Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the info. 5 pages of patch notes makes me happy.

From what I’ve seen both ingame and on the forums, the majority of the thief-targeted complaints are about one or two certain thief builds that are very easy to play and can cause a lot of mayhem if used against players who.. do not know how to “counter” the build well (i.e. dodge).

ArenaNet has done an okay job thus far with balancing, and we’ll be seeing more balance changes come the large November 16th update. I think I may be more eager to see the balance changes than the actual event, hehe.

Bugs have been and will continue to be fixed, but fixing them does take time. This includes necromancer bugs, which have been more heavily targeted (for bug fixing) by devs than the other professions in at least a couple patches thus far.

While I know that they’re aware of condition builds doing poorly against environmental objects and enemies wherein it isn’t possible to stack conditions onto them, they have expressed that that issue is not an easy one to solve.
In regards to condition stacks – there has been a lot of out cry about it, much that I personally agree with, and surely they are aware of it, but I don’t recall seeing them post any official stance on the issue one way or another. Perhaps if they increase the max stacks (or maybe even change the way that stacks overlap) in PvE but not PvP…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/better-colour-overall-graphic-FXAA/first
Here ya go, Hebee.

Your question is vague. There are many ways to be secretive. ArenaNet has said on numerous occasions that they prefer to be as transparent as possible (which, compared to most other MMO developers, they have been doing a great job of), but they will not release information unless it is 100% absolutely true and going to happen. This is why you often do not see information about upcoming content, balance changes, and so on. They are working on it, but there is not enough information that is absolutely set in stone to release to everyone. They don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up.

Then there is the idea of keeping certain information, especially algorithms, secretive for the purpose of reducing abuse and exploits. From my point of view, this is a logical reason as to why they should keep certain information purposely secretive.

A lot of what people complain about is not only being acknowledged and often being worked on by ArenaNet, but is also their opinion – which is sometimes not the opinion of the majority of the community. “The content sucks. ArenaNet why’d you tell us the content would be good? You lied!”

daphoenix.4283:

@TimeBomb
I had originally assumed d/f was useless since nobody ever talks about it, but after using it a little bit more I can conclude the following:

D/F is more focused on melee ranged abilities, and the focus puts more emphasis no defense than mobility when compared to D/D. It doesn’t have as many gap closers as D/D, so it does have a pretty big drawback when fighting against opponents that kite heavily. Since the mobility is much lower than D/D, D/F users would be forced to fight losing battles should they be in that situation and cannot retreat as easily.

S/F is more so for teamplay reasons

D/F is a moderately odd gameplay style, and it lacks mobility and is below par in regards to AoE and range. I find that the numerous defensive capabilities of a D/F user, especially when built well, makes up for this in most scenarios.

D/F is, in comparison to S/F, slightly more offensive and much more capable of taking advantage of signet of restoration due to the overall faster casts. A lot of focus abilities synergize very well with melee abilities; some even better than their synergy with ranged abilities.

D/F is very capable of retreat. This is in large due to the oh so many very useful focus abilities. Even in WvW, I’ve taken 10-20 enemies on by myself and stayed alive efficiently for ~30 seconds. At that point, either all of them have stopped paying attention to me and I’d remain alive, or I still have several on me and, being out of defensive maneuvers, I slowly but surely get killed. The build is very, very sturdy.

Due to the lack of range and AoE, D/F is, for the most part, not good for dungeons or WvW. That’s the biggest downfall of the weapon set. If you like playing defensively, D/F works quite well for PvE and SPvP.

I’ve been playing ele ever since BWE1, and been using D/F ever since release. I wrote up a D/F bunker guide a little while ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/D-F-build-and-yes-F-for-focus/first
Do note that the latest D/F bunker build I recommend is this.

The build works well for solo PvE and SPvP, though due to lack of mobility and AoE, it is lacking in dungeons and WvW. It’s also quite fun to play.

Focus has its issues though. I proposed several ability improvements here not too long ago, but due to the overall lack of popularity focus has, the thread didn’t get much traction.

