Guild Wars 2

Being German myself, I chose a German server 2 years ago and set the game client language to German, because I want the game in German. Including map chat. The game was designed and able to give me German everywhere, so I used it. It’s like being home. I just don’t like to communicate in a foreign language after work, I want to communicate in my mother language.

The mega server is an issue, since you meet players from non-[DE] servers. But since I still am on my German server and have set my game client to German, I still write in German in map chat and will continue to do so. If the language support was withdrawn by Arenanet, they would have announced that, but they didn’t. They made incredible efforts to localize the client, and now I should not be able to write German in map chat? No. I can have the game in German in every aspect, which must include map chat.

However, if someone has his game client in English, he should be aware that the filter option assigns him an implicit “English” tag to his chat messages, so he should really write in English as well. Doing otherwise is not polite. If I change my game client to English, which I do in rare cases, I also switch my chat language to English of course.

The game is lacking a feature to give the player the option to choose the languages he is able to understand and the option to explicitly tag his own chat messages with a specific language independently from the game client language. This is more important now with the mega server. A little clickable language flag next to the chat input box, where I can quickly choose a different language for my next chat messages, if I want to answer in English instead of German. And a list of languages in the game options that I want to read (German and English in my case). This is a way to introduce language chats, but merged into one channel as before, so it doesn’t clutter your chat window.

We cannot guess from the information you gave.
Make sure you plugged the monitor into the r9 280x graphics card and not into the internal graphics on the motherboard and make sure the r9 280x graphics card is plugged into the correct pci-e slot on your motherboard. If there are 2 possible slots, choose the correct one according to the documentation of your motherboard. Many motherboards have 2 for sli/crossfire but if you have only 1 card, you must use one specific slot and not the other. gpu-z can show if your graphics card runs with the maximum possible speed of 16x pci lanes.

Everything that was said is true. I have a personal guild for a long time with me as the only member, and I only represent it when I want to deposit or withdraw items from the guild bank. The guild is still there after a year.

What I must not do is leaving the guild. On leaving, the guild and its bank is immediately and irrevocably gone and destroyed. Representing other guilds is always fine. You must be careful to join/represent other guilds, since the button to leave a guild is next to the button to not represent a guild. Don’t click the wrong one. I even don’t know if there is a confirmation dialog.

To be honest, I don’t like raids. I don’t like these absurdly difficult challenges where 15+ players have to be painstakingly coordinated in Teamspeak and directed on what to do every second of the encounter. It feels like you are drilling animals in circus. I don’t like being a drilled animal. The first few weeks after the release, a tiny group of people are analyzing the mechanics, then teach their friends (often only their friends) of how to beat the boss. Someone must stand here, using this skill 10 seconds in the fight, some other must stand there, using that skill after 20 seconds and then on reload. Beating the script of the encounter this way is ridiculous. It is no epic “victory or death” battle against this terrible menace, it is a mechanic to make people press keys to the script of the encounter instead.

On the other hand, if in GW2 you call new dungeons with more than 5 people a raid, then it’s absolutely fine with me. I really would very much like to go into a dungeon with more than 5 people. It should scale to the number of team members, however. Would be ideal for evenings with the guild where more than 5 people want to do something together. Currently, 5 people go into a dungeon, and the rest scatters and sometimes logs off instead of playing.

I have definitely more lags and more disconnects in all areas of the game since about the September update.

All the 2 years before I had rock stable connections – about 1 disconnect in 2 months at most, or less, and no skill lag (ok, some in Claw of Jormag fights). Now I have about 1 disconnect per day and skill lags every now and then (on for every 30-60 minutes, I would say). Instances or open world PvE, all the same. I play from the EU.

It’s really annoying and reminds me of the BWE’s, where the connection was perhaps even better than now.

For me, the priest of Balthazar is bugged. After the September update, I unlocked 49 miniatures of set 1 on my account (every non-exotic mini), and the collection achievement shows 49/50. A few days later I got the mini risen priest of Balthazar and unlocked him as well on my account. The counter is still 49/50.

It seems to me that it’s either a bug or he doesn’t count for the Miniature Set 1 any more.

Your location: Germany
Time and date of incident: 2014-10-05 18:00-22:00 UTC (yesterday evening)
Game World: Kodash
Brief description: skill delay and getting disconnected. Additionally, a popup with “the login servers are currently not available” appeared simultanously for me and many guild members while doing the guild challenge in Southsun Cove with no appearent reason.

I got disconnected after a monster skill lag in Fractal of the Mists an hour later and was able to rejoin immediately.

I also did the jumping puzzle Morgan’s leap and fell down a few times. The damage and animation for the half-damage-on-falling-trait came about 1 second after I actually hit the ground.

Was in Teamspeak all the time and there was no disconnect/lag problems at all.

If your higher-leveled characters are able to unlock the Summon Mistfire Wolf elite (provided you have enough skill points), you have the digital deluxe version. If it is not available to any of your characters, you have the normal version.

I feel the Asura need more attention here.

If you add the command line parameter -autologin to the GW2 shortcut, GW2 autostarts as before the update.
How to add command line parameters: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

You only need -autologin, no other parameters as possibly suggested by the wiki article. If you checked the two boxes to save account name and password, the game finally starts automatically with this option.

At least this is how I got it working again.

The search function in the german forums doesn’t work either. It gives you results, sometimes, but the results are random and most of the time have nothing to do with what you searched.

For example, if you search for “und” (german word for “and”), which is contained in about every post, you only get a small selection of posts of a thread. Sometimes even one-liners without “und”, while other posts with “und” are missing.
It’s probably the same in every language subforum.

The berserk mechanics in the fractals is the same as in the open world: be as offensive as you can and kill the enemies before they kill you. Don’t endure damage, don’t try to outheal damage. Destroy the enemies instead.
When I raised through the fractal levels, I thought I need more defensive equipment in the higher levels, but that was not entirely true. Going too defensive means too much penalty in damage.

