Guild Wars 2

TheDaiBish.9735:

wouw.5837:

well just a mail it to them? it’s not rly hard

The problem with mailing is that if you want to trade two items of equal rarity (like the Pre-cursors) the trade would be based on trust.

Face to face item trading (no gold) would be good for this reason since while items might be of equal rarity, they might not be of equal value on the TP.

If the items have different values on the trading post, then a 1:1 swap means that somebody is being ripped off. Sure, they have equal rarity, and thus supply. That just means that one of the items is wanted more than the other.

Do you have any reasons why you think these changes are a good idea beyond a general whine that the TP fees are too high ?

Point by point response:
1 – CoD mail would have the same effects as introducing a trade window. Effects that ANET doesn’t want, which is why they didn’t include them. To get ANET to change their mind, you’ll need to respond to their reasons. To know those reasons, you’ll need to search the forums to find ANET’s posts.

2 – Personal stores are the worst trading system I’ve seen. Lots of time going store to store looking for what you’re after, because store names rarely say anything useful. For most players, the most accurate name is “my bits and pieces” because of how varied their items will be.
Add a search system to deal with that and people will use that every time. Suddenly the distinction between one store and another becomes meaningless as everyone just uses search. So you’re left with the overheads of running the personal stores plus the search interface which makes it look like a sensible system.

Adding a secondary trade system reduces the volume traded in the trading post, making it more vulnerable to market manipulation.

3 – ANET picked the 15% total based on how they think it will affect the GW2 economy as a whole. The gold sink part is very important. Reducing the tax rate is reducing the gold sink, meaning prices will only go higher. So, even if ANET does decide to add in a different system, it will have the same fees. Any difference in fees and players will just use whichever has the lowest.

4 – See my response to 3

This idea is intended to encourage people to complete unpopular events by increasing the reward for them. Specifically:
– When a DE begins a timer starts running to track how long it takes.
– If the event is failed, then the timer pauses until the event is restarted. No bonus is awarded.
– If the event succeeds, bonus xp, coin and karma is awarded based on the timer. The longer the event has been running without success, the greater the reward. Then the timer is halted and reset to 0 until the event starts again.

With this, events that don’t get completed because they are inefficient to farm or too hard to complete will produce greater rewards, making them more attractive to attempt. This should encourage people to spread out into less populated areas, or to keep trying at hard events because the reward will be greater.

WhoaItsJoe.1352:

I’m afraid I disagree. How would an expiration date help with the problem you’ve described? Wouldn’t the crafted items go from sitting in the TP to sitting in the pickup/inventory/bank of the poster?

When an item gets returned to the person who listed it, they then have two choices:
– Relist it.
– Do something that destroys the item. Be it vendoring, salvaging, mystic forge, or something else.

If they chose to relist, chances are the price has gone down. So they’ll pick a lower price. Everyone has a price that it too low to be worth relisting. Very few people will relist it when an order of the lowest possible price has expired.

On the issue of trade spam, that can be mitigated with a long enough duration. 90 days seems long enough.

Don’t forget the Asuran variant, where they use giant golems to punt whoever they feel like.

They should do what GW1 did and let people keep running the old build for hours.

Keep forcing a restart upon changing zones though.

Getting a group in the game is super easy. All you need is to be in the area that has said dungeon and either Map chat or stand in front of it with your lfg symbol up

Maybe that works for explorable mode dungeons. It doesn’t for Story mode. Saying “LFG Story” or similar messages in chat still gets people who think you’re doing explorable mode.

There is that closed Ploymock portal in Rata Sum

If you have been paying attention, you have seen the rage caused by ANET announcing that the opening of Halloween act 3 would only happen once. Mainly because ANET was telling people that they would miss out.

ANET’s mistake there was not their choice of when they opening would happen, as there is no time that can satisfy everyone. ANET’s mistake was deciding to make the event one time only.

Next time, find a way to make it repeatable. For example, the act 3 opening was just a cutscene, so having it play to everyone the first time they entered LA after it had started would have worked. And it wouldn’t have show the crowed of players weakening immersion by standing around in a clump waiting for the surprise.

If someone at ANET does come up with an idea for something that can’t be tweaked into something that happens for everyone*, then that idea should be rejected as a bad idea because it can’t be made to cater to the GW2 community.