I use the Logitech G600, which has a similar (though much nicer) 12-keypad on the left side of the mouse. I only macro’d 6-0 to it. I found that I was much less efficient when I macro’d the F keys or the 1-5 keys to my mouse. 6-0 are the ones that are hard to reach (and that I use less frequently), so I found that macroing just them to the mouse was the most efficient solution.

daphoenix.4283:

Weapon types
Dagger / Focus (D/F) – This is considered to be the worst setup of all the weapon choices available. It is almost never used as the dagger and focus abilities do not combine well.

I can’t get over how much more wrong you could be here. I’ve used S/D, D/D, S/F, and D/F quite a bit – my most common build being D/F. D/F is by far the best weapon set for bunker builds that Ele has. The synergy between the two weapons is excellent. Set it up correctly and it’s not only quite fun to play, but also virtually impenetrable. It works in SPvP and PvE, but due to the lack of range and AoE, it does not do very well in dungeons or WvW.

Also note that I found easily S/F the worst of the four combinations. The DPS was lacking even more than D/F , to the point where I couldn’t bare it anymore and switched back to D/F. The lack of mobility is certainly not fun, either, though it’s not much different for D/F. S/F is also, IMO, a lot less fun to play than… any other weapon set that the ele has, D/F included.

That being said, focus in general is a tricky weapon to use. It primarily lacks mobility and DPS, but if you are able to both synergize focus abilities with your MH weapon and are able to efficiently use the focus defensive abilities. It’s easy to use them at the wrong time.

Read This – It is the official Guild Wars 2 Third Party Program Policy:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Policy-Third-Party-Programs/

Let me give you the best answer you could possibly get…

For the umpteenth time, they will not vet, i.e. give an official response, to any specific third party application. Source:

Our development team is not able to review third-party programs to assess their components or give them any sort of approval.

Furthermore, let’s go over the following part of the aforementioned Third Party Program Policy:

The best way for a player to assess whether a specific third-party program could have any impact on another player or a PvP opponent is to ask:
• “Does this program allow someone to play faster, better, longer, or more accurately than someone who doesn’t use it?”
• “Does this program allow someone to ‘play’ when he/she is not at the computer?”
• “Does this program allow the user to gain undeserved rewards?”

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”—or even “maybe”—then we strongly recommend that you do not use the program because to do so may place your Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2 account in jeopardy.

Q: “Does this program allow someone to play faster, better, longer, or more accurately than someone who doesn’t use it?”
A: The answer is obviously not “yes”. The answer is not even “maybe”. The answer is no.

Q:• “Does this program allow someone to ‘play’ when he/she is not at the computer?”
A: The answer is obviously not “yes”. The answer is not even “maybe”. The answer is no.

Q: “Does this program allow the user to gain undeserved rewards?”
A: The answer is obviously not “yes”. The answer is not even “maybe”. The answer is no.

Furthermore, do note that no one has reportedly ever been banned for using SweetFX or similar SMAA injectors. The large and ever-popular thread about SweetFX has never been closed, although staff have acknowledged it and there are even a couple staff posts in that very thread.

Guild Wars 1 has the ever popular Texmod which even has its own official wiki page! It’s even more ‘questionable’ than SweetFX as, from what I’ve seen, actually modifies the client files, which SweetFX does not.

There are mods for GW2 that are much more questionable than this (namely Combat Mode), though even still, no one has reportedly ever been banned for using them.

Based on the above information, most people will deduce that using SweetFX will not get you banned.

I never noticed this issue in Orr until I got to Cursed Shore. The CC from mobs prior to Cursed Shore is fine. Cursed Shore definitely over does it IMO.

The big worry for me about the gem shop terms is that it appears that they’re not claiming they won’t replace due to technical limitations – they’re claiming it is in their legal terms of use/service/whatever that they refuse to refund in any way shape or form if a bug on their end causes issues.

There’s a bug running rampant in these forums where you very often do not see the quote, edit, trash, or report buttons for any posts – even your own. They’re working on a fix, but in the mean time, let me tell you how to access these functions even if you don’t see the buttons.

First, find the post you want to edit/trash (your own posts only) or quote/report. There should be an icon in the bottom right of that post that looks like two chain links linked together. It’s the permalink.

Get the URL that that icon leads to. You can do this by left clicking it and looking in your address bar, or by right clicking it and clicking Copy Link Location(this function varies depending on your browser).

