Guild Wars 2

One of the cool things about RPGs is building a character that has a different skill-set than another character of the same class. It serves to differentiate your character from another. I would like to see more of that.

What I want to suggest here are Order Skills. Somewhat along the lines of Racial Skills, which you are given based on your choice of Race at character creation, the Order you choose to support in the Story grants access to six skills that are unavailable in sPvP. Again, like Racials, the Order skills are divided between the tiers with three Utilities and three Elites.

The Skills would, of course, be flavoured based on the Order. The Order of Whispers Skills, for example, would include a trap, a poison and an Elite stealth, while Vigil Skills would include something that gives Might, an AoE attack and a 30-point Elite Skill that summons some Vigil troops (along the lines of Hounds of Balthazar).

I have only just thought if this and haven’t given much thought into what these Skills might be, so any suggestions would be great… just remember that they should be the equivalent of Racials that are useful for every class but not necessarily so over-powering that any given class is best to choose a particular Order over another.

If your server is going to win or lose because of night-capping, it makes little difference when the match ends. At least with a weekend ending your server has a chance at making a comeback.

Vexacion.3971:

The key point in WvW matchups is the first couple days. It’s makes more sense to have the first few days on the weekend with the closing day on a friday.

This is circular reasoning.

The first few days are when a match is decided because the match starts on a Friday night. Regardless of which timezone you are in, there are always more people online on the weekend because everyone that works is able to play and/or play for longer.

If the start/end of the match were to be switched to a Sunday night we would see the end of the match being the deciding period.

If the start/end of the match were to be changed to a Wednesday we would see the middle of the match being the deciding period.

Changing to a Sunday night start/end makes abundant sense because a match should be decided at the end and not the beginning.

Those of you being harsh on Kaineng clearly didn’t notice who posted the OP. Kaineng isn’t the only server to say “he doesn’t speak for us”.

Radeon HD5830 1Gb DX11. I haven’t got max settings on everything because I hate going from great fps to a crawl so I have a constant 60-ish fps even in huge WvW zergs. At the same time, I haven’t really given higher settings a chance so I don’t know exactly what the performance decrease will be.

Oh, 64-bit Win7.

Honestly, I do think that there is some over-hype about the numbers of console gamers marginalising PC gamers. It seems that when a game isn’t released cross-platform, and ends up with console grade graphics rather than PC graphics (like Skyrim), the dev’s appear to think that people aren’t upgrading their PCs anymore because they have a console, so there’s no need to push graphics to their full potential. I fully expect, however, that when the next generation of consoles are released we will start seeing more and more PC titles that make full use of DX11.

While I agree that some respawn rates are far too fast, think of the alternative. Would you rather fight the same mob three times, or walk across a zone with zero mobs anywhere because someone came through ahead of you? Some specific spawns need to be adjusted, yes, but not all.

While it may not be used in every game every published, the use of the asterisk to convey action is a commonly accepted standard on forums and in games. On this forum, the use of enclosed asterisks results in bolded text.

It’s all well and good to use new forum software with new commands, but this is very confusing and is akin to re-mapping keybindings without highlighting conflicts.

pandemos.3497:

You should definitely do the EB jumping puzzle… or the LA one. I enjoyed both quite a bit.

I’ve done both, without turning up the gamma. What you enjoyed I found incredibly frustrating and annoying, but I still did them the way they were intended.

This has nothing to do with me wanting to solve a particular puzzle, that puzzle was just the latest thing to highlight the lack of written content available for this game.

Consoles… Casuals… Corporate control… We’ve heard it all before.

This is not that thread.

I’ve played a lot of games over the years, certainly not as many as some people because I tend to stick with one game and play the kitten out of it, but I probably do fall into the category of gamer that non-gamers think of when they hear the words “hardcore gamer”. I’ve pulled more than one 48hr non-stop session (though I think my longest GW2 session was around 22 hours). In other words, I enjoy playing the games I like and I have at least a fair idea of whether or not I will like a game before I get it.

I also know what I don’t like about games. I hate good labyrinths, for example. I can appreciate them, but I don’t enjoy doing them. I’m also not a fan of some kinds of puzzles. One thing I really hate is dark places, not because I am afraid of the dark or anything but because if I wanted to look at a black screen I’d turn my monitor off (and to deal with the hatred of this sort of thing, I often end up just turning the gamma up which completely defeats the purpose). The worst time I ever had in a game was in a NWN2 server which involved a blackout labyrith, a series of “pick a door” puzzles, that sent you back to the beginning when you got them wrong, and having to deal with overpowered spawns the entire time.

Thankfully, someone came up to the solution to this problem a couple of decades ago. Call them what you like, game guides, walkthroughs or strategy guides, they have been an invaluable resource for gamers for years. There are extensive websites dedicated to walkthoughs of every kind of game you can think of, most of which go into exhaustive detail about every little thing the dev’s have spent the time and effort to put into their games.

But not Guild Wars 2.

I have never, ever, come across a game with so few pages dedicated to it. That’s not to say that information isn’t out there because it is – on YouTube. And I’m not just talking about walkthroughs either. A couple of weeks ago I thought I’d look up some armour skins and found a bunch of videos but only two pages, neither of which had any kind of comparison. Tonight I ran into a puzzle while playing my Necro which I wasn’t able to solve on my Ranger. Since the puzzle is apparently unavailable once you complete the associated Heart, I wanted to get it right and see what the end result was, so I turned to Google… and found nothing. The only reference to anything related to this puzzle is a nearby NPC, that suggests seeing if you can get the nearby Asuran Console working, and that was an orphan link on the official wiki.

