Guild Wars 2

Hesacon.8735:

Mordremoth slays Lazarus and frees the sylvari. Mordremoth rules Tyria for a thousand generations and everyone lives happily ever after. Except the humans, charr, norn, and asura, since they’re all dead.

There will still be quaggan.

Well, at least there will still be quaggan until bubbles, the underwater starfish dragon is destroyed, which we can really, really hope takes them with it.

They are, after all, the water equivalent of the sylvari, but without players of the race, we might get to purge them entirely as they so richly deserve…

Amaimon.7823:

That’s exactly the problem, you go from Killing zhaitan straight to investigating Scarlet’s hut in the Dry Top with people you’ve never ever seen before

You go from Zhaitan to a recap of season one and in-game explanation of why it has gone away, and then on to Dry Top. It’s not … well, definitely not gonna say great, but at least it is more than zero explanation between the two.

I know you are not entirely being serious, but: at least one developer at ANet does like challenges that are extremely difficult, and very few people can complete. This is, in fact, entirely legitimate if stored in the “few AP only” bucket where it makes no significant difference that people can’t get that achievement done.

They are all fine. The difference in damage from balance-related class differences are much smaller than the difference in player skill and specific details of the current situation for most players.

You should focus on playing what you like – especially because balance changes happen regularly to keep that first statement true, which means that whatever is in the middle today will be somewhere else tomorrow.

Rauderi.8706:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

PPS: I don’t know why people fetishize the FGS map rewards so much. It’s above the other maps in reward, except week 5 Fireheart Rise, but not by so much as to make or break the world, I’d think. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Map_bonus_reward/profit

Q, meet A:

A: Champ farm. :P

Basically, there’s a circle of bosses that the zerg will go murder, which means getting quick map rewards. When highly valued things show up there, the champ train zips around for quick event credit with relatively swift recharges. So when Giant Eyes end up on FGS… You get the picture.

…and, presumably, the Orr and Kitten <see what i did there> maps don’t have such a convenient rotation. That makes sense. I don’t see that much advantage to the boss zerg vs just doing events, which is why I didn’t manage to see that. ’preciate the explaining.

Tongku.5326:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

tra la la la, you would see a much higher return on investment if ANet were to focus on improving their ability to use multiple CPU cores than DX11 or DX12. Only 12 really brings a new model to how the software interacts, and even then, only for games that have good support for multiple concurrent cores working on scenes.

Just because DX11 or DX12 have a higher number doesn’t magically make them faster, better, stronger, or bring anything new to the table. Sorry.

^^ This, on the client side.

On the overall game side I would like to see better server hardware and networking so we stop getting skill lag during mass events and WVW battles. Its so bad now it renders much of that unplayable to the point where entire guilds end up leaving maps because of it. That needs to be fixed at least somewhat.

Though I don’t know if going up to DX 11 / 12 and its equivalent network related components wouldn’t help address any of that to at least some degree. I’m not a network or IT guy.

DX 11 and 12 bring some new capabilities and a new programming model, but they are mostly (eg: all the performance improving ones) tied to heavily multi-threaded games being able to efficiently use more cores concurrently without DX being the sticking point.

Since GW2 is pretty single-threaded, and it’s extremely costly in both time and bug count to improve that, adding newer DX support would bring approximately nothing of significant value to the table.

In general, much of the lag you experience in WvW is also down to those client limitations, rather than server-side limitations, but it’s impossible to say with certainty as there are so many variables involved.

Fig Nastie.1302:

Greener, i took your advice and updated the Wiki. Now that I have updated the potted blue orchid, I will likely start doing that with other items I have made to assist other people with approximate scale and functions/movements associated with scribed items.

Thank you very much for doing that. It won’t solve your problem, but it will save the next poor sap growing in a pot from the same pain.

Barak.2385:

Pretty sad. Pathetic actually. Over 2 months now and not even a ‘whatever’ from anet.

Developers and CS people often read, but rarely reply, in the forums. This is “industry standard”, and mostly stems from the degree of abuse that some folks give them if they are more involved visibly.

I’d suggest the best choice being to move the content to the GW2 wiki, and then link to that from the forum post. Possibly with an excerpt or summary here, but ultimately, that’s a better place to maintain a document anyway…

Silverstone.4539:

they need to fix this! I think I’ll just give up on the game if upgrading my PC dose nothing. Overwatch at Max setting and I can hit over 200FPS constantly. GW2 max settings and its 30-59FPS. the bottleneck is in the GW2 code! needs fixing!

