Guild Wars 2

This whole debate is pointless. If you have fun doing all the Hero Challenges, this nerf wouldn’t affect a thing. You’re completionist. You’re a completionist whether there’s the nerf or not and you’ll get it all done anyway. The difficulty is still there, the challenge is still there.

What the defenders of 400 HP cost don’t understand is that Elite Spec, if you are going on what ArenaNet have been saying for the past 10 months, isn’t meant to be some sort of holy grail for the long haul.

Getting a Guild Hall will take effort, getting the Legendary Backpack will take effort, getting Legendary Armor will take effort, getting your Masteries will take effort. Notice how ArenaNet NEVER once mentioned Elite Specs as part of their “end-game progression”. They want people to PLAY the Elite Specs.

If you enjoyed the journey to unlocking the Elite Spec, that’s great. I’m sorry some of the players here disabused you of that fun. I support you in that. But please understand the purpose of the Elite Spec (MAINLY) is to be played, not to be earned.

Ok finally managed to talk to Scout Acan. Only thing I did different was completing another story instance with another character.

sirjarros.4107:

human male scrapper

I just got to this story step 5 mins ago. I flew by him on a rock which was by the vista, across a ravine from his platform. he disappeared when i flew by and suddenly appeared over on his platform. I’ve tried gliding by him several times from different places to no avail. something definitely off.

also….it was night time when this happened, just in case that trigger has anything to do with it.

thanks for your efforts Matthew!

Update: (30 minutes later)
So, I logged out while posting here earlier. Came back and it was nightfall…again. So I figured I must have spawned in a new instance, because night doesn’t come back THAT fast. lol Long story short, i flew over to him and walked up on his platform and voila…he could talk!

Scout Acan did the teleporting act on me as well after choosing the Defend path.

Guild Goddess.2041:

No way I’m going to spend 500 gems to guest to finish this mission! Really people?

Guesting is free -_-’

Only Server Transfer will cost you Gems…

Tao.5096:

MatthewMedina.5419:

Good news, bad news.

Good news: with the sampling of people of all races and genders who’re experiencing this problem, we’ve ruled out the dialog not working for one or two of these combinations.

Bad news: It seems there’s something more sinister at work here. I’ll throw up a flare and see if I can get some coding support to look deeper into this.

Small dev note: We care greatly about your play experience and we are working as quickly as we can to get all of you unstuck. Please be nice to your devs who are coming in over the weekend and forgoing time with their families and loved ones to ensure that these issues get resolved as soon as we humanly can. Thanks!

I’ve noticed one thing.

Couldn’t talk to Acan after doing path with Defending the Itzel Village.
Could talk to Acan after doing path with Following Tizlak and pwning Mordrem outside of the Village.

Female Human(Warrior).

Same thing here. No problems when choosing Attack path with Asura Male Necro, couldn’t talk to Scout Acan after choosing Defend path with Norn Male Guardian.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

You can do the Boss Circuit. You’ll get at least one with each boss and they spawn every 15 minutes. It’s most effective once a day per account. Doing it more than that (on a second char) and you’ll lose the guaranteed rare, though you’ll get the big chest.

Here is one of the timers: http://gw2.limitlessfx.com

I’d agree with this before Megaserver implementation. Now, you’re best off doing Silverwastes’ Breach + Vinewrath. No faster way to get rares to salvage at the moment. Don’t bother with World Boss trains anymore unless ArenaNet fundamentally changes the World Boss/Server/Instance API feature.

Information accurate until after HoT launch.

Alukah.2063:

Sylum.1806:

a.) Megaserver.

This, all of my this. I used to do every single world boss (excluding balth) starting from reset and ending before midnight, even without guesting, the WB train was nearly nonstop, the zerg didn’t have to stop to do pres, as either me or a couple other people in my server would prepare pres ahead of time, but now the time table makes it impossible to do the same within the same amount of time.

I still do WBs because hey, variety, I never liked the champ train when it was a thing, SW can get as boring if you overdo it.

If you jumped between 3 servers, you wouldn’t even need to prepare pre-events, in fact, it was so hectic you had to choose which boss to catch first!

Avectius.3271:

I’m not sure if I’m thinking about this right, but right now, the thought of being able to get precursor weapons has spawned a dilemma for me.

So, one can either keep doing world bosses and the likes, and patiently wait for the precursor he/she wants for the legendary weapon he/she’s trying to craft, but that’ll take ages. Getting one is already rare enough, let alone the one you want. So then there’s gambling some gold on the Mystic Forge, and hope that you don’t have to spend a lot of gold to finally get your precursor. Finally, we have the good old Trading Post routine; just get a ludicrous amount of gold (either by farming or currency exchange) and there you have it.

Now, I’d hate to just farm for 900 gold or more, or spend close to 90 bucks on gems to exchange for gold, but thing is, how do I know I won’t end up spending far more than that on the Mystic Forge?

What should I do? Heck, what did you guys do? Precursors are by far where crafting a legendary weapon will hurt your real life/in-game wallet the most

1. If you need to spend money to change to Gold to buy Precursors, you must not have even a couple of hours to play GW2 everyday. My sympathies if that’s the case.

2. If you can play at least 3 hours everyday and cannot get a Precursor within 2 months without spending money, you’re doing it wrong.

Just to give you a perspective: I never got a precursor drop, I don’t trust RNG which is why I never use the Mystic Forge. I have 4 legendaries (Juggernaut, Bifrost, Sunrise, Incinerator, in that order).

I bought all precursors, and as you can see, they are all among the most expensive precursors.

I spent 20 months getting the first, 11 months getting the second, 3 months getting the third, and 2 months getting the fourth. If you can see a pattern there, I can tell you why in one word.

Silverwastes.

Yes, thanks to the Silverwastes, there’s never been a faster way to make money.