GW2 isn’t the first game where I have noticed players using YouTube for a lot of things. Anyone that played Diablo 3 could probably tell you about the dozens of one-post wonders hawking their YouTube channels on forums for the stupidest of things. But what’s going on with GW2 goes a step further. For every page where someone has gone to the effort of actually typing something, there are at least a dozen for D3. I doubt anyone could say, with a straight face, that D3 has more content than GW2.

I know you can get money from YouTube for views, but I think this goes beyond that. I’ve seen the term “dumbed down”, usually coupled with one or more of the above-mentioned “C” words, a lot in gaming over the last few years. But my experience so far in GW2 forces me to turn that phrase around and say that it’s the players that are being dumbed down. I think that the same thing that drives people to write TL;DR and complain, or apologise, about “wall of text” for anything longer than one paragraph (I saw a sentence statement that included a TL;DR quite recently, possibly on this forum) is the same thing that’s pushing people towards using YouTube instead of actually typing something out. Is it the rise of texting that is somehow preventing people from being able to read or write more than a couple of hundred characters at a time? Is it Honey Boo Boo, the Kardashians and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Is it any wonder that game developers are, supposedly, dumbing down their games when the players can’t be bothered to, or simply aren’t capable of, reading or writing more than a couple of sentences at a time?

I want to encourage people, who actually bother to read this, to contribute to the community by improving wiki’s and writing guides for websites. I also want to remind you that you are doing your fellow players a dis-service by posting “YouTube Guides” – they go to look at your video for 90 second video, then quickly find themselves looking at videos of kittens, puppies and ferrets, rapidly followed by THAT part of YouTube and end up not playing the game because they have been looking at transsexual aliens being chased by kittens while singing Gangnam Style.

As I’ve said, that lead shouldn’t exist period. The reason that lead exist is because points are rewarded evenly. When you are outmanned and own structures you should be award more points. When you outman and own structures you should get less points. So when a server is able to take over a whole map unhindered they shouldn’t get nearly the numbers advantage that they do get. If its set up in the proper way a server that has no competition when it plays while the others do should hardly get any points. A smaller lead directly counters the morale issue.

I kind of agree with the general sentiment here and, a couple of weeks ago, suggested a system where all servers start on an equal footing and get bonuses, to players and NPCs, based on their holdings. A server which controls the majority of locations gets less of a bonus, and has weaker NPCs, than the servers that control less locations. This makes it harder to hold locations and capture new ones for the winning server and easier for the losers to cap’ and hold… until they start winning.

What you are continually ignoring, however, is that this thread is about a very simple solution to many of the problems facing WvW. Change the clock. That’s it. Will it fix everything? No, it won’t. But it will fix most of the major problems by reducing their impact. What you are talking about is far more complex than simply resetting the clock and will take much longer to implement and test. ANet could change the match timers TODAY. There is no testing of any kind required. It is as simple as changing your clock for daylight savings. Actually, that’s not entirely true since Dragonbrand was stuck with the exact same match-up for over a week when it was supposed to change every 24 hours, but presumably that issue has been fixed now. Changing how Orbs and the Outmanned buff work and changing how points are accrued is something that involves far more work and testing.

In fact, for changes to Orbs, etc., to be properly implemented we will need shorter matches anyway. To use my example from earlier, ten matches at 60 hours each works out at around three weeks, but ten matches at a week each works out at almost three months. Isn’t it preferable to have a change that can happen NOW rather than to endure another two, three, or ten weeks of how WvW is at the moment while we wait for them to implement a change? And then they finally implement changes to the Orbs, Outmanned buff and points. What would you rather? Three weeks of dealing with a mechanical change that will almost inevitably be buggy and/or overpowered, or three months of it? That timeframe could amount to six months before WvW is “fixed”.

Again, changing the length of matches is a very simple and elegant solution to many of the problems we are currently facing. Every single solution offered to every problem with WvW is more complicated than simply changing the timer.

Part of the connotation of “zerg” is also the hive mind which is barely kept in check by commanders… which is also referred to as a mob mentality. Zerg is more appropriate than mob, however, because the term mob refers to any group (it’s also the collective noun for kangaroos) while the term zerg refers to a tactic of throwing large numbers of cannon fodder at a target.

The quote button is missing again…

I didn’t say 2 weeks was perfect, just that 3 days was too short

The only reason I disagree with 3 day matches and prefer 60 hours is because 3-day matches will always end at the same time of day and favour the server that can muster the forces to be there for the last few hours.

Population unbalance leads to one server able to build orbs and thus get even more powerful

Population unbalance has nothing to do with being able to capture Orbs. While I agree that the Orbs need to be changed, they are irrelevant to this discussion.

Server population/time zone distribution isn’t fixed by a 3 day match. This is what causes servers competing in higher or lower tiers than they should

Time zone distribution and server population are two different things. 60 hour matches solves the time zone issue because no time zone is favoured by the match starting or ending at the same time each week. I’ll get to population below.

3 day matches doesn’t fix the bandwagon issue

The primary cause of the “bandwagon” is people having nothing to do for three or four days every week. Instead of being too bored or frustrated to go out to WvW what is being suggested here gives people a reason to stay on their server.

Perma out manned isn’t solved by a 3 day match length, if how well the first day goes largely determines the out come of a match. And like I said, if your server quits due to losing after a day or two it deserves to lose.