If that graphical performance is a problem for you then, yes, you absolutely should walk away now. It is extremely unlikely that there will be a client update that significantly changes this.

FWIW, I don’t care as long as my FPS stay in the 20+ mark, because that’s entirely playable, without visual stuttering. So, for me, it’s fine, but I am definitely conscious that other games will look better and play smoother. The content is what keeps me here.

Supercluster.7159:

onevstheworld.2419:

I’ve played GW2 on both my 15" MacBook Pro (2011) and i5 Surface Pro 3.

GW2 will play on lower settings, but the cooling solutions aren’t really made to cope with CPU and GPU intensive games, so they heat up and throttle like crazy. I’m guessing the current gen MBP’s will behave similarly.

I use this https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/tgpro/ for fan control. It works great when things get hot.

Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea to fiddle with fan control on your macOS machine, assuming it runs on genuine Apple hardware. The system is carefully built to manage cooling as well as it can, and because the hardware and software are designed and built by the same company, it does a much better job than Windows hardware can. (Exception: Microsoft made surface devices, in theory.)

If your MBP or whatever gets hot enough to be a problem it will shut down automatically; remember, though, that it’s gonna get hot enough to be uncomfortable on your bare skin first, because it is designed to use that huge aluminium body to … radiate heat, when it works hard enough.

You probably want to consider having the MBP on a desk, and possibly lifting it a little so there is airflow beneath it, to help out. Having the lid fully open or fully closed is good, having it open just a crack is not.

…and that will do what you need. Also, given the software architecture, GW2 on macOS is not going to push your system to the limits of power use or energy consumption. It can’t run more than one core particularly hard, and it is relatively frugal in GPU use too.

Useful facts:

If you submit a support ticket through the web, you get an automated reply to confirm it was received by their system. If you don’t see that within 15 minutes, check your “junk mail” or “spam” filters, and if still nothing, it wasn’t seen by their end.

Once you have confirmation it is in the system you can expect a response. If you don’t get one there is a thread in the forums where you can post the ticket ID as a fallback, but that is “after three days”, and pretty much never required.

(Why is it never required, you ask? Because that automated email confirmation is from their ticket system, which keeps track of tickets that have not been worked on yet, and presents those to the GMs who deal with them. Which means that losing track of one is hard – not impossible, but pretty darn hard.)

note: GW2 mostly depends on single core CPU performance, so adding more cores may result in lower overall performance.

cranos.5913:

Vinceman.4572:

cranos.5913:

DPS meter would help loads in identifying the problems you can’t see.

Which unseen problems? If people are taught to make 0 mistakes they’ll have no problems in succeeding.

Quite often ppl don’t even realise when their dps is low. Actually showing this, even if it’s just personal and not group-wide would make the average player a lot more skillful.

Nah, it’d just end up being another kitten for people to boast about or castigate others about.

WoW has plenty of DPS meters, both personal and group, and guess what it also has: your exact complaint there. “People don’t realise their DPS is low. They need a meter to improve. I’ll link one.”

Turns out that here, just like there, the real problems come down to mechanics of the fights, and to stop chasing the “flavor of the month” class so that they can actually know whatever they play well enough to, y’know, actually pay attention to the mechanics.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Compared to Raiding in WoW before I left after Cata, Gw2 has more forgiving raids in the sense of no real Enrage mechanics that one shot you unlike most WoW raid bosses, the mechanics for the most part allow for less stagnant fights, and put more emphasis on Raid awareness and Mechanical skill over DPSMoAR. Which is a relief, they could tweak some bosses to make them more challenging (maybe more challenge notes)but right now they are in a good spot if left as they are.

FWIW, WoW raids post-cata have moved in a similar direction to what GW2 have implemented. It’s more or less “the” model for MMO these days. (Wildstar brought out ultra-hardcore-only raids because people said they would pay for them, fell in a pile of fail because nobody really did want that sort of thing, and then moved to the same model.)

So, more awareness and mechanics, less DPS uber alles, everywhere. Which is a good thing.

Auburn.2456:

So did Anet guild member have to lvl up their guild? I really don’t think they did. So yes they are given an unfair advanage.

You “really don’t think they did”, huh? Well, MYTH CONFIRMED! I mean, there is no possible way you might be, y’know, wrong about that.

PS: over here in the fact-based community, you can find various discussions from various folks who work on MMOs that will tell you that (a) internal testing environments are not much different to the PTR, and are where they do things like “insta-max-level guilds”, and (b) they play the public stuff regularly, without cheating, because that is how you understand the game better.

hayabusafmw.9370:

Totally agree with the OP. People tend to feed me bs like GW2 is a very very healthy game. It’s not even close to be.

