Guild Wars 2

I did put this survey up on Reddit and GW2G, which has increased the number of respondents quite substantially. We are now at 600+. I intend to follow up on this survey with more specific questions.

Most recent data:
http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-C16F4C2BF89A426290939BD1C695F942.pdf

That is an interesting way to look at freedom in the philosophical sense. It does remind me of some discussions I’ve had with my ardent utilitarian friends over the value of intense pleasure experienced by one person vs. distributed pleasure experienced by many.

However, in the pragmatic, political sense, freedom will always be understood in the context of civil, political, and economic liberties. As the people of a society have more of these liberties at their disposal, that society is freer.

Thief? Black powder spam owns everything short of champions.

Rikimeru Tokesbudz.3816:

will not click link but i do both pvp and pve, i enjoy pvp(open world not arena pvp tho) a bit more than pve tho.

Would you like me to input your answer for you, then?

Given the nature of these responses, I think it might be appropriate for me to start a survey on which elements of the game people enjoy or not.

Also, I have updated the data with the most recent responses. 300+. http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-E3CF0FC389204F4F9B7921F45BE03572.pdf

Oglaf.1074:

Democracy does not automatically mean freedom though.

Far from it.

That is true, but both freedom and democracy have been increasing.

Sylosi.6503:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Given that preliminary results indicat…

The preliminary results indicate nothing, because you’ve made the mistake of only posting your survey in the general discussion forum which is very PvE orientated, if you want to include PvPers in your survey then it might be helpful to also post it in the sub-forums they spend most of their time in.

I understand your point, but I am afraid that the mods will infract me for spamming if I post this survey in multiple forums. Therefore, I have chosen the one with the highest general population.

If you would like to expand the reach of this survey to the class subforums, reddit, GW2G, feel free to do so. Please understand that the site rules probably forbid me from posting this survey multiple times in different forums.

The results have been updated, with 180+ respondents.

Iruwen.3164:

And still PvP players complain the most and cause changes for all PvE players.

My understanding is that most balance changes have been a consequence of PvP related factors. Given that preliminary results indicate an overwhelming preference for PvE in this game, I think balance changes may need more careful deliberation before they are rolled out. On the other hand, PvP balance is generally seen as a more pressing issue than PvE balance, due to its competitive nature.

Kromica.2831:

Tajmo.1836:

@Preyar

Is it at a fixed location or general area?

Also, I received two infraction points for posting “false and misleading information” in my original post. So apologies for whatever part of it is untrue, I was probably seeing things.

The misleading part was saying fantastic loot drops as those do not exist in this game :p

TroIololol

What do they actually drop?

I now have close to 80 responses. The overall distribution is pretty similar compared to before. What interests me greatly is how international the responses are – so far, only 17 of them are from the US but this could very much have to do with the time zones (early morning right now).

FacesOfMu.3561:

Nice survey. I wondered the difference between asking “What do you play the most?” to “What do you enjoy the most?”. I found myself saying I played all the PvE options, but I clearly enjoy 1 or 2 more than the other/s (that is, my opinion/feelings are stronger set than the way I distribute my time). Would love to see the results, although hinting at them early may create a response bias.

The distinction between “what do you play vs what do you enjoy” is definitely something I thought about. I, for one, don’t enjoy dungeons very much so I almost never run them (I have in fact not done FotM once yet). I may explore it in a future survey.

Update:

Data for ~1000 respondents: http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-5CE6082C5E79428395C58B177D966BF7.pdf

===

Data for 600+ respondents: http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-C16F4C2BF89A426290939BD1C695F942.pdf

====

Data for 300+ respondents. http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-E3CF0FC389204F4F9B7921F45BE03572.pdf

==OLDER DATA==

Data for 180+ respondents.
http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-922D50C1AD0C492889F10BDEBA4B8022.pdf

==OLDER DATA==

I now have data for the first 100 respondents. http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-C9D8EDFC4040464695ED6E3F7B5D4C2A.pdf

==OLDER DATA==

Here’s the first PDF for you guys to look at, with slightly over 30 respondents. Hopefully I can get a couple hundred or more within a few days.

I am really curious about whether the results will change as they go on.

http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-BDA08CE618F44455B299AFF9918327A9.pdf

Dudeface.8102:

Everybody knows that freedoms are evaporating all around the civilized worlds in favor of more government.

This is in fact, false. Democracy around the world has generally been increasing, especially since the demise of the USSR, while authoritarian regimes are becoming less common.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Country%20Status%20%26%20Ratings%20Overview%2C%201973-2013.pdf

Freedom House has been evaluating the democratic status of countries since 1972. The number of free countries has more than doubled since then, while the number of “Not free” country has dropped by almost 50%.