If a server legitimately out-numbers your own then the match is going to be over in a couple of days and you’ll be matched up with another server. Morale is different. What you describe as “perma outmanned” is a result of nobody bothering to go out there because fighting is pointless when the winner was decided days ago (also, it’s worth mentioning bot’s may well be playing a part here, whether filling up player slots so that you don’t have enough actual people to make progress or by being the cause of the outmanned buff in the first place… for all you know there might be 10 players and 40 bots on the other side.) Shorter matches will lead directly to better morale and more players wanting to be out in the borderlands more often. “We’ll win next round” is a lot more attractive when the next round is tomorrow instead of next weekend.

Points being awarded the same throughout a match’s length when some times are less populated by every server than others is not fixed by a 3day match up. This part of the reason why how well you do during the first 2 days determines the out come of a match. If you can take over the entire map without a fight you will have a large point lead instead of what should be a small one.

Again, the first couple of days of the matches right now are played on the weekend which is the peak period and the only time of the week when a majority of players can play for extra time. You are far more likely to see someone sitting up for 24 hours straight playing WvW on a Saturday than a Wednesday. With shorter matches this means that no two will play the same way because of the numbers of weekend players. A match that starts on Tuesday morning and ends on Thursday night will play out very differently to one that starts on Friday night and ends on Monday morning. “Night capping” (I’m Australian so it’s more like “day capping” for me) is a problem because of the length of time of the matches. It’s very rarely a significant issue on the first few days because any points gained or lost overnight can be quickly made up. It’s when you have a week of night-capping that a small difference in points compounds into an unassailable lead.

What you are ignoring, Xpiher, is timing.

More people play, for longer periods of time, on the weekends.

This is why, before server transfers and anything else, the outcome of a 7-day match is often decided in the first two-three days. 6pm Friday night through to midnight Sunday are the peak hours for gaming.

The rest of the “mechanics” that you have complained about are a direct result of matches starting on a Friday night.

With 60 hour matches it would look like this:

Friday night -> Monday morning.
Monday morning ->Wednesday night
Wednesday night -> Saturday morning
Saturday morning -> Monday night
Monday night -> Thursday morning
Thursday morning -> Saturday night
Saturday night -> Tuesday morning
Tuesday morning -> Thursday night
Thursday night -> Sunday morning
Sunday morning -> Tuesday night

That’s 10 rounds in about 3 weeks instead of nearly three months. No two matches in a row can be dominated by “night-capping” or the population surge of the weekends. Weekday players will always be able to make a difference to the match.

A faster competition makes for an exciting competition. Volativity in the server rankings is a good thing. The problem at the moment is that the competition is decided by server transfers and not the actual match-up. And the main reason people transfer is because they are sick of one-sided battles that leave them with nothing to do for the best part of a week. Overwhelming vitory is boring for both the victors and the vanquished, but when the match is going to reset tomorrow there is far less of an impact on morale than if it’s going to reset next weekend or two weeks from now. This will reduce server hoppers.

While we’re at it… A lot of people don’t seem to understand what will happen when they complain that free server transfers have to stop YESTERDAY. Will it stop the population fluctuations? Absolutely. Will it stop things like what happened to Dragonbrand this week? Absolutely. But do you know what else absolutely will happen? The top three servers will continue to have hours long queues 24/7 and the bottom three servers will continue to be ghost-towns. PERMANENTLY. Moving an entire guild to another server is one thing when it’s free, it’s something entirely different when every member of that guild has to pay actual money to make the shift. In fact, guilds aside, some people may simply stop playing altogether, preferring to play another game rather than having to actually pay to go to a server where they are able to participate in WvW. I have played on Dragonbrand since Headstart and have no intention of leaving. I have seen the impact of the server transfers and not just this week*. But I also support WvW lock-outs rather than ending free transfers.

*Our fight with Crystal Desert and Blackgate, a couple of weeks ago, was extremely close for the first four and a half days, until some Europeans transferred to BG and steam-rolled the maps. It was so close, in fact, that it is an excellent argument for shorter matches because the difference between first and third was only a couple of thousand for the first three days and anyone could have won.

Two week matches will annihilate WvW. The losers will be too frustrated at being zerged every time they poke their head out of spawn to show up, and the winners will be too bored of spawn camping to go out either. We’re already seeing this in 7-day matches, in some cases for 6 days… two week matches just means 10+ days of nobody bothering to play WvW.

I also think that 4 days would be better but it has a BIG downside which pretty much kills the idea.

A week has 7 days so the day the matches start will shift week by week. The problem with 4 days is that there is only one reset per calendar week and when that reset lands on a weekend it will cause havoc. Three day matches, on the other hand, means two resets per calendar week. This would make the impact of a weekend reset negligible in comparison.

You know what would probably work out perfectly, though? 60 hour matches. The reason this would work is because it does not benefit the “night crew” or the “day crew” because the start/finish time will always switch, meaning that the server with the best “night” coverage won’t win all the time. It would also make things even better for weekend players.

Maybe the filter doesn’t like Ike… or thought you were going to say Ikea.

Pretty much what Rise said.

What you may not know about yet is that there are rewards for completing maps (all Points of Interest and Way Points discovered, Hearts filled, Vistae viewed). These rewards start as almost insignificant for completing a city (it used to be experience, a Transmutation stone and 1 whole copper(woohoo!), but it was changed a couple of weeks ago), all the way up to experience, two exotics, 40 of a high level crafting material and 50 silver (was it 50? I forget) for the level 70+ areas. There is also an achievement for 100% World Completion, but you needn’t worry about it until you’re 80.