My armor and weapon is completely berserk, but I have 1 knight ring (Ettinband: toughness instead of ferocity) and the backpiece is soldier and the rest is berserk.
It seems to me that this, combined with the build, is my personal sweet spot between going down not too often and still dealing decent damage. I tried everything berserk and less water magic for more damage, but I went down significantly more often. Especially water X with its instant party-wide condition removal with no casting time (just attune to water) is a life saver in many situations.

About your questions, well, you have to experiment if you don’t yet know what works for you and what doesn’t work. I gave an example what works for me. Perhaps it works for you as well, I don’t know. With staff you cannot give as much party-wide might as with scepter+dagger, but you give combo fields of all kinds. The finishers could come from the party members. Instead boosting, staff deals good damage directly.

This reminds me of my MMO start, which was GW1. What I missed most were explanations of the core game mechanics (what is the purpose of all of the things in the game) and the meta mechanics (how to use these things to get a positive result).

Unfortunately, this problem still exists with GW2. Things are still not explained, but simply put in front of the player. The NPE stretched the timespan things are put in front of the player, but it is still not explained what the purpose of the thing is and how to use it for the best purpose. It doesn’t become clear what the reason is why this thing exists.

It should become clear that items can be bought and sold for money or used for crafting without help, but nobody explains what a character build is and why it is important. Nobody explains explains how to build a character that can fight. Nobody shows good examples and bad examples, where you see what works and what doesn’t work.

The problem is, that as a beginner, you are not able to see why you fail. Often, you don’t even see that you failed and could be better instead. You think: “I die so often. This game seems to be designed like this, but this is too frustrating for me. Bye bye.”

Initially, the fixed 5+heal+3 utility+elite skill scheme was to avoid totally broken skill bars, but with the addition of traits and additional attributes of armor and weapons, you can (and will) still have terrible and totally inadequate builds. It is not enough to give a template that cannot completely fail from the perspective of skills – it is necessary in my opinion that also the additional aspects of your build should be in some kind of guided tutorial. Simply giving the tools into the hands of a new player one by one is not enough. Tell him what to do with it more thoroughly.
The absolutely worst thing in this regard was the fixed trait setup until the first feature update. It even prevented experimentation. Thank god it’s the past.

So I would say the NPE is a step in the right direction for completely new players, but only a step. There could be more. It would not be wasted time to implement – the return of investment would probably be more players that otherwise leave after one week, because they were not able to learn the mechanics.

I’m going as staff ele with a 6/2/0/4/2 build (Fire=VI, VII, XII, Air=III, Water=VI, X, Arcane=V). The water part is a bit defensive, but equipment is full berserk. This works well up to 49.
As an example I made some videos on 49 with staff ele as recording player. Perhaps you might get an idea, although the commentary is in german (probably doesn’t matter if you mute an incomprehensible comment instead of the usual junk music other players put over their videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwqPMN2XAKVgOdDgB7rzM9dyGAJipgMq6

What makes these videos different, is that they are not nice, not fast, not clean and not optimized. They are just casual. Everyone can do that and get even through level 49.

I have a proposal for the placing of the guild halls.

• guild halls are located in the major cities in the open world (Lion’s Arch, Divinity Reach, etc.)
• they are in separate areas above, below and behind the publicly accessible areas, not to be entered by the public.
• every city map has a place for 2 large guild halls, 5 medium, 15 small (or more, I don’t know the best numbers)
• all halls of the same size have the same layout and look the same, so it doesn’t matter to which one a guild is actually sent.

• if someone wants to enter his guild hall, he is sent to a free guild hall of the correct hall size on the current map if he is the first one to enter. If there are already guild members in the hall, he is sent to the currently allocated hall in the correct map instance (travelling to the new map if necessary).
• if all guild halls of the current city map are full, existing instances are searched for a free one. If there are no free ones, a new city map instance is created.
• players are teleported to their halls. No portals or doors exist.

• the map chat is shared between all people present on the whole map
• the say chat is shared only in the guild hall

This way, players in guild halls are still on open world maps and participate in the open world map chat – they are not hidden from the public and out of reach. They are simply on the same maps as before, but only located differently. The number of city map instances probably doesn’t change at all.

Since this camera movement was brought back, Arenanet seems to find it important that the camera in fact spins around you if you are dead. Probably a design decision for aesthetic reasons.

I propose that if it is that important, the camera still starts to spin if the character is dead. But it should stop spinning and not restart spinning, once the player moves the camera himself and actively. This way both parties are satisfied: the aesthic aspect after you drop dead, and the player’s wish of a fixed camera to watch the rest of the fight without constantly readjusting the camera.
There is a timer that restarts spinning after a few seconds. Set this timer to 5 minutes, and all is fine.

I saw this error as well. I had one stack of material (250 items) in my invisible bag, and a second stack of material (60 items) in a normal bag. The invisible bag is on top of my bags, the normal bag below it.
The second stack appeared as available for selling in the TP (60 items). I sold the 60 items. To my surprise, I found the 60 items still there, so I sold it again. It was still there!

Then I detected that 60 items I sold were not pulled from the stack in my normal bag, but from the stack in the invisible bag instead. And I saw that I in fact sold 2×60 items, since I sold 2 times.

The issue is that if there are 2 items of the same kind in your inventory, one in a normal bag and one in an invisible bag, and the invisible bag is on top of the normal bag, on selling the item is pulled from the invisible bag and not from the normal bag.

Machine freezes, reboots and graphic driver resets are a symptom of hardware issues. Often, it is a heat problem. Sometimes compatibility issues between hardware components.
A properly built computer is able to endure hour-long prime95 sessions and furmark gpu test, even in parallel. Or GW2.

