Guild Wars 2

D’oh. Had to actually look up the history in the wiki, was so long ago.

That was either ‘Daily Events’ or the later ‘Event Mentor,’ which counted events from any source – including WvW (which is where I got a lot of my monthly Event count done in the old version – daily usually done in 20-30 minutes there, monthly about 80% done in 4 hours or so).

In that case, a ‘regional’ event set is closer to possible, with a little extra legwork on how the zones work. I certainly support the change, but we may not get something like that until after the expansion hits.

Pockets.3201:

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

Another solution would be to have multiple zones assigned in a round-robin fashion, perhaps on login. But then its no longer a simple list that’s assigned once, so may not be as server-friendly or coding friendly.

Or maybe just have it regional, like the gathering is?

I’m not sure that’s possible, yet.

Everything we’ve experienced so far with the DE system is exclusively at the zone level, including the two LA meta event sequences. Our one ‘main’ example of event influence from launch – the Orr temples – has been broken by how the megaserver system works too. So at the moment things are tied at the zone level (instead of region) for events.

Unfortunate, really – I liked the feel of the old Orr in that respect. It gave me the same sense of ‘living to make the world better’ that I had in Eve. You don’t get that with Megaserver, though the two new maps are showing it may be possible in other ways. We’ll have to see how the expansion plays out I suppose.

Pockets.3201:

I don’t think this is nearly an extreme enough drop in damage to fix the event issues, and really hope they wouldn’t try this as the solution to their poorly thought out daily.

They just need to stop trying to cram everyone into the same zone and it really would be much less of a problem right there.

Another solution would be to have multiple zones assigned in a round-robin fashion, perhaps on login. But then its no longer a simple list that’s assigned once, so may not be as server-friendly or coding friendly.

I’m coming to this late, but want to remind that some of us are not physically able (RL) to use Zerk or similar ‘optimal’ builds, but would still like to have a relatively efficient run. Thankfully its been easier to open with ‘note that I have bad wrists, but am still familiar with the class mechanics, just can’t zerk’ and not be immediately kicked.

I have also been quietly watching how HoT has been developing, to see if the new area will be worth my time. So far that might be yes, but not on a regular basis (probably because I’m more interested in any WvW changes to entice me to stay around again).

I’ve made similar suggestions that may work out better (for ArenaNet, not the players). The idea was to turn the meta on its head by altering rewards by player mode (ultra hardcore to casual) rather than transient strategies used on said servers. Individual players can then pick a server based on their specific level/intensity of play.

For example, Gold would effectively become competition/prestige servers. PPT and WXP are practically the only things players will earn in abundance on these maps – the Edge map can be used for the rest.

The bottom tier servers would become ‘new player/inactive’ focused: New players are now auto-assigned one of these on first login, and have to earn their way up the Leagues via WXP levels. Anyone, in any Tier, who has not set foot on the original five WvW maps in X weeks are kicked down here too – and yes that would include me. These special servers would rotate color every week, regardless of Glicko standing, and transfer costs between them are always the minimum. [This specific idea I’ve been tuning the most, as its something that could be implemented on its own.]

I would prefer a gradual system of reward changes though, so that going from top of Silver to bottom of Gold won’t immediately spark an exodus. That’s a much harder problem. But I’ve always felt the stacking/spreading problem won’t go away unless both carrots and sticks are handed out through the entire tier system.

Vayne.8563:

TSW as far as I know also gives expansion content for free, and as I mentioned earlier EQ 2.

The thing is, it’s not unheard of. It happens.

Not quite. TSW bundles (say on Steam) will usually include the oldest ‘expansion’ content, but not the most recent ones.

I knew that going into TSW last October/November. Not a bad attempt for me (given my wrists). But if that is what a ‘mild level’ grindy MMO is like, then I’m not likely to continue it – at least not regularly. Still got my $20 worth, easily, those two weeks I tried it (really nice lore/immersion btw, if you’re into horror or ‘dark days’ genres).

As for cost of an expansion: Depending on the cost and frequency of paid expansions, you can technically turn (twist?) a ‘buy once’ game into a ‘stealth subscription.’ Yes, it would cost less than ‘normal’ subs, but you still generate a somewhat steady revenue. Some may argue the expansion route is more stable actually (meh, not sure about that myself). So I’m wary of the announcement (more interested in the content, not costs), but will hold judgement for now.

Since I like a ‘wrist friendly’ playstyle, my list.

Favorites:

- Guard has been my go-to character in anything ‘serious’ like dungeons / fractals, WvW etc because its forgiving to someone who does not have good reaction time (or in my case, sometimes hitting the wrong key, because a finger cramped for pushing too hard). I can still build in good DPS, while having enough defense/heal to not die when I’m forced to take a hit now and then.

- My Engi and Necro are mostly used for general exploration. The engi is the closest I have to map completion (just need WvW), mostly because of the shortcut hops available from rifle (he’s never used pistol or shield). Necro is a minion mancer, and it works for me since I treat him as leading his own private strike team; Being able to switch from melee to ranged is nice too, and makes him the character I always bring to help folks doing Crab Scuttle.

‘On the Fence’ list:
- Mesmer and Ranger. My two newest characters – both max height Charrs :-) – are probably being tarnished in my personal review because they are affected by the Traits changes. Ranger has been better there, she does well without picking traits so far, but I’ve also settled on GS/LB due to how general PvE tactics work with my own limitations. I did settle on birds/cats as my main pets though, the utility is better for me (and I have general aversion to bears anyway). I’m still needing the WvW wolf to round out my general pet list…

Dislikes:
- Thief, Ele, and Warrior (in my own case only). I love all three classes, love their mechanics, and have seen some amazing feats done in all three by former guildmates and various live streamers. But I don’t have the dexterity and reaction time (let alone enough painkillers) to play these effectively. Regardless, my hat’s off to those who can.