Your Personal Story will, fairly consistently, lead you to new areas that are a higher level. Sometimes, they will lead you to completely unnecessary places that are on the other side of the map to your actual destination (I did a Priory quest the other day where I had to go to the Priory. I went to the priory but there was no green marker… it was on the far side of the map. So I went to the marker and entered the instance… which started at the Priory entrance o.0 ). You should be aware that there are also rare occasions where the Story will send you to an area that is much higher level than is required for the quest, like being sent to a level 45-55 area for a level 35 quest, but these are rare and the destination is easy to get to without fighting.

Don’t neglect Crafting, either. Whenever possible you should be gathering crafting materials at every opportunity. The gathering itself provides you with xp, while crafting items provides xp and allows you to make your own gear to use.

So, what does that mean?

Use the Story as a guide. When your Story sends you to a new area, your first instinct may be to just make a beeline for the marker, but doing so will, very quickly, result in quests that are way above your level. Instead, you should be clearing each “region” on the way. Think less about progressing your Story and more about map completion – find the PoI, do the Hearts (make sure to check the Heart vendor when you’re done because some of them are the only source to buy certain things), view the Vista and, while it is not a part of map completion, gather the crafting nodes. While you are doing this, you will also stumble into Events, some of which are much larger than others. As well as getting money and loot from killing things you will also be rewarded with xp, money and Karma on completion (and, on larger Events sometimes a chest full of loot), but some events have a secondary function. When on a map you haven’t yet explored, Events where you are asked to guard someone will almost always lead you to new areas of the map, and they will fairly often start near one WP and end near another making it very easy for you to go back to where you started. You should be doing Events at every opportunity because you need the Karma, money and xp from them, but don’t neglect other things to do on the map.

Clearing the map on your way to the next Story quest will usually get you the xp to be at least the “correct” level for that quest. In some areas you will actually level beyond what is required (but don’t worry, you will be down-leveled when you start the quest). If you do this for every area the Story sends you to (except Lornar’s Pass, which is so huge you’ll be begging to get out of there long before you’re finished), you will always be at least the appropriate level for your Story.

You don’t need to be obssessively methodical about this because you can always go back to a map and finish it later. It is in your best interests, however, to do a map when you are at the appropriate level to do it because the rewards are designed for characters of that level.

Oh, one more reason to do map completion. You will need a total of 3 GOLD to unlock all of your Traits. Completing maps as you go will guarantee you have most of that money to buy those upgrades when the time comes, without you even thinking about it.

The outmanned buff could give you a guaranteed exotic item and 50 badges per kill and that still wouldn’t work for the simple fact that the only way you get that buff is when you’re so outnumbered by the other side that you get insta-gibbed as soon as they see you.

I don’t think there’s a need for some of the complicated suggestions I have seen when a simple lock-out will work. You move to a new server and you are locked out of WvW for 8 days. Simple. Matches increase to two weeks (please no) and the lockout increases to 15 days. Matches decrease to 5 days and the lockout reduces to six days.

I did the Story Quest where you go into a dream-world version of Orr the other night. My Necro is traited for minions and was one level above the recommended level. Every single fight I lost every minion and had to wait for the timers before I could progress. The Juggernauts (the spectral Bows) were the worst – they wiped out everything in a single attack every time.

Um… It’s possible that I am inadvertantly responsible for that.

I don’t actually know what site you’re talking about, but I was in Sparkfly Fen when Teq last spawned on DB and someone made a comment asking whether the timer was right. Someone else made another comment which prompted me to say something along the lines of “wouldn’t it be hilarious if someone made a website that displayed all the wrong timers?” Someone else replied that that would be awesome and Teq spawned less than a minute later.

That’s wrong-headed, though. People do not like to lose, they like to win. The outmanned buff should give the side that has it a chance to regain ground. You don’t encourage people to hang around by offering them steeper odds, you encourage them by giving them a chance to win.

1500% extra karma/xp/mf would be meaningless when the side that is outmanned cannot get enough people together to take an objective to earn that Karma… especially since the winning side that has the numbers to cause the outmanned buff also has all three Orbs and is getting a huge boost to their stat’s.

Incidentally, the only thing you can reliably do with the outmanned buff is kill Sentries, and maybe Dolyaks, on the road… both of which give a substantially reduced amount of karma in the first place.

You seem to be forgetting something. Along with Race and Class, what else do you choose at Character Creation? Colour scheme.

Most, but certainly not all, of my Ranger’s dyes have been similar to her original colour scheme. The same goes for my Necro. All of the Rare dyes that I have found (I had a couple given to me by guild mates that already had that colour) have been a shade of one of the colours originally chosen for that character in character creation.

I still think it is random, though. If anything, you might get a slightly better chance of finding a shade of Blue if you chose Blue on creation.

I think the bonuses are backwards, and should be based on points as well as population.

Orbs should not have any effect on players. I think the perfect thing for Orbs is that they give a buff to NPCs.

The buffs to players should go to the losing side(s). The outmanned buff is worthless, mainly because it doesn’t actually counter the fact that you’re outmanned. If buffs were given to the losing sides, it would go a long way towards preventing the current situation of one side just rolling over the map and the other teams being unable to dislodge them.

I was actually rather surprised to find that a game name Guild Wars has such a lacklustre guild system.

*Officer chat channel.
This is one of those basic things that should have been in from day one.

*Scaled Influence.
The way things stand with Influence right now, a large guild can have all their members log in once, and do nothing else, and they get enough Influence to research tier 3 upgrades in a single day. A small guild, on the other hand, has to work hard for every little bit of Influence they can earn, and those same tier 3 upgrades can take weeks. Tier 4 upgrades can be researched by a large guild in as little as two days with no work whatsoever, for small guilds it’s likely to take months doing non-stop events/pvp/wvw. There needs to be some mechanism to slow down the big guilds and, right now, the only thing I can think of is reducing Influence gained based on the number of members, say -15% Influence, from all sources, for every 100 members.