By adding a little bit to the end of the URL, you can quote it, report it, or if it’s your own post, edit or trash it. Here are the specifics:
Edit: /edit
Trash: /delete
Quote: /quote
Report: /report

For example, if your URL looks like this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bots-powerleveling-bots/639572

To edit it, go to this URL (for your own posts only):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bots-powerleveling-bots/639572/edit

To trash it, go to this URL (for your own posts only):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bots-powerleveling-bots/639572/delete

To quote it, go to this URL:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bots-powerleveling-bots/639572/quote

To report it, go to this URL:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bots-powerleveling-bots/639572/report

It’s that simple. Happy lurking, all!

The gem shop is somewhat buggy. For example, I am positive I bought only one devil’s horn, but got two in the mail. It asks you to confirm, so I know that I only bought one. It was a free item so luckily there’s no chance I could have been double charged, but it still could definitely happen to someone with a paid item.

Considering the buginess of the cash shop on top of the unusuality of the gem shop, it’s definitely quite odd that their terms don’t allow you to get refund for anything whatsoever, even an error on their end. …Isn’t that a borderline scam?

Vlaxitov.5693:

Difficult =/= fun. (and tbh the fire elemental isn’t difficult, just a pita)

The fire elemental feels like being cheated for the amount of time/effort vs reward.

Thinking its fun or hard because you have to zerg it doesen’t make you cool.

Heh, I suppose my opinion is completely different from yours. Difficulty and challenge is a huge contributor towards how much fun I’m having. Furthermore, being able to kill a world boss without a good number of people should be nearly impossible in my opinion.

I very vaguely remember something being said about the UI being made more customizable at some point post-release. It’s nothing more than a vague memory I have, and I’m not even sure if a staff member ever said it. Hell, I may be thinking about a different game even. If anyone else has any memory of or evidence/log of a staff member saying something about a more customizable UI, please do speak up.

For the record, they are not able to provide item replacements because they are literally not technically able to do that, i.e. spawn items. Their terms do indeed say that they will not refund money/gems due to an ingame bug. It’s blatantly asinine but that’s what it says; that’s what you agreed to.

I don’t think you’ll hear much more than a community coordinator telling you that support already gave you a final response and that’s that (followed by a thread lock). You can either never purchase gems again, stop playing GW2, or attempt a charge back, get banned, and still only have a chance to get your money back. I know that, if you initiate a support request, they’ve been refunding the $60 purchase price if you purchased the game from their site. I don’t know if they stopped doing that yet, though.

G’luck.

What’s your favorite open world boss in GW2? I haven’t fought all of them, including any of them from Orr, but my favorite out of what I’ve fought is easily the Fire Elemental. Yup, the level 15 one in Metrica Province. It only spawns if a DE chain fails, but wow… it rains havoc on everyone despite your original level.

Constantly spawns Embers which are painful and, while it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the embers’ attacks and the boss’s attacks, all of the constant fire ground AoE’s and everything else being thrown at all players in the vicinity as soon as they start crossing the bridge to fight this guy… if you’re unlucky, you’re going to die. It’s virtually impossible to kill unless you have at least 20-30+ people. It’s difficult to fight both as a ranged and melee player. It just produces a constant onslaught of destruction.

Comparing some of the later world bosses to this guy… I think something’s wrong. Many of the world bosses are little more than tank and spank, and are even easier when you have 10-20+ players. But this level 15 boss… is a challenge and a half even with 20+ peoples. I wish the level 40-60+ bosses were half as challenging is this guy!

To whoever designed this boss: Thank you. And please, please do us all a favor and get your hands dirty by improving some of the other world bosses.

They said “no” very early on to addons, especially UI addons.

There have been a few mentions somewhat recently by one or two staff members that they want to eventually be able to work with third party developers to create “apps”. They haven’t said anything more than that, from what I’ve seen.

7/10. I just wasn’t able to get in to most of it. They made it very difficult to do so, in my opinion. I didn’t bother reading a guide, so maybe that was my problem. The real problem is that the learning curve shouldn’t be so high that it’s almost necessary to read a guide or spend oh so much time learning it all; I just don’t have time for that.

You won’t get an official answer more than what we’ve already seen. ArenaNet has been known to say something isn’t allowed while implying that you won’t get banned for it. It basically means that they don’t recommend you do it and they won’t support it and potentially anything else that goes wrong with your client if you are using it.