I strongly suggest you leave now, before you go from “dislike” to “hate” for the game. Keep your memories, and play something you think is good, healthy, and fun instead. You will be much happier, I promise, after that initial brief pain of separation.

BRB, xfer to SBI.

hackks.3687:

That’s why we need a voting system. Majority vote to kick player from team results in Dishonor for player and 4v5 scenario ensues.

This is a thing over in WoW PvP and does not fix the problem you express here.

John.8507:

Only getting 24 – 26 points for a win. Its going to take ages to get out of Bronze.

That much change says the game is still uncertain about your “correct” ranking, but it’s getting a handle on it. At this point it could still be MMR error, but it’s getting more likely that what needs to change to get you out of bronze is skill improvements. Sorry.

By the time it’s down to plus or minus ten points you are in the world where you are close to your real MMR.

Balian.5314:

Oh it’s ‘Poe-all classes are OP except ele-lala’! Rofl!

Nope. Ele OP~ Needs nerf~

It’s one of those irregular sort of words:

I’m playing well and deserve my rank.

You are passable, but your build helps carry you.

They are an OP class abusing bad design.

Zak.9106:

Yup exactly. As it stands im writing down everything on meta and its way too much for a noob like me

I’d honestly just read over the page once or twice a day, if I wasn’t trying to answer a very specific question … and play unranked.

Ultimately it’s playing, not study, that’s going to improve your skill the most.

This is not the right way to bring the issue to the attention of ANet support. See https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reporting

If you can’t use the in-game reporting options, you could consider the email reporting option to request they look into this. In-game reporting is the best way though.

Saiyan.1704:

If this were placement matches…

…I would have logged out, gone out side, and punched a baby.

I increasingly wish they had gone with “start at MMR 350” rather than placement matches. Not because it would make a single kittening difference, but because it would shut up the people whining because they think that placement matches are even vaguely relevant.

MissCee.1295:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

It’s worth remembering that ANet often read, but rarely respond, on the forums.

In my experience, the only time they respond is to tell you you’ve been “naughty” on the forums.

In mine you sometimes, but rarely, get responses from developers in public. They extremely rarely contact me to tell me I’ve been naughty.

Perhaps you should reexamine the possible causes of your receiving only infractions as a result of your communications, hrm?

Pakkazull.6894:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

…not even: it would only take ten to twenty games to put them roughly back at the same MMR they have now, because (shocking news!) the gliko algorithm converges fairly quickly on the target MMR.

I could see that being the case if a high MMR player was artificially lowered to bronze and inserted into an active system, but if everyone was reduced to bronze level MMR? I dunno, you might be right, I’m not pretending to be an expert.

I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, but I have worked with these matchmaking algorithms, and have some background to understand them when I have not.

Anyway, a common gliko implementation is to forgo “placement” matches or whatever, and insert new players with a rating of 350, high volatility. They then rapidly converge on real rating as they play.

So, yeah, it’d quickly sort people out into the “right” range as you played. The only people who wouldn’t get pushed to the right place are the non-players, which doesn’t matter in the slightest unless you also tie some sort of leaderboard to it.

(Which is why the default low MMR is good, because it means that you won’t have a top N where someone randomly fit in, after the first few matches.)

They can’t send the gold – free accounts have that locked down. Gotta buy HoT before you can send gold to your main account.

TBH, I’m pretty sure it’s just real people really playing their accounts for their personal benefit. Good chance it’s because “AFK for ascended gear in ranked” has become a meme.

kdaddy.5431:

LOL wait are you saying you are ok with potential Gold 3 players in multiple bronze matches?

Nah, they sayin’ that this change is what they happened to think of which would, magically, solve perfectly all the matchmaking problems that thousands of the best and brightest can’t resolve across hundreds of games and decades of experience.

Like most “this one AMAZING change will solve PvP problems” posts it is more or less “I don’t know anything about cars, but I’m pretty sure it’s the spark plugs”.

Phoebe Poison.4875:

I actually agree.
Sure, there are situations where it doesn’t make as much of a difference, but the higher the division, the less players of similar rating queuing, the further away from primetime, etc, it produces the same issues as the old mixed qs did. Obviously less extreme, but they’re still there.

We’re in a better place than we were, the season is really pretty good overall, but I think it’d be better if we just removed the duoq, went back to soloq only, in addition to whatever is being prepared for 5man (I surely hope something is, right?)

Yeah, that’s pretty much unavoidable. There is always a tradeoff between “perfect” matchmaking, and time in the queue. The PvP team have to balance how much each one sucks.

