had a field day with her and others didn’t.

I wasn’t complaining about Liadri or promoting her as a good example of how challenging content should look like.
Maybe I should have made that clearer.

Actually it’s not difficult. The zerker only groups you see in the lfg just seem more prominent for 2 reasons.
One: The drift towards experienced or would-be-experienced players going glasscannon to speed things up.
Two: Despite that trend the fact that a “zerker only” group with probably additional tags like “experienced”, “lvl 80”, “XXXX AP” or even “ping gear” simply take longer to fill up than a simple “path x” description where no one cares what you bring. Those pretty often fill up in seconds and thus are only seen if you refresh a bit more often.

So as was already suggested: If in doubt, just post your own group in the lfg with your expectations in the description. Unless you go for rarely run paths it should fill up quickly enough.

Blaeys.3102:

[…]

As for rewards, I dont see a need to offer anything unique. This suggestion is more about wanting the experience and the challenge more than anything else.

Alternatively, they could offer a one-time achievement reward for finishing all of the 5-player instances in a season – a title or a skin that looked like a reward from the main story with a different color, possibly.

While the sense of achievement for having mastered something difficult will probably be enough for those who simply look for a chellenge, I think additional rewards might be a good idea to get more people to try it aside from the completionists and those looking for challenging content.

Of course, as I said, that is a two-sided sword because it will also invite complaints about something being too difficult – see liadri.

With that in mind, you are probably right, a one time achievement would be better and the idea of a repeatable for multiple rewards might be going too far.
Although that would be a step into the direction aof skill based prestige skins. Something quite a few people seem to be fond of.

@ rojak
Yes, a lot of people complained about them not being able to solo all parts and that they weren’t optional was basically the main problem.
Alongside the complaints about the molten duo being too difficult and both aetherblade bosses being to difficult. Some of that may have been due to the fact that they were only temporary and this might be alleviated with the new living story system.

In addition, we saw multiple complaints about the last step of the dragon’s reach part 1 and 2 being too difficult. And let’s face it those fights aren’t that difficult – they aren’t too easy, but still not overwhelmingly difficult – and are trivialised if you go in with a group instead of going solo.
People obviously didn’t even consider “hey, let’s do that as a group if i have trouble soloing it”. And people complained about the difficulty even though those are permanent addition that can be attempted as often as you want until you get them done.

Of course there is always the option that those complaining are simply more vocal than those who like it. As is usually the case. But it is still something you have to consider as feedback.

@ Jerus
I’m not saying that I dislike the idea of a hardmode. Quite contrary. But they stated in that inverview that hardmodes is not what they want to do atm.
I know the summit fight has a sort of hardmode option for one of the achievements. And yes, that idea could simply be taken just a few steps further to make it challenging 5 man content.
But I don’t expect them to do it at the moment, again based on that interview. I would like it. And I would like to be pleasantly suprised because I was wrong. But i don’t see it happening currently.

forum bug wars 2! Have at thee dragon… bug…

I pug on a regular basis. And it isn’t that bad depending on your expectations and patience and well, luck.
Some days you will get decent groups, some days you wonder how something like CoF1 can actually go that badly.
The problem is what you define as decent. Speedy (but nowhere near an actual speedrun) and with little to no hiccups? Then you’ll actually ge quite a lot “good” runs for you.
Albeit I usually only pug the more or less “failsafe” commonly run paths. With less common or trickier paths looks over to Arah or CoE it might be very different.

The main problem pretty often is lack of communication. Did people actually read your lfg and accept your terms? Do they know the instance or are they just winging it? Will they react positively to advice or requests? (Common requests being stability or reflection for certain encounters.)
And for those playing in EU mostly: Will the actually be able to understand what I’m trying to tell them? A surprisingly common example: I tend to be mildly amuses every time someone askes me what EA and/or PS means when on my warrior; sometimes even other warriors.
Edit: Simply because of language barriers.

Also fixing some of the more annoying typos.

While I personally would love to see 5 man aspects in the living story in order to actually get new group based content, I don’t think it will be incorporated into the basic living story line.
Because I vividly remember the kittenstorm on the forums during season one when aspects of it weren’t solo content.
Why people expect the major pve feature of a MMO game to be solo content however is beyond me.

That aside, I think they could (and should) go the way Blayes suggested. Keep the baseline living story soloable, but add paralell 5 man content as optional side quests or similar.

The problem is, if you go that way and say “it’s optional, let’s up the difficulty”, you will again either have a lot, and I really mean A LOT, of complaints from people not being able to do everything because it is too difficult or, if they choose to make it easy, people complaining about the lack of challenging content.
Middle ground in that case will most like mean taking heat form both sides. So it’s tricky for the developement team.
I guess the best option since hardmodes seem off the table, would be to go with an moderately easy baseline instance and really hard achievements. And reward those achievements properly with titles or special skins. Maybe even make them repeatable for multiple skins of the same line for a full skinset of weapons or armor.