While the third party policy posted by Gaile is quite vague in regards to the legitimacy of many third party applications, these graphic filters aren’t one of them. It’s blatantly not a violation; it’s not bannable. It modifies nothing more than the graphics. Furthermore, it doesn’t modify any of the client files in the slightest. There has been no one banned for using this. They have posted in this thread and some similar ones vague messages that usually point back to the third party policy.

Bloodlust.3672:

Forum auto-search is very annoying/broken. It always starts searching before we finish typing in the search field. The auto-search is a very unnecessary feature—please remove it. We can press “enter” to search by ourselves.

It appears to be an attempt to imitate Google’s instant search. As with Google’s instant search, it should definitely be an optional enhancement.

In the mean time, you can use RSS feeds as a temporary although more time-intensive/complex solution. There are many RSS readers and what-not as both browser extensions and stand alone applications. If you would prefer email updates, there are services that can email RSS updates to you. A brief google search brings up an article detailing several seemingly good solutions: http://blog.themeforest.net/resources/7-rss-to-emailsms-services-you-can-use-for-your-item-feed/

3) When a thread is locked, you don’t know it’s locked if you’re reading the thread – you only know if you’re looking at the forum list. The issue is that you don’t know it’s locked if you’re reading the thread until you click Add Reply. There is also a missing route bug.

An elaboration: The above is pretty clear, though it is a combination of a couple very similar bugs.
A) You don’t know if a thread is locked if you’re reading that thread.
B) When you click Add Reply to a locked thread, there is no matching route (very easy to reproduce), which creates a 404 error.
Upon pressing the back button, you then see the intended “Topic Locked!” message at the top unless (bug!) you clicked Add Reply from a thread that didn’t have a page specified in the url.
URL Example: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/If-the-new-zone-has-ANY-Risen-in-it
After pressing the back button when getting this route missing error, if your thread URL didn’t include a page, then instead of showing the Topic Locked! error, it redirects to the last post at the last page; this issue coincides with my first listed issue.
Do note that this also creates a similar issue as #2, wherein you are able to go forward to the same exact thread.

Solution: Fix the missing route error. Modify the “Add Reply” link for a locked thread to make it very apparent that the thread is locked.

Update: The missing route error seems to have been fixed.

4) Occasionally, a thread links to a non-existent page. Example: There are 5 pages in a thread, but it links to the 6th page. Then it shows absolutely no content aside from a buggy list of pages.

Solution: There’s not much more to say other than.. fix the bug. Also add a fail-safe fall back: If a non-existent page is accessed, redirect to the last page, perhaps with an error similar to “Non-existent page number: # accessed!” This isn’t just in case bugs occur, but also if somebody links to a non-existent page of a thread for whatever reason.

Update: This has been fixed.

5) More often than not, the post-specific edit/quote/report buttons are not visible – for your own and other people’s posts.

Solution: Requires a bug fix, plain and simple.

Update: This has been fixed.

Thanks for your time, I’ll add more bugs as I find them and have time to document them similar to what I’ve done above.

Hey all. I’ve been both using and working with bulletin boards AKA forums in some fashion or another for the majority of both my personal and professional career as a software programmer.
Im going to look over, in detail, some of the bugs and issues that plague this forum. To do this, I’ll be doing a bit of QA on certain problematic areas in these forums to investigate exactly what is going on when these issues occur, and how to reproduce them. I’m also going to propose a solution for each issue.

Without further ado:

1) The thread pagination back button bug
p.Threads link to the thread name without any page specified.
URL Example: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lost-Shores-Dignified-anticipation

There is an inconsistency here: When first going to the thread, it shows the first page – but the URL does not change. But if you refresh the page, it redirects you to the last page, specifically the last post, ex: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lost-Shores-Dignified-anticipation/page/5#post632179
Once you’ve seen the first page, the URL without a page specified will automatically redirect to the last page and last post. It functions in such a way that you can not click the back button to go to page one. The back button will just lead to the specific forum you were at before clicking the thread.

How most forums work: If the thread is specified without a specific page, it always goes to the top of the first page.
There is usually, at the very least, a small icon next to each thread title that can be clicked to view a specific page or go to the last post on the last page.
By getting rid of this icon, the above inconsistent functionality was found to be necessary.