*Well, everyone who logs in within a 1-2 day period around the holiday.

How the event is made available to everyone doesn’t matter. Only that it is made available to everyone.

It doesn’t even need to mark all zones. All you really need is a line of text under the Been There, Done That title progression that names one of the zones you don’t have complete. When you complete that zone, it changes to show the name of another incomplete zone. Repeat until you have 100%

ANET intentionally chose to not include a trade window. If you want them to change their mind, first you will need to dig through the forums to find out why. Make sure you read what ANET staff have actually said (the posts exist), not the reasons that people claim ANET are using.

Then, once you know why ANET has not included secure P2P trading, you need to convince them that adding it in will be a net advantage.

Saying that it would be nice to have it isn’t enough.

Not only did you not miss much, I’ve heard people saying that it keeps repeating on them.

Though with what the event is, ANET could have done much better by just throwing you into an instance where it plays the first time you enter LA after it has started. Or copy WoW’s phasing. Hopefully they do something better next time.

BowmasterSol.3457:

I have no clue how many Anet staff are needed to pull off events like this. Since Anet is majorly working out of Seattle, they want to have manageable work hours for their staff as they appeal to their highest peak time of player concurrency. Hopefully when Anet starts growing and establishing more offices throughout the world, they will have additional groups of teams able to coordinate these events for multiple time zones.

Same way they handle every other dynamic event: By programing the servers to handle everything without the need for human input.

If the event needed human input from ANET, they would have to stagger it just to handle all the existing worlds. Then there are overflows.

Get a laptop?

Yes, lets just try to take part in the event while driving to work.

Call in sick?

Or lie to our boss and use up a sick day.

I think most people are over reacting in that it’s probably going to be some 5-10min thing that has no rewards or special anythings other then being there to witness it.

ANET is saying things like this:

DO NOT MISS Act 3 of Shadow of the Mad King

Where do you get the idea that it’s going to be as minor as you’re saying ?

Shelledfade.6435:

Kalmatos.7842:

So, I’m in Singapore and when I saw the time that they picked for the Special Event, I guess that Anet hates Asian.

GMT 19 00

For us it would be 3am in the morning. On a Monday. sigh

EDIT: And yes, if the event is repeatable means I will be spoiled. I’d much rather be SPOILED rather than not being able to even ATTEND the event. Hope you guys see this Anet.

heres a thought… go to sleep early? Wake up at 3am? Enjoy event before you go do whatever you do in your miserable life?

What about those of us in New Zealand ?

8am means you’re talking about when people are leaving for work if you have a 9-5 job.

They’ve already got it set up in lore (and in the scavenger hunt) that he hasn’t been seen in 250 years. That ship has sailed.

What, specifically, would be the excuse?

Have only generic NPCs in town when he shows up. Kill them all off during the event, then have replacements show up.

Have all the NPCs mind controlled. Thus they can’t say it’s the first time he returned.

“Run, it’s the Mad King” not “Run, the Mad King has returned”.

Though it’s probably too late for those options. ANET’s only option left is to forget about having it make sense and repeat it anyway.

Most of the stuff makes plenty of sense for it to repeat. How would you set it up so that it makes sense for the first time Mad King Thorn has been seen in 250 years to happen multiple times?

By making no mention of this being his first time back, or giving NPCs an excuse to not know he had come back before.

Rainshine.5493:

…This isn’t the finale. You realize that, right? It seems VERY obvious that this is when the Mad King first appears. It wouldn’t make much sense for everyone to be surprised to see him like it was the first time when it’s actually the 10th, or for the fountain (everything points to him coming out of it) to break, unbreak, rebreak etc.

Then they had four choices, all of which would be better than the one time only event:
– Write an event that can be repeated while making sense.
– Repeat it anyway.
– Don’t have any special event.
– Copy WoW’s phasing tech so that each person only sees it once.

Instead, they decided to go with an event so important that they had to advertise it everywhere by saying you won’t want to miss it.

Doggie.3184:

They said you could watch the event on youtube. .-.

That’s never the same as actually being there. Especially when there are interactive parts, like the Mad King had in GW1.
GW2 is a video game. That means interactivity.

Rainshine.5493:

They said they picked the time because it’s when they have the highest concurrent users. They aimed to make the most people happy that they could. Being in the minority sucks, but really, it’s not about you.

