Guild Wars 2

Sigh.. okay thanks for the feedback.

Anyone else experiencing a severe decrease in rate of salvaging ectos from rares in the past few days?

We’ve all seen the price of ectos drop most likely due to supply increase from people salvaging rares for wardrobe skins. After salvaging 20-25 rares in the past 2 days I’m calling arbitrary stealth nerf to their droprate.

RNG is RNG I know, but as someone who does world bosses more than most other content, seeing 1 mithril, followed by 1 rune, then 1 leather, and so on over and over again a pattern becomes apparent.

Anyone else having this experience?

No inherent bonus chance to win. Only a base 3.14% damage mitigation against clickers. Tab target negates this passive debuff.

~66 games for one armor peice. Yea, no thanks.

While I’m all for PvPers having an alternative to getting skins, mats, and loot, this slowball garbage gives little incentive for any other player to work towards them if they’re willing to participate in the rest of the game.

Farming WvW or PvE is far more time efficient for ascended mats, weapon/armor skins, champ bags, and loot. Sure you can’t please everyone, but glory design was better.

Patch the holes with Blade Shards..

and duct tape..

lots of duct tape..

This kind of reminds me of other MMO’s where you get an expansion and all your hard-earned gear is rendered obsolete. Without the expansion.

Xenon.4537:

2. A new outlook on stats and gear.

One man’s “new outlook on stats and gear” is another man’s painful endeavor beginning a grind all over again because some other set of gear that you share stats with was deemed too powerful.

Xenon.4537:

Edit: So the buff/nerf breakdown is…

Power: +6%
Precision: +6%
Condi: +6%
Crit Dmg: -30%
Offense: -12% – nerf

Toughness: +6%
Vitality: +6%
Healing Power: +6%
Defense: +18% – buff

I think it’s also worth mentioning that a -30% nerf to crit dmg possibly devalues the current and post-buff value of Power and Precision, in turn making the set even less damage potential than it already is.

That 6% condition damage isn’t going to make up the difference for the loss of burst from all those auto-attacks and spells casts with a base damage involved.

The alure of this set was that you have supportive stats and still have moderate DPS because of the high crit damage. If there were tanks in this game the +6% to defensive stats would be worth the mitigation. But the ratio of DPS to damage taken is not 1:1 here. It should be evident in how prevalent heavy Power or Condition damage builds are to begin with.

Best case scenario, we almost break even to what we were. I don’t speculate this made Celestial any more viable for WvW or sPvP, and definitely made our damage output slower.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I wanted to stop by and say thanks for the feedback. We do feel that the celestial stat set will be hit the hardest with the upcoming critical damage changes, so we are looking at possibly boosting the overall stats by a small amount.

Also the celestial stat set in PvP is using a much lower stat multipliers than the PvE versions so we will be looking at changing this as well. Nothing is set in stone, but I wanted to let guys know this is something we are discussing.

The PvP celestial set was never viable, so I think you should put it at a power level close or equal to the (possibly buffed) PvE counterpart.

That would be the idea. =)

Whatever happened to this idea?

I just hope the little red flag in the batcave has gone up, and these threads aren’t being dismissed as generic rage.

Edit- editted for ghetto math and generic rage. lol.

Nike.2631:

They already describe the trader for blade shards as “she”.

Its Marjorie’s sister, who we will be seeing at the entryway to the new zone.

Marjory’s sister will trade random junk for Blade shards in order to build a massive lawnmower to cut through the foliage of NW Maguuma Jungle.

Calling it now!

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

Right now the Art Department is basically carrying the whole company. Kudos to these guys.

This is pretty much the position I’ve had for months now. Music is also well done in my opinion, and from what I can tell there’s a lot of Anet staff involved with the community a lot as well.

There is a lot of good things that came about in at the end of LS though. Despite bugs and criticisms from players, both Escape from LA and Battle for LA were a lot of fun as what reflected by loads of players participating in them until the last day.