*Something else to spend Influence on.
Maybe I’m missing something, but there doesn’t appear to be anything to spend Influence on after tier 4. All those expensive tier upgrades do is unlock things like banners and buffs which cost an insignificant amount of Influence. For even a small guild this will eventually mean that there comes a point where the Influence is just building up and there’s nothing to spend it on… some larger guilds are already at that point. I am not saying that those banners and buffs should be more expensive because that would just put them out of reach of small guilds, but there needs to be something for the larger guilds to spend their Influence on.

*Guild Commanders
One idea that could solve several issues, may be to have Commanders as a temporary “buff” that can be researched repeatedly and bestowed on an individual at the officer’s discretion, rather than something that can be bought with gold. The benefit of having it as temporary (say, one week) is that a guild can give many people a chance at the role. Another way to do it would be for guild leaders to always have the rank, and then research the permanent rank for each individual member.

That’s all I can think of for now.

A lot of people seem to be throwing around the word “viable” of late, especially in relation to Rangers, but I don’t think many seem to know it’s meaning: “capable of working successfully”.

LB/SB Ranger is not only viable it is effective… Assuming, of course, that you make use of all of the skills from both bows and don’t just press #1 on the SB and go to make coffee.

Lowering the settings is not a solution because this is not a performance issue.

Yes! I forgot about that one! That line is so embedded in my psyche that I actually heard it when I saw him say it.

I remembered another one I was going to mention… There’s a rather large Pirates of Penzance reference in, I think, Bloodtide Coast. There is a Heart area where you have to break up fights, dispose of rum , etc., in a pirate’s hideout. The pirate captain, or Pirate King, is named Captain Penzance and if you hang around for long enough you will see some of the locals complaining about the nonsense he is spewing… and then you will see him performing a paraphrased version of what is probably the most famous song from that musical.

TransparentlyOpaque is a rather ironic name for someone posting in this thread… but I think you’re missing the point. Yes, for some people the effects cause lag. But that isn’t the main issue here. The main issue is that when you get more than a handful of people together, all using spells that each have large visual effects, it very frequently results in the targeted enemy being almost totally obscured. This means that for characters where positioning is important, they cannot tell when they are in the right position. It means that professions that rely on trap-like mechanics cannot see where to place them nor when they are triggered. Most importantly, it means that you cannot see the wind-up, or telegraph, of those enemy skills that will potentially wipe out a large group of people. You also cannot see the red circles indicating enemy trap-like attacks.

How about this as a solution? The effects stay exactly as they are, but no more than two effects of the same kind can be displayed on the same target at the same time. Where appropriate, one of those effects is always yours. This would fix the visibility issues as well as the lag while retaining the integrity of the graphics.

LF3M AC EM2
LF3M AC EM2
Rodents Of Unusual Size [ROUS] are now recruiting!
Level 400 Leatherworker/Huntsman looking for work!
Rodents Of Unusual Size [ROUS] are now recruiting!
LF3M AC EM2
Level 400 Leatherworker/Huntsman looking for work!

Sound familiar? These are three situations where players are currently being suppressed for spam. True, they are spamming, and it is annoying to see /map chat filled with this sort of thing, but they have no other option to form a group, recruit new members into their guild or get work as a craftsman.

A proper LFG tool has been requested many times already, but I want to take that idea and extend it.

Years ago, I played on a Neverwinter Nights server (it may have been NWN2) which used in-game Notice Boards for a variety of advertising tasks. It was a Trading Post, LFG tool, Crafting services advertising space, guild recruitment tool, and place to post PvP bounties. Once an ad was posted it was a simple matter for a player to use the board to match up what they are looking for with what is available. It was essentially a big advertising space that allowed the player to narrow down a search to something specific.

On using the Board, the player is first presented with the option to Browse or Post. On choosing which one, they are then presented with more options:

Browse:
1. Party Recruitment
2. Guild Recruitment
3. Crafting Services
4. Other (it was a RP server, so use your imagination)

Once one of these options has been selected, the player is presented with a series of filters to narrow down their search.

The post section is the same, but in reverse.

It would be good to include materials as a filter in the Crafting section. This would enable a consumer to know exactly what materials are needed to make something, but also allow the advertiser the option to have extra materials as part of the cost. For example, something costs 8 Orichalcum Ingots (or 16 Ore) to craft, the Crafter could advertise it as being 9 Ingots and take the extra as his payment. In order to make the system secure, in a world where we have no trading window (and people scam even when there is a trading window), accepting an advertisement could form a kind of contract where any monies/materials sent to the crafter are automatically refunded to the buyer if the item is not made within a given period of time. Likewise, when the item is made it appears in the buyers inbox/inventory rather than the crafter’s.

Using a system like this would make it very easy to find a guild that suits you, find a crafter to make you that sword, or find a group to run that dungeon with for the umpteenth time… all without spamming the chat channels. Basically, it is one-stop shop – it isn’t just a LFG tool, it is a "Looking For… " tool. Obviously, this is something that requires more refinement, but I think it’s a good place to start.

You seem to be new to the internet.

Spamming is the repeated posting of the same message, usually an advertisement. When a gold seller says “buy gold here!” over and over, that is spam. When you post “LF1M CM EM3” over and over, it is spam. When an officer repeatedly says “Join my guild!”, that is spam. When a crafter says “400 Woodworker looking for work!” over and over, that is spam.