Solution: While I believe that even if there must be no icon or list of pages, this functionality can be implemented better than it currently is – I propose that an icon be added next to each thread that allows someone to go to the last post on the last page, as it currently attempts to do automatically via messy redirects. If they just click the normal thread title, it should always lead to the top of the first page. (Perhaps the preexisting icon to the left of the thread name could be used for this functionality, rather than adding a new one. Though it may be a bit too difficult for the majority of users to notice that the functionality exists if it’s that obscure.)

2) Pressing the back button can lead you back to the list of forums rather than a specific forum (i.e. list of threads) as expected.
How to reproduce:
A) Go from the main list of forums into any forum.
B) Click a thread that you haven’t read before; it should show you the top of the first page (rather than automatically redirecting you to the last post on the last page).
C) Click the back button. You should see the list of threads on the forum you were just at.
D) Click the forward button. Since the thread is now no longer new to you, you should see the last post on the last page.
The bug is here: E) Click the back button. Instead of going back to the forum you were just in, you will be brought back to the main list of forums.

So what is going on? At step 4, when you click the forward button, your browser history replaces the forum you were in with the thread you are now in.
You will also notice that you can press the forward button again, which leads to the same thread URL without any page specified – thus it automatically redirects to the last post on the last page (which is the page you’re already at; confusing, eh?).
I am not sure how related, if at all, to a browser bug this issue may be, but it is definitely an issue that needs to be and can be fixed in the Guild Wars 2 forum.

Solution: I’m going to leave this up to the forum developers. I’ve made it very clear what the bug is and how to reproduce it.

Edit; Additional Bug: If you get the above bug but go forward to the thread with a specific page, you can not go back to the forum listing by pressing the back button. This is because pressing the back button leads to the URL without a page specified, which redirects to the last post on the last page. You have to back up a couple pages at once.

[Continued below…]

In the future, do note that LGBT may have been a slightly more.. widely used term to describe the type of community/guild you seem to be looking for.

Update: I found a guild, thanks everyone!

Hey all. I’m looking for a new guild on any US server; I’m willing to transfer. I’m interested in all elements of the game – from casual PvE to dungeons to WvW and sPvP. I’d prefer a guild that’s on a server that is at least ranked in the top 50% of servers in WvW.

I’ve got a level 79 elementalist (so close to 80, heh) and a level 16-ish thief that I’m currently leveling. I consider myself a moderately skilled player in both PvP and PvE.

Due to my busy life (…and my arguably short attention span), I mainly play GW2 casually. I usually try to play for at least an hour or two a day, but there may be some days that I don’t play much, if at all.

I don’t want to join a large-sized guild, I want a guild that is more so a group of friends than an army bent on taking over the planet. While I’m okay with what some may consider a medium-sized guild, I prefer a smaller sized guild.
I prefer guilds that lack drama and plan to be around for a while. I play in a guild to relax, socialize, and have fun – not to have orders barked at me and listen to people QQing.

Now, a bit about me…

I consider myself a mature person, though do note that I am a bit of a.. clown. While I’m not willing to disclose my age to this entire community, note that I am indeed of legal age. I’m a proud geek, both recreationally and professionally. I’m (technically) a professional website designer and programmer.
I’m located in the pacific time zone, though I’m a night owl and will often stay up quite late. I have a headset with a mic and prefer a guild that has and actively uses ventrilo, teamspeak, mumble, or something along those lines.

I’m a loyal guild member and pride myself in having integrity to both myself and the people I communicate with. While I find there is little to no point in getting into arguments with other people, I do like healthy debating.
I’m able to follow orders and what-not, but am also capable of being a leader. I don’t mean commanding peons to do my bidding – I mean taking an active role in bettering the community as a whole. Also note that for some odd reason, I find happiness in helping others.

And… that’s a brief intro to what kind of person and guildy I am.
Thanks for your time, all. Feel free to reply to this thread or PM me if you’d like me to be a part of your guild.

So wait, TPvP tracks and pairs you up against other players/teams with similar skill levels, while SPvP doesn’t, i.e. pairs randomly? What about the auto balancing mechanic in SPvP? Is that not working well, or does it balance only by glory level, i.e. time played rather than skill? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, it sounds like the skill matching system should