For context, I don’t do more than one Breach/Vinewrath in a weekday, and no more than 3 times on a weekend day. I do about 3 Tequatl kills, 1 Karka Queen kill and a Triple Trouble kill a day. I don’t do Chest runs in SW, I only do Dungeons on weekends, I don’t do Fractals.

Just sell all your rare weapons and salvage all your rare armors. That’s the trick. I won’t explain to you why, you’ll figure out once you understand legendaries and the market. Suffice to say, the ones who are going to fund your precursor by buying your Rares are those gamblers who think they can spend less time and gold getting their precursors by gambling on the Mystic Forge with your Rares.

I made an Incinerator in two months. Two months. From scratch. Didn’t spend a dime of real money. Think about that. And I don’t consider my schedule hardcore farming. My friend spent all his time in SW and made a Sunrise and Twilight in two months. If you’re complaining about how difficult it is to get a precursor, you’re really doing it all wrong.

Showbiz.9725:

The last few days I’ve been doing all the world bosses but it takes around 3 hours including downtime.

I’m curious which World Bosses are the best to do every day? Wouldn’t it actually be better to do Silverwastes instead of doing World Bosses at all? I feel like 3 hours spent in SW vs 3 hours doing world bosses would result in a lot more profit if you do SW. I’m kind of curious why there seem to be so many people that try and do every single world boss every day. I must be missing something?

Also, which world bosses can drop Ascended and Exotic gear?

Thanks

The answer to your 1st question is:

1st Tequatl kill of the day. Other than that, no other World Boss is worth the effort and time… not anymore. And you can thank ArenaNet for that.

Two reasons:

a.) Megaserver.

Since the game was changed to a Megaserver, some world bosses were put on fixed spawn times, the rest remain the same, triggered within a window, but absolutely no way to track which map instance the boss spawn is on since maps were no longer tied to servers, which meant no API to track which meant no timers to follow.

Before the Megaserver, in the same 3 hours, I could kill up to 18 bosses, and get at least 19 guaranteed Rares by guesting on Blackgate and Dragonbrand/Jade Quarry servers and jumping back and forth between servers to catch bosses using boss timers. It can get so hectic I have to make an educated guess which boss will die first so I can maximize my time and possibly catch all of them. It was exhilarating to say the least!

Frozen Maw
Caledon Great Jungle Wurm
Shadow Behemoth
Fire Elemental
Fire Shaman
Dredge Commissar
Modniir Ulgoth
Golem Mark II
Shatterer
Claw of Jormag
Foulbear Chieftain
Eye of Zhaitan
Megadestroyer
Temple of Lyssa
Temple of Dwayna
Temple of Melandru
Temple of Grenth
Karka Queen

Some clarifications:
Tequatl & Triple Trouble are not in the list because Tequatl wasn’t that easy back then and I had not yet joined TTS. By the time I was regularly killing Tequatl, it was already the Megaserver.

Taidha Covington and Temple of Balthazar were not included because they were incredibly unreliable to get going before the Megaserver. Actually the only bosses that were helped after the Megaserver were Taidha, Megadestroyer because they were so difficult to spawn.

Also, I said at least 19 guaranteed rares. This does not include the Grand Chest at Gates of Arah, which when looted almost always has at least a Rare. I experienced less than 10 times in a year, looting the Grand Chest from Gates of Arah without a single Rare.

Moreover, within these three hours, I can still catch World Bosses I already killed the first time in the day, a 2nd, even 3rd time using another Lv 80 alt and looting the Grand Chest for a chance to get 0-3 Rares.

In fact, considering that all Grand Chests of World Bosses have a chance to drop 0-3 Rares, my daily average for 3 hours of World Boss trains before Megaserver was 30. THIRTY RARES! Try getting the same result from world boss trains now, heck try getting the same results from 3 hours of Silverwastes farming!

Thanks to an inability to track Legacy Bosses (those not added to the fixed schedule) and a fixed spawning time, the Megaserver made world boss trains incredibly time consuming. But the death knell came with the 2nd reason…

b.) Silverwastes

The reason why only the first Tequatl kill of the day is worth the effort is because it is the only world boss that gives you anywhere close to the rewards of catching a 50%-70% prepared SW. A successful Breach + Vinewrath will net you a minimum of 4 Rares guaranteed plus a bunch of champion bags. That is about the same amount of time needed to get into a good Tequatl map and getting the kill.

So, in summary, thanks to the Megaserver and SW, don’t bother with world bosses unless 1.) it’s the first Teq kill of the day and 2.) you can get the Chest of Monstrous Goods daily reward from killing the world boss.

I do Karka Queen, Teq, and Triple Trouble once each day, only for variety and playing with my guild. Considering purely Rewards-versus-Time spent, I would never consider doing them at all. SW is the place to be for maximum value in farming.

To answer your 2nd question:

Some of the responses given earlier are incorrect. Tequatl and Triple Trouble are not the only World Bosses that give Ascended boxes.

The reason why they don’t mention other world bosses do, is because of its incredibly low rates. Consider the following:

I’ve been doing Triple Trouble for only a year, started doing Tequatl about half a year before that, but World Boss trains another year before starting Tequatl. In all this time, I’ve gotten:

From Triple Trouble (Remember, I’ve done this the least): 7 Piles of Regurgitated Armor and 2 Armor Boxes

From Tequatl (Remember, I’ve done this a year after I did daily World Boss trains): 4 Tequatl’s Hoards and 1 Ascended Weapon Box

World Boss Train: 1 Ascended Weapon Box from Shatterer Grand Chest, and 1 Ascended Weapon Box from Golem Mark II Grand Chest (Note: Grand Chest is the one you loot in open world, Bonus Chest is the icon above your minimap that guarantees at least a Rare)

And in case you were thinking only mid-level world bosses dropped them, my friend recently got his first Ascended from a World Boss (also from the Grand Chest, not the Bonus Chest), it was Frozen Maw, a low-level World Boss.