My biggest criticism of Living Story as a whole is that it is temporary. Not for the sentimental reasons one might suspect, but because:
1.) Any new players or players who level alts will never have the ability to experience this content. We don’t lock people out of Shadow Behemoth or Ascalonian Catacombs just because they kill Zhaitan do we?
2.) Achievements, vanity items, recipes and specific crafting items are lost or only obtainable through RNG means. With emphasis on the prior two for obvious reasons.
3.) Content will never be polished and tuned to account for any remaining bugs or event scaling for varying group sizes. While Tier 1 servers may not have had this problem there’s a lot of less populated servers that just stopped doing Tower of Nightmares, Marionette, Assault Knights among other encounters days before the content was even finished.

I agree, cool idea for blink and dealing with difficulty targeting aoe when there’s a lot of spell effect and other stuff going on. +1

So it gives players more time to learn their first weapon, then when they equip a new weapon type they have 5 completely different skills dropped on their lap all at once…

okaaay then..

Further research into asuran hair patterns is conclusive:
:3

Stay classy mesmers!

Head – Armageddon
Shoulder – Magician
Chest – Heritage
Gloves – Student
Pants – Heritage
Boots – Ascended

Dyes – Royal Purple, Midnight Violet, Iris, Illumination, & Antique Gold

You pretty much get Rank 14 when farming 500 badges for Gift of Mastery anyway, if not I doubt anyone would be far off.

After extensive research, controlled experiments, and precise data collation, it seems that the aforementioned foreign head-growth, “hair,” is an evolutionary remnant, a biological characteristic leftover from a prehistoric time period where humanoids were so simplistic that they could not fashion clothes or proper shelter. Consequently, their bodies had to generate said hair to prevent said simpletons from freezing to death in their dirty little caves.

So do not judge the great Zojja for being more evolved than you!

Furthermore, Asura do not wear “headgear.”

We wear eargear.

I’m not sure I agree. Streamlining condition damage and duration could disproportion the value of burning and poison to bleeding and confusion, or any combination of conditions for that matter, as well as mess up a lot of runes and builds.

The problem is with the cap. If 50 power-based build players fight a boss they do the damage of about 50 power-based build players. If 50 condition-based build players fight a boss they do the damage of 25-49 condition-based build players.

I don’t know if removing the cap would break certain encounters or mechanics but it’s certainly the bulk of the problem and a deterrent to people who might want to build that way. If a player is contributing to a fight with is skill, build, and gear, then he should be doing the damage of one whole player.

EscataFlayer.8470:

3 tiers of groups.

Tank – Warrior
Heals/Offtank – Guardian
DPS/CC – Mesmer

Can we update the Fractal Capacitor backpiece to function similar to the Spinal Blades from Living Story in how you can select the stat allocation from the list when you buy/upgrade it?

I’ve been crafting Celestial gear and while a lot of the other craftable ascended backpieces look great they don’t all fit my class character and/or color scheme. I’m sure there’s a lot of other players who don’t use those 4 initial stat allocations. The Fractal Capacitor seems to have fallen behind the current technology. *tear!

Rebound.3409:

I am serious..give me a good server to guest to.

Blackgate or Jade Quarry

Causes:
1.) Waypoints cost money and can be far away, and even farther if adjacent waypoint are contested. Sure it’s lazy, but also valid. Probably designed this way to prevent graveyard zerging. So which is the lesser evil?
2.) Mistakes happen, especially when dodge or die mechanics are involved. When they do there’s always hope that a kind soul will rezz you and you get instantly get back into the fight.

Effects:

1. Removes your DPS as well as theirs.
2. Causes a bunch of people to go to one spot to get splatted by AE as they rez.
3. Increases your “value” for an enemy to target making #2 worse.
4. Causes you to be semi-prone and vulnerable.
5. Probably gets you killed as well as them because of how long it takes to rez adding yet another loss of dps.

If dead players scale bosses or events, or if a boss is designed for 50 players and 15 are dead or otherwise occupied rezzing the dead the rest of the encounter may be for nothing. So it’s either graveyard zerging or taking into account for “R” factor.

If a player is revived with max rezzers it takes about a second or two. I’d speculate that’s more often than not the same if not less DPS than would be lost by said player running across the map for 20 seconds.