Repeating the event every three hours, like they did in GW1, would satisfy everyone. One time only is always going to anger people. Thus one time only is the worst of those options.

Then there is the insult:

It also means that it’s the same calendar date whether you’re American or European.

It’s like the Oceanic players don’t even exist in their minds. If that sentence wasn’t there, I’d be a lot less angry over this.

Nappychappy.7046:

I wonder why its a 1 time event… Even more so why is it a secret? Should I make plans to make sure I show up, or is it some crap I don’t care about?

Don’t worry, ANET thinks you are too stupid to avoid spoilers:

For those of you wondering, having the event at separate times for separate zones is actually one of the worst options. Whatever happens is going to be on livestreams instantly and then on YouTube about five minutes later. At least this way, everyone has a chance to experience it in the game, without having it spoiled by the rapid availability of video on the Internet.

So, by that logic, you will find out about the event even if you aren’t trying.

I say ANET should find the highest up people who approved the one time event. Then fire them, because a one time event is a very stupid idea when you’re talking about an international community.

I don’t care how good the writers think their writing is for this event. They decided to write an event which could not be repeated, when the audience is international. That means they are ignoring the limitations of the medium they are writing for. I don’t see how you could consider such writers as anything but bad writers.

Telis.4189:

Found it amusing the NA servers are accommodating to the EU player base that has their own servers, while screwing Oceanic’s who were sold NA editions of the game.

With a little bit of thought they could have picked a time that was at least feasible for every timezone to attend instead of falling on a weekday.

No they couldn’t. No matter when they scheduled their one time only event, someone would miss out. Picking the time when they have the most people online makes sense.

The problem is not when they scheduled it. The problem is that ANET decided to run a one time only event.

ostracize.8316:

As someone who played games from Oceanic for years I quickly learned that companies are going to base events around USA or EU timing, and it’s going to require a pretty big sacrifice to make it.

The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can enjoy everything else about the the halloween content.

Guild Wars 1 did things correctly: The event was repeated every 3 hours.
Why should we accept this kind of treatment from a company who has got it right in the past ?

Sajuuk.5706:

You know how this reads to me? I reads: “I think you’re too dumb to avoid spoilers on your own and don’t understand that this means some people won’t experience it at all, risk of spoilers or not.”

Agreed. But what could we expect from a message which assumes that people are too stupid to know that timezone differences can lead to the event happening on different calendar dates ?

Sir Litlejoh.8365:

FIRST…

Bank pins for banks. a 4-6 digit numerical pin that users can enter to show that they are the TRUE owner of the account. The user can set one if he chooses to for his own protection. Check out the game Runescape to see what I am refering to if you do not know.

It wouldn’t help. A username/password combination is one factor of authentication: Something you know.
Adding a pin wouldn’t add any extra security, phishers would just steal it and keyloggers would just wait for it before they hit the account. A pin is only something you know.

For better security, you need a second factor. Typically something you possess, like the authenticator WoW has and (last I heard) ANET is working on.

SECONDLY…

If you can buy gems for cash….

Why not allow users to buy Gold Coins for cash….
This is similiar to the Farmcash and COINS in farmville. Where farmcash is the gems in GW2 and COINS are the silver/gold/ bronze in GW2.

Give ME FEED BACK PLEASE! I was able to get us Game cards!

You can buy gold for cash right now. You buy the gems, then sell them for coin.

Now that I’ve actually played a bit with this, I just have to say that while I was expecting it to make GW2 look better, I was not expecting it to be this much better..

LostMK.4089:

vertical fov… for a "wide"screen

thanks anet >_>

Locking the vFoV and letting the hFoV adjust to the screen width is a good way to do it. Only problem is that it still assumes that the best FoV is the same for everyone. Which it isn’t. Imagine a triangle with one corner between your eyes, the other two at the top and bottom of the screen. The angle at the nose corner is approximately the best vFoV for you. For hFoV, use the sides of the screen.
It should be trivial to see that changing the size of the screen, or distance you sit from it, will significantly change that angle.

Still, this is a beta test. Once they know they can adjust the angle, adding a menu option to change it is trivial.

I’m in New Zealand, making it 8am for me. Right when everyone is getting read for work.

Deciding to run a one time only event is always a stupid idea when you have an international playerbase. If your writing means that repeating the event doesn’t make sense (despite all the other repeating events), then the writing is bad.