And finally I’ve opened thousands upon thousands of champ bags only ever gotten 1 Zojja’s Weapon Box.

So, all World Boss Grand Chests have a chance for Ascended, they’re just incredibly low, and so do champ bags (so go do more SW, there’s no faster way to get champ bags)

Compare the rates: 365 Triple Trouble kills in a year (actual kills is lower) and I got 9 Ascended boxes. 18 World Bosses x 365 × 2 years (actual kills higher since I farm World Bosses on Alts before Megaserver, which still gives Grand Chests) and only 2 Ascended boxes.

Ariurotl.3718:

I’ve been maining Guardian for about a year now… and only yesterday I accidentally hit a movement key and found out to my great surprise that Renewed Focus doesn’t root you when channeling. I have no idea why I even thought it rooted me, it probably had to do with the animation. For almost a YEAR I stood still when channeling it. My face still hurts from the facepalms.

Now let’s hear about your top fails in the game. It could be anything, really. Tell us about that one time (or several times) you felt stupid!

That’s because the skill started as root-only. It was later patched to allow movement.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

The main reason why Dragonhunter sucks is because…

Defender’s Dogma
Blocking an attack causes justice to reach its maximum charge.
1. Does NOT work anymore the moment you press F1.
2. Has no effect if you were already at full stacks of Justice. (20% of the time)
3. Inflicts only 1 stack of Burning for only 1 second to only 1 foe on your next attack.

Pure of Sight
Deal (10%) bonus damage to enemies beyond the range threshold (360u).
1. Among the damaging skills, does NOT work with over 60% of them because said skills can never reach beyond that range threshold in the first place.
2. Only works on at most 1 skill on each of our Melee weapons, said skill having 15-30s cooldown on said weapons, and whose damage value is only worth 1 auto-attack. Equivalent to a trait saying “improve your 15th/30th auto-attack’s damage by 10%”, nobody in their right mind would pick such a trait. Therefore, it’s a dead trait on a melee weapon.
3. You still have to fulfill the range threshold requirement on the skills it even works with. (Which means it does not always work on skills it even affects)
There are more builds where this does NOT work than builds where this works.

No other profession is being forced into using their new Elite spec weapon other than Guardian(because of this trait).

As you can see(if you are Pure of Sight), Dragonhunter’s Minor traits are a bad joke.
I wont type the presentation on Traps, i’ll let someone else explain why they are bad.

This so perfectly encapsulates my frustration with the DH elite spec.

LunacyPolish.4602:

We haven’t even played all of them. They haven’t even all had a BWE or tweaks yet. There will probably be significant adjustments to all of them in the first balance patch post xpac.

How can you even answer this question?

Yes, we can. Because the question concerns the elite specs as they are, NOW. If we need to consider future adjustments before we can comment and compare, then we can comment and compare on nothing, because the environment and features of an MMO are constantly changing.

And there are some fundamental problems with the Dragonhunter (and the Tempest too), that some of our learned friends on this thread have pointed out, that will need more than just adjustments to address.

Electro.4173:

Doesn’t fit your playstyle =/= terrible elite spec. Not all elite specs are going to fit all roles. I imagine people whose ideal Ranger is an offensive powerhouse don’t feel all that great about Druid either, for instance.

Not to say that Dragonhunter is necessarily amazing or whatever. Just saying that not fitting into a certain playstyle shouldn’t really be a basis for calling an elite spec bad.

Of course not. You’re right, and I can see how my lament can be perceived that way, but there’s also very poor synergy between the DH abilities with the rest of the Guardian skill set.

Also, Daredevil’s getting 3 dodges, Chronomancer’s getting a Braid-like reverse, Druid’s getting a de facto Death Shroud; just about every elite spec is getting a really defining unique profession mechanic. The DH only got physical manifestations of its original 3 virtues.

I’ll be the first to admit my opinion is going to be far from objective. I’m just not as impressed by the Dragonhunter as I am with other elite specs (Tempest notwithstanding), and this has nothing to do with whether the DH plays into my ideal build or not.

portedGoblin.7413:

Reaper
Chronomancer
Druid
Herald
Daredevil
Berserker
Scrapper
Dragonhunter
Tempest

I will concede that the Tempest is a very close second behind the Dragonhunter in terms of being the most underwhelming Elite Spec. I suppose our only difference is whom we care more about, the Guardian or the Elementalist.

Now with all elite specs revealed, who still thinks the Dragonhunter is, both thematically and game play wise, not the most poorly designed elite spec?

I play Engineer, Ranger, Necro, and Elementalist regularly with the Guardian getting the most play time (what most people would call a “main”) and there’s absolutely nothing I can use from DH to synergize with my ideal tanking Guardian build for HoT.

I think I speak for just about every Guardian player out there how excited I was to learn we’re getting the Longbow since we lacked a really good ranged weapon but the elite spec has just turned out to be a complete farce.

I’m even making a Thief to try out the Daredevil which looks infinitely more interesting than the Dragonhunter.

P.S.: Kudos to the designers behind the Chronomancer, Reaper, Druid, Daredevil, and Berserker. They will be truly fantastic additions to the game.

dlmoore.7293:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

out of curiosity – which dungeon and about which path you asked?

It was CoF P1.

So I’m a little confused. Do people think I’m blaming the f2pers? I was simply posing a question. As it stands, I have no position on this particular topic.

Wow, out of respect for your intellect, I’m just going to say that was most disingenuous of you to make that remark.

The topic of your thread is “Is f2p causing community toxicity?” and your pretext was based on a situation that you had no probable cause to attribute to F2Pers. You actually think given the topic title and such a weak pretext that people won’t assume you’re out to smear the F2Pers?

There are jerks in every game community, and you’re not making things better by so tenuously linking this one bad incident with F2Pers when you’ve not stated a single thing that indicates the jerks belong to that community. “Was I being melodramatic?” Without question, yes.