If it freezes/reboots after a few seconds or minutes, it’s often a heat issue. My machine is an example of this: when I built it 2 years ago, I ran prime95+furmark over night perfectly fine and the temperature rose high, but never over the documented cpu/gpu limit.

Just a few weeks ago, graphics driver resets started to happen when I was recording videos of my gaming sessions. I identified a heat problem indeed: I have a fan-throttling program running to keep the machine silent when there is no load, and I misconfigured it so the fan speed was too low on maximum load.
I fixed the configuration, so the fans ran at maximum speed when there was maximum temperature, and I cleaned out the dust in the machine.
After that, no graphics driver reset any more.

So if you detect a reboot due to heat problems, you cooling system is probably underperforming. There are big differences between cpu coolers. Often the stock coolers are the culprit: they are barely able to transport away the heat on maximum load, even if they are correctly mounted and not throttled. Most customers never run into this issue, because they never run CPU-intensive programs but only office applications. But people who do this, and GW2 is a CPU-intensive program, will definitely run into this. Here is a difference between a computer built for office use and a computer built for gaming use as well.

I was curious as as well, what the fastest way for a beginner starting with fractal level 1 is to get the 1850 fractal relics for the backpiece. I assume you want to buy the excotic Prototype Fractal Capacitor for 1350 relics and make it ascended in the mystic forge, which costs an additional 500 relics.

So the question is, starting with fractal level 1, how should one plan his fractal runs to get 1850 fractal relics?

Do I want the least number of days?
Do I want the least number of runs?
Do I want to achieve a high fractal level as well?

I made some calculations (the excel sheet is rather convoluted, so I don’t bore you with it but only present the results):

- on leveling, I assume I buy 2 infusions for 75 relics each at level 10 and 3 additional infusions at levels 20, 30 and 40
- the pristine fractal relic from the daily chest is always salvaged into 15 fractal relics

== 1 run every day ==

1. Make only 1 run every day, and always the next level.

Days required: 34
Runs required: 34
Highest level acquired: 34
Relics acquired: 1876

2. Make only 1 run every day, and level to 26. Do only run level 26 after reaching level 26. This requires 3 infusions less than plan 1.

Days required: 32
Runs required: 32
Highest level acquired: 26
Relics acquired: 1895

3. Make only 1 run every day, and level until 16. Do only level 16 after reaching level 16. This requires 6 infusions less than plan 1.

Days required: 31
Runs required: 31
Highest level acquired: 16
Relics acquired: 1912

== 2 runs every day ==

4. Make 2 runs every day, and always the next level.

Days required: 23
Runs required: 46
Highest level acquired: 46
Relics acquired: 1866

5. Make 2 runs every day, and level until 36. Do only run level 36 after reaching level 36. This requires 3 infusions less than plan 4.

Days required: 22
Runs required: 43
Highest level acquired: 36
Relics acquired: 1854

6. Make 2 runs every day, and the first daily run always the next level. Up and including level 11, do this with the second daily run as well. After level 11, run level 6 for the second run. After level 21, run level 16 for the second run.
This way, you get 2 daily chests after reaching level 11.

Days required: 19
Runs required: 37
Highest level acquired: 25
Relics acquired: 1887

7. Do the same as plan 6, but stop leveling at 16. Alternate between 16 and 6 after reaching level 16. You still get 2 daily chests after level 11, and you need 3 infusions less than plan 6.

Days required: 18
Runs required: 35
Highest level acquired: 16
Relics acquired: 1884

8. Do only 1 daily run until level 10. Starting with level 11, do 2 runs like in plan 6. Level only until level 16. This way, you avoid runs without a daily chest.

Days required: 21
Runs required: 33
Highest level acquired: 16
Relics acquired: 1883

9. Do the same as plan 6, but after you reached level 21, do 3 runs a day: one with 21, one with 16 and one with 6. This way, you get 3 daily chests after level 21.

Days required: 18
Runs required: 38
Highest level acquired: 21
Relics acquired: 1926

== 3 runs every day ==

10. The plan for dummies: do 3 runs a day on level 1.
Days required: 20 (but be careful: 3 runs a day for 20 days is hardcore grinding)
Runs required: 58
Highest level acquired: 2
Relics acquired: 1860

TL; DR:
If you ask me, I would either go for plan 3 (1 run for 31 days) or for plan 7 (2 runs for 18 days), if I am only be interested in the relics and not the higher fractal levels. Level 16 is still easy enough for most players.

If I am interested in the higher fractal levels as well, I would go fo plan 1. One fractal per day is the perfect pace with the higher levels – more is somewhat exhausting.

The whole fee thing is very simple.
- fees apply if you sell an item
- if you directly sell or offer an item, you pay 5% of the listing price upfront from your wallet. This 5% is destroyed and removed from the game.
- if someone buy the item, you get 90% of the listing price in your wallet. The remaining 10% is destroyed and removed from the game.

shorter:
- you list an item for a price
- you pay 5% of the price out of your wallet immediately
- after selling, 10% of the paid price is removed
- the remaining 90% of the paid price is put into your wallet

this means:
- you pay 5% + 10% of the price, total 15%
- afterwards, you have 85% of the price in your wallet (85=100-15)
or
real revenue = listed price * 0.85

If you have some item and want to get a certain revenue out of it, so you want to know at what price you have to sell it to get exactly this revenue, you have to divide it by 0.85:

listing price = wanted revenue / 0.85

If you list an item and withdraw the listing, you will only get your item but not the already paid 5% listing fee.

I’s as simple as that. This is the whole trading post math.

You don’t have to do any of the GW1 campaigns or achievements in order. Just play GW1 and don’t care too much about achievements. In the Hall of Monuments, you only register them. Just do them in any order. Then, after some time, unlock the tapestries and register your achievements in the HoM.

If you start out in GW1, I recommend you start a character in the Nightfall campaign. It’s the best balanced starting tutorial and the only campaign that provides you with the customizable heroes right from the start, which tremendously help if you play the GW1 campaigns alone.