But, once that stupidity is locked in, it makes sense to pick whenever you have the most players.

Now for the really insulting line:

It also means that it’s the same calendar date whether you’re American or European.

Are they saying they expect some players to be surprised by timezone differences meaning different calendar dates ?

Then there is the insult to anyone in a country at GMT +5 or more. We have it on monday. That is a different calendar date. So why aren’t we mentioned at all ?

ANET should do something to apologize for this insult.

By now you have all seen this post regarding the special halloween event. My thoughts on that can be summed up by: Making an event that can only occur once for a global MMO was a bad idea. But once that was locked in, scheduling the event for peak population makes sense.

Then I saw this line:

It also means that it’s the same calendar date whether you’re American or European.

Which is a big insult to Oceanic players. Not only does the event occur early on monday morning, but ANET justifies it with an explanation that specifically excludes us. It tells me that if you live in a country that’s at GMT+5 or higher, ANET doesn’t care about you.

ANET, you need to do something to apologize for this insult.

In other words they must go find a bot to make it look like they aren’t AFK, breaking the rules a second time, just so they can resume playing ?

Why do you expect ANET to waste server resources on people who broke the rules ?
Not to mention privacy issues. The same issues that mean ANET never responds to tell you if someone you reported was banned.

That looks right.

One thing CCP does to buyers in Eve Online is to remove the bought currency. When the currency has been used to purchase something, this leaves the buyer with a negative wallet balance. Since they can’t afford the listing fee, they are locked out of the market (the same thing would happen in GW2).
So they come whining to the forum about a “mysterious” negative wallet balance. Which means that they just outed themselves as a gold buyer and letting everyone know how CCP punishes them. All without CCP having to violate their privacy policies.

So I propose that ANET copies this method for first offenses. Remove entire value of bought coin. Remove the items that were bought with this coin.
If that doesn’t work, keep repeating it with an increasing ban length. Say 1 week for the second offense, double that for each subsequent offense. The reason I’m suggesting temp bans is so the buyers remain in-game to warn other players of what will happen. Thus deterring them.
The increasing ban length is for those that don’t get the message.

Falunel.7645:

A bit late, but here’s a listing of all the armors you asked for:
-Asura Necromancer: Light Inquest armor, received by trading tokens from the Crucible of Eternity dungeon. Can be worn by all races.
-Charr Guardian: Heavy Tier 3 Charr cultural armor.
-Norn Ranger: Medium Tier 2 Norn cultural armor.
-Human Engineer: Medium divinity/exotic armor. There are several types with different stats, but the same appearance. Any race can wear them.
-Sylvari Mesmer: Looks like the light armor from Twilight Arbor, though I think they used different shoulder pieces. Can be worn by all races.

I don’t remember the gear like bits on the Asura necro glove. Though I don’t have a spare character slot, so I can’t easily check what it looks like.

Garbadmur.6041:

Plus in the current free server transfer set up, people could just hop around servers seeking the inevitable arbitrage

And when free transfers end, guesting will begin. With the same effect.

VendettaDFA.9368:

There should be servers with a glut of a specific item and a lack of another. It helps make each server more unique and I also believe this separation of Trading Post will actually benefit the players.

Translation:
– In some servers, certain items will be very hard to buy because nobody is farming them.
– In others, they will be very hard to sell because they are overfarmed.
How does that benefit the players ?

Oh, and “make each server more unique” translates to: Make some servers better places to be than other servers. So that the better servers get more players, making them even better and the bad servers worse.

Why should my decisions on what to farm,craft,buy or sell be impacted by players who will never contribute directly to the overall health of the server I play on?

Why should my decisions on what to farm,craft,buy or sell be impacted by players who will never contribute directly to the area of the map I play on?

With the exception of Orr, people on a different map to you don’t contribute to what you’re doing. So if you and another player never meet on the same map (say, you both farm different dungeons), the only interaction between you and that player is via the economy.

So how is a player on a different server worse than a player who sticks to an area of GW2 that you don’t like ?

I suggest changing to server specific Trading Posts, or at the very least a clustered approach. Tie only 3 or 4 servers together on a TP if individual TP’s don’t fit ANETs business model.