Congratulations on starting a flame war, exactly the kind of thing jerks will do.

Wanted to buy GW2 before watching the Angry Review. Became a GW2 fanboy after watching it. Also became a subscriber to his channel because of the GW2 Angry Review. Still his best made review besides his Ride to Hell: Retribution Angry Review and Sonic: Free Riders Angry Review.

Unfortunately, his channel is not as attractive as before. Angry Reviews too infrequent, good reviews even rarer. He does more Let’s Plays now but his improv isn’t great, as those who watched his interviews with Colin can attest to.

Hello, I visited gw2status.de and entered “tracert auth1.101.arenanetworks.com:6112” into the command prompt, but got the error message “Unable to resolve target system name auth1.101.arenanetworks.com:6112” I tried the other IPs on the list but got the same error message as well. According to the guide, I need to enter a domain name after the “tracert” into command prompt. Is there something I did not get right?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Sylum.1806:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Even if “the rest of [your] internet access is fine,” it still could be an ISP or backbone problem, just one that shows up for GW2 and none of the other sites people you know happen to use.

Make it easy on ANet to do troubleshoot:

• Create a support ticket and provide them with tracert data (they’ll walk you through how to do this if you don’t already know).
• If possible, confirm that your ISP does not deliberately throttle certain content. (Comcast in the US has been known to do this and, let’s say, make misleading statements about the practice.)

Thanks, can you explain “tracert” data? And the lag happened at once to players across different ISPs and different countries. They all just happened to be in the South-east asian region. That several ISPs can simultaneously coordinate throttling of specific content seems rather unlikely.

• Using tracert
• For your target IP, using gw2status.de, pick any of the Auth-Server Europa (unless part of NA, in which case, choose from “Nordamerika”. (Better still, try to find out which one you are connected to, via network connections control panel).
• Include that information in your support ticket.

Thank you, thank you!

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Even if “the rest of [your] internet access is fine,” it still could be an ISP or backbone problem, just one that shows up for GW2 and none of the other sites people you know happen to use.

Make it easy on ANet to do troubleshoot:

• Create a support ticket and provide them with tracert data (they’ll walk you through how to do this if you don’t already know).
• If possible, confirm that your ISP does not deliberately throttle certain content. (Comcast in the US has been known to do this and, let’s say, make misleading statements about the practice.)

Thanks, can you explain “tracert” data? And the lag happened at once to players across different ISPs and different countries. They all just happened to be in the South-east asian region. That several ISPs can simultaneously coordinate throttling of specific content seems rather unlikely.

Hello ArenaNet,

Are you guys tweaking some network/server settings? Most players from Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore experiencing either extreme latency or can’t even log in at all right now. Only Guild Wars 2 client is affected. The rest of our internet access is fine. Please look into it asap.

Seems like a one-sided debate here. Let me offer a few points from the other side. I’ve posted LFGs with a minimum AP requirement though I’ve never kicked people for it before. It just serves as a deterrent to most less experienced players since I’m often short on time to run dungeons.

1. Nobody who sets an AP minimum on LFG, or kicked players from parties for low AP, has come out to say that AP is the most accurate gauge of skill and/or experience, or even a decently accurate gauge.

2. If you have “low” AP but deem yourself skillful and/or experienced, there’s no need to get offended at this practice. The fact is you’re an exception, and exceptions prove the rule. Just because you’re skillful and/or experienced doesn’t mean other low AP players are the same. The thing is most players don’t have the time to suss out whether you’re the exception or not.

3. There’s really no great way to determine a player’s skill and experience in a particular dungeon path unless we play together. Some people just don’t have the patience for that. AP is not a great way to sort the wheat from the chaff, but people just make do with what they’ve got. If you’re the exception to the “low AP = noob” rule, good for you, but there’s no need to get personally offended for a practice that applies for most other players.

People just don’t read LFG thoroughly enough. Most people don’t bother putting up the IP for Tequatl taxis. I do, to avoid people on the same map taking up space. But even after doing that, there’ll always be lazy people from the same map joining anyway.

Of course, the game could be designed better, such as displaying your current IP on the LFG and displaying the IP of the poster on LFG. But in the absence of such Quality of Life features, we can all make the environment less aggravating by doing the basic legwork.

“/ip” isn’t that hard to type.

Buck.7562:

Is to lure players in and wring as much money out of them as you can with microtransactions. The naked greed has been a turn off, and so has creating a game that gives advantages to people with more money to spend away on a game. You’ve introduced income inequality to the traditional meritocracy of gaming. Even though you still can’t buy skill the game is much more tedious to play with inadequate storage slots, and there’s other things in the gem store that make the game easier to play.

I overlooked this, but I thought I was buying the whole game. But I don’t think I’ll be buying the expansion.

The misinformation and lack of objectivity in this is astonishing. I’ve played F2P MMOs for years before I finally went “Buy-to-Play” with GW2, and I can say “giving advantage to players with more money to spend away” is the farthest thing from the truth to say about GW2.

Unless there’s somehow an attack or heal that scales with how awesome or unique you look, cosmetic and convenience features which are the only things sold on the Gem Store don’t count as an “advantage”.

I suggest you either need to play GW2 more or go out into the ugly world of F2P MMOs so you avoid looking like a salty commentator hopelessly out of their depth.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

What’s the success rate for Triple Trouble? Does it vary between EU / NA and do the strategies vary as well? I’ve only been on a few but as yet not on a successful one.

If you’re on an NA server, catch the 1st, 4th, and 5th spawns of the day (counting from daily reset) with TTS. Download and install teamspeak and enter channel: ts.ttsgamers.com

Be in teamspeak 30 minutes before start of the event and you’ll have instructions on what to do and how to join the right map. Near 100% success rate.