I don’t envy them that part of the job!

mysterion.1276:

While were on it we should make legendarys, blacklion skins and all limited pve skins more obtainable for PvP players.

Earning gold, and items you can sell on the TP to turn into gold, then buying them … not sufficient?

Spartacus.3192:

Nice! In over 2 years of playing ive NEVER EVER not even once received a reply from support after putting in a ticket via in game support.

Something is very, very wrong there. Do you get the automated responses? Because, every time I have asked about some problem I got a response. Maybe not a “we fixed it”, but still, a response from a person.

Arden.7480:

And you are right, that Rytlock won’t come back to us so fast. We cannot say to charrs: ‘Release him!’, because this is the matter of charrs.

Oh, we can. Most easily if we tie it to solving a ghost related problem, but also by attaching it to a dragon related problem. All we really need to do is provide proof to the Charr leadership that they benefit more from a gladium Rytlock in our care than they do a Rytlock in theirs.

I’m not sure that is what will happen, though. Feels more like removing the last vestiges of the old guard from the story to me, so that they remain alive but not an active part of “our” guild.

Well, the sad truth is that because the model in GW2 story is, like most MMOs, that you are THE big kitten hero, they have to write a generic story, and your actions are always going to mismatch your self-image at some point.

TSW did better, because if I’m just a foot soldier – a hugely important pact member, but not THE leader – then it’s much more reasonable that I’m not able to change the direction of things the way I think I should.

Absolutely. It’s routinely in LFG during the start of the meta, even when it isn’t the daily event zone, during US east and west coast evenings.

Zaxares.5419:

ANet’s basic stance on AFK farming is this: To be eligible for in-game rewards, they expect you to be present at the computer actively playing the game. If what you are doing is still giving you rewards, even though you are providing no input whatsoever, then it is not permitted and you can face punishment for it.

My main beef with afk farmers is that they tend to scale up the events, making it harder for genuine players trying to complete the event while getting little to no help from the afk players.

You can always lead the mobs over them, then switch through the character select screen to drop aggro. Their pets should have triggered aggression. Repeat until they die, and gain nothing from their time…

Fun fact: someone tried to game the market, by purchasing all the sell offers until coins were available at the 5g-per mark.

The market recovered and the price has returned to 1g buy, 1g30s sell, and looks to be recovering further.

Which is to say: the 1g-pre price is pretty much what the market is interested in, and people are absolutely willing to sell enough coins at that price to keep the market operating comfortably.

Come back when there are less than 100 coins on the market, or the price persists much higher than “two coins a day from the daily completion gold reward” and you might find more traction for complaints about them.

Djinn.9245:

If raids are so easy and people are completing with 4 people, why are some raid leaders charging 100g for a boss so people can open this Mastery? If its so easy why not let anyone in your raid?

It’s a free market, and they will charge what the market will pay. Are they filling these raids? Also, are they expecting the people who pay to contribute absolutely nothing, or are they expecting them to participate, understand mechanics, etc?

I suspect you will find that this is paying to be carried through a boss kill as dead weight, no expectations at all on you, for the mastery.

If you want to not pay gold for it, try instead finding a training raid, or a guild that raids, and working with them instead.

It’s also been established that, as with many companies, ANet have a separate team working on gemstore content and “non-gemstore” content. Since the former funds the later, to a great degree, this is a good thing for y’all.

tra la la la, you would see a much higher return on investment if ANet were to focus on improving their ability to use multiple CPU cores than DX11 or DX12. Only 12 really brings a new model to how the software interacts, and even then, only for games that have good support for multiple concurrent cores working on scenes.

Just because DX11 or DX12 have a higher number doesn’t magically make them faster, better, stronger, or bring anything new to the table. Sorry.

You can send me some. I have this pile of ascended rings and trinkets accumulating until I do enough fractals to get reasonable priced ascedend salvaging stuff available…

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Did the diessa event daily last night. Took like five minutes without any issues. Plenty of events available.

Five minutes for four events? I detect hyperbole.

I also suspect it was around Meatoberfest, which is a fairly active event area. Or maybe the little bandit quarter down near the JP.

Overall, Diessa isn’t terrible for events. But that’s Diessa. Try saying that about a zone without a decent event hub or quest chain to follow.

Actually, in zones where the rift stabilizer works, it’s definitely possible to get it done that fast, because each rift triggers a new unstable rift in the vicinity and it’s super-fast to finish them. (tip: find the leftmost purple slot. click one slot to the right of it. repeat until done, typically 2 or 3 clicks, sometimes 4, total time ~ 30 seconds.)