ANET’s business model is to make the game more friendly to casuals. Which means they want to make it hard for power traders to screw over causal players. More volume in the economy means it’s harder for power traders. A global trading post gives more volume than separate ones.
A global trading post also means they can’t rely on easy money. Whenever such a scheme goes public, they face lots of competition from all server, which ruins the profit. Under separate economies, a scheme getting out is only a problem if there are a lot of power traders on your server.

ANET’s business model also involves tweaking the economy to keep it running as intended (eg lowering drop rates if an item becomes too common). Which means two things:
– They need to track the state of the economy. A global one is much easier to track than multiple separate economies.
– When there is a problem, they need to fix it. With a global economy, they apply the same fix to everyone. With local economies, some will be having different problems to others. Which means they each need a different fix. So that means ANET needs to keep track of lots of different fixes. When players identify server differences, they will switch servers to take advantage of them, which means both the source and destination server economies need tweaking in response to player shifts.

What happens when a new server starts up and other servers, in an attempt to keep that server down, decide to buy up every single ecto that gets listed in the new servers TP ?

I see no advantage, and lots of disadvantages, of separate economies. Well, unless you’re a power trader.

Zenyatoo.4059:

1. Make loot from the end event chests actually good. Blues are unacceptable. Im talking at least a rare garunteed. This gives an incentive for players to finish these events if they’re in it for the loot

That won’t work. If an area is regularly farmed, all it’s loot will fall into three categories:
– Vendor trash. It’s only value is selling it to the vendor for a fixed price. Giving the players the gold directly has the same effect.
– Items, or ingredients of items, to sell to other players. Which will have its price decline due to it being oversupplied by farmers until it becomes vendor trash.
– Bind on pickup items. Useless unless you want those items for yourself.

So by guaranteeing a rare drop, you’ll just crash the price on rares. Then someone will come along saying they should guarantee exotics, using the exact same reasoning you used to say guarantee rares.

I’ve seen mobs coming towards me in a straight line underwater, while I’m backpedling away from them, go invulnerable. Then return to their start spot. Then stay invulnerable for a variable duration (sometimes long enough to regenerate to full health, sometimes not) while I’m still hitting them*. Then I can start hurting them again.

*When an enemy goes invulnerable, you need to be prepared for it to decide to come back and attack you. So if you can keep hitting it, do so.

I see that ANET has some options here, all of which are a smarter idea than this invulnerability:
– Do nothing. Let us kill melee enemies while we are safe on a cliff. Outsmarting them should be allowed.
– Give them the ability to jump so they can follow us up.
– Let them cheat and just jump at us. Especially if they can fly.
– Give them a ranged attack. Now this narrow ledge we are on become a liability as it’s not large enough for us to dodge.
– Have the enemy run away in an attempt to get out of our range. Just like a player would if faced with an enemy they can’t kill.
Invulnerability is the stupidest response to this problem I can think of. Even if it worked properly.

poe lyfe.5879:

its a good idea and a reasonable one as well. but how many of you would buy copper harvesting equipment if it were implemented? i sure wouldnt if the other ones were better and less inventory space. so no i wouldnt want it.

I’d still by them on low level characters. But buying the copper tools isn’t important. What is important is how much players spend on buying harvesting tools. If ANET gets the numbers right on this, the amount spent by players who carry every single tool will not change.

You could also check out http://www.gw2armor.com

When I look through there, I don’t see the class selection screen armors for Asura.

I’m looking for it for all my characters:
– Asura necromancer
– Charr guardian
– Norn ranger
– Human engineer
– Sylvari mesmer

Could I at least get the names of them so I can check the wiki ?

I don’t want to spend ages checking all the heart vendors, only to find that the one I’m after is a cultural set and thus not available for character because I’m the wrong race.

It’s a good idea. The only downside I see is that, like GW1’s Star of Transference, there will be some people who see that it spits out, at most*, the same amount of karma and thus call it stupid because they don’t get that its purpose is to transfer karma around. Which isn’t really a disadvantage, unless you really hate topics that keep showing up on the forums.