Someone having a conversation, no matter if that conversation is with one other or twenty others, is not spam. It is not the speed of the comments that makes it spam, it is the content.

Does suppression need to be looked at? Absolutely it does. Gold sellers simply log out when they get suppressed and bring in a new character. Actual players, trying to find a group, on the other hand are essentially being punished for using the only method available to form a dungeon group. The same goes for people trying to get work as a crafter or trying to recruit for their guild… Which gives me an idea. Runs off the the Suggestion Forum

Um… no…

It’s in the spot that would usually have the Experience Survivor achievement. The theory that I have heard on Dragonbrand is that it is a special Halloween achievement that is going to be locked until closer to the day.

Mr Crazy Moose.5760:

Novaserra.7049:

Ranger boss in Ascalonian Catacombs has 2 wolves called Shadow and Fang = Warcraft reference perhaps for Shadowfang keep?

Shadowfang was a Diablo 2 reference.

Which shouldn’t be surprising since the founders of ArenaNet were former Blizzard employees that worked on Diablo 2, Starcraft and the pre-WoW Warcraft franchise.

Holy kitten! I was going to post an almost identical thread today!

Absolutely, the Terminator 2 reference. Blink and you’ll miss it.

I do not remember where it is, but it is somewhere in the early human zones. Someone makes a reference to Skyrim by paraphrasing the “I used to be an adventurer but then I took an arrow in the knee” line from that annoying guard in Whiterun. I am tempted to say it is “My brother was in the Lionguard until he took an arrow in the knee” or something like that.

There are a few more I have noticed, but can’t think of right now (which is why I didn’t post this thread earlier).

As well as the Hylek, there are other ancient cultures being referenced. I can think of at least three areas in Fireheart Rise alone:

Amduat Point: The Amduat was one of the Coffin Texts inscribed on the inside of sarcophagi to guide pharoahs through the afterworld, the Duat. Anybody who knows this knows where my name is derived from.

Sati Passage: This one may be an unintentional double reference. Sati (aka Satet) was a goddess that personified the Nile flood. Sati was also a Hindu goddess and was Shiva’s first wife. The “Act of Sati”, where a wife will throw herself on a husband’s funeral pyre, is named after her.

Simurgh Timberland: The Simurgh was a Persian mythological figure that is usually depicted as a bird (sometimes a peakitten, others an eagle) often with the head of a lion (or man) and the limbs of a lion. The Simurgh was said to have all knowledge and, according to the Shahnameh (the Book of Kings), raised an abandoned infant that later became king. When that king’s wife had trouble gicing birth the Simurgh came and showed him how to perform a caesarian section and Rostam, one of the greatest of all heroes was born.

It’s not just melee characters.

On my Ranger, where positioning is key, I can’t even see the enemy most of the time and, on the rare occasion when I actually can see them through all the effects I can’t actually tell which way they are facing so I can be in the right place. The solution? I stand still, only moving to dodge AoE or direct attacks (and, realistically, I’m providing exactly ZERO bleeds even if I am in the right position since everyone else is adding bleeds as well and it’s capped at 25).

At least my Ranger can actually hit the target. Trying to place a Mark on the ground, in a place where it can be triggered, so that my Necro does more than auto-attack damage is a nightmare… and I can’t even tell whether or not they trigger it.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the need to see an enemy wind-up for special attacks… which is, of course, impossible.

There apparently is a solution, though. Turning off particle effects supposedly fixes things. But that makes the game look like crap. So, the choice is to play the game at reduced graphics settings to see what is going on, or to play at max graphics and be effectively blind. That really is poor design.

There is one up-side, for me. The fireworks don’t cause lag for me, but I know they do for other people. As a Ranger I can rest easy that my attacks are not contributing to the fireworks so I’m not making them worse and not contributing to other people’s lag.

Does anybody have a link that says what’s going on? I’ve used my CC on LotRO, GW and GW2 and this is the first I’ve heard about any breach… so more information that what is thus far in this thread (which amounts to a “breach” possibly involving our CC details) is required.

Simple solution to the lack of connection with Zhaitan – Arah is locked until you a) reach it in your story and b) have done the story mode for the previous dungeons.

You want grind? How about this?

Three 3-man dungeons that give a total of 15 account bound tokens per day.
Three 6-man dungeons that give a total of 30 tokens every three days.
Each of the six pieces of armour costs 300 tokens and an account bound raid token.
Each of the six raid tokens drop once per raid.
Raid can only be done once per week.
12 people in the raid.
Two weeks after people actually started to complete their sets, the sets were made redundant by an expansion with accompanying increase to level cap and a re-working of almost all skills.
LotRO 2011.

At least working for a Legendary in GW2 isn’t that bad, you can even buy a lot of the ingredients on the TP (if you’re ridiculously rich).

PS: My numbers may be a little off, it was over a year ago.

I see reading comprehension isn’t your strong point, either that or you’re a troll. Most likely a combination of both.

I don’t think “blocking” means silencing them, especially since you can block them already. I believe it’s blocking the annoying icon floating above their heads.

And congratulations to you for reading the OP. What I saw was the mat’s selling for a total price of 7g and the finished product selling for 9g. I did not have 7g, so the only way for me to make the perceived 2g profit was to sell my completed product to raise the cash and then replace it with the new mat’s. It was only after doing so that I discovered the prices are being displayed incorrectly.

Maybe you should actually read posts before making kitten comments on them in the future.

Hint and free advice: The mat’s required to make a Conduit are in limited and very short supply. The price can only go up for them, and the Conduits, until one of the mat’s run out.