Location: Germany (ISP: Unitymedia)
Time and date: 19:00-23:00 UTC, 2014-09-20
Game world: Kodash. Open world PvE and WvW (edge of the mists)
Description:
Several 2-5 second long lags (skills are spinning, other characters stop doing anything, are running into walls) that either ends with a fast forward of all actions that happened during the lag or with a disconnect.
I had 3 or 4 disconnects this evening. A fellow in Teamspeak mentioned 8 disconnects (she was only playing PvE, no WvW).

Location: Germany
Time and date: 2014-09-16 20:10 UTC
Game world: Kodash (lag/disconnect occurred in Fractals of the mist)
Description: 3 people out of 5 (all from germany w/ different internet providers – I checked!) got sporadic lags of 2-5 seconds while skills are spinning. At one time, the 3 were disconnected simultanously and were able to rejoin immediately.
On this run, I had no problem myself. But the other day same situation, different team members, and I was one of the 3 who had lags and were disconnected and were able to reconnect immediately.

I’d like to comment on the new TP as well after a few days of use. In short, the new interface is great in comparison to the old one. You have to change your clickflows, but after that you’re faster than before. Quick selling after your dungeon run as well as trading huge quantities of stuff.

PRO:
- the incremental search
- you use the mouse for everything, once you found your item. No constant change between input fields and mouse clicks.
- both listings (buy/sell) visible at the same time, giving you instant overview about price structure
- browseable categories with automatic filtering in addition to manual filtering. The whole browsing, filtering and sorting system is absolutely great. Sane categories. The one who designed and implemented this has really done a great job. Congratulations!
- much faster and smoother response. Almost no lags as with the old TP.
- to increase or decrease offers by 1 copper: just one click on the up/down control

NOT SO PRO:
- the 2 buy/sell listings are too small. Must always scroll.
- the whole TP window could be bigger. Should be resizeable. Usually, we play on a 1920×1080 monitor, don’t we? Why this tiny TP window?
- "OK and “Continue” buttons in the confirmation window redundant after selling, if you sold every item of a stack. “Continue” is only relevant if you didn’t sell all items if is a stackable item.
- filter and current item is gone after you close and reopen TP window. This is the same as with the old TP, but still annoying as hell. If you must always open the gem shop as TP starting window, ok, fine, but please keep filter and current item, so I can continue my shopping/selling from where I left off to attack this enemy that just attacked me.
- undesirable default on highest buyer or lowest seller. I wish this were user-configurable and saved between sessions
- default listing size too big (icons too big->too much scrolling) and “I am Evon Gnashblade” listing too small with smashed icons. I would like something in between.
- Evons listing mode is not saved between sessions as a default

In response to other criticism:
- I really got familiar with the number bar instead of typing the number of items to sell/buy in an input field. 1 item: click on left end of bar. maximum/250 items: click on right end of bar. A distinct number: drag the marker, then use the scroll wheel. For me, this is actually faster than typing a number, because I can keep my hand and my mind focused on the mouse and I am not forced to change to the keyboard, move the focus to the input field, replace the number in the field (this alone was horrible), then change back to the mouse.

There is no greater purpose. I hope you don’t keep the junk items. There is no other use than selling them at the merchant. Immediately. No need to keep them. There is absolutely no benefit in keeping them.

Even the game call them junk items. See the wiki for an explanation why they exist: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Junk_item#Trivia

With the feature pack you have a collection of junk to fill, giving you a junk title, but since this collection is filled automatically, you sell the items just the same.

Edit: but they seem important. Some of them even got updated icons with the feature pack!

Having read the entire thread, I still would like to respond to the OP:
I understand your point that you feel the game moved obtainable rewards from playing the game to the gem shop.
I don’t feel this way. There is plenty to obtain completely without the gem shop. In fact, I never bought any vanity item from the gem shop and don’t intend to, and don’t feel I am badly rewarded.

But, there is in fact a thing in the shop that really has contamined the game, and that is the convenience items. The everlasting harvesting tools, the copper-fed o-matic, the Captain’s airship pass. I feel that all the consumabe versions of the tools have been deliberately made with so few uses that you have to by them over and over again every day, so players would buy the permanent versions to circumvent these. Nobody would buy the permanent ones, if you could buy consumable tools with 500 or 1000 uses, especially salvaging kits. But 500 or 1000 would be completely sane use values, if you count the plethora of items to harvest or to salvage.

The same with the Airship pass and this new item for teleporting to your personal instance: instead of giving the players access to a NPC service hub with merchant, crafting etc. with the touch of a key like in GW1, where you could use the guild hall for this and even resume to your original place where you started, you sell this convenient access for money.
Everyone wants easy access to the services, but I feel that by forcing the players to travel away just for bank access or crafting, Areanet artificially created demand for the convenience items. If there were no gem shop, I bet access to these services would be as easy as in GW1.

In the end I see the total costs of GW2. For me, the convenience items are a must, since they repair was created broken. So they add to the total cost of GW2. Well, for a game that I play for 2 years not bad – 75 Euro for the whole game, and ~45 additional for the 5 convenience items, totalling 120 Euro. Although the value the 45 Euro items add to the game is not quite as much as the initial 75 Euro would add, since they were the complete game and 45 Euros spent only for the everlasting versions of some ingame item.

My only hope is that the value of these items is somewhat increased in the future, for example by the possibility to create duplicates of them for every twink on my account. Apart from that, I see them as subscription equivalent for my longer use of the game – they don’t really add value to the game, they only cost money and repair what was created broken.

Since about a month ago, there seems to be a dramatic change in the way you (Arenanet) communicates with the players. Although mostly seen only in the english forum, there are now many more developer posts that actually contain answers and directly adressing players’ concerns instead of giving universal answers.