Anyway, a quick update with the limited results I have so far: there seems to be an overwhelming preference for PvE, with WvW being the most popular form of PvP among all players.

I’d be interested in seeing some community statistics on this. To that effect, I have built a survey with kwiksurvey, which I hope you will answer. I’ll be publishing and keeping the results up to date. If you have polite suggestions as to how I can improve the survey, I would be interested in hearing them.

http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=ul6rado34pj9jqv80340

The survey, of course, more detailed than the binary PVE/PVP distinctions. Depending on the response, I may consider creating a second one asking people about why they play mostly PvE, PvP, etc.

I’d basically agree with Elthurien. S/P + SB is a very versatile setup. I do use D/P if I want a bit more mobility and enemies are less clustered together.

How long do corpses with loot have before they disappear from the open world?

[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img27/8950/gw22013012014470397.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img442/2307/gw22013012014470719.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img705/453/gw22013012014471072.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img233/8330/gw22013012014471208.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img40/9209/gw22013012014471292.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img542/9420/gw22013012014471420.png[/IMG]

1 attempt. I tried to use Hwang Mi Hee as a reference (http://actressportal.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/hwang-mi-hee-umbrella.jpg) but the inability to change eye/mouth height makes it hard to get a match.

I noticed the same. I think its frequency might have been toned down, if not altogether removed.

Really, you should do something about getting your old character back. But that’s just my opinion – you’re free to do whatever. I have 2 level 80 characters and am working on getting 3 more up.

Have you tried contacting Anet to see if they can restore your character?

I would posit that more people would benefit from having their prices lowered than them remaining what they are now. Anyway, lodestone prices are secondary to this. The main point here is that rewards in open world chests need to be better all around.

I see, this is all very interesting.

How about a personal DPS meter that you can use to evaluate yourself? It would be possible to record statistics over time and log them.

I think my plan, then, will be to do cooking on all of the characters that need levels, followed by jewelry. After that, I will pick up a 3rd craft that I have not mastered yet.

Hey, I’ve got a bunch of alt characters I’d like to level, and I’m not terribly keen on repeating a bunch of starter zone content that I’m already well familiar with. What are the 2-3 cheapest crafting disciplines to max out? I’ve already got 400 in leather, jewelry, artificing, and tailoring. How do the rest of the professions compare to these?

What I mean is that the chest rewards should scale to the difficulty of the jumping puzzle. The hardest ones might give several lodestones, a BL key and an exotic rune/sigil, the easier ones might give silver a some boosts or utility item.

What, you can repeat Jumping Puzzles and get the rewards? I didn’t know that actually. I thought they were one-time things. In any case, I still maintain that they need to give something better than blues/greens/etc (this is an issue with open world boss/loot chests in general).

Maybe some lodestone prices would fall, but they Charged lodestones are trading at nearly 4g, I don’t think anyone would really complain.

Anyway, since not all jumping puzzles are created equal, I’d suppose that the first thing they’d need is an evaluation of their difficulty. Once that is sorted out, rewards could be adjusted accordingly.

Why is the Inquest allowed a recruiting station on Rata Sum? I was exploring the city earlier and they have this huge place filled with recruiters. Aren’t they equivalent to a criminal corporate entity?

Right now, they give a few greens, some random green upgrade component, and a few silver. It would be nice if we got something a little more valuable to encourage more people to do them. An assortment of lodestones, some exotic runes/sigils, a black lion key, etc. These are all various things that could go inside these chests.

What do you think?

PCanineBrigade.4916:

Yep, leveling up interrupts EVERYTHING. But it refills our HP and knockbacks everything around you though, so it’s not all bad. But I agree it can get frustrating.
Why not both? Eliminate the “level up” animation when the character is doing something other than moving and keep the HP refil/knockback effect. One can only dream.

That would be perfect.

LFk.1408:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

The point of this post was largely to highlight the absurdity of how gold, the currency, is valued against gold, the commodity.

It seems to have gone over most people’s heads.

Actually, I think people are having as enjoyable a discussion as you can have about the topic.

There’s only so much you can draw from the absurdity alone, which, of course it is strange if you assume our gold pieces are literally just pieces of gold.

Everything in a fantasy game is “absurd” though, meaning that highlighting one funny circumstance is kind of lost in a swarm of "absurd"concepts, like how you can carry around stacks of snowflakes in a jungle without them melting, or fit 200 rifles the size of my body into a few packs i’m carrying.