First let me start out by saying that the cost of Gems in Australia is the same as in America – $10 = 800. This means that what follows is not directly related to the specifics of the thread, but it’s very much worth mentioning.

The Australian Dollar (AUD) has been at parity with the United States Dollar (USD) for quite a while now. In fact, for most of the last couple of years, the AUD has been worth more than the USD.

According to the first site listed by Google, the current exchange rate from AUD to USD is $AU1 = $US1.01890. In other words, $1 Australian is the equivalent to $1.02 US.

Here’s the thing. While the $-Gem conversion is the same in Australia as it is in America, the game itself costs us 50% more. In the US it sells for $60. In Australia it sells for $90. GST is included in that price. This is, in fact, the norm. Skyrim, Diablo III, Civilisation V, Shogun 2, any major game you care to mention that was released in the last few years costs $60 in America but $90 in Australia even if you purchase a digital copy from Steam or directly from ArenaNet/Blizzard/CA, etc.. This is not limited to games, with similar price discrepencies visible in business software, DVD/BluRay movies, and pretty much any hardware to do with entertainment. There is even one piece of “professional” software, from either MicroSoft or Adobe (I don’t remember which), that sells for $1000 more in Australia than it does in America.

And there is no reason for it.

A parliamentary inquiry is due to start investigating this subject later this year… so maybe by 2022 we’ll be paying the same for these things in Australia as the Americans do.

This thread title deserves the “Understatement of the Week” Award.

My favourite: There’s six Dredge beating on my pet about 2 metres in front of me. I kill one and hit 3 for my next attack… Instead of hitting one of the five remaining Dredge, my arrow lands on a Deer 15 metres behind them.

I have been watching the price of Mystic Conduits rise of late and decided that now is the time to sell. Why? Because I was able to sell for 9g and buy the Nexus and Frame for about 6g. All I had to do was find the listing fee and I’d be able to make 3g profit and replace my Conduit.

Here’s the problem. The prices being displayed by a search bare no relation whatsoever to the actual sell/buy prices.

Mystic Frame search price: 2g 99s 55c
Lowest Sell price: 6g 90s 3c
Lowest Offer price: 3g 55s 57c

Mystic Nexus search price: 3g 76s 23c
Lowest Sell price: 6g 40s 96c
Lowest Offer price: 3g 74s 50c

Mystic Chest search price: 1g 15s 1c
Lowest Sell price: 3g 18s 2c
Lowest Offer price: 1g 22s 1c

Mystic Conduit search price: 6g 69s 99c
Lowest Sell price: 11g 0s 0c
Lowest 3 Offers: 6g 24s 32c, 6g 25s 1c, 7g 50s 3c
This one has actually changed. When I sold mine, the price listed in search was 10g and the highest offer was 9g.

I feel like I have been scammed. Whether by someone somehow manipulating the interface, or by poor implementation on ANet’s end. I sold my Conduit for 8g (after tax) and it cost me almost 14g to replace it (I had all the ingredients except the Nexus and Frame).

The winners here are the person that bought my Conduit for 9g and is now listing it at 11g, and ANet who just made $20 (actually $30, but I was going to buy $10 worth of gems anyway) out of me because I was forced to buy Gems and trade them for gold to replace my Conduit.

I have been out there every day this matchup and saw what happened first-hand. Some people need to get their facts straight.

During the 24hr matchups it was BG that dominated because BG has more Oceanic players than DB. Complaining that DB was night capping is utter rubbish because it was BG nightcapping FA and DB that allowed BG to claw their way to second. BG always had more “nighttime” players than the other two servers combined. How do I know this? I am Australian. I was there for the some of the so-called night capping… the time when BG was able to take back positions we had taken during the “day”. Our “day shift” had to take back positions every day that BG had taken overnight for the simple fact that BG had, and always has had, more players in Oceanic time zones.

This was a very even match until Wednesday (Tuesday for you American types), and looked to be a great match-up. Anybody who calls DB’s lead “domination” is deluding themselves. We took an early lead, yes, but we had to fight tooth and nail to hold it, just like BG had to do to overcome FA. Leading by 5-10k is not “domination” by any means. It really was “anybody’s game”.

For the majority of the time, the difference between first and third was insignificant and DB was managing to increase our lead by only a couple of thousand a day, but come Wednesday, DB had finally managed to start to get a real lead when we peaked at 26k over BG for 15 minutes. Then something happened. It took less than 30 minutes for the BG horde to re-take Umber (arguably the most contested supply camp in EB for around 6 hours), Durios, Quentin, Danelon, Golanta, Jerrifer’s and reach Klovan. And that was just in the south. Simultaneously, all of the stuff we had taken in the north fell in quick succession, too, which shouldn’t be surprising since they were all new. When I logged off, after around 10 hours total, DB’s lead had dwindled to around 12k. When I logged back on, BG had a 7k lead which increased to 24k when I logged off again. BG went from 26k behind to 24k ahead in about 18 hours.

I should add that over the course of the hour before BG swept through our fully upgraded positions in the south, we had a number of people transfer over from BG that included Kaide telling us how wonderful DB is compared to BG, someone who told us we should attack Blackgate Valley “because they won’t expect that” (no, indeed, because all of BG was holed up defending Bravost which we could not muster the forces to take), someone who managed to lead our forces away from Bravost into FA territory (allowing BG free reign to take back everything from Umber to Jerrifer’s) and someone else that started complaining “we don’t need to know when they are attacking every single useless thing” in reference to someone calling out that the BG horde was on the way from Golanta to Jerrifer’s (after quickittenaking everything east of that). Oh, and let’s not forget the guy who said he had just transferred over from BG… and then 15 minutes later said “OMG DB is so pathetic” when BG started taking things back. There aren’t rumours of spies for no reason.