Torsailr.8456:

You mean like this?

Jaymee.1560:

One thing that always popped out to be by any mail that ArenaNet actually sends its player is… the Arena Logo is also in the letterhead. Nice big red lego right there, always tells me the email is official. It’s actually very hard to miss.
!https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/176799/gw218.jpg!

That does not always work, at least not immediately.

As an ironic case in point, I’ll cite my own experience with this one – been involved with the internet for well over 20 years now (thanks to college), and been a Unix Admin for almost that long too. But my heart still skipped a beat and freaked out a little when I got one of these (censored) emails this morning. :p

Thankfully, the first thing that caught my eye was the yellow text at the bottom, so I eventually deleted it and continued on. It was pretty well done actually (in English at least), and if it weren’t for the horribly mangled URL I probably would have been contacting ArenaNet directly to find out what in Grenth’s name was going on…

@Gaille – again, thanks for the heads-up, and the changes ArenaNet been making in this respect. But I think this highlights a opportunity to expand on the NPE. The old help did some highlighting of the in-game mail system – not always in the best ways, but at least it was covered. We seem to have lost that now. Would it be possible to add a new clickable on one of the early levels, to highlight mail again at least? A summary of your information here could (hopefully) get pushed out more to early players.

I’d also suggest a reminder of some sort – in game, not just here. The frequency for that type of notice is always tricky, but if you’ve got the ‘last login’ info for our accounts, it should not take much work to tailor things for individuals. Use your triggering system involved with logins perhaps? I dunno, but going the extra step could go a long way.

Shorah Gaile.

As a programmer / project manager myself, I understand the reasoning behind not fixing it. Still find it a bit of a bummer though. :| I suspect a lot of us used that one for completing the old monthly easier (though I can probably get three with a couple busy sessions in WvW or EotM).

Thanks for the update regardless. Have a good X-Mas week…

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

I don’t think this can be fixed without completely reworking the transfers and world system. People who want to play wvw will want to be on a winning team. That means there will probably always be a few tier one teams playing each other over and over.

I’ve brought up the idea of making separate groups of servers to serve different playstyles, though originally that was just to make Gold/Silver/Bronze different.

A consolidation of what I have in mind now would be something like the following:

General: All the below groups are new servers. The existing world sets will stay in ‘maintenance mode’ for 6 months while guilds decide and move. One discounted (1/3 cost) transfer to everyone who logged into WvW (not EotM) within two months of the rollout. Also, only siege is allowed to take out walls and doors (balanced by having the ballista take out doors, from a distance).

For EU’s language-based servers, I’m up for suggestions, since I’ve not had experience there. EU could have 9 servers in Groups 2/3 to allow for that, while NA can live with 6 in those.

Group 1: Inactives / New Players / Returning Players. 3 Servers. No cap, no Glicko, constantly rotated in color each week, not in Tournament. All ‘inactive to WvW’ accounts (not entered a BL/EB/OS for three months) will be re-assigned here on a regular basis, with a discounted transfer out available. All new accounts go to one of these servers automatically (choosing is no longer an option), with one free transfer available after one month (hopefully by then the player has one L80, and roamed around a bit). Players may voluntarily transfer to one of these for 400 Gems, and transfer between them for 400 Gems each week without penalty. This setup could easily double for GvG matches as well.

Optional – A second set of ‘Group 1’ servers, using PvP characters instead of PvE. These will not be part of EotM though.

Group 2: Normal. 6/9 servers, WvW as you see it today, is part of Tournament, and are part of the Glicko ladder (can move in and out of Group 3 ranking, below).

Group 3: Hardcore. 6/9 servers, part of Glicko ladder and Tournament. These high-ranked servers are focused around scoring. PvE-type rewards are reduced here (amounts debatable, but should be less – could be offset by raising XP/WXP a bit). Bloodlust removed if appropriate (depends on scoring changes). Remove all Ambient and Yellow/Red creatures that are unrelated to scoring (partially for changes in strategy, partially for optimizing server load). Maps do not upscale (optional).

As an earlier poster said, one of the main problems in adjusting the RNG system here is balancing that across multiple playstyles – casual through hardcore. It would be useful for this discussion if we knew which of these you’re intending to focus on the most now (though my money has always been on the casuals).

With that in mind, John’s 2.5 suggestion (in OP) is probably the best for now.

Also, an important step towards balancing the RNG (at least here) would be making it more visible to a player when DR is in effect. Some method that helps dispel or deflect the discussions that come up around DR, when RNG is discussed. Once that is in place, you should have a better foundation to debug any problems with creating a ‘balanced’ RNG system (screenshot or ‘player status snapshot’ supplied with the bug report).

You could also consider offering a ‘well rested’ account buff, when offline for a certain number of hours/days (up to some modest maximum). It would not last long (perhaps 2-3 hours), but would help the more casual players a little bit. The content of such a buff is up for debate elsewhere, but would probably include increased MF.

tolunart.2095:

There are already token systems in the game. If they were utilized more by the player base, they would be expanded upon, but they are not. In fact many players care about the tokens only to the extent that they can be converted to gold (using karma and skill points to produce items to sell on the TP, for example, and forging/salvaging equipment bought with dungeon tokens), so there is not much incentive to create new tokens that will just be converted to gold.