That said … the only zone I ever, ever have trouble with is Frostgorge Sound, and only during the week when it has the highest value map rewards. Otherwise I just follow the event pointer, and do the events, and it’s done in short order. Not five minutes, but less than twenty, sure. Even the HoT meta ones.

I wonder … try this: go to your settings, find the “content guide” dropdown under the general options. Set it to “Disable Personal Story”, which should give you an event indicator pointing to the closest dynamic event in the current map.

See if that helps you find events that are going on, and do them. Also, if you do have lots of competition, remember that you can scroll the minimap and port, or just ask in map chat.

Personally, I find it much more effective to simply start calling out events when I get to them, which usually encourages others to do the same, but you can ask people to do that politely and get great responses. (hint: “events” as a single word is not a polite way to ask. try “if you don’t mind, please call out event locations as they start, for the daily” instead.)

Ultimately, though, if it’s that bad … PvP, WvW, and the other three PvE dailies that are not event completion are available to you. Just skip out on that one if you need to, and do something else.

PPS: I don’t know why people fetishize the FGS map rewards so much. It’s above the other maps in reward, except week 5 Fireheart Rise, but not by so much as to make or break the world, I’d think. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Map_bonus_reward/profit

Try contacting support, explaining the situation, and asking for help. They often send the item required, since it’s not possible for you to progress without it.

Common advice is to contact support, explain the situation, and ask them if they can help. It’s reasonably frequent that they will simply send the required item.

(and yes, I agree it would be nice if the event wasn’t broken. when will MMO devs learn that all events should have a reset timer that just hard-resets them after three or four hours? I dream of the day.

Ashantara.8731:

Uhm, how do I do that? I’ve always used the support website, didn’t even know and in-game feature existed.

It’s in the support section off the menu, but TBH, it’s probably good enough. Don’t stress too much about it this time.

(I think my tone came across wrong in what I wrote before. Sorry.)

Single core CPU performance is a big limiting factor in GW2 performance. Upgrading your GPU will certainly move around the bottleneck, but … only if it was where the bottleneck was before.

@Loli, when you say you “know” it isn’t using all the performance, do you mean that it’s not using all the single core performance, or that it’s not using more than one core? Which it wouldn’t be – client is mostly single threaded.

Larsa.5231:

The same thing happens to me, I can not believe that arnet people have no idea how to solve this problem.

Fun fact: if this was happening for everyone, ANet might be able to solve it. Sadly, it’s not, it’s happening for a tiny handful of people. That’s terrible, but also points to something between your computer and the ANet servers, and not the ANet stuff itself, being the issue.

Contact your ISP and ask their advice on diagnosing the problem, or try running https://www.pingplotter.com/ and posting the output so we can try and help you provide better info to the ISP or whatever.

BeLZedaR.4790:

Poelala.2830:

Lightning Orb’s radius is now 450

Uhh you realize that a radius of 450 would make it the size of a capture point pretty much? O_O

Hey, if traps can be the size of a capture point, so can basic attacks!

Pakkazull.6894:

Well, that’s the silliest suggestion I’ve seen in this thread so far. You’d basically condemn everyone to two months of awful matches out of spite, because you feel you’ve been wronged by “the system”.

…not even: it would only take ten to twenty games to put them roughly back at the same MMR they have now, because (shocking news!) the gliko algorithm converges fairly quickly on the target MMR.

The biggest thing that distinguishes it from ELO or other algorithms, in fact, is the volatility estimate, which roughly speaking translates to “how much does a surprise win or loss move your MMR estimate”, and reduces as you stabilize.

sorudo.9054:

i don’t like to play boring and stupid things, i do like to play to explore and don’t care about rewards.
i think you’re taking to the wrong guy with your rant, you would not watch a horrible movie ether.

I feel like you are maybe playing the wrong game here? Like, if the game is boring and stupid, play something else, maybe?

(Also, wouldn’t Bitterfrost provide, like, twenty minutes of entertainment max, since it’s a pretty small map, so would be explored super-fast?)

Ayrilana.1396:

Well if people really felt that mystic coins were an issue, they’d do the event. Just because people choose not to do it, doesn’t dismiss it as a source for coins.

Sadly, we are in a conversation in which that will be dismissed, as will any other suggestion that the price is not “too high”, that the market is healthy, or anything else that disagrees with the axiom that the prices are (a) too high, and (b) this is the fault of the inability to farm them.

Thankfully ANet show no inclination to give in to this irrational complaining, and to continue to sensibly manage the economy, so that’s all fine…