In the past, there were waves of communication every few months, but in retrospect they were only waves of public relation broadcasts to calm down players in specific points. I never had the feeling that you were actually communicating with your players in both ways, I felt it was always some kind of broadcast directed to an audience. No feedback from your side.

This time, I hope it is not only a wave but a change that will last, since for the first time I see messages with more than “that’s great, continue discussing this”. It’s actually this time also feedback to the players with hints about what the studio thinks of the discussed topics. This is exactly what I expect if someone says ’I’m communicating".

I appreciate the posts that contain “about topic x, what do you thing about it? We’re interested, but don’t take it for granted that this will result in an actual game update”. You are interested in topic x – yes, this is great. Now I know what topic is worth discussing. In the past, the community was in the dark and wasn’t able to tell if it rode a dead horse or touched a hot topic. Now we know which horses are alive.

I hope this change will last and is really a change and not a temporary initiative.

This problem has been fixed in the newest update. Great! Many thanks.

@yontory: you may have missed a Windows feature with the sound system to get the game sound through your speakers and voip software through the headphones. In Windows, you can declare one sound output device as “standard device”, and one other as “standard communication device”.

Declare your speakers as standard device and your headpone as standard communication device. Voip software will automatically choose the standard communication device for output (if it is plugged in) and everything else will use the standard device.
It seems that in your case you set the headphone as standard device, so everything goes through it as long as it is plugged in.

Since the release of the feature pack, I am unable to select a custom sound device in the sound options of GW2.

The drop down list of the available sound devices now only contains one entry, the text “Standard device”. Before the feature pack, I was able to select from the many sound output devices on my system. The feature update reset my custom set device to the standard Windows device, and now I am unable to select any custom device again.

I use a custom device for video+audio recording to record only the game sound without any interference of other sound sources. The function was quite useful, and it does not seem right that it has no functionality any more.

The cannons don’t seem to be of any practical use. Whenever I try them, either the enemies were just vanquished by somebody else, or I don’t hit them. So I leave the cannons alone. I would not consider them bugged, I consider them badly/insufficiently designed. The problem with them is not the event participation algorithm, it’s just that you don’t hit anything with them.

I am using only the mortars as long as at least one is available. There are two more at the eastern side of the event area, just in case you didn’t notice. If there aren’t any available, I join the zerg. But the last times I met the Shatterer, I always found my place at a mortar.

I’d like to mention my 2 biggest issues with the camera:

- bouncing zoom in and out if the camera hits a wall or pipe above my head
- looking upwards

If you divide between “add feature” and “fix annoyance”, then the above is the annoyance part – if you add anything else to the camera, I would consider it a feature, which is not so important as fixing an annoyance.

The “Looking upwards” problem can be seen if you fight the Claw of Jormag in its second stage. Try to hit the paw in melee while you try to see upwards to the head of the Claw to see the damage numbers that appear there. It’s impossible – the camera moves to your feet on the ground and you are only seeing floating clipped character textures from all of the other characters.

In this case, I wish the camera would lift itself up from the ground to above my head, giving me the possibility to look over my body and the bodies of the other players that obstruct the view.

I understand that in competitive play, it is probably undesirable that you may see more than it is intended – you may look behind stuff above you from the ground, while in reality you aren’t able to look behind it. But as long as you are not able to attack it, like it is currently, it is perhaps acceptable.

Speaking about the bouncing zoom, I could only guess on what to do. As I learnt, there is a ray traced from the camera to the object and/or character, and if it hits something on its way, you get the hit position. I assume, the camera is then repositioned to the hit position to avoid that the camera moves behind and inside walls and objects.

This results in the bouncing effect, if the next moment the hit position has vanished and the camera can go back to its original distance. Perhaps it is possible for the ray to try a few more camera positions before a final hit is reported.
If you find a hit on the first ray, predict the way the camera and the character will move for the next few frames and ray-trace these situations. If the hit is gone with these, don’t move the camera (zoom in) at all but let it go through whatever small pipe hit the camera.

The camera smoothing at GW2 release was more than it is today. Together with a slightly bigger fov, it was reduced some months after release to help people with motion sickness (helped me tremendously), but I doubt that there will be additional changes.

You might want to look at your PC performance and your frame rate instead. If you play at a low frame rate, perhaps 20 fps and below, the game feels very sluggish because of the input latency that is increased with such low frame rates. You feel as if you were swaying like being drunk. It caused nausea for me.

But I got a better PC, and now GW2 runs with 40-60 fps. No issues with input latency any more. The camera acceleration seems fine now. In comparison with other games that have not acceleration at all, it feels more natural.

Spawning different bosses simultanously would not split the zergs, because there are always multiple map instances for each boss. You would only halve the numbers of instances, not the number of players in the zerg in each instance.

I mostly agree to your statements, Halvorn.

From me, some statements about why and how I fight some bosses and others not:

Claw of Jormag
Once or twice a week, because of the promise of loot. Very annoying boss. The greed is what drives me there.

Taidha Covington
Never. Either the event fails or I don’t find the path to the boss or I lay around dead and the boss is defeated before I find my way back to him.

Megadestroyer
Once or twice a week. Actually a good boss, and I don’t know why I don’t fight him more often.

The Shatterer
Three times a week. A good boss and fun to fight, especially if you made the “Asuralations” event right before and spread the pheromones within the zerg.

Modniir Ulgoth
Three to four times a week. Nice event with good pre-events.

Golem Mk II
Daily. Right up to the point, and you have a bunch of materials to harvest while you wait for his appearence.

Fire Elemental
Two times a week. The boring 6 minutes pre-wait-event is too long, and because of that I usually skip him.

Jungle Wurm
Daily. It’s a challenge to hit as much pre-events as possible as well as the nearby event where the nightmare cult overruns the outpost.

Shadow Behemoth
Almost daily. Easy to fight, yet entertaining mechanics. A chance to additionally fight the corrupted oakenheart champion if you get a few minutes early.