A valid point, but I believe that’s partially because those vendors don’t deal exclusively in ‘their’ currency – selling and buying.

Why not have Karma vendors only buy your stuff for Karma instead of gold (1 copper in normal vendor == 1 Karma)?
Or trade in Rare items to a vendor in Dry Top for 5 Geodes?
Or a Rare item to a WvW vendor for 5 Badges of Honor?
And so on. Possibly including Laurels and dungeon tokens.

Its less efficient than just selling those items for Gold, sure, but why not allow that ‘end run’ around using Gold/TP for your needs? You could even have these vendors accept non-salvagable items at that point. To re-balance some of this, however, it may require ‘adjustments’ to the items being sold by said vendors. A bit of a left-field idea, but one I’ve not seen covered yet.

Two Traits-related items:

1) Add a discounted ‘trait trainer’ to your home instance (at least half-cost for Master/GM traits), for 1200 Gems. Gem Store only.

2) Item to unlock all Traits (must be L80 to use, can re-use the Trait Reset icon). Cost of 800-1000 Gems per character. Added to BLC as Rare item as well.

3) unrelated to traits, but a long-standing concern: Drop the cost of Upgrade Extractor by 25-30%, even if for a trail period, and see if that helps sales.

Are these only for the BL tickets, or for the other tickets during LS1 as well?

I still have two Dragon Jade tickets lying around – will I be unable to use those? I believe these have a different weapon vendor.

So I picked up a small PCIe SSD, as a ‘caching’ disk for certain games (including some of my longer-lived/mod-heavy Steam installs, and probably my various Uru installs). GW2 is on the short list, but its already on my main OS disk (a WD Blue).

Will a copy of the game folder work, or is a reinstall needed? I know some MMOs (like Eve) only use the starting directory for settings, so copies work well there. But some other games are heavily Registry tied, which would require a reinstall to move those.

Would have just done the re-install, but the folder is huge, and took a couple hours to do it last time. :/

[For the curious – this is a Plextor M6e, 128 Gig version, in my 4x slot. Scary boot at first, btw – it took over and started up, then let the motherboard go to POST. Sheesh.]

DonQuack.9025:

Actually has happened to me. Forgot about those “no” value ones. therefore I guess my 75% is relatively valid.

Technically, no booster has no value anymore (except the WXP ones perhaps). You can drop a couple gold on a stack of enchantment powder, and convert those into something else you’re interested in (in my case, converting a bunch of killstreak boosters I’ve been collecting the past couple years).

My original suggestion disappeared at the end of the ‘changes coming to NPE’ thread (which promptly ended up on page 4, unfortunately). It took time because I wanted to level a character – at my pace – under the new system(s) before giving larger feedback.

My TLDR of the post boils down to ‘Please add Trait Unlocks to the new Content Director.’ At the very least, it would create a ‘nicer’ tie-in of the April trait change to the recent Leveling/CDS changes. My preference is for a separate drop-down entry, but I’ll take anything right now; as mentioned above, I find the trait disconnect rather jarring, and its caused a leveling ‘plateau’ on the new Mesmer a couple times now.

A (somewhat) more cynical solution would be a gem-based, home instance ‘unlock’ of the trait trainers (similar to the various resource node unlocks). These folks would sell traits at much reduced gold/SP costs from the public ones; It would still be a gold and SP sink, just not as big. And yes, I would probably buy this in an instant.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t know if you’re qualified to talk about “pure torture” as far as gaming goes. Not until you go back and try chocobo breeding for a gold chocobo . . . as an introduction. Afterwards we can discuss “NetHack”.

Have I mentioned that my three years in Eve Online was (mostly) as a Miner, or other form of ‘crafting’ industrialist? Or the 3-4 years in Uru/UU with static content? (we made our own) As for NetHack, I was a fan of Larn actually, and the occasional foray into a ‘Xanth’ zone in a DikuMUD I frequented in college (I honed my touch-typing skills playing MUDs – this was before tintin existed).

I’ve spent the past month leveling a Mesmer through the new format. This is my first serious attempt at playing/learning the class, so I’ve tried to do this like I did my first character – don’t touch crafting etc much, just do the content presented, and when buying new gear keep the costs down.

As of now, the character is L57, with her first three minor traits unlocked over the weekend. I did eventually hit a ‘slump’ in the early 40s, which I caved in and tossed my meager stack of level-up tomes at to get through it. Oh well. I plan on bringing the character to 80 and gearing her anyway, as the class has started to grow on me.

My biggest likes so far: relatively steady leveling, reasonable rewards (especially for L10 and L30 story ending), the ‘class specific’ drop system helped a lot at early levels (saved a lot of coin at one point by upgrading the chest armor from loot), unlock of Utility 1/2 came with one free skill unlock (no one’s mentioned this yet, that I know of), and the changed pacing allowed me to take more time in working out the Mesmer’s fighting style.

My biggest dislikes so far: the ‘stat slump’ mentioned before (using Bloodlust sigils to counter this), slightly ‘meh’ rewards for L20/40 Story end (still better than before though), trait unlocking (which I found surprising to me, but I unlocked the above mentioned traits first to help survive better).

The lack of ‘content direction’ for Traits (in a system where you get everything pointed out now) is also very jarring. It may have worked for the April patch, but now its not fitting in well.

My biggest suggestion? Add the Trait Unlock locations to the CDS, or at least the map.

Xillllix.3485:

The first step to fixing the population imbalance is to clean up the server population from PvE players and older players no longer playing WvW or the game.