*It would not surprise me for ANET to make the creation of the jug consume materials that can not be recovered.

mercury ranique.2170:

I think in this case your better off, asking support to help you. I would ignore Sleepwalkers advise. Although it is not on purpose, your gw1 character name is part of your security queston and there for it is unwise to post it on a public place. Beside that I don’t know what it would learn us if we know whats in it. You have visited the HoM in GW1 (or atleast logged in, so that would mean the first three rewards are ready) so the problem is that the accounts are obviously not properly linked (bugged?!). So off to support with you https://en.support.guildwars2.com/

There are two ways to avoid security issues:
1 – Create a temp character and give us that name. Delete it once we have looked
2 – Enter your character name, then give us the URL. That way we don’t see the name at all. For example, here is mine. Tell me the name of one of my characters.

Not that giving us the character name will help us get into your account. As long as you keep your password secret you’ll be safe, while anyone phishing for your account details will get your character name off you.

BTW, is this your HoM ?
If it is, then I’ve just proven how easily I can get your character name.

Digital Dragon.2697:

Maybe that’s the thing, I don’t remember if I’ve visited the HoM in GW1 (or even how to get there anyway). I’m just looking to get the rare pets for my Ranger, guess overall it’s confusing.

Most the characters have 3/50 which I realize is probably no rewards really, but how do I get them, to get the pets?

3/50 is what you get for linking accounts. To get more points, you need status in your HoM.

Here is a list of how many points you need for each thing, along with how many points each statue earns.

What you mean by “most the characters” ?
The points value is account based. So all your characters should have the same, unless you have multiple accounts.

If you want to be a minion necromancer, why aren’t you using the minion elite ?

Go here and enter your GW1 character name. Tell us what it shows you (or just give us the name of one of your GW1 characters so we can look for ourselves).

Game companies usually don’t respond to suggestions, since that just leads to more drama when they give a bad response (just look at the reaction to their FOV response) or if they have to cancel something they have said they are doing.

While this suggestion is easy to describe, it might not be easy to implement. It all depends on how the back end database is organized.

Why not just remove the 250 limit for order quantity ?
That way, you can easily buy 503 pieces of ore in one order, while your suggestion would still require two orders. One for 2*250, the other for 3.

Instead of clicking on the link with the left mouse button, use the middle one. That way the new page opens in another tab and your original page is untouched, so you can return to it at any time.

More importantly, you can open lots of pages in tabs at the same time. My typical way of reading a forum is:
– Open all interesting subforums in tabs. Then close the main forum tab.
– Open all intersting threads from a subforum in new tabs. Then close that subforums tab. Repeat until all subforum tabs are closed.
– Read each thread.

It’s much more convenient than using the back button to read a forum. Even on forums that work.

When you pick your characters class, each class is shown in a different set of armor. Is that armor obtainable at all ?

If so, how ?

Instead, I proposed that some of the “missing” Assassin concepts be added to the Thief arsenal – Lead+Offhand+Dual Strike combos, etc.

I think ANET has already implemented those combos in the form of chain skills

My thoughts on the next expansion mainly focus on the question “Which dragon should we fight next ?”

We have 4 choices:
Bubbles, the deep sea dragon. We don’t know much about this one. I’d guess it’s the one we will go to Cantha to fight and there will be a lot of underwater combat.

Jormag. It’s minions don’t look that interesting and I don’t really care for the look of corrupted ice. But it’s probably going to involve a lot of EOTN places, so could have a lot of nostalgic locations.

Kralkatorrik. I really like the look of the dragonbrand and branded creatures, so things should look nice. However it it probably going to be in Elona. I’ve already got my fill of undead from Zhaitan’s minions, so I’d like ANET to hold of on Joko’s forces for a bit. Also, I find that desert sections are generally my least liked areas of games featuring desert and non-desert areas. Not because I dislike deserts, but because they often come with other parts that I dislike., making it an unusual coincidence.

Primordus. The underground dragon of destroyers. I really hope ANET does something with the terrain around his forces other than rock and lava.

I have never been killed by an invulnerable enemy. But I have been killed by an enemy that went invulnerable, walked away, let my conditions on it end, regenerated its health, then came back while I was at low health from other enemies.

I say get rid of the invulnerability. If an enemy is easy to defeat because it doesn’t know how to jump, then ANET has four better choices:
– Teach the enemies to jump up to places players go.
– Reshape the terrain to not mess with the AI.
– Move the enemies out of that part of the map.
– Give the enemy a ranged attack that gets used in that situation.

Giving enemies invulnerability just because they got outsmarted is a horrible idea. Especially when it triggers on terrain that has no visible obstructions, meaning players can’t predict it.