This discussion was destined to get off point, but has been civil and somewhat relevant. What more can you ask for?

That’s true. It’s a matter of suspension of disbelief, largely. We accept bottomless bags as an element in fantasy games, but I find the discrepancy in how gold is valued to be a bit harder to accept. Pure gold should come about through a much more rigorous refining process and should be far rarer than it is in game.

This is less of a bug than an unintended effect, but it is worth mentioning. If you level up while using dagger storm, it will cancel the animation and skill. If you are engaging a group of enemies, the interruption in the animation can kill you, especially if you are using signet of malice, since you will also lose any healing from the daggers you are throwing out.

This is less of a bug than an unintended effect, but it is worth mentioning. If you level up while using dagger storm, it will cancel the animation and skill. If you are engaging a group of enemies, the interruption in the animation can kill you, especially if you are using signet of malice, since you will also lose any healing from the daggers you are throwing out.

The point of this post was largely to highlight the absurdity of how gold, the currency, is valued against gold, the commodity.

It seems to have gone over most people’s heads.

What kind of skin tone do you want? Posting a picture of a person as a reference might help.

It’s pretty easy to just choose one of the medium skin tones, but I prefer slightly tanned characters. Try Pale 2, 3, Light 6, or Mid 1, which should have enough color for you.

Savannah Hawk, mesmer.

We are humans, so we would naturally find other humans more pleasurable to look at.

He has a rugged look, and I like that. Seems fitting for a watchman. 8/10

Here is my thief.

Hypothetical situation, basically derived from the earlier Wintersday/ecto thread.

1. You have a crafting discipline.
2. There are very cheap materials for this discipline.
3. You can produce a level 80 rare item that will cost less than an ectoplasm.
4. You can extract this crafted item with a probability of getting an ecto, which on average (taking into account the chance of getting nothing), will sell at a higher price than your finished good.

If this is considered an exploit, I’d be alarmed. It’s essentially saying that making money from crafting, even if it comes from an unintentional effect, violates some element of the game’s code of conduct.

One must consider that if the above practice is done on a large enough scale, the following will happen:

1. Prices of ectos would decrease
2. Prices of ingredients/materials would increase

Any sort of “profitability” in this action would only be temporary and the market would adjust in reaction.

No other supporters? I am disappoint.

I’d be interested in having some swimwear as a town clothes option, especially since the textures and meshes already exist in game for at least some of the races and sexes.

How would you feel about the ability to modify specific features about your character’s body, as opposed to choosing among presets? There are obvious difficulties regarding how some armors might interact with different bodies (this is already an issue) but I think this level of customization might satisfy a lot of people who don’t like the offerings the character creator.

A lot of games use a slider system for various body proportions, but for this game something else might be more appropriate. You start out by selecting your preset body, and then afterwards you can adjust specific elements of it (e.g. arm, torso, leg width/proportions). You also could borrow features from other body types when customizing one, e.g. taking the arms from body type A and using them for body type B. Of course, this would present challenges with ensuring continuity of some meshes, since a very muscular torso would not work with very skinny arms.

Hidden killer’s 100% bonus is actually not that useful. If you’re running a backstab build you probably have very high crit % already and are better off taking Executioner.

You were revived and died multiple times.

Pull skills such as Scorpion Wire will interrupt dagger storm.

Power is a standard stat for just about every armor. Thief offensive PvE builds are typically precision/crit damage. In total, I carry 4 armor sets on my thief, each focusing a different stat for different uses.

Crit damage/precision
Condition damage/vitality
Toughness
Magic find

The most viable condition damage build is pistol/dagger, which relies on stealth to stack bleeds from the stealth 1 attack. It is more of an SPVP build though. Caltrops pairs pretty well with this, since it’s 10 stacks of bleed on a 24 second cooldown (if you trait recharge on tricks).

Using caltrops/black powder is fairly viable for leveling up to 80 since it does respectable damage, but once you start doing Orr events which are a zergfest, you will probably want to switch out of condition damage and focus power/precision because bleeds will not do enough damage fast enough to tag kills.

Your specs aren’t exactly high end. You’re using integrated graphics on what I would assume is a notebook (as the AMD E2-1800 APU is used for notebooks). Guild Wars 2 is not going to run very well on your computer. I suggest you lower your graphics settings to the minimum possible.

You can only loot the chests once per day now, according to an Anet member who came ingame.

Jeremy Soule has been responsible for all of the music for the Guild Wars games and I would expect him to be the composer for this as well.