As it stands now servers are “full” yet they do not have the same WvW population at all.

I find this idea interesting, and would like to expand on it a bit using (mostly) current mechanics:

- Create three new ‘meta’ servers outside the Glicko series; they will rotate color weekly, have no login cap, and not participate in Tournaments. ‘Seed’ these servers initially with any accounts that have not logged into the game more than 6 months. Willing transfer onto these servers would cost 400 gems (same cost to transfer between them afterward), but you are initially assigned a server at random. Transfer out would be the cost of the target server.

- Implement a hidden ‘timer’ on the backend that tracks the last time a player has entered a normal WvW map (EotM excluded). After one month of not entering a map, you will be sent a warning email (second warning after two more weeks). After two months (eight weeks), you are re-assigned to the mini-cluster above on a random server.

- Players sent to these ‘meta’ servers (due to inactivity) will be given the ability to transfer back to their original server, at half its current cost. This should be stated in the ‘automated transfer’ email.

- These three servers may need adjustments to karma and gold later, depending on any resurgence of activity. Some small ‘perks’ may also be applied to anyone on these servers – permanent ‘no armor damage on death’ (or just permanent Outmanned) on everyone (including in EotM) would be a small, if useful start. The idea here is to turn them into ‘training’ WvW servers for new or returning players (I envision the atmosphere to be like low-sec space in Eve).

Have another +1.

I made this suggestion in the Guilds CDI, of all places, as I consider it a QoL change to both WvW and Guilds (due to the Global setup now). We’ve had folks organizing a dungeon run, only to realize at the gathering spot that one or more members are on the wrong region cluster. The same goes for WvW runs – most of Operation Union / Legion of Honor is based on TC, except for the EU contingent and laggards like myself.

If the chats are using technology similar to the old IRC system, I believe it should be easy enough to implement.

I admit that I’ve actually taken part in WvW this time during a tournament, because the achievements are low enough that it can get a ‘foot in the door’ for the semi-regulars like myself (usually roam Militia style these days, not partied, but trying to stay within a group). Plus my wrists don’t immediately seize up in pain just looking at some extremely long list, like the last two – during those I left the game completely for other things.

But the complaints that ‘this is too few’ still has merit, since you included EotM as a valid source of events. Granted, I used that world map on the first week, but it was a long time since I did any PvP maps, and wanted to get back in the groove first. Had a very fun time that night too – never thought there would be an actual 3-way on EotM, but it happened for once.

The two main suggestions I’ve seen so far (either more events if EotM included, or less when removing it) are good to me. I regularly completed large swaths of the Monthly (like events and kills) in a couple 2-hour WvW sessions – relatively casual compared to most people posting here. So raising the weekly event requirement (even a little) is fine with me too.

Much prefer a system of ‘carrot’ style changes being applied, based on what League tier you’re in. Make all three unique in their own way.

1) Change NA League sizes from 6/9/9 to 9/9/6. A separate suggestion, but is linked partially to others.

2) The nine (perhaps six?) Bronze servers are placed on a constantly rotating match setup (independent of Glicko), but still gain/lose Glicko based on those matches. This would give more variety in Bronze, while giving a server there a better chance to rise toward Silver.

3) Remove Karma/Badge rewards from objectives (EotM in particular). Badges should be given instead for every enemy player kill (not from bags). I still see this being farmable, but not as badly. XP/WXP can stay as-is. (Yes this is a stick, not a carrot. Perhaps start by applying this to EotM, and see how that affects the map’s use.)

4) Add +%MF to Silver (ex. 50%) and Bronze (75%). Borderlands and EB only.

5) Remove Bloodlust in Gold. Its not as needed in the high-end.

6) Winners of Bronze/Silver Tourney are given X guaranteed weeks in the next tier up (regardless of Glicko, but if they qualify later they can stay). This works better in the 9/9/6 layering I mention above.

Again, my personal take on ‘spreading out’ the population is to encourage different play styles in each League tier, and give lower tier servers more mobility to climb up. I normally try to make suggestions within reasonable development limits (and leveraging current mechanics in the game), but its been very hard to do that in this case.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Regarding interest in lower-pop servers: I moved down from T1 in an effort to have a more relaxed WvW (less taxing to my wrists). This has mostly succeeded, but the Tourney is clouding that somewhat. We’ll see.

OK, I find the possibility of an infusion interesting (though a bit odd), but I’ve just scoured multiple searches and can’t find anything definitive about them.

Can you or someone else post a screenshot of an example item? I’m perfectly happy to sit corrected, if its not as bad as it turns out.

Wanze.8410:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The worst part is those weapons don’t even have unique skins, they are basically a trap for new players to waste all their money so they have to buy gems.

New players dont have 425 crafting profficiency. These are aimed at veteran players that want to craft them for their alts to level faster, as they lined out in the blogpost.

If that’s the case, then why so many ectos? That’s about 22 Gold per item, just from those, for an account-bound Exotic. At that point you’re better off crafting a set of Rares or standard Exotics.

Now, if the stat choices included the ‘harder’ ones like Celestial (or the ecto cost was for an ‘armor box’ set), it would be easier to swallow.

Though the key may have been pushed to a slightly later time period for a new character, the rewards that went with it were significantly buffed:

- Approx 3.5-4 levels running the L10 PS block (without boosts).
- The BL Key of course.
- A ‘white’ champ bag (contained level- and class-appropriate loot).
- 50 Luck (disguised as a ‘thank you’ from your Destiny’s Edge mentor).

