Guild Wars 2

When I was younger and more stupid, I used to buy gold for Guild Wars 1. It was easier, and cheaper than farming it all myself. It was actually so cheap that you could max out your bank storage for about $50. Which was more than enough money for the lifetime of the game and any characters you would have.

There were two reasons for my purchase. One, it was too hard to acquire gold through legitimate means, and two there was no legitimate way of purchasing gold.

ANet IMO has eliminated these two issues. While gold can be a challenge to acquire, it’s not so much of a grind that it feels impossible. It’s actually quite easy all things considered. Then there’s the fact that crafting professions are fairly easy to level as well, and some can make a decent chunk of change.

I’m not sure what ANet is planning to do about gold sellers, but I hope they do something soon. Personally I’ll never be buying through gold sellers, even if it costs me more to go through ANet because I want to support the company who’s made this totally awesome game, and because I find gold sellers business practices to be completely unethical. This was something I didn’t know about back in GW1

I can see the temptation for others though, and I can’t say I would fault them for succumbing to that. Times are rough, so ANet needs to get on the ball and eliminate the temptation, not punish the players for being tempted.

Same. I logged in and as soon as I clicked my character to load in I got dropped.

Mathog.3157:

It seems relog helped. I’ll tell you if it happens again.

Sondergaard.8469:

Also, did you check under the map filters to make sure that waypoints didn’t get toggled somehow? It’s the little eye symbol in the bottom left corner.

I never touched that eye. But even if I switched off everything I should still see waypoints.

Oh, interesting. I didn’t know that o.o; I’ll have to watch out for this bug. Good to know a relog can fix it though.

29 and my gf is… around that grins. We’re both very happy with the game and not going anywhere anytime soon. Granted we both have very busy lives, so we’re not playing it 24/7.

That could be a large part of why you see the younger audiences running off so fast. If they have nothing to do all day but play this game for insane hours of course they’re going to burn out quicker. The game was made to be enjoyed at a leisurely pace, and most of us 28+ adults have jobs, college, families, etc that take up our time when we’re not gaming so we eat up the content at a much slower pace.

As for those asking why age has anything to do with it, the above explains one side of it. The other thing is, most kids don’t have much patience. They want it now, now, now! Granted, different environments and social experiences can change that and thus there are youth that have extreme amounts of patience just as there are ones who have extreme lack of patience. I know when I was younger though, everything was about wanting to be older faster, wanting to get out of school sooner, wanting to get my chores done quicker, wishing I didn’t have homework so I could play.

Relate this to a game. They want to get to the finish line faster. They don’t want to have to work to get there. They want to have the best everything, and no matter how much they get they are never satisfied because there’s always more they could want.

Where as adults, typically (but again not always), tend to have had a little more life experience to develop an appreciation for the smaller things. We don’t mind slowing down to enjoy the scenery because we’re not in a rush to get anywhere. Everything else in our life is rushing past us at such a rapid pace, when we do get a moment to sit down and relax, we don’t want our play time to fly by like everything else. Just my observations on it anyway…

I was under the impression that it already worked like this for the majority of recipes regarding armor and weapons. The only catch is, the higher level recipes you can’t get through simple ‘discovery’ methods. Most of them have to be bought, or achieved through the mystic forge. There is likely an armor set available that has the stats that you want, but you’ll have to find the recipe. I would recommend checking guildhead.com as they have the most complete listing of items with their stats, and recipes.

Moonpuncher.7250:

but it’s not a coincidence that people complain on the forums. Ask someone “Hey has anyone been dying more recently?” and you’ll get plenty of people affirming, but that doesn’t mean there’s a cause behind it. Happy people generally don’t post on forums Don’t believe me? Read ANY game’s forums.

I actually didn’t see anyone complaining. I saw someone asking a question to figure out whether they were just having a bad luck streak or if something got tweaked. By the way, to blow holes in your theory, I’m a happy person. Quite happy with the game. I come to the forums because I enjoy reading about other peoples experiences, offering help where I can, and just learning about what other people have discovered, or what the devs are saying about the current state, or future of the game.