Svanir Shaman
Daily. Gives almost all of your daily events and happens right before my guild starts group actions.

Karka Queen
Daily. Easy, good material harvesting during wait, an additional champion, and good loot. Happens right away when I usually log on and before my guild starts doing group actions.

Tequatl the Sunless
Never. Did him about four times, but getting into a sufficiently organized instance is awful and time consuming. If you don’t, the possibility for failure is too high. It also spawns earlier than I usually log on into the game (too soon), or when I am already engaged in some guild activity (too late). I want to spend my time fighting the boss, not looking for an instance, so he is out of my rotation.

Evolved Jungle Wurm
Never. Never even tried it, since I heard the need for organization is even higher than Tequatl. It also spawns when I am usually not online.

Edit: Before the megaserver, I also did the temple events in Orr on a regular basis, because you had timers where you saw the events and were able to join, if you had nothing else to do. Now with the megaserver I almost never to these events any more. Only if I am in one of the Orr areas, which is 2-3 days per month, but usually I am not in Orr, so no temple events any more for me.

Regarding the mechanics in Dry Top: after visiting every location in Dry Top, which is exceptionally beautiful, I only want Geodes for the backpiece and the various recipes in the long term. Farming them with the events gets boring after 1-2 hours, because it’s always exactly the same choreography.

There is also a difference in loot in and out of the sand storm: if I want to farm Geodes, I show up xx:38 and do the events during the sandstorm, resulting in 8 or 10 Geodes per event. The other 37 minutes of the hour I do something else, elsewhere. The events out of the sandstorm only bring 2 Geodes – I don’t see a point in being present in Dry Top and doing them if I only want Geodes.

I don’t understand the motivation behind the increasing bounty level and the last 20 minutes where you harvest what others have sown. It’s not a nice mechanic, and it is a monotonous cycle. And I have seen people who sell a taxi to a level 5 Dry Top in the lfg tool for money.

How about a system similar to the “Favor of the gods” from Guild Wars 1 and count event successes instead of maxed titles? After x successful events, the sandstorm comes for 30 minutes and bounties are doubled and prices halved, if you absolutely must have this sandstorm mechanic. I would rather not have this but give all the vendors the same items and the same price.

Or count successful events individually for each player and give him alone some perk or cheaper prices for some time if he reaches the required number of events. Save the number between map changes, so he can go offline in between.

I have a new video. This time, in windowed mode. Absolutely short video, only the bug itself. I open the inventory, look at some items, move the window around, close it. On re-open 2 seconds later, the inventory window appears repositioned in the middle of the screen and resized.

Unfortunately still not really reproducible.

I assume a precondition to see what is in the video has to do with switching from fullscreen to windowed mode and back. I was able to sometimes shrink the width 10 to 9 by going fullscreen, position the inventory window like in the video, close the inventory, switch to windowed mode and then do what the video shows. Or the other way round (first windowed, then fullscreen).

And if it is of any relevance, it was the first logon of this character after a client update.

You’re right, my /age says 729 days, that is 365+364 days.
As far as I remember, the servers were opened for login at 06:00 AM CEST, which is 9:00 AM PST or 4:00 AM UTC.
I remember that I crawled out of bed an hour before and created my first 5 characters in pyjamas with my eyes half closed.

Sticky dev posts at the top of discussion threads with Arenanet’s stance on the thread topic would be great, but only be of some value, if you keep them reasonably current. If you create them not only for the next 2 weeks, but for the long term.

From the past communication initiatives, I learnt that the dev attention to such things is only a few weeks. This is too short.

So, please either be committed to create and keep those posts current for the long term, or not create them at all. But if you abandon it after a few weeks, it is like all those other failed communication initiatives from the past: pointless, a waste of your time and a waste of our trust and expectations.

About communication:

Why should I and anybody else participate in a future CDI? They aren’t going anywhere. They only summarize what has been said in the forums and in chat and in the game for ages, make nice short lists…. and then the tiniest topic is being addressed in a weird way and everything else is thrown away. Because of that I didn’t participate in any past CDI – it never has been any different.

CDI for communication – you will read what the community says, make a list, and then … silence will be. As there has been for the last year for everything the community was trying to say. The most toxic posts are suspended during it, that’s the benefit for you. You are reading the community, but you are not listening to what they say.

You are not communicating, you only make the community make lists of their concerns, and then you take this list somewhere. But not into the game, since I can find only the tiniest bits months later. Things that were first mentioned one year ago, some were around even since the BWEs.

As far as I know, Arenanet sill has 200+ employees. I assume they are doing something. But I cannot see stuff in the game worth of 200+ people’s work. Where is it? Are they developing GW3? Have they developed 3 extensions that were archived right before completion?

If you say: they are working on something great and we are excited about when we are allowed to talk about it: forget it. I don’t believe it.

There was always a great hype about new things in the past, but they turned out being somewhat average and long expected. For example, you made the upcoming commander flag colors an extra blog post announcement. Is this the work of 200+ people of the past months? You got thus far, making the ability to chose a tag color a great and exceptional feature. What a letdown. Where have your ambitions and abilities gone?

By chance, I have a video where the inventory resized itself. I even have the keyboard recorded, since I experimented with video recording.

What happens in the video:

- I have the inventory open and do maintenance while waiting for an event
- I move the inventory window around and close it
- I move my character around a few steps
- I open the inventory window again (pressing the i key) and I find it resized. (previously: 10 columns, now: 9 columns)

I cannot say much about it – it looks like voodoo. I close the inventory, and some seconds later I re-open it, finding it 1 column smaller.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to reproduce the resizing. But it really took place. The video is 1:42 minutes long and nothing was cut from the scene. I can also upload the raw footage with the previous hour, if necessary.