For a starting character, that’s not bad at all. Even as a veteran, I find that to be pretty generous to a new character. Unfortunately it seems that after L15 the XP grind ‘bogs down’ again (probably use boosts to compensate here), and I found the L20 rewards to be a slight let-down after that (though the ‘choose your stat’ ring was an interesting touch).

The QoL discussion related to Halls is fine with me, but I have two closing notes:

1) The Hall could have some mechanic to reward altruistic play. For example, a small guild acquires the starter Hall (call it Tier 1), or its that size due to Influence purchases done by the guild so far. A vendor could be inside that rewards Influence – basically the ‘sell’ tab for your inventory on a vendor, but giving out Influence at a similar scale to Copper. This would only exist at the starting levels/Tiers, and getting less returns over time (for example, at T2 he only accepts toward speeding up anything in queue, at T3 its at 5:1 ratio, and T4 he no longer accepts). How to determine the Tier status is the tricky bit; If there’s been no tracking of total Influence spent then its all for naught.

The idea here is to create a separate sink for lower classes of items (for players that have no need for them), and in a way that also helps smaller guilds get some starting infrastructure in place.

[Edit – An alternative is to have this guy exist to ‘buy’ Merits as you get him more and more items (unlocked when Bounty Practice is available). Costs should expand in a linear fashion, similar to Luck – that way you’ll probably hit the DR on this guy around the same time you’re maxing on Merits.]

2) Related to Ohoni’s previous post: How about opening the various Home Instance doors, and replacing them with ‘star’ entrances? Or do something similar to the Order Gate system (i.e. at Trinity), where you talk to someone to determine if you want to go inside the Megaserver instance (no personal additions), or the player’s instance (personal additions etc). This opens up more areas for group interaction, while also keeping less instances running. It also leverages existing tech you have in place now, so should not take too long from a planning and implementation point.

Regardless, that will probably end my involvement for now, as I have no direct interest in the Halls themselves (I just like to view the challenges from a technical and social aspect).

Shorah and /salute

Castrin.8972:

wwwes.1398:

I strongly disagree with guild taxes. Seriously, I can already see how this would create rage if this were implemented as a feature.

I agree, in game tax system is bad. I’ve had to deal with it and it just never works the way it should and leaves many running to guilds/corps that have no taxes.

To expand on this: Taxing in Eve Online makes some sense because many of the structures and control areas are player-controlled in tangible ways – even in ‘safe’ space now. That does not translate very well (if at all) to GW2. This game was designed specifically to avoid this, which is one of the reasons I love it (my main reason? no tangible losses on death).

Zesbeer.8365:

my take on risks:

• the log of past guilds- this would encourage exclusivity
  • might add guilds that require that you have been in X guild for x amount of days.

This particular risk is major. I’d like to post an extreme example seen from Eve Online:

http://evewho.com/pilot/Alain+Kinsella

There is my main character’s entire history, including links to his forum and combat record (though I made efforts to mask the latter through an alt, which is now in the same corp – oh well :p ).

Jon/Chris,

Is there a technical problem preventing the addition of a simple /server chat channel? Though not directly related to Guilds, it would certainly go a long way to alleviate some Guild-related QoL issues introduced by Megaserver. It would also help as QoL for WvW, an added bonus.

As a programmer and SysAdmin, I don’t see this taking much of your resources to implement and test.

Since we’re partially discussing people’s use of the multiguild system, I’ll mention my own experience. My apologies ahead of time for any rambling.

My primary reason for being in a guild – in whatever form you call it – has always been to be with a like-minded group of people that I can hang out with, and enjoy the game with as well (to the point that I’ve sometimes helped a game’s overall community for several years after leaving the game – i.e. the Mysterium Con). In GW2 it’s partially aligned with the game mode, and for me it’s generally PvX with focus on Story PvE and WvW. That gravitates me to the Eve model of ‘one major group at a time.’

The problem I’m having currently is the disconnect between Guilds and Servers, as fallout from the last two major patches (as well as a drop in my personal activity in GW2, to something a bit/lot more casual). That eventually prompted me to drop down to another Tier/League, and in turn make some major changes to how I perceived Guild representation and ‘Militia’ in WvW.

This is where I find the Guild system to fall a little flat, but at the same time is one of its strengths. What I’ve settled into now is one primary guild for non-WvW stuff, and working with that server’s community group (out-of-game) for my WvW Militia needs. Now, this is specific to the more Casual player involved in WvW, which is why I’ve been tagging myself as Militia. I think a more hardcore player would not have this problem.

So how can we fix this? I love to be involved in many similar groups, which is great here – you adopted the Second Life ‘groups’ model for Guilds. But, as others have mentioned, I am unable to communicate with all of them at once. That is why I have stuck to Eve’s format, which probably runs opposite to the original goal here. The above suggestions (for opening up chat to several guilds at once) would certainly help with that.

And, though the ‘Rep problem will continue to pop up, I think we have enough mechanics in place now to let that fix itself from the social angle. It’s still not enough – we could use better tools here – but its also not as critical as leveraging the social aspects of guilds.

Again, my apologies for the rambling. But I hope outlining the problem from my own searching will highlight some of the problems.

SirJack.4760:

Also, for Elementalists:
F1 (Fire): Unlocked by default
F2 (Water): Level 4
F3 (Air): Forgot, but it was 12-13 I think
F4 (Earth): Level 20 and still locked.

At least you have nearly all the Attunements by 12-13. I’m surprised that Earth has not unlocked yet, given the remaining progression. Perhaps 25-30?