Devildoc.6721:

mrstealth.6701:

Devildoc.6721:

Once the F2P floodgates open you will see the quality of players from those countries who can’t even afford to pay $10. They don’t speak English, they’re extremely rude players that harass people because they feel their country should ‘take over’ the server.

As much as I’d like to just dismiss claims like this as stereotyping…I can’t. Because I’ve seen it happen in other games. It’s, of course, not all of the players from these countries. But there can be a large number of them, as well as English-speakers that are just as disruptive.

I don’t recall seeing a lot of that in Tera when I played for a while earlier this year. Though, chats were still rather bad at times(worse than anything I’ve seen in GW2). So it does seem that phenomenon can be one that doesn’t last. But it certainly does happen to at least some games that make a F2P move.

It was really bad when TERA first went F2P. I picked up the game for $10 the week before it went F2P just to check it out, that first week, it wasn’t all that bad. But THE DAY it went F2P it became flooded with BR’s, flooding chat, harassing anyone speaking in a language other than Portuguese, sending you whispers about how this was “their server now” and you’d find gangs of people with brazilian flags as their guild logo running around kill stealing from anyone NOT using a Brazilian flag guild or with .Br in their name, or all flagging and gang pk’ing people (until level capped non BR’s came by and slaughtered them all (and then they got harassed in tells)). It was a terrible community and made me uninstall. I recently reinstalled and am playing again on a different server and it’s not quite as bad so you might be right about it not being a lasting deterioration of community.

But I for one dread that first month or so of F2P players.

As someone who played only Free-to-play MMOs before GW2, and as someone who works for a Free-to-play MMO developer/publisher, I can safely say:

1. Putting an entry barrier to an MMO such as an upfront payment before one can play the game, does not eliminate jerks from the game. Some of them can still afford it.

2. Jerks transcend nationality. They come from everywhere.

3. Putting an entry barrier to an MMO greatly reduces the number of jerks and nasty behavior. Exactly why, I’m not sure. Most jerks are cheapskates? Most jerks are just broke? I don’t know. But with my very small sample size of experiencing 1 non-F2P MMO (GW2) vs. all the other MMOs I’ve played, I can confidently say, the GW2 community is the most civilized, helpful, cerebral, and least self-entitled I’ve ever come across.

Which is why I’m still playing this game since launch.

But I can see great value in the F2P demographic. They just need to be channeled to the game in a right (smart?) way. Only way I can see them being a beneficial presence instead of a disruptive one, is limiting them purely to Heart of the Mists, with no access to Map Chat, Whisper Chat, Mail, and Trading Post.

That way, GW2 gets the potential esports competitive population it needs, and keeps the jerks away from the paying crowd and where they need to coordinate and socialize the most.

Challenging Group Content perhaps?

Traits ICD display would be a great addition.

+1 on the suggestion to change Ctrl key to toggle. Can’t move and jump at the same time when holding down the Ctrl key. Need this QoL fix.

Netko.9271:

Reseting my IP seems that solve problem for me for now.

Thanks for the tip! Solved the 4811 ping on Teq and other lag issues for me after the past 3 terrible days of GW2-only lag!

For those who don’t know how to renew your IP, go into Windows> Start> type “cmd” into the field. A command prompt screen will appear.

Type: ipconfig /renew

into the command prompt window to renew your IP.

4k pings every day at every Tequatl event since the last patch. Did several tests across different computers at different locations and networks, and confirmed this latency has nothing to do with my equipment. Please look into it, it’s getting nigh unplayable.

I just hope that Spirit Shards can be used towards progressing Masteries. The exchange rate can be really poor for all I care. Just make Spirit Shards more relevant. Having 1.7k of them sit in the wallet with nothing to spend on, is irritating.

Hello,

first off, congratulations on a great WTS in Cologne. It was really competitive GW2 at its finest.

Thanks to the changes made by ArenaNet, I’ve started to play Conquest, and I must say it’s infinitely more intense and enjoyable than WvW (my server is kinda dead, I do suppose those in more active guilds and servers may disagree with me on this point).

So unlike previous WTSes, I watched the latest WTS with interest. However, I had immense difficulty keeping up with the action. I think the commentary was great, but the constant switching of PoV was jarring and honestly greatly reduced the enjoyment of the experience.

I concede that this could be down to my inexperience in sPvP, but if ArenaNet is interested in expanding the player base for sPvP, the coverage should cater novices better.

A suitable compromise would just be to allow players to observe battles directly from the game server, so we can either control it ourselves, or view the Twitch streams of players whose camera control better suit our tastes and experience level.

Thank you.

Timiok.1048:

I don’t see this in other games that often. Now all I hear is people saying they won’t participate in certain parts of the game because of quite simple bugs or problems that just haven’t been addressed.
For example: This whole wvw thing that is going on for a WEEK only has somehow convinced people to quit the game and/or never play wvw again.

If we have absolutely no trust in a game, how can we support it? There always seem to be angry comments about the most simple things like a trait being over/underpowered, or a specialization weapon. I’ve seen people honestly quit about such small things within the year I’ve been playing the game and it astounds me. I don’t like to call the community sensitive but, in other games I see problems much more signifant than these and those communities are much calmer. Don’t get me wrong the community of this game is by far the kindest community. This game is like the ‘Canada’ of online games. I just think it is kind of sad that people overreact this frequently over such small things.
That is why I think here was such a crazy amount of rage over actual problems like the pricing of the expansion, and the current wvw golem bug.

If you play more MMOs, you’ll realize there isn’t a single MMO out there where their official forums are made up of mostly sunshine and rainbows. If you have nothing to complain about the game, you’ll be playing the game. Not spending the time on forums to cheer about how much fun you’re having. The latter rarely if ever happens.

MMO developers have to accept that the forums is just going to be an avenue of negativity. The only thing to take comfort from is if the negativity is constructive.