- Windows client
- 1920×1200
- real fullscreen (the keyboard is no overlay – it is overlaid in the video by OBS, the video recording software I used)

If “selling path x” entries in the lfg tool were now removed on a regular basis, I would not consider this a bug but welcome it instead. This lfg tool selling spam is really annoying and makes finding a real dungeon group difficult.

Happened to us as well. Exactly as described:

- someone is in combat, with the hammer, falls down the cliff. Hammer disappears.
- hammer nowhere to be found. We searched all levels.
- forced group wipe
- the hammer appears on the pedestrial for a split second, then disappears
- we searched for the hammer again on the whole map on each levels, no hammer.
- no change on more foced wipes
- unable to procceed.

Happened to us 2 times in a row on 49 today and some days ago on a lower level. Not funny.

If a video could help you in tracking this bug down: I recorded both sessions completely and can upload it somewhere, if you like.

I doubt the current dungeons will change. I don’t like them, because they have never the right difficulty:
- for a new player, they are ridiculously difficult
- for an experienced player, they are not challenging (I don’t want additional difficulty, an experienced player simply misses something interesting in the fights)

Most of them are too short. They seem long because of long static (and boring) boss fights, but the dungeon area is in fact very small. Not much to see. I remember 5 level deep dungeons in GW1 – that was fun! You killed huge quantities of trash mobs on your way instead of single legendary bosses that consumes half of your dungeon time. Take the boss away, and your dungeon time is only 5 minutes.

Isn’t this not occurring any more? This is from a lvl 49 run one or two days after the update that “fixed the scaling”. We did not run one single 49 after this any more, because of this. We gave up at that time after more than one hour of fruitless tries with our guild team.

(I apologize that the text is in german, but you can read the numbers, I hope).

Regarding gear check: The ability to do a gear check before starting a dungeon and kicking non-conforming players is certainly not desired.

But consider this: a new player, 100 account points, joins our guild. After some time, he tells: “I die so often and do no damage – what am I doing wrong?”

Currently, we ask: “how did you set your traits? How’s your gear looking?” And a long and tedious research follows, and we answer something like: “…and look for berserker equipment, this is equipment with that certain attribute distribution…”

With the template system, the question could be: “please ping your current build”, and we are able to comment on the build. And we can answer with a modified build or a pre-made build, so the new player has something he can start with.
This is some kind of gear check as well, but a productive and desired one – it helps veterans helping new players, and it helps new players to get better.

As a PvE player, I hope this will make it to the PvE world as well.

PvE templates should not leave out the equipment, because equipment is essential in a build. If a player does actually own a required armor, rune or weapon, the template should load this. If the player does not, the currently equipped thing should stay.

To ease the attribute and rune hell in PvE, consider unlocking attribute and rune combinations in armor and weapon instead of the requirement to have an extra armor for every attribute combination and rune. An unlock should be as expensive as buying a new amor/rune.

For example, let me unlock both berserker stats and valkyrie stats on my exotic or ascended armor and let me choose freely between them. Let me apply more than one rune in my armor. Don’t destroy the previous rune, unlock the runes on this armor piece I applied to this armor piece instead. Then, the template can load the corresponding attribute combination and rune into the PvE armor if it was unlocked on that armor previously.

I would use templates like this:

- to have a repository of builds I like and use and to be able to switch between them
- to be able to develop builds and keep the development stages, so I am able to get back to an earlier stage
- to have a repository of builds I got from somewhere and I want to try them out when I have the time for it
- to give builds to other players who are asking for one
- to have a suitable build ready for special situations, e.g. in dungeons

I want to post builds to the game chat and to forums, and I want to import builds from these sources into my repository or directly into my charakter.

I want the repository at home on my disk, because there I have full control over the organization of the builds. It would also enable tools to use this repository directly, for example player-made team builders that are not web-based (there were good ones for GW1).
This would also enable players to share not only single builds but also whole build catalogs. Just zip your repository and send it via email or forum attach.

I attach a screenshot of my GW1 repository to give an idea how I organized my builds.

I postulated that a transaction will change the size of the pools exactly by the amount of items bought/sold – a simple addition/substraction operation. And that the exchange rate is the ratio (quotient) of the 2 pool sizes. Of course, we cannot verify if this is the exact formala used in the game, so this keeps being a hyothesis.

But I think my formula and transaction rules are simple enough and describe the development of the gem exchange rates since the launch of the game with an error margin not too high. Unfortunately, it is not possible to do experiments to determine how much the price actually changes with large transactions – the gem exchange is too big to see valid numbers, and probably nobody would pay hundreths of dollars to verify a simple formula.

Regarding no-creation of gems in the exchange, John says this:

John Smith.4610:

Think of it this way. The government can print as much money as they want, that doesn’t mean your bank account has access to that money. The currency exchange does not have access to gem creation. It has a limited stock that players add and subtract from.

This confirms that no gems are created out of thin air within the gem store or destroyed.

John Smith.4610:

As a quick aside. Gems in the currency exchange are finite. You may buy gems with real money to your hearts content, but if you don’t put any of them gems into the currency exchange the currency exchange’s stock of gems never changes.

This one confirms that the amount of gems to buy from the gem exchange is finite. The pool can get empty, and players fill or empty the pool with their transactions. Gems are only created if someone buys them with real money.

About the initial prices at game launch and development of prices:

Assumption:
- the initial amount of gems i in the gem pool be 10000000 (10 Mio) ($80000)
- the inital amount of copper j in the gold pool be 250000000 (250 Mio (25000 Gold))
(I guessed these values. They must be so high that single transactions don’t change the gem price significantly, and must have a ratio of 25 – the initial gem price)

Then at game start:

b = g / p = 250000000 / 10000000 = 25

And about 25 copper was the initial price at game launch.