My L12 Mesmer still only has the first Shatter. Unfortunately the wiki has not been updated with the current level unlocks for these. I’m in no hurry with those though – I barely use them at this point, so hiding other Shatter options may have been a good idea.

If Yalora’s remaining posts are like the ones so far, I’ll just +1 the lot of them (even though I have some minor disagreements, they’re mostly at the nitpick level).

-=-=-=-

Chris, would it be possible for you to explain the current state of your ‘Guild Permission’ system, even if its a 200 foot view?

Right now, I see the permission system to be similar to UNIX’s ‘user/group/all’ config. What some of us are asking for is something a bit more granular, and I don’t think the current system will support that very well (please correct if wrong). I think its a good idea for us to know how easy/hard it will be for you to extend it; we don’t need the details, just a ‘SWAG’ type statement will do.

And I certainly don’t want it too complicated – like Eve for example (where a dive into a Corp Roles change can leave you wanting a stiff drink). The ability for you you to (internally) assign a simple role list to an easily expandable list of categories would probably be best, if that’s not done already.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

Shouldn’t there be a warning in the patch notes: if you are doing this arc your progress will be wiped out

If you were on the storyline pre-patch, you’ll still be on it post-patch. (Thought it might not be visible until you reach L70, since it’s in Chapter 7.)

Thank you for leaving that option open, if you were in that section.

I have a Norn Warrior sitting there to reserve the end sequence (I should probably just go and record that). My mother’s side of my family is of Norse decent; due to that, I had found Apatia’s small story to be the most tragic (and touching) of everything you had done around the Norn lore.

I do understand why (technically) you had to remove that step, and why it was chosen. And overall I’m OK with that. But the outpouring regarding Apatia’s RL ‘loss’ shows how well you did this particular story.

/salute

Sunshine.4680:

I just wish it didn’t have that awful stroking animation it does.

Actually, on a Charr that animation is different – it looks like they’re trying to stab the enemy with it. I find that fitting for the race.

I also like the suggestions to swap Orb for Wave. I’ve been trying Mesmer again (also a Charr), and its staff AA uses a bouncing orb. Re-using this base mechanic to replace the Guard’s Orb should not take much work.

I can understand the idea of “use the PvP character config in WvW”; I thought that was the direction they were toying with in WXP and similar mechanics.

But there are other (and hopefully easier) changes that could be done to change up how WvW works, while also giving various carrots to spread out.

- Remove Badges of Honor from all chests and NPCs. These are instead earned from player kills only (1 per recorded kill). AP chests are fine, but progression of badges here should be slightly smaller at the lower level chests.
- Same with Karma in WvW, but add increased bonuses for being in Silver and Bronze leagues. Add Karma rewards from increasing various WvW Achievement tiers.
- Lower droprate from NPCs, increase it from enemy player kills (again, increased more at Silver and Bronze).
- Remove the Bloodlust mechanic from Gold League.
- Change the NA Leagues from 6/9/9 to 9/9/6. Bronze servers (while not in Tourney) are placed in a rotating matchup, separate from Glicko, but scores for it are still calculated based on how each match went. This allows a low-tier server the ability to (re)build into Silver, either due to recovering from a blowout or just trying to push out of Bronze. Bronze rewards in Tournaments may need to be re-balanced in this format (though this could become self-correcting, if they push into Silver in the process).
- A more controversial suggestion: Winner of Bronze league is given two weeks guaranteed in the bottom of Silver (give them a little push to see if it sticks). Same for the Silver winner to Gold.

Edit – I know some of these can be seen as gamable, but at least its being offloaded to another player instead of an AI. Perhaps a ‘best case’ would be to apply the first three just to EotM (encouraging PvP here), and the rest can apply to normal WvW.

Very, very happy to see a thread discussing this. Thanks all.

Sylvari T2 Cultural has a tailcoat that works reasonably well. It still flaps around a bit, but the two ‘tails’ taper in-line with the legs (making the effect look almost like no coat).

For a few silver its not bad. I’ve combined it with T2 leggings and TA boots (T2 and T1 boots weren’t matching well on the color schemes for some reason). But due to that I’ll probably keep any further Medium classes to Sylvari (I already have Engi, can’t play Thief due to my wrists, so just Ranger to try again).

My current Rifle setup is Fire/Force, but I’ve considered replacing the latter with Intelligence, since my opener tends to either be a ‘sniping’ fireball from FT or Prybar from Toolkit.

How good is Air in a damage situation? I do see nice bursts coming from Fire (even when its only a Major sigil), but the guaranteed crits from Intelligence seems tempting instead (at least for PvE).

1) Replace it with the ‘sniper rifle’ tripods the Charr leave open in various parts of Ascalon.

2) For WvW – have ‘Mortar Mastery’ work with the Engi mortar.

To be honest though, I’d prefer any change at this point. It continues to be bugged enough that I’ve never spent the points for it. In fact I’ll usually pull up ‘Take Root’ (Sylvari racial) as an Elite option after Supply Drop.

As a ‘spendthrift’ player, I’m perfectly fine with Exotics.

I did leverage Laurels and Commendations, so that my usual dungeon running character has 20 AR through trinkets (with the option for 25, but that’s on a Cleric’s amulet). My focus is on helping others start out in various ways, so sticking to fractals below 30 (and usually below 20) is just fine with my current loadout. If I can get the rings infused (and steel myself to make Mawdrey /w infusion slot), running below L40 is possible too.

Interesting to see this come up.

I’ve mentioned Vivox a couple times here. All clients using it point to Vivox’s cloud, not the game’s, for the various comms. And is usually able to turn off with one click.