Browsing around these forums I see the number of happy people enjoying the game, and positive attitudes far outweigh the negative. Perhaps I’m just not looking hard enough though.

On the OP, it’s possible that there was a stealth nerf, or an unintentional bug introduced. If either is the case, I haven’t seen any official posts on the subject as of yet. Maybe shoot one of the forum mods like Gaile a PM and ask her to take a peek at this thread to shed some light?

Most of the items you can craft are not soulbound. Furthermore, your inventory stash for craft materials is shared account-wide, so the idea that you would need a recipe ‘account-wide’ is a bit obsolete. If you have the recipe on a character, just log over and craft what you need and put it in your bank for the other character. In fact, you truly only need one character with max professions on all the professions and they can swap between them to craft whatever you need. (Assuming you have the funds to do so.)

Also, did you check under the map filters to make sure that waypoints didn’t get toggled somehow? It’s the little eye symbol in the bottom left corner.

I’ve recently changed to a more aggressive firewall (to track down some network issues) and it unfortunately does not have the option to authorize network activity by application.

What IP ranges does GW2 utilize, so that I can open them up on my firewall?

There’s an easy solution if you’re tired of your server being paired against the same people all the time. Transfers are still free. Move to another server that needs the help.

I think the only thing I felt in my experiences that might be good to take advantage of DR would be stacking AOE ground effects. Crowd control, etc not so much. One of the more effective DR’s I saw for balance that was done for this exact reason was accomplished by simply allowing only 2 stacks of the same class spell to overlap in any one area, and capping the amount of players it hit. For example, only 2 eles could stack rain of fire on the same player. If a third cast rain of fire, their spell would not hit the target, but if they used a different AOE effect they would. This prevented ridiculous amounts of spike aoe damage where everyone would just spam AOE on the keep doors and no one could get close enough to break it down even with siege equip.

PrestonSwain.6219:

Fixing the bug is only half of the issue. The game has a bug that is literally eating items from players and you have no system available to restore items. “When it’s ready” was the biggest lie ever told. I’m sorry to be so rude, but WoW support makes GW2 support look like monkeys. GW2 is more fun to play, but about 80% of my guild already quit because of how unfinished/untested this game is mixed with how bad the support is.

When my account got hacked in WoW, it took 30 minutes using an automated system to get my account and all of my items returned. Friends who got hacked in GW2? A week minimum to get the account back and the characters are likely permanently gone along with all of their items.

And how many years did it take Blizzard to develop this type of support and recovery system?

FYI, Blizzard also outsources their customer support. The issue is not that Arenanet does not have the tools, it’s that they do not have the time or staff yet to handle supporting requests for rollbacks on characters.

They are at their limit already with many other very legitimate account issues that need to be resolved first before they can even start to think about adding to the list of ‘support’ features. They are working on this, rest assured. They’re hiring new staff as fast as they can, and I am more than certain they’re expanding the capability and the tools available to their support staff as needed and as fast as possible.

Sure it would be ideal to have a system like this that is automated, but developing that also takes time, and doing it right, putting it through QA, etc also takes time. Give them a break. Yes it sucks if you get hacked and lose your items. Yes it sucks if the forge eats things. Is it the end of the world in either scenario? No.

As for the ‘when it’s ready’ thing being a lie I don’t agree. The game has its issues, sure, but it’s far from being unplayable. So you don’t use the mystic forge for a few weeks til they fix it? Big deal? There’s a thousand other things you could be doing.

Arenanet is not perfect, no company is, but they are trying hard and there’s no reason to treat them like crap. They’re people just like you, who have feelings just like you, and are frustrated with bugs, just like you. Having unrealistic expectations helps no one.

Thank you for keeping us in the loop Jonathan. I really appreciate the hard work of everyone at Arenanet, and thank you for sticking to your guns on game balance. Don’t let the memes and nownows push you guys to hasty decisions. So refreshing to hear logic and reason prevail for once.