Rezz your dead.

Or they sit there.

Being dead.

Constantine.7812:

Aberrant.6749:

Please use the enter key and break up the text. Trying to read that feels like hitting the side of a tree on Endor.

If that text makes you tired pls dont read it. Also nobody wants to know it. So your comment doesnt belong here.

I found it funny and valid on the grounds of general forum/writing etiquette. If you want people to read, support or be involved in your discussion, separating walls of text can help with that.

As for your original post, I agree. Achievements for Living Story should be achievable for players of all skill levels, and from all servers.

If a zerg is a large group of people in a concentrated location working together, fighting, rezzing, sharing boons, dispelling conditions, all in order to complete and event, boss, etc.; Why is this a problem?

Logically, if player feels the need to zerg it’s because it’s the most valid and easiest strategy. Meaning they want to complete the content but need the numbers or want to complete the content without the frustration.

Some people just want to play your game.

Siobhan.5273:

tmakinen.1048:

Autumn Frazee.3158:

Hopefully with the difficulty changes, it will also make it easier for a good server to get ‘Six Minutes to Knightfall’.

Methinks that when an official representative starts talking about “good servers” and alleges that features of the game have been specifically calibrated to exlude those people who dare to stay on an un-good server, then it’s high time to cut losses and respectfully uninstall. Could be just me, though.

No, I get what you’re feeling, and I don’t think you should go anywhere. I think staff that speaks of customers that way should think about apologizing, rather than alienating them further.

Word choice is irrelevant and no one should waste their time taking offense.

The fact that there ARE “good” servers and “bad” servers is the real problem. The fact that content is both released and tuned to accomodate the “good” servers is the problem.

When a player from a “bad” server feels obligated to guest on another server in order to experience the new flashy awesome content, what incentive is it for them to stay on their server and consequently continue to keep it populated?

Why should a server with 10 players on each knight fail? 30 players is a pretty sizeable group. Why can’t 30 players be successful with Teq, Wurm Trio, or Knights? Will Mordremoth only be available on Blackgate?

Melodramatic? Yes, but you get the point.

Thanks, I thought so. Plus it offers a fairly reasonable way for players to experience content, achievements, vanity items they may have missed.

Baronessvonbaugh.2165:

I know that some players find these events too easy but, there are those of us that would like it achievable at least.

Most of those players don’t play on low pop servers that are rarely successful in such events. Scaling has always been the problem, and based on experiences with Teq and Wurm Trio, I fully expect the focus to be on looking forward rather than taking a step back to polish aspects that could’ve been a lot better.

I was in the same boat and my server wasn’t getting more than 1 knight down in the main instance both before and after the zerg nerf.

Charak.9761:

GuestGate 2014 \o/

^ This.

Remember when world bosses were buffed because they didn’t want people standing around auto-attacking. At least with the zergball we had to move from boss to boss to be successful. Now we are literally standing around and straight up turreting.

I don’t see what the problem was with have the zerg for the assault knights pre-event when the portal to the Prime hologram splits the zerg anyway.

No one in the history of ever has enjoyed or remembers how they enjoyed a game because of how hard it kicked their kitten .

Maybe if content and achievements were less challenging and/or a pain in the rear to do we wouldn’t need to hide in the corner or afk-leech for their rewards.

“To encourage players to split up, the boon from the associated Attunement Pool will now be required in order to damage each Assault Knight, and only 50 players can have the attunement for each color simultaneously.”

It also doesn’t say that even with the appropriate attunement players deal 50% less damage than prior to hotfix.

Darkhaven got zero knights down. Yea, zero. I guested to another server and into an overflow that got Blue and Red down, players went to help Green and overscaled the boss and didn’t have enough attunements to compensate.

Punished for trying to participate positively and cooperatively.

Thanks a lot.

At the brink of our impending victory, are there any plans to refurbish the formidable flying fortress and pinnacle of holographic technology into some form of pseudo-holodeck for recreating past experiences of Living Story chapter 1?