Does not even need integration: C3 is a free voice client system that is part of the Vivox cloud. Just need a halfhearted nod from ArenaNet or NCSoft (the latter I still see as TBA on Vivox’s customer list).

The cynic in me makes me suggest “maximum order size is now based on the collection max you’ve unlocked.” ;-) Some of the regulars here would probably salivate at this one, but I have no interest in it.

Some more interesting ideas (both Collections and Trading):

- Bought items from BLTP go straight to Collections, when appropriate. Same for any salvage materials, and various Crafted items that already have Collection slots.
- All LS ‘stacked’ items get Collections slots. i.e. Blade Shards, Mystic Cogs from first Wintersday, Foxfire Cluster, etc. This would free up about half a bank tab.
- Collection slots for Gem Shop stacked items (Boosts are the big culprit here, but also Revive Orbs, Repair Canisters, etc). This alone would free up almost two bank tabs. :p

- Ability to salvage the remaining Karma and Dungeon gear would be nice. I could then sell six Melandru off my armor (using BLSKs) instead of four. :p
- Trading of Dungeon Tokens and BoH. (I tossed this in for fun, I’ll have a heart attack if I’m right…)
- Trading of (currently) untradable minis. i.e. the Wintersday ones. I have no interest in them, let me sell them to someone who has an interest.

- A larger (enforced) gap for the buying and selling of Gems. Unlikely to be announced, but I eventually expect this for the long-term (using the WildStar cost ratios as a guideline, which I thought was a much better implementation of the PLEX setup).
- Re-balancing (mostly down) of some Gem Shop item costs. Keys would be a nice start, but there’s plenty of other targets for this. (Unlikely, but putting it out there anyway.)

I’m a bit in between – I’m happy when I can help others, and when others are happy that I was able to help. In that regard, I’m supposed to be part of GW2’s ‘core’ market, regardless if I’m casual or hardcore.

Recently, the past 18 months of T1 WvW had burned me out of this notion. So I made a couple of ‘life changes’ (including a server swap to Silver League and dropping the guild I normally rep’d), and that’s turning out better than expected (though I had not expected my server choice to suddenly jump to the brink of Gold league).

But the best experience I had was just a few weeks ago. I had just dropped the guild, and needed a pick-me-up, so joined a LFG post asking for PS help in Arah. Turned out it was the Arah Story dungeon (though I also helped one of the players speed through Source of Orr), and before long I ended up leading two guys new to Arah in a 3-man of the dungeon (in a WvW-fitted Guardian). This was a completely new thing to me; I seriously considered dropping in fright, but instead took a deep breath and said “OK, here’s what’s next…”

Was it hard? Yes.

Did my ideas always work? Of course not. :p

Was there any backtalk, badmouthing etc? No, we worked out each step as needed for our classes, and tried to help as we knew of the other’s. It was a good learning experience, including for me (I will be taking a fresh look at P/S Engi, and Ele in general after this patch).

Was it fun? OMG YES. They thanked me at the end, and were very happy about the whole thing (probably that it was over, but no matter to me). In hindsight, I should have asked about their guilds (would have joined either one instantly), but we had been at it for over two hours and all wanted to crash for a bit.

It is experiences like the above that make me continue to login to this game. Now if my WvW experience can be re-vamped to that level (including casual, friendly voice comms), I’d be 100% content for now. And with guilds disconnecting from servers, I may discuss re-connecting with my original guild again.

process execution.8014:

Hayashi.3416:

The current system where rares smash into less value than masterworks is absurd.

This is the root of the problem that prompted me to create this thread; I’m not beholden to ecto as the solution. It just seems like a logical extension to the existing salvaging system. As I mentioned earlier:

The level 68+ restriction just seems somewhat arbitrary to me.

• If I salvage a level 70 masterwork dagger, I get mithril ore and luck.
• If I salvage a level 30 masterwork dagger, I get iron ore and luck.
• If I salvage a level 70 rare dagger, I get mithril ore and ecto.
• If I salvage a level 30 rare dagger, I get iron ore and …nothing.

To the people concerned about the ease of crafting low-level rares: yes, they are currently cheaper than the ecto price and there would be some money to be made for market speculators. But that’s no different to any market shift. Eventually the market would stabilise, with the most likely outcome being that the lower tiers of crafting mats increase in value to match those of higher tiers. And given the huge volume of the ecto market, this stabilisation would happen quite quickly.

OK, I can get behind the core problem, but I’m still on the fence about ectos being the solution.

Adding Luck to the non-ecto Rares (at the same rate as Masterworks) would be a reasonable trade-off to me. It adds a personal value that not everyone would pursue, and is also an increased sink for those items (as one of the end materials are account-bound). Most of those items also salvage into middle-tier materials, that are used in Ascended; Placing the supply pressure there is less disruptive than doing that to Ectos.

Crafting your way into Luck will likely become just as expensive as crafting for Ectos (probably more), so I don’t see that as a deal-breaker either.

There was another discussion about this, but it appears that thread has moved on to page 3 or 4. I’m posting a clarified version of my suggestion here…

I was generally fine with the downscaling as it exists; it worked well in most situations, and probably would have worked fine with most of April’s changes. However, the Trait changes now have an older L80 (or even most 60+) be far more powerful than normal in lower level zones, due to having more traits to work with.

My suggestion is to tweak how downscaling affects trait and skill access, leaving the rest of the system alone:

Below L60 disables GM Traits.
Below L30 disables Elite skill.
Below L20 (starter zones) disables all remaining Traits.
Trait point allocation for the stats is unaffected, and may be re-assigned as needed.