Two thumbs up to you sir, or lady whichever the case may be. This makes complete logical sense to me. Half the weapon, half the price. I also agree that 2 sigils for 2h weapons makes sense.

I want skritt more than quaggans… :P

I read an article recently about ‘old school events’ and how no other MMOs these days are doing GM hosted events. During Beta you guys showed us that Guild Wars 2 is quite capable of GM hosted events and it’s something I think that could be really fun to see become a regular part of the game.

What I mean by a GM hosted event is actually having one of the staff come into the game and spawn an event, that they actively play a role in. Be it that the GM is the boss, or they turn a player into a boss, or whatever. A GM hosted event is different from a Dynamic event in that it has human generated interaction.

My first suggestion, to blow off some steam for both Devs and users with the bugs and stuff… Let us have a Pinata event where a developer gets to come and play the role of a pinata while we all beat the candy out of them. Of course, this would be even more fun if the Arenanet team was actually fighting back! Invasion of the pinatas!

Aga.8641:

I don’t know what’s worse, the endless supply of “it’s coming”, “soon” or “be patient” or no information at all.

It’s coming soon, be patient. They’re still gathering information.

I don’t think this issue is as cut and dry as ’It’s too hard, fix it.’ I think it goes much deeper than that because for some classes it’s incredibly easy, where for others it’s near impossible. This was true for most of the personal story quests for me. When I ran through with different characters I discovered that they can be -very- class bias.

That in mind, it COULD be a class balance issue and some classes needing abilities to counter those situations. I could totally see a viable addition of PVE only skills here to help counter this issue like they did with GW1.

This suggestion is specifically for the trading post. I have noticed a trend where many times people will be selling an item at a price equal to the items value, and someone will come in and dramatically undercut them. Unfortunately they often do so with enough quantity that there is time for the next person to come in and ‘match lowest seller’.

This results in a downward trend that ends up resulting in the item selling for 1 copper more than the vendor price.

My proposal is to take multiple ‘lowest sellers’ and average them to keep from dramatic drops in the pricing of items. People will still have the luxury of listing at a custom price, but the ‘match lowest seller’ option will no longer be a boon to aid in dramatically dropping prices and doing so very rapidly.

I’m not arguing that there doesn’t need to be sinks in place. Of course there do, otherwise we do get economy inflation and that’s bad for everyone. Is it a necessity to do it through repairs though? Does it impact the economy that much? Are there more creative/inventive ways that it could be accomplished?

One of my favorite things about Guild Wars 1 was that there were no repairs. Death was punished in a meaningful way but not in a way that was so overwhelming that it was impossible to continue. Mind you, I’m not saying repairs are overwhelming, they are just annoying in my opinion. We actually still have the death penalty in GW2, except now we also have repairs on top of it.

The question is not so much, does it do what it’s supposed to, as it is, is it really necessary? There is no doubt that it does work as a sink. It does punish the player. It does function as intended. But it is based off an archaic and dated model. Is there not a better way?

Location
Waypoint: Michotl Grounds Waypoint
Area: Michoan Marsh
Zone: Metrica Province.

Event:Kill the Cuatl Thieves

Issue: This event spawns and endless supply of the Cuatl supplies in the camp. As seen in this screenshot, all those tiny bags do not ever derender unless a thief from the event successfully steals it. Due to this, after the event has run its course multiple times (which is quite frequently) the area takes a huge FPS hits.

There are thousands upon thousands of these bags litering the swamp, from the camp all the way up to the area where the Cuatl thieves despawn when they succeed in stealing supplies.

Frame rates due to this issue go from a steady 30-60 down to 10-12.

Suggested solution: Add a despawn timer to the bags.

Weirwynn.2390:

Yes, clearly you must be right. I will trust the word of a player that repair is not necessary as a money sink, and that the current state of many players graveyard-rushing dungeons totally wouldn’t be even worse with less death penalty.