If you now buy 1000 gems for 25000 copper, the price adjusts:

(250000000 + 25000) / (10000000 – 1000) = 250025000 / 9999000 = 25.005

And we got the values for the next transaction:
g = 250025000
p = 9999000
b = 25.005

If we buy gems for gold, there is a fee involved: Only b*0.7225 is actually put into the gold pool of the gem exchange. The rest (0.225) is destroyed (removed from the game). The money is not destroyed within the gem exchange, it is destroyed before it enters the gem exchange. Within the gem exchange, nothing is created or destroyed.

This way, neither gold nor gems are created out of thin air. No transaction does this.
The generation of gold only happens in the PvE part of the game with loot drops and event bounties. Not within the gem exchange: here the gold is pulled from the money pool instead.
The generation of gems only happens in the gem store if someone buys gems with real money. Not with ingame money: if someone buys gems with ingame money, they are not created but pulled from the gem pool instead.

This is all. In my original post, I also gave a little Perl script to simulate the development of prices, but I think the above is enough for now.

There is some proof from John Smith to confirm the basics of this hypothesis. The intial pool values will always be a guess of course, but you see the general idea.

John Smith.4610:

There seems to be some confusion:
The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.
If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

He writes “The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold” and “The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply”.

The combination of “has a supply of Gems and Gold” and “each supply” means that there is some kind of pool (“supply”) for gems and gold, and that more than one pool exists (“each”, not “the”). We have 2 items to exchange (gold and gems), so we have exactly 2 pools. 1 for gems, 1 for gold. As far as I see it,, he describes exactly what I propose.

He writes: “The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply”, that means the exchange rate bases on something: the availability of something in the pools. Therefore, the exchange rate isn’t changed directly, but is determined by the amount of gold and gems in their pools.

He avoided to say directly that a transaction will change to amount of gem/gold in their pools (one gets bigger, the other one gets smaller). But he said in which direction the exchange rate goes if something is bought, which is indirectly determined by the amount of things in the pools. All this leads to the conclusion that a transaction changes the size of the pools and the new exhange rate is determined by the new pool sizes.

I thought about the this a while ago in our german Wartower forum
and I made some sort of hypothesis (or educated guess) about how the gem and gold prices are determined.

Here is a translation/summary of my posts: [I apologize for my not-so-financial-english, since this is not my primary language. I also apologize for the wall of text – feel free to skip…]

I thought a while about the pricing and the mechanics behind the gem exchange, and in my thoughts I assume it strongly follows mathematical rules and algorithms. I assume no human “adjustments” of prices. My conclusion comes down to:
“The price is the ratio between gold amount and gem amount in the gem exchange”.

Here is my hypothesis:
[I again apologize if this is already common knowledge and has already been documented. I only frequented german forums until now, so I don’t know how the international community sees this]

First some definitions:

- b is the buy price in copper per gem
- s is the sell price in copper per gem
- p is the current amount in the gem pool
- g is the current amount of copper coins in the gold pool (money pool)
- i is the initial amount of gems in the gem pool (at game launch)
- j is the initial amount of copper coins in the gold pool (at game launch)

Regarding “gold pool” and “gem pool”: I assume there are 2 pools in the gem exchange. One is filled with gems, and one is filled with gold. John Smith indirectly hinted about this in this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/705345
I get from this: whenever a player buys gems for gold, he gets gems from the gem pool and the money goes into the gold pool. And whenever a player buys gold for gems, he gets the money from the gold pool and the gems get into the gem pool.

Observations about b and s:

- there is a relation between b and s, which is:

s = t * b

and t = 0.7225 = 0.85 * 0.85

This means you buy gems always at a price with a factor of 0.7225 lower than you sell gems. It’s a constant between the two prices that never ever changed. Verifiable with the gem price statistics at www.gw2spidy.com.
So I always use b in the next calculations, since s = t * b.

More Observations:

- the more gems p in the gem pool, the lower the buy price b
- the more gold g in the gold pool, the higher the buy price b
- it was possible at game launch to immediately buy gems for gold
- it was possible at game launch to immediately buy gold for gems
- the buy or sell of 1000 gems adjusts the price by perhaps 1 copper, or less.

Assumptions/postulations:

- the amount of gold in the whole game must not change due to the gem exchange. It is not possible to generate gold out of thin air within the gem exchange.
- the amount of gems in the whole game must not change due to the gem exchange. It is not possible to generate gems out of thin air within the gem exhange.
- to be able to report the amout of gems that exists in the whole game, it must be known how many gems exist in the gem pool. This is called p.
- to be able to report the amount of gold that exists in the whole game, it must be known how much gold exists in the gold pool. This is called g.

Hypothesis about the inner working of the gem exchange:

- whenever a player buys gems for gold, p is lowered by the amount of gems the player gets, and g is raised by the amount of gold he pays.
- whenever a player buys gold for gems, p is raised by the amount of gems he pays and g is lowered by the amount of gold he gets.
- p and g was prefilled with some amount of gems and money to let players use the gem exchange from day 1 since launch in both directions

What should happen if a pool gets empty:

- if gems are constantly bought more than sold, p gets empty. The price must go so high that the last gem cannot be bought. If the gem pool really gets empty, you spend infinite amounts of gold, but get 0 gems in return.
- if gems are constantly sold more than bought, g gets empty. The price must go so low that in the end you could buy all of the gems in the gem pool with the last copper in the gold pool. You spend infinite amounts of gems but get 0 gold in return (since the gold pool g is empty)

This leads to the Hypothesis about the relationship of b, p and g:

“The price is the ratio between gold amount and gem amount in the gem exchange”

As formula:

b = g / p

The buy price b falls, if the gem pool p increases, and it raises, if the gold pool p raises.

After a transaction, new pool sizes are computed:

g_new = g + gt (gt = gold transferred during the transaction)
p_new = p + pt (pt = gems transferred during the transaction)

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

No.

2. Did you buy them in the past?

No.

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

I would if the price is right.

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

Yes.

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

Yes.

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

No.