The idea here is not to completely match a newer player (an 80 in Exotic or better will still do better), but instead to narrow the gap between the two in a given zone. In turn, this would (hopefully) allow the devs to re-balance each zone with an eye toward that general gap (perhaps to the point of removing Defiant use in early zones), and also be challenging to more of us. It also uses existing mechanics that (I hope) are easily applied.

Galen.9042:

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

Astral also has a very valid point – as it stands now, you can craft many L70+ rares now (with no ectos) and potentially salvage them for ectos.

It’s worth pointing out that those rares you can craft without ectos require 15 T5 crafting mats each. Those go for around 3 silver on the current market, making them cost around 45 silver just in mats. The rate for ectos dropping from salvaging rares is around 0.875 for Master kits and 1.25 for Black Lion kits, making the economic tradeoff slightly worse than just buying the ecto in the first place (given that BLKs either cost gems or are a rare daily reward, and thus can’t be relied upon to be always available).

On the topic, it would decrease the price of ectos in the market because there’d be more potential items producing them. That’s going to raise supply. I can see where the OP is coming from, but this change would have pretty major effects on the economy, since ectos are one of the most heavily traded items in the game.

Point taken. I’ve not done much heavy crafting lately, and when I was the cost on T5 was a lot less (this was before Ascended weapons came out). T5’s now have a ‘sink’ of sorts, since the primary end product is account-bound.

I’m personally on the fence about increasing the ecto drop/creation rate. As I’ve mentioned, I normally get enough for my needs in casual activity already, and their cost (overall) has been pretty steady the past few months.

@ OP, the dungeon vendors do give out Exotic (L80) items so there should be no ‘loss of value’ for the lower level tokens. Note that for armor, you may need to browse on another tab to see Exotics.

Astral also has a very valid point – as it stands now, you can craft many L70+ rares now (with no ectos) and potentially salvage them for ectos. I also get plenty of ectos salvaging the rares I get from guild missions and the occasional boss, to the point that I’ve been salvaging them for luck/MF.

Since this has now come up, I had a suggestion about downscaling in the works but wasn’t sure it would be received well.

-> Zones below L60 would disable Grandmaster Traits.
-> Zones below L30 would disable the Elite skill.
-> Zones below L20 would disable all remaining Traits. Skill #3 can stay.

This could, technically, affect dungeons as well, though they would only disable GM traits. Affecting Personal Story would be far more interesting (and in-line with character levels again, if you come back to it much later). And the mechanics for this already exist in-game, so there should be (crossing fingers) no major code changes involved.

Editing to add – its not that people want the game to be harder, they want a closer challenge in Metrica that they currently have in Cursed Shore (and in turn reviving the ‘replayability’ aspect of GW2, to more areas). My suggestion would not need you to change anything (equipment wise) in a normal L80 loadout, and would be a relatively easy step in that direction.

For a slightly more serious answer, I believe there was a mention someplace that all three server clusters (including China) are using the same code base.

What you’re seeing are probably items that will (eventually) be sold on the China gem shop. I find it extremely unlikely for them to be sold directly in NA/EU (more likely be dropping them in BL Chests – as TP sellable items).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There are a lot of important changes coming down and we don’t even know half of the ones that will be covered on the main website, never mind all the other stuff that we’ll find in the feature build.

Now, that might not be the content that some people want and it might not address individual concerns, but I, for one, am really happy about these, especially considering I don’t have to pay a cent to get them.

Agreed, though I still have reservations about what will happen to WvW in the future. After all, this set of changes have effectively disconnected guild membership with server membership.

Waiting to see what the ‘Fresh Start’ post on Thursday will reveal. I have a couple ideas for what could happen, but will hold my tongue for now.

I had an old suggestion in another thread, which basically leveraged the League system to change how each group of worlds play.

Gold servers would be changed to focus on PPT/Competition: Karma/MF/XP would be reduced (exception going to opponent players you take out), no Bloodlust (and/or use the old maps), only Siege can take out structures (no PvDoor), and so on. Tournaments that cross League boundaries would use these rules.

Silver is the current WvW.

Bronze I don’t have a good answer for anymore. My original idea was BvRvG (aka EoTM format on all maps), but I no longer believe that’s going to work. Open to suggestions here, but my core goal for this League was to cater toward more casual players like myself. Perhaps keep the Silver rules, but World Bonus advancement is earned faster.

Name: Sungak

Main Characters: Sargeon Leapur / Sognar Elkendan

Current Region/Server: NA – Crystal Desert (new transfer, as of last week)

Interested Activities: Anything Story (including LS2, PS, Story dungeons), Fractals (up to 29), Figuring out RSI-friendly character builds that still have some DPS to them. ;-) And hanging out on voice servers (which I find easier on me than trying to type a lot).

Active: Weekends, usually starting Friday night. Weekdays are all over the place, unfortunately.

Additional Comments: I work 3rd Shift US, so with the right group I could be online all Fri/Sat night.

Do you want to be a member of the guild Legion of Honour Y/N: Yes

Are you happy for people to contact you directly (whisper/PM) Y/N: Yes, though it will work best to friend me first, and check if I’ve set the ‘lfg’ status color. And be aware that I cannot physically run DPS builds – not if I want to be usable for RL work anyway. :p

I am currently between guilds – I dropped the one I was with prior to transferring, to prevent oddball Influence creation. Plus due to the T1 rank, WvW had gotten a little too ‘busy’ for my wrists to handle. So I traded down – presumably to T4, but looks like it just became T3 yesterday. chuckle