If you like the game, and have no complaints, stay away from the forums. Most people in the game are having fun, at least at that point in time, so soak in the positivity there instead.

Selling Eternity by merging Sunrise and Twilight in the Mystic Forge and getting the latter two skins is the worst idea ever.

Eternity is selling under 5k gold, while Sunrise and Twilight are each selling for over 3k. If you craft both Sunrise and Twilight, you’re better off selling them both, get nearly 7k in gold, spend less than 5k of it buying an Eternity, getting all 3 legendary skins and still have around 2k gold in profit.

Darkyre.7324:

Sylum.1806:

I wasn’t trying to be snide earlier, but the info you offered initially and even now cannot help you get the answers you want.

Apologies if I misread the tone of your post.

I think I should clarify my intentions too. I am aware of the RNG statistics with the Mystic Forge, I know it can be very brutal with people tossing in hundreds of exotics with measly returns. With that knowledge in mind, I have never seriously done any mystic forge farming due to those chances. Since late 2013 I’ve been tossing any surplus of rares into the forge each weekend.

Me: 30-40 rares every weekend, taking into account my hiatus from June-Dec 2014
Friend: Started Forging in May 2015 with say 25+ misc. rares per day into forge to this date

Because my friend claimed to have gotten 3 pres in a short amount of time. I wanted to see if anyone knew whether he met any conditions to allow a higher chance on pres.

Judging from all the kind replies (thanks all) looks like he just got lucky?

Or he could just be exaggerating. Memory can be such an unreliable thing. Without the actual odds which only the developers have, it’s hard to tell if there’s a discrepancy between accounts.

Since you understand basic statistics, I won’t need to explain how the existence of the exception (the small portion of the user base on extreme ends of the RNG spectrum experiencing “better than average” luck and “poorer than average” luck) proves the rule rather than invalidate it.

Assuming you started playing in Jan 2013, that’ll be a total of 31 months now. Minus the 6 you were on hiatus, that’s 25. That’s 100 weeks. 40 rares per weekend would be 1000 uses of the Mystic Forge since you started playing GW2.

Your friend uses the Mystic Forge about 6 times a day, over 2 months, that’s about 360 uses in total.

Means he got 1 Precursor for every 120 uses on average. I don’t think anybody, without access to more data can honestly say if the range of getting 1 precursor per 120 – 1000+ uses, is as intended or not.

More research is needed.

Darkyre.7324:

I got him into the game after I came back from a brief hiatus. If I were to put a number to his attempts, that would be 25+ random rares in the forge per day? Would be very immature for an adult to be lying. Guess those were just his lucky days.

Sylum.1806:

Do a little reading on statistics and come back with a more compelling argument.

I wasn’t making an “argument”. I am fully aware of the statistics, and looking around for any other possible explanations.

Which means you don’t actually know how many he did use. Also, no one in this thread knows how actively you’ve used Mystic Forge since 2013. Without all these variables, nobody can offer you any concrete explanation. I know it can be frustrating to see others get loot that you’d want with what seems to be considerably less effort, but attempting to look for possible explanations without all the salient info is just groping in the dark.

If you’re looking for comfort and commiserations, there’s plenty to go around. I’ve played since launch and not gotten a single precursor anywhere. But I’ve also gotten lots of ascended chests from Tequatl and Triple Trouble, even from sPvP, champ bags, Golem Mark II and Shatterer grand chests while a guild leader I know got 0 Tequatl’s Hoard in over a year of farming Teq.

RNG is very difficult to figure out as a player even if you have the hard figures to your own game history and a few others. Trust me, I know because I head the regional office for customer support of an MMO developer/publisher. We answer endless complaints from disgruntled players daily about their poor RNG results and it’s a challenge to get them to understand statistics and RNG without disclosing the actual odds (which we’re not at liberty to do).

I wasn’t trying to be snide earlier, but the info you offered initially and even now cannot help you get the answers you want.

Darkyre.7324:

So a friend of mine recieved three Sparks from the MF in a span of less than 3 weeks? Been on this game since 2013 and never gotten a pre from bags or forge. As much as I am happy for him, I get really frustrated everytime a new Spark gets linked on my chat.

Is this purely RNG loving him and hating me or is there something hes doing right? As far as i know hes been throwign in random rares obtained from SW and has a magic find of 85%.

(yes im jelly)

You can throw in 10,000 Exotics into the Mystic Forge in 3 days, and you can throw in 4 Exotics in 3 years.

Just stating length of time without actual volume of use doesn’t indicate anything.

Do a little reading on statistics and come back with a more compelling argument.

MarkoNS.3261:

I am shocked to find out that a lot of people dont like Traeharne, besides Tybalt those are the only 2 npc from the main story i like. tell me the reasons you dont like him i am curious.

Ps – Anet dont kill him , if you must kill him give us an option to spare him.

I can attempt to explain why there seems to be a lot of players who don’t like him.

I, for the record, am ambivalent towards him. I just don’t like the execution of the 2nd half of the Personal Story.

1. People are more likely to take the effort to voice their displeasure with something than their satisfaction with it.

The feedback on forums, social media, and in-game is not necessarily representative of the entire community’s attitude towards Trahearne. The outspoken ones may or may not be the majority. You might already know this, but covering this anyway just in case.

2. The first half of Personal Story introduced the player’s story and his/her race very well. It is likely that given limited resources and time, the developers decided to converge all paths once the the player begins to confront the threat of Zhaitan. This is not necessarily bad, but the immersion becomes very negatively affected once you play through the Personal Story on a 2nd character. This negativity might be associated with Trahearne who plays a very big part in the 2nd half of the Personal Story.

3. Compelling story often involves compelling character development.

This has always been an Achilles’ heel of Western RPGs that follow the traditional tabletop RPG style of allowing the players to create their own avatar. Designers of Western role-playing video games fail to consider that tabletop RPGs can incorporate compelling storytelling and character development while allowing players to dictate the protagonists’ personality and origins because the narrative is being managed by a human game master. The GM can accommodate player choices by reacting accordingly allowing for full immersion. It is a lot less easy to to accomplish that in video games given limitations in asset development and AI programming.

That’s why Japanese RPGs have for years, been superior at storytelling in this genre. The protagonists are intricately designed and the narrative tailored by professional writers to tell a focused story. That’s why linear games like the Last of Us have critically acclaimed narratives and character development.

I think the ArenaNet developers recognized that and tried to come to a compromise. Without being able to control what the player’s character will turn out to be, they instead focused the narrative on an NPC whose personality and character development that they could design, hoping for the player to experience compelling character development vicariously as a sidekick.

Therein lies the problem. Players in role-playing games are meant to be the heroes, not the sidekicks. That’s why there’s the backlash. Personal Story became “Trahearne’s Story” and the fact that the execution of Trahearne’s character development felt incomplete and rushed only exacerbated the problem.

You can see how much better this situation was addressed in the narrative of Season 2 of Living Story.

Fixing this problem in Season 0 of Personal Story will conceivably take up resources that ArenaNet probably feels can be better spent on new content. I don’t expect this to be fixed. At least with what they are doing so far, one can be optimistic for the future.

If you flip a coin and get heads 10 times in a row (totally possible), it doesn’t mean the odds are not 50%.

Tip: Google “Law of Large Numbers”

This is simply the PvE version of what’s wrong with WvW right now. Got bored with the mindless running around flipping strongholds with no intention to hold on to them, and switched to the much more intensive Conquest sPvP.

I guess ArenaNet recognizes this problem by addressing it in the HoT expansion for WvW, and if you noticed, in Silverwastes, there’s no defense event at the end of the meta-events chain. Vinewrath dies, there’s a cooling period, and the whole chain starts again. Guess they just wanted to invest the resources in Living Story Season 2 rather than fix existing content. So can’t say they aren’t aware of the problem.

At this rate, I really wouldn’t mind supporting a subscription model for GW2. It seems their reach often falls short of their imagination due to limited resources and it’s a pity given how much better the game can be.

+1 to this thread.

I started playing GW2 after getting tired of all the grind and pay-to-win nonsense of Free-to-Start MMOs. The latter often didn’t allow spaces for character names and I chose an account name I didn’t really like not knowing GW2 supported having multiple words in the account name. I really would like to have the opportunity to change it, and am even willing to pay for it.

Hope ArenaNet can consider offering such a service.

You guys are so hardcore. Asking for higher consumption rate of Dragonite Ores for those of us who get more than we can feed to the Princess really doesn’t affect you pro PvP-ers and WvW-ers that don’t get many ores a day.

To answer some of your questions:

1. Whose average play? Mine. Happy? Look, I get that PvE is not everyone’s primary content in GW2. That’s what makes the game great, that everyone can play however they want. But allowing PvE players to sink more Dragonite Ores doesn’t somehow directly, and negatively impact players who don’t focus on PvE.

2. “Um 24/7 chestfarming is not an average play style.” Yeah, it’s not. Cynicism doesn’t help in constructive discussion. I do 1-2 Breach + Vinewrath runs in Silverwastes a day, 2-3 Tequatl kills, 1 Triple Trouble run (2 if I’m home on weekends), and a Karka Queen kill. That maybe more than the most casual of players, but I think that’s far from excessive. If you try that yourself, you’ll easily end up with more than 250 ores a day, really.

3. I’m not asking for improved rewards from Gunk-covered Pellets. This isn’t about greed. And asking me to throw away the Ores isn’t a solution. I played the game, and the game gave me the Ores as a reward. Let me do something with it. Hey, if economy is the concern here, cut down the Dragonite Ore rewards for PvE content by all means. I won’t be crying over it, I promise. But if it’s given to me, please let me have the means to use them reasonably frequently such that it doesn’t clog up my inventory.

Perhaps I phrased the thread badly. One of the earliest responders made a good point. Princess isn’t the only way to sink Dragonite Ores if ArenaNet wants to do something about it. New features like Guild Halls in HoT could solve that problem.

My point is basically to ask for more effective sinks to Dragonite Ores, as one other commenter pointed out, there really is a very big demographic of players that do World Bosses train. I used to be in it, and the ores rain down like no tomorrow.

If you have a well-reasoned argument against more effective Dragonite Ore sinks, go right ahead. There’s no need to be snide or to take it personally.

Dear ArenaNet,

Please consider tweaking the function of the Princess, Dragonite Ore eater. Average play generates more Dragonite Ore per day than she can consume.

Possible solutions:

1. Increasing the minimum and maximum use per day.
2. Allow consumption of multiple Dragonite Ingots per use. Generates a random number of Gunk-covered Pellets per use.
3. Allow consumption of either 50 Dragonite Ores or 50 Dragonite Ingots per use. Latter option generates an Ascended grade version of Gunk-covered Pellet with better rewards.

Please consider one of these or implementing other alternatives to better sink Dragonite Ores. Thank you.

Raven.3957:

After they announced HoT, the hype train began. Even with the few things I disliked here and there with Gw2 I never thought ANYTHING would derail the hype train.. I was so excited, wanted nothing more but more info.. everythign they leaked, spoke of.. all of it was music to my ears..

Then the fiasco with the pre-release happened..

I didnt think anyhting would make me hesitate to pre-order the SECOND it became avaliable.. but that did.

A few days later, they announced they were sorry for the misunderstaning, and corrected it. I was instantaniously relived, and just about to purchace the 100$ preorder..

And then this patch rolled out.

I was honestly excited for this patch, I liked a lot of the changes (to leveling, new traits would mean a change in game play, spice things up, etc.. Not to mention a gorgeous new Lions arch..)

But when I got online, and realised that unless I played a meta, all of my builds were removed from the game or nerfed out of exsistance.. I realised how DPS focused everythign was.. How destroyed PVP and WvW were..

Well, to sum it up. Theres no new PVE content to play, been there and done that with everythign they have out so.. nothing to do there.

PVP and WVW is broken, forget about that until they ballance crap (Unless I feel like CONSTANLY running in a massive zerg.. thats stupid, I would like to play the game with a few friends, or even be ABLE to play alone, if no one was around to play. Not make the game a REQUIREMENT to play with others just to be viable..)

So.. uh, I think with this last patch not only did they actually derail the hype train fully, and make me NOT want to buy the expansion. I think they ACTUALLY convinced me to QUIT..

From gw1, all the way until now in gw2. Ive been loyal and loved playing this game. But this patch destroyed everything I knew and loved about the game, and on TOP of it, took a massive dump over the morals I loved Anet so much for.

So.. Kindly F off, all you dps babies who like to mash your face into the keyboard and kill things to pretend your good at something, all the people who “love” what the update did. Thanks for ruining a beautiful thing.

This absolutely summed up my entire experience. I was so ready to throw money at ArenaNet for the expansion after the HoT announcement, then decided to not pre-order it after the Standard Edition fiasco unless they did something about it. They did and I was going to buy the Ultimate Edition as a return gesture of goodwill but the June 23rd patch effectively broke the game and left me wondering if I should even bother.

Look, I’m not one of those people hating on the changes. I support every single one of them, unequivocally. The condition overhaul, the specializations (I don’t get the whining about lack of build diversity, you folks are nuts, many of the traits that were removed were lame ducks, not viable for use under all but the most niche circumstances. Diversity for the sake of diversity is pointless.), everything was great.

But the implementation…for goodness’ sake… sky high damage causing an upheaval over Conquest and WvW, the Symbolic Avenger bug and subsequent disabling of the trait instead of a hot fix, the continued silence over the Wurmslayer Armor-Mystic forge bug, the lazy fix of doubling HP for World Bosses after the excessive power creep of the condition overhaul…

I work in a company that makes MMOs. I know it’s impossible to build a bug-free game, much less a bug-free MMO. But the scale of the problems that came with the June 23 update, and the way they’ve since handled it… I wonder if ArenaNet traded in their programmers for writers because the story’s gotten much better but the rolling out of features has become absolutely game-breaking.

P.S.: Full disclosure. I decided to go ahead with the purchase of the Ultimate Edition even though my head and my principles said otherwise. This is the amount of goodwill that ArenaNet deserved for what they did right previously. I loathe to think they will see my purchase as an endorsement of what they’ve been doing recently though.

There’s no way this can be tweaked to the extent where no one will be unhappy. Any change to a system will engender both approval and disapproval from the entire spectrum of the community. What RNG in GW2 needs is to look at the most extreme examples of effort-vs-reward in the game and improve on them, such as:

1. Hundreds of Hard-core Boss Kills Without a Single Premium Reward:

I’ve been lucky enough to get Tequatl’s Hoard three times after killing him hundreds of times for the past 18 months. But I’ve seen raid leaders mention they’ve got nothing at all in the same amount of time.

I hope I’m not an example of being extremely lucky since I’ve gotten an ascended weapon box from the grand chest of the Shatterer and Golem Mark II and one from a Fallen Champion’s Bag, but have never heard anyone mention they’ve gotten ascended boxes from those sources before.

Solution: Allow players to trade an extremely large number of Sunless Runes and/or Carved Bone Spoons for a Tequatl’s Hoard. OR a high number of Connie’s Lost Wedding Ring and/or Amulet of Triple Curiosity for a Pile of Regurgitated Armor. Make it a really high number if you have to, but give that option so players at least have a distant goal to work towards instead of this sense of hopelessness where they don’t know when their bad luck streak will come to an end.

2. Pre-cursors

I know this issue is sorta addressed with the HoT Mastery feature, but other than an inordinate amount of Mystic Forge gambling, I’ve done just about everything there is to do in the game, AND STILL I’ve not gotten a single precursor drop.

I’m relatively active despite my professional life, and I’ve amassed 11k AP in my 3 year tenure in GW2. That should count for something. Instead, I’ve had to pay through my nose to buy precursors on the Trading Post for all three of my Legendaries (Juggernaut, Bifrost, Sunrise). The 10k AP achievement mark should be nothing to scoff at. It isn’t a milestone that can be easily reached in a short time playing the game casually. It would be very much appreciated if ArenaNet can offer more consideration for their loyal players by doing something like giving an account-bound precursor (I’ll even settle for a random precursor), for every 10K AP earned.

Look at it this way, even if the player were to do nothing at all except daily achievements, that would still take the person 1000 days to get a precursor. That’s a significant investment of time and effort. C’mon, it’s time to do something about this.

That is a Wurmslayer handpiece from your screenshot. Unfortunately, Wurmslayer headpiece and handpiece are currently bugged. Only the shoulder piece can be reforged. Unfortunately, ANet has still not acknowledged this bug after a week since the patch. I’ve sent a ticket in-game as well and still no word.

There seems to be little attention on this issue.

I actually lost the mood to play the game after failing Teq for the first time in over 6 months. Totally supported all the changes they are making to the game and even getting Ultimate edition of HoT but the game just feels broken now.

PvP is out of whack, Teq is unkillable, and my Wurmslayer headpieces and handpieces still can’t be reforged. Gonna be taking a break until everything is fixed. sigh

4th hot fix. Still no word on this bug

You have my sympathies, but at least you’re actively trying to accomplish the challenge instead of having to wait until the right time comes along before you can actually start the challenge.

Consider it the “Bloodborne of Jumping Puzzles”, might make you feel better. At least when you do complete it, you’ll feel a greater sense of accomplishment.