(Apologies for the passive-aggressive sarcasm)

I never said I was right, I shared my opinion and asked for opinions, feedback, and thought out responses. Your sarcasm is not appreciated, nor is it called for. If you have something constructive to say, please do, but otherwise refrain from responses like this that contribute nothing constructive to the topic.

Okay, after reading through this thread I have to say I couldn’t disagree more. The tank, support, dps roles still exist, they just blur the line enough that classes aren’t bottlenecked into a single role because that’s the only role they’re good at.

The other side of that is though, that no class is at it’s best or strongest when alone. Every class is reliant on other people performing well in their own role to bring you to your maximum potential. This means that if you are playing a healer, the person you are healing has to also be doing their part.

For example, lets say you’re in a dungeon. You’re playing healer. If the person you are trying to heal is ‘tanking’ but they are not spec’d properly for it and are not using skills, movement, dodge, etc to counter damage guess what’s going to happen? You guessed it! SPLAT!

If you have a guardian who is full on spec’d for tanking, in gear appropriate for the level of content you are doing, and you are the same I can guarantee you your heals will keep them up through the content if they know their class and are effectively using their skills. But guess what? It’s not all on you two. There are 3 other people who need to be using buffs and support to make the whole team more effective.

The M.O. here is teamwork. What you are suggesting would have the opposite effect. You want to be able to outheal incoming damage on your own without being reliant on other players to perform their role, use their heals, and counter damage intelligently. That’s not possible, nor should it be.

Hmm, I was really hoping to see some big red love on this topic. Well, I hope the suggestion was seen at least and they take it into consideration as a possibility. It would certainly improve my game experience as I feel death is already punishment enough without the extra slap.

I suppose a more appropriate way to phrase my question would be, do we need them? Does it enhance the experience, or hinder it? For me, I feel it is unimaginative, and a hindrance. It’s annoying, not fun. It does not add a sense of excitement or danger, but rather a sense of frustration and annoyance. Especially when there are so many scenarios when a player can die unexplained to a single blow.

I understand the need to discourage death, but I have seen so much creativity from arenanet in this game, I find it difficult to believe the solution to discourage death is to simply have a copy paste feature of every other mmo just because.

eronth.9017:

Right, well mine is fact. That is literally the reason armor breaks then costs money to repair. It is to sink money. Money sinks are used to help balance in-game economy.

Except that there are already so many sinks that it’s an unnecessary addition.

I found myself pondering over the feature of item damage and repairs while reading about the numerous complaints in regards to dungeons, earning money, etc. I am going to try and share my full thoughts on this topic, but I would love to hear from someone at ArenaNet as to their reasoning behind damaged gear.

That said, let me begin. My first thought is, repairs are in place to punish death, both in reducing effectiveness of the player (when gear is fully damaged) and in penalizing the player monetarily. The question that comes to mind though is, why?

Let’s look at the effects of repairs on the player.
1. It adds stress to the player for dying.
2. It reduces player wealth, in effect acting as a sink.
3. It kicks a player in the teeth while they’re down.
4. It adds an extra step to getting back into the action.

Now let me touch on these points. Firstly, the stress factor. When fighting in a tough area, for example in a dungeon, the player is already stressed by trying to maintain high focus to succeed in the fight and defeat their foe. Adding to this the thought that every death is another chunk of change becomes stressful when currency is already difficult to manage for your average player.

The second note, that it acts as a sink would hold up as a viable reason to keep it, however there are already SEVERAL sinks in place, that it is unnecessary for controlling the economy. That in mind, it then serves only one purpose, to punish the player. More on that in a moment.

Third point is that it kicks the player when they’re down. This ties in with the second point, it costs money. So you died a few times, now not only do you have to return to a repair station which is both time consuming, more so if you walk, or costly if you teleport. In addition to this, the player is already punished by the knowledge of failure and defeat, as well as the currency cost of having to teleport to the nearest waypoint, and the time cost of having to travel.