Edit: I am aware that actual rewards other then a sense of “I did this, yeah!” again will prompt complaints about “I wanna have that too, but too hard, wah wah”. But in that case seriously, some things simply shouldn’t be handouts. Just axxept that there will be always complaints.
Personally for example I wouldn’t expect to get all those achievements with my level of skill. But it’s something I could work towards by improving myself. If I really wanted them.

Yes it does. More plushies for everyone!

But I admit I like the new “collections” through exploring/collecting/clicking stuff idea.
Time to everywhere again I guess. Which is basically the only problem I have with it. The “do it again” part. Because there are some things I don’t want to do again… shivers at the memory of some jp

Also deSade and I have established that I posses a degree in advanced dying,

Don’t we have those already in form of the vine bridges in Dry Top?

Try running down one of those with a speed buff on. In at least one of the directions (I think it was the eastern bridge running south to north) you will see the true “speedrun-killer”-mechanic.

Sounds like someone tries to trade a greatsword for a harp .Anyway congrats and good luck with the music.

Favorite dungeon: HotW
Simply because I love the iceberg-towns of the Koda.

Least favorite dungeon: AC, because I had an overdose of that at some point.

Hard to farm? I suppose you mean like that in the pure sense of praying hard to the rngods?
Because frankly that is all that will help you to get fractal skins.
I don’t mind putting effort in the form of time into something in a game (though i prefer skill, which ultimately also includes time to learn something). But the rng factor in the case of fractal weapon skins for most people simply negates the option to put effort into it. Because it’s purely luck based.
Yes you an put more effort/time into it by doing more fractals to have more possible rolls on the rng table. But at the end of the day it will still be purely luck based.

Edit: And this comes from someone who has had incredible luck with his fractal skins. There’s only one still out there, that is on my “I’d like to have” list. All other fractal skins that i wanted I’ve got already.

Purple Miku.7032:

I suppose this game just hates me then.

I’ve spent like 4k hours total on GW2 and I think the best drop I’ve gotten on this game was an abyss dye, second to that maybe an entropy.

240 pristine relics and I’ve still never seen an ascended chest drop that’s berserker, but this is probably shared amongst many of you as well.

Best black lion chest was probably one that I got a mini scarlet from or something like that.

Took like 200 tequatl kills to get a tequatl hoard.

-_-

You’ve got it all wrong. the game has simply acknowledged that you are a community person. So in order for the rest of us to get good drop rates, yours have been “slightly reduced”.
We all thank you for your community effort btw.

Lindbur.2537:

I wish I had a good reason to remain logged in for more than 5 minutes these days.

One can only hope.

From what I hear, the game can be used as a nice chatroom with beautifully animated backrounds. Some even interactive to boot!

I had a few long discussions lately with friends about the business model of GW2 and how their company policy perfectly matches a certain form of business model that, while it might be successful, wil be a very alienating concept for loyal long term customers and people used to a different business model from mmorpgs in the past like GW1.

Sadly, in an quick and/or superficial analysis of that business model, dungeons like those in GW2 are actually harmful for the company’s revenue. So investing manpower or money into them is actually detrimental from that point of view.

I thought about starting a topic about that but honestly, that would mostly listing why in the current business model of GW2 dungeons – as they are now – are actually a problem for the revenue, so I’ll refrain from that here as well.
And the only 2 things I could come up with to make them worthwhile were either something that is not on the table (an xpac) or only remotely feasible/connected to a lot of negative PR (selling access to new dungeons via the gemshop).
The uproar in the community why LS for example is free if you manage to log in at least once in a fortnight and the new dungeons were part of the gemshop only would be most likely enormous.
And those really interested in new dungeon would probably only spend gold for gems to buy access anyway, since dungeon running when done effectively is quite lucrative in terms of gold.

Oh and I fully expect this post to be mod-bombed sooner or later. Despite that I couldn’t find anything in the forum rules or code of conduct this post actually violates.

I’m not sure wether to be intrigued or wether it’s a slippery slope towards a tmi moment. Problably both.

Honestly? That one looks waaaay to innocent to be you.

Other than that: Great sketch!

JasmineLong.6514:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

http://www.reddit.com/user/ranique <- works. For some reason the forum-url was in front of the reddit-url.

The new blog post. What the kitten. “Feature Pack”? More like “Recycle crap from China-Pack”.

It’s like ANet thinks the game needs almost no new content and everyone is new.

They’re going to wipe everyone’s mind so that way this IS all new content to us…wait…who are you? Who am I? Oh god!

I like how you think.

Edit: It seems more and more that GW2 is meant to be a game with high player fluctuation in regard to people quitting and new players picking it up instead of having a constant loyal playerbase.