There’s a certain little asura who is not only qualified to handle said technology but would also express great interest in researching past events leading to the rise and fall of Scarlet.

For Science!

Took me 2 hours of trying every skill combination in the book. Eventually succeeded with time warp and sheer dumb luck. Left with 3 alliance bags and a sour taste in my mouth.

So… despite the fact that we knew she was coming, Scarlet successfully invades Lion’s Arch, one of the oldest and most fortified strongholds in all of Tyria, with a handful of dredge and krait, consquently forcing the retreat of Tyria’s most skilled and lethal champions, many of whom had banded together to slay an elder dragon already. At this point she drills into the harbor until she hits some blue goo that then travels 5-6 some odd zones west into Maguuma jungle where it awakens a sleeping elder dragon?

I can’t imagine why more people didn’t predict that.

Invictus.1503:

With mesmer I did the following:
1) focus 4
2) blink
3) dodge big red AoE
4) timewarp
5) finisher

This got me the win and achievement quick.

This. (hiccup)

After about 2 hours (hiccup) of trying mirror images +distortion, mass invis, decoy, mantra of concentration, signet for random procs of aegis, weird assorted dodging/blinking/phase retreating nonsense, the deciding factor to this achieve ended up being time warp.

I didn’t think they’d ever release an achievement I’d hate more than the Not So Secret dive location, but Nowhere to Hide is about as much fun as food poisoning.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No, Abaddon’s power was absorbed by Kormir. But Abaddon himself has been completely destroyed.

I suppose you believe Tybalt is dead as well?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Based on what we currently know, what they can’t do is increasing, and what they can do is decreasing, with each passing year.

There’s no way to say either way since we haven’t been introduced to them nor have any characters made mention of them yet.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

They don’t represent all magic in Tyria.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The Bloodstones are not the embodiment of all magic on Tyria.

“In 1 BE, he (Abaddon) spread magic to the races of Tyria, and thus was indirectly responsible for the wars that came afterward. King Doric pleaded to the gods and they rendered magic into the five Bloodstones, diluting their gift.”

That pretty much encompasses all magic that doesn’t belong to the gods.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

She wouldn’t. She’s looking for something else. The strongest leyline, which leads somewhere.

There’s no evidence to suggest otherwise. The theory that she’s using the probes to find Mordremoth is just as easily debunked by the fact that Sylvari are immune to dragon corruption.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

One: Abaddon is dead. Not just dead, he died in the Mists. That’s like extra-dead with more dead on top, and a special sauce of not-returning-anymore.

Two: The Bloodstones are weakening. They are slowly leaking their magic back into the land. They may no longer be as powerful as they used to be.

Three: We have no reason to assume the Bloodstones can be used to bring anything back to life.

1.) Abaddon was absorbed into Kormir.
2.) Maybe, but there’s no telling what they can or can’t do after hundreds of years.
3.) Considering one represents Preservation, and that all of them combined represent all the magic in Tyria I don’t find it much of a stretch.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The leylines are not tied to the Bloodstones as far as we know. Plus, you don’t need probes to locate Bloodstones. We know where some of them roughly are. But she doesn’t seem to be after those. She’s after Lion’s Arch. There’s no Bloodstone underneath Lion’s Arch.

If ley lines channel magic around the world and the bloodstones are the embodiement of all magic we know in Tyria, how are they NOT interconnected?!

Even if I rescind my speculation about Abaddon or a corrupted Kormir, why would she need dozens of energy probes to find Lion’s Arch?

I see a lot of people throw out Mordremoth and Primordius, I don’t hear a lot of theories about the energy probes. Let me know what you think of this theory I came to:

…I do think she may be trying to revive and restore Abaddon’s power using the Bloodstones. One can only speculate WHO Scarlet saw to motivate her towards these ends. It could have been Abaddon himself, a corrupted Kormir, Dhuum, etc. That kind of story arc would be worthy of a new chapter in Living story/expansion.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Scarlet is using her probes to research the ley lines in order to find the Bloodstones. I also believe they are an important focus of the Eternal Alchemy, potentially reinforcing Taimi’s research and role in things to come.