Last point, I stated it adds an extra step to getting back into the action. The player is now effectively in time out. We have to take time out of our adventure to go and repair, which also acts as an immersion breaker.

So my question is, why do we have repairs? Is it simply because other games have them and so it is expected?

I have read it several times from ArenaNet that the M.O. of GW2 is ‘Fun’. Repairs are not fun, and in every way possible, they are stressful, frustrating, and an extra unnecessary punishment to the player.

Why do I say it’s unnecessary? We are already punished monetarily and with time by having to respawn. Even if we decide to wait for a res, we are still punished by the time factor. Repairs do not fit with the idea of ‘Fun.’

Take a look at areas of the game that do not punish the player with repair costs. Fall death and puzzles. The punishment here is having to start over. However, the punishment of having to start over is sufficient enough, but does not cut into the ‘fun’ factor of the challenge. The same punishment applies when we die in combat. We have to start over, travel, etc. Yet we are thrown an additional punishment for dying in combat.

TL;DR: If the goal is indeed for GW2 to be fun, then why add this extra condition to death? We have the timed death penalty, teleport cost, time cost, stress factor, frustration, some times even anger! Do we really need repairs on top of this?

DandySlayer.7019

How bout make a single dungeon currency that doesn’t take up items slots, while at the same time fixing the broken dungeons and make them all playable and challenging enough not to be easy but not hard enough to be impossible? Everybody would want to try different dungeons with that system in place due to the fact everybody can work towards the gear they want and not have to constantly run the same 3 paths of a single dungeon over and over again. But that would only work if the dungeons are all properly balanced to offer that challenge and never get to the point of being super easy.

Seconded. I love this idea. I think it would encourage exploration of other dungeons and the other options within them so people don’t feel like they have to grind the same content to get the set they’re after.

spreadsheets.9805

First, the group of people that have already run dungeons is larger than the group of people that have already spent some tokens on gear…(snip)
The second point is that you have to consider how information about future changes forms player behavior…(snip)

(Quote edited for space)

Very well thought out, and I really hope they consider this side of the equation. It makes a lot of sense, and I can totally see this being the case if they just increase rewards as opposed to lowering price.

Slaven.3721:

+1 but I say up the difficulty and in return we get more drops. That what I hate about the new update with dungeons. Instead of reducing rewards just make them harder to get.

This I completely and 100% agree with. Nerfing the rewards was a bad idea IMO. It reduces incentive to even bother with the dungeon. Increase difficulty, make the rewards worth it, then you really have something worth doing.

Guilds attempted: Ming Dynasty, American Avatar Association, Cant Find The Crit

Server: Darkhaven

Attempting to join a guild is resulting in the following Error:

Network error .

Please check your Internet connection and try again.
(Code=3040:1002:3:1930:101)

This error is occuring on two different accounts with different characters, regardless of zoning out/in, or logging out/in.

This error is persistent through sessions and has been unresolved for a week now.

Currently encountering this bug on Darkhaven.

The issue exists when purchasing the Deluxe Edition after a character has already been made. This is at least how it is for me. The character I purchased it on did not receive the elite skill, but every character I made AFTER the purchase did.

station.6421:

I think the 5 ability on the focus and shield were accidentally swapped during development and no one noticed it :P The focus shield would work better on the actual shield both mechanically and thematically. Projecting a huge, light dome seems something more akin to something a focus would do.

I completely agree with this. As well as the OP on swapping 3 and 4.

Deleted old post in favor of a better screenshot

Loving the game! All of it! Two suggestions though…

Trading post: Add a filter for armor type. Light, medium, heavy.

Cosmetic: Dye weapons! I want to dye my weapons to match my armor!

Problem goes beyond this. Hackers target the user’s email first a lot of times. If they have access to the email account and the user no longer has control of their ‘master email’ then they get screwed on both fronts. They can’t change their master email, and they can’t recover. This creates a new and deeper security concern. Giving users the ability to change the email assigned to the account allows them to avoid this security concern should their original email be compromised.