Given we had 2 dungeons and an new path in season 1, I’d say expecting a new dungeon in season 2 was understandable.
I can’t think of anyone in my guild who would have expected season 2 not to have a dungeon included.

I think it is a little bit better explained in Chris Cleary’s post before that.

To quote:
“Skips” generally require abuse of terrain to accomplish. An example of this would be “breaking out” of the map in order to bypass content. Doing such would be quantified as exploitation, using an exploit and profiting (“selling” runs) would be quantified as selling an exploit.

I guess that might be why he places the seling in quotation marks. Because there is legal selling and exploit selling.
But sadly even that leaves room for (mis)interpretation.

I’m not saying that I will believe anything until i see it actually happening. But I’m also not going to put my head into a sand dune and do nothing when there actually might be a chance.
If that is embarrassing, so be it. I can live with that.

It’s interesting. For the longest time the dungeon subforum community felt ignored. And I’d say rightfully so.
In the light of that the regulars were a united front against this neglect.

Now it seems that there might be some improvement on that part on Arenanet’s side and what happens? We start tearing each other apart and lose our united front because resentment sits too deep in some and others still hope.

It is a pretty sad sight to behold.

Can we function as a community only if we have that “common enemy” feeling? Or can we get past that and try to work constructively towards “a better future”? (I know it sounds incredibly corny.)

rojak.1894:

Does it mean crucial fights in the story will become a 5 man ‘dungeon’ like Missions in Gw1? Maybe they will leave the classic dungeons the way they are then..

I don’t think so. We had that in LS S1 and if I remember correctly they were not that popular with the LS target clientele.
There were a lot of complaints about them being too hard.
Although that might have been due to the fact that they were temporary content only and included the Molten Duo and Mai Trin, which broke the back of many pugs.

But since we geht the too hard complaints about the final fights in The Dragon’s Reach, part 1 and 2 as well, I would expect the complaints to rise even more because now you cannot do it alone anymore.
Or something like that. Just look how many complaints are out there that they dared to put the final personal story chapter in a dungeon. (Which frankly put only shows that people forget they play an MMO and not a single player game.)

So I wouldn’t expect that.

I’m confused. I actually sort of “ragequit” a group yesterday.

Friend of mine and I decided to get AC story for some alts. We flag us simply as “story” and get 2 level 80 (one me, my necro never ventured much into dungeons before) and a few lowlevel ranging from 30 to 33.
Looks good enough.
Then someone initiates a kick for one of the lowlevels. And apparently the second pug agreed.
After a chat inquiry what the hell that was about gave no immedeate answer, my friend just reups the old lfg.
The same player joins us. 10 seconds later, our 2 “friends” kick him again.

Then the other level 80 pipes up in chat “we need better team”. “wee need one god player”. Yes he wrote “god”, but I presumed that was a typo.
Anyway at that point my friend and I left. It was a frickin’ storymode. AC no less. What in all that is unholy do you need a “better team” for in that case?
Not even counting that he apparently dismissed my level 80 as “not good” for whatever reason, possibly being a necro. That I could have taken that as a personal insult just came to me later.

Anyway we posted a new lfg. got the twice kicked player again and two others and proceeded to do the instance without a hitch.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Silberfisch.3046:

Btw. reducing the cd on the defensive wells on necro would be something that fits their intended upgrade of a necro’s sustained survival, wouldn’kitten Increased reusability of blind/condicleanse would fit the bill, imo.
That and maybe some dodges or blocks somehwere or vigor in any form.

Lolno, we’ll just add some more HP and Healing Power application through Gandmaster traits.

So I should see that I get more ambrite to make full use of those?

Btw. reducing the cd on the defensive wells on necro would be something that fits their intended upgrade of a necro’s sustained survival, wouldn’kitten Increased reusability of blind/condicleanse would fit the bill, imo.
That and maybe some dodges or blocks somehwere or vigor in any form.

Also, why didn’t anyone include Renewed Focus into their list of good elites? Or am I deluded about its usefulness?

I’ll sign that, but only if it comes as an armor skin set and not an outfit. I would prefer to only use parts of it.

And I would like a Countess Anise minipet while we are at it. Having someone who refers to the player character as “pet” as a mini pet sounds oddly fitting.

Why does the phrase “bring it on!” pop up in my mind when I look at that picture?

Looks great btw. could be used as an ad or wallpaper.

I imagine a ranger with the new trait and a frostbow is a happy combination.

I would guess about 2-3 weeks after the “new meta” is established, the core of that will become the new “exploit”.

Given how you think about vegetables, that is probably one of the most dire predicaments ever.

I can’t help myself. yawn

Raire.7983:

Silberfisch.3046:

@ Raire:
I suppose you are a staunch supporter of dragonite for fractals?

Not sure what you mean, but they can bury the place in my unused dragonite for all I care. ;P

What I mean is the following:
In order to realistically do lvl 50 fractals you need an AR of 70.
There are 2 ways to obtain this. One is done running fractals, it would appear. But there is a catch. In order to get there with what fractals provide assuming you level strait up from level 1, you will have to spend 1600g (and change) on the TP/crafting materials from npc vendors. If you want the maths behind that number, I can provide them, just say so.
You will also need 110 laurels. And roughly 350 globs of ectoplasm for example. And a few other drops I just presumed them to be lucky enough get along the road.
If you want to factor in armor or weapon chest drops, those are incredibly rare and will in most cases not deliver the statistics your looking for, forcing you to either use subpar statistics or go through the ordeal described above. So I didn’t enter them in my consideration, but I already was generous with ring rewards, coagulated mist items and similar in favor of the player. Which is actually by no means a given.

Fun fact, since Agony infusions have a current maximum of +16 (if the wiki is correct), you can’t actually get to 70 only using gold/fractal drops. You will need the laurels or dragonite ore, which brings me to the second option.

The alternative is to venture outside of fractals and do open world content, namely meta event world bosses because they deliver dragonite ore which is needed to craft ascended armor and/or weapons. And crafting these ist expensive as hell either way.

So fractal players have been forced to spend hilarious amounts of gold or spend a almost equally hilarious amount of gold and venture into open world pve. Something a lot of them despise at least to an equal measure as you seem to despise doing fractals.

Given that this has been the state of things for quite some time now, I don’t think it is surprising, that a lot of fractal regulars can’t understand why 5 lvl 1 fractals are such a huge deal.

So, quoting you about forcing people to cross-over gameplay, I presumed that you were someone in support of the plight of fractal runners in regard to the acquisition of dragonite ore.

Raire.7983:

[…]

I consider it an action to exclude people and show no respect for what they want to do with their time. I personally have little issue with exclusive rewards for different aspects of the game (so long as they’re aesthetic), but this cross-over garbage makes me angry. If ANet wanted this to be a Fractals reward, the process should have began and ended in Fractals, and not included something with a unique function.

I know ANet and their stauncher fans like to present it as positive encouragement, but to me it’s an imposition that I simply won’t tolerate.

I’m actually an advocate of allowing people to play the game the way they like and I understand that “we have to do something we hate, so why shouldn’t they too” is not really a good argument.
But I think it puts some of the comments that doing 5 fractal runs is no big deal into a different perspective compared to what fractal runners have to go through.
Btw. I don’t say that this is the only motivation for people to say “why not do those measily 5 fractal runs?”. Just an easily understood reason for some of those comments, I believe.

That’s why I asked you wether you were a supporter of dragonite through fractals.
In the end, we will have either to abide by Arenanet’s policy in the matter or choose to play a different game or do without something we would like to have/do.

I’ll offer you a compromise: Be vocal about getting your mists stone via a different route, maybe even the mentioned dragonite ore. And in addition be vocal about changing the rewards for fractals to include dragonite ore, or at least allowing fractal runners to trade their excess relics for dragonite ore.
That way you and the fractal crowd have something to agree to.
A common cause is always better anyway.

stomps on the forum bug

@ Raire:
I suppose you are a staunch supporter of dragonite for fractals?

Actually I belief there was a statement about the topic when a different event was concerned that stated it was not an exploit per se. But it wasn’t what the developers intended for the event.
So while not playing as intended =/= exploit in that case. Still they’ll rebalance the respawntime and the scaling I guess, because that is what they did in similar cases before.

I’m currently laughing very hard and shaking my head at the same time. A friend wanted to duo CM/teach me how to solo p3, so we did p1 and p3.
Then we did an experiment wether we could speed it up with a different class composition.
After that my friend wanted to sell. I had no problem with that so he posted a lfg entry.
Result: We got two of those people who apparently belief dungeon selling is evil. I see the kick window at my friends character and half a second later the Queensdale loading screen.
The very first time I’m involved into selling and this happens. Must be a sign.
To add insult to injury, I read almost everyday about fillers and this particular problem here on the forum, but I forgot to remind my friend about it.

No Pulse.2967:

windowcat.7236:

ANET PLEASE, PLEASE, remove the drop of rings on 30+ lvls. It’s disgusting, how much time you spent on high level fractal to get ring that you don’t need. The fact you are doing 30+ lvls makes obvious that you have all rings and you don’t need more. (Even if you do, you can buy them for 10 pristine cause I bet you have tons of those.) Please anet, I just can’t make myself do another fractal for this crappy reward system at all.
#ETTINBAND4LIFE

Anet is good at removing things…

Now now, let’s not be overexaggerating here. Only if it benefits the players.

Actually the solvents in the paint I have here are pretty harmless. But the mildew repellent used below the paint for the bathroom, that stuff is evil.