We should re-name Stonemist into Catnip, since those cats the commanders are herding always seem to go straight there at every opportunity…

Communication>>>>Everything else.

Communication really is key.

Today there were two commanders in a borderlands, followed by about 25 people, and the only thing either of them said in /t or /m was “let’s try another border now”. That’s it. I followed them to the next borderland and joined what i thought was a commander’s squad. It wasn’t a squad. The commander had a party. When I asked why he was in a party and not in a squad he said something about it being easier to control in case situations change. The irony is that that commander was mentioned in Lion’s Arch a couple of hours earlier as one of the “good ones”.

On the other hand, a couple of nights ago there was no commander for quite a few hours and the whole map was being run by four people. Three were in and around keeps with small groups, upgrading them, setting up siege equipment, holding supply camps, and spotting for the fourth group which was taking keeps. It all worked flawlessly… until a commander showed up and, everything fell apart without him even saying a word because following the Silent Blue Dorito to take useless things was more important that defending what we had spent days building.

There is a theory floating around that commanders are being sent to other realms to gather up the peons/zerg and run them to distant and useless destinations and away from where the other realm wants to attack.

You know what? I haven’t heard of this before, but it explains exactly what happened the other night on my server. A silent commander lifting an hours long siege and leading the zerg to the other side of the map to cap supply camps, allowing the besieged to sweep out of their keep and wipe us off the map.

Anvils were made to be beat on…

While I agree with some of the sentiment expressed here, I cannot help but notice some arrogance involved. Some guilds started GW2 already established with dozens, if not hundreds, of members from other games while others simply sent out random guild invites to everyone that crossed their path. All it takes for these big guilds to get the high level upgrades is for their members to log in. That’s it. Smaller guilds, on the other hand, have to grind content constantly to build up the influence needed to get the tier 3 and 4 upgrades. And i’m not talking the buffs themselves, which are only a couple of hundred Influence, I’m talking about the upgrades that cost 5-10k each.

Being in a big guild doesn’t make you special. You are literally being given those upgrades and WvW buffs just for logging in. What makes you think that you deserve the right to claim a location more than a guild that has to work their arses off for the same thing? Why should your guild have the right to claim a location five minutes after you go out to WvW more than a guild that has been out there for 10 hours?

That said, a guild with buffs should always be preferred to one without. But then again, it does absolutely no harm when a buffless guild claims some random tower on the other side of the map that the enemy is just going to take back in five minutes anyway… especially when the big guilds with all the buffs are doing stupid things like laying siege to Stonemist for 6 hours and ignoring the rest of the map.

You can add two more to the list: “Puller” and AoE.

On my Ranger I have noticed that sometimes (at random, sometimes it’s different on the exact same pull) if I pull a mob of enemies, they will attack me exclusively until I’m dead. Not downed, dead. All the while ignoring everyone else.

On other occasions, I will have not fired a single arrow, waiting for my party to gather the mob together before unleashing a Barrage… which causes everything to drop what they’re doing and attack me. Again, this doesn’t happen all the time, but it has happened often enough for me to notice it.

Still other times, I can unload everything I have into a target that completely ignores me.

I think that, unlike most games which have a standard threat table, there is an index of tables. Each critter has a selection of tables from the index and randomly uses a table when it spawns. In other words, there might be ten different versions of threat priority, each monster has access to five of those and is randomly assigned one when it spawns.

Bloodbath & Beyond?? I was in a LotRO (PvM) guild with that name.

I don’t usually tend to give my characters silly names, but I do give them to my pets.

Ranger – Kyxha Syadistine is followed around by a Jungle Stalker named Ms Kitty Fantastico, a Moa named Dinoindaskies and a shark called Fluffy (I was mightily disappointed to see in the Ranger pet name thread that there’s a few sharks with that name… and even more disappointed to see a certain event boss with it as well).

I’m tempted to make a Charr Elementalist or Mesmer named Miss Kitty Fantastico or maybe a Guardian named Summy Buffers. Willow Roseandburn would make for a nice Elementalist Sylvari. Ripper Giles would make for a great name. Yes, I do watch Buffy a lot…

My Necro is Sokar Rostau, which is a modified version of an Egyptian god of the underworld (Sokar, Lord of Rostau).

My Elementalist is named Symbaoe, which is the archaic spelling of Zimbabwe.

All three names, and a few more, are ones I have used for characters for about 15 years and they’re always similar builds within the limits of the game.

“Night capping” is an issue for some servers and shouldn’t be dismissed as whining. When one server has a large number of US players and a large number of Australian players it becomes a lop-sided fight for servers that have less players during one of those time zones. I’m an Australian playing on a server that is mostly American, and when I go out during Australian peak-times we are sometimes horrendously outnumbered.

How about limiting the percentage of a map that can be controlled by a single server?

For every location captured that takes the dominant server over 50%, the other two servers get a certain number of NPC defenders to their remaining locations. What those defenders are could be random, so that you never know how many of what you’re going to be facing. There might be 50 cannon fodder or 10 champions. This would make it increasingly difficult to capture new locations.

Once the dominant server controls more than 75% of a map, the other two servers get offensive NPCs that attack locations nearest the spawn point, perhaps these offensive NPCs could also follow Commanders and attack marked targets. This makes it increasingly difficult to hold locations.

This would make things more interesting for everyone because the dominant server isn’t left with nothing to do but camp spawn points, while the other two servers have a chance to claw back what they have lost. It also means that captured locations need to be defended.