The Sylvari teaching “Act with wisdom, but act.” bears resemblance to “Act with magic, act within reason, act without mercy.” Which may explain why she and “certain other Sylvari” are more impressionable.

Going off the idea that Abaddon still has some kind of connected power with the Bloodstones through the Eternal Alchemy, one of them may be buried beneath or near the Pale tree. This could make him potentially responsible for the Nightmares within the Dream, as well as corrupting Scarlet and the Nightmare Court into a new army of Margonites. During Omadd’s experiment, I believe Scarlet revisited her nightmare, and her role in the events to come.

“She saw Tyria and the Mists; she saw the insurmountable challenge of the future and her people’s part in it—the sylvari of the tree and the Nightmare Court, Caithe and Faolain—all part of a grand design. And for the first time in years, she heard the voice of the Pale Tree, begging her to go no further.”

I think it’ll most likely be Rox.

Taimi: Despite the fact that nearly every single Asuran in the personal story dies… anyone who kills off a cute, charismatic, cripple Asuran child is literally a terrible human being.

Marjory & Kasmeer: They’re not going to kill of either half of this budding couple and I don’t think even if their characters and relationship were more developed, it wouldn’t be worth it as a plot device.

Braham: I had mixed feelings on him. Insecure with his relationship with Eir but shows potential to be a great soldier/leader. I think it’s more likely we see him grow than get killed off.

Rox: A stalwart, hard working, soldier-type with a human side people can relate to. Has guilt and remorse for losing her warband. One of the better developed and likeable characters of the group.

I think fans of the story might get a little choked up at Braham and Frostbite standing at a little grave in Ascalon.

Kanenas.4906:

snip

While I don’t think she’s the reincarnation of Abaddon, I do think she may be trying to revive and restore his power using the Bloodstones. One can only speculate WHO Scarlet saw to motivate her towards these ends. It could have been Abaddon himself, a corrupted Kormir, Dhuum, Abaddon’s unnamed predecessor, etc. That kind of story arc would be worthy of a new expansion.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Scarlet is using her probes to research the ley lines in order to find the Bloodstones. I also believe they are an important focus of the Eternal Alchemy, potentially reinforcing Taimi’s research and role in things to come.

The Sylvari teaching “Act with wisdom, but act.” bears resemblance to “Act with magic, act within reason, act without mercy.” Which may explain why she and “certain other Sylvari” are more impressionable.

Going off the idea that Abaddon still has some kind of connected power with the Bloodstones through the Eternal Alchemy, one of them may be buried beneath or near the Pale tree. This could make him potentially responsible for the Nightmares within the Dream, as well as corrupting Scarlet and the Nightmare Court into a new army of Margonites. During Omadd’s experiment, I believe Scarlet revisited her nightmare, and her role in the events to come.

From the wiki:
“She saw Tyria and the Mists; she saw the insurmountable challenge of the future and her people’s part in it—the sylvari of the tree and the Nightmare Court, Caithe and Faolain—all part of a grand design. And for the first time in years, she heard the voice of the Pale Tree, begging her to go no further.”

(Holds out three crisp twenties.)
TAKE MY MONIES!!

Shpongle.6025:

Avoid the orange on the floor.

Squee Squashington.5189:

Just because you got it doesn’t mean there aren’t bugs.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

And more ideas?

Keep trying

treborIRL.4521:

I finished up the rest of my achievements on my servers marionette kill last night, they are definitely not bugged.

Just because you got it doesn’t mean there aren’t bugs.

Moshari.8570:

The only thing we have had trouble with was the /cheer command, both me and several friends are not seeming to get that even though we have tried to cancel out of the cinematic and /cheer, we tried waiting until cinematic ended and /cheer, and we have tried it after going up to the chest…still haven’t gotten the acheive….anyone have ideas what we are doing wrong?

You have to do it just before the cinematic. Best advice is to copy /cheer into your clipboard and spam ctrl+v when people get to the end of chain 5.

Bombs on Warden III only hit for 95% hp, even when triggered by other players.

>.>

Stacking for organization is reasonable. Stacking for the purpose of stacking might or other buffs defeats the purpose of evenly distributing players to separate platforms for an encounter designed for a small group.

Zanthrax.6538:

" The entire game was never for you ", so why did arenanet say this content requires highly co-ordinated players and encourages people to critique their builds etc, when clearly casual players don’t do that. Perhaps there IS room for both casual easy content and hard content in a game. Also you said " At least when I want an easy game, it doesn’t exclude people from rewards or content " You still experience the content, you will never down it unless you improve but you can experience it while still getting the rewards. See living story meta achievement. Obtainable with dailies. The only thing you don’t get? Purely cosmetic skins. How does that not seem fair?

The current state of the game compared to the “vanilla” incarnation differ so immensely they might as well be considered different titles.

I don’t mind having some sort of endgame with moderate challenge regarding difficulty or time requirements, but I feel the powers that be have forgotten that a substantial portion of their player based comes from games that they left because they not longer wanted to play a game that felt like a job. Drudging through content isn’t fun for everyone.

They barely run/succeed at Teq, Wurm Trio, or Marionette on my server any more. I don’t know what further math you’d need to see that there’s a problem.

I PLAY HOW I WANT!

Still have no idea why I didn’t get credit for Warden V, but I’ve discovered that if ANOTHER PLAYER on your platform triggers a bomb on Warden III that downs you, you are once again prevented from getting your achievement.

>.>

Valor Singus.7049:

The consequence, of course, is that some players either can’t, or won’t put in the effort to develop. Some will drop the game, while others will stick to their safely determined routines. I would wager that ANet is entirely aware of this, however, and considers it acceptable so long as they don’t do something that epically screws things up and alienates the entire base. Since even Tequatl didn’t -quite- do that, and they seemed to have learned from some of the mistakes made there, just as they will from the ones made with the marionette, then by all metrics they are doing their jobs well.

Rift, SWtoR, and WoW: Cataclysm lost a lot of players to time and difficult, annoying, and/or unengaging endgame. Since we’ve already started down this road, what’s the X and Y% on players that will leave with ESO, WoW:WoD, Rift 3.0, or various other non-MMO titles on the horizon.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The average skill level rises, and in turn, we devs can make more interesting events that utilize the depth of the systems we have.

Gene Archer.8560:

I truly wish devs and players alike would stop trying to force other players to “get better at the game”.

If the average players wants to improve their skills, they will improve their skills. What you’re trying to do is force people to improve their skills. And yes, it is forcing because if they don’t get better, then they don’t get to take part in the content and take part in the rewards.

1.) Elite/moderately skilled players are punished by the casuals who fail, consequently preventing them from being rewarded for their efforts.

2.) Less skilled players not only do they not enjoy or take part in content but they also become the scapegoats for the frustration had by the many players who were doing their jobs, indirectly supporting stress and bullying between players. And before someone drops the PR response about reporting harassment through a ticket to support, YOU did this. YOU created an unhealthy situation and negative playing experience for many players, and you want to raise the bar even higher?!

3.) You, as developers, need your players to play better?

Ayrilana.1396:

Or there’s a damage threshold and greatsword auto attack the entire fight on mesmer doesn’t give you credit.

Combat log doesn’t show phantasm damage.

Regardless if you like fluff, high challenge content, or somewhere in between, there’s no doubt that LS, GW2’s “endgame,” is becoming a very negative play experience.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I got Deregulator without problems, myself…

I think another requirement is that you can’t be downed at all during the fight.

It’s also possible that you take damage from orange AoE while still in the loading screen.

Doesn’t explain the OP’s combat log though.

That might explain why I didn’t get it on 3 since I was downed by a bomb, but like you said doesn’t account for 5.

Regardless, not getting credit because of a hit by the Warden is pretty dumb.

It may also be possible that Marionette Deregulator is bugged considering have completed the events with successful chain breaking for 1, 2, 3 & 5 and only have 60% credit.

I’m pretty sure Darkhaven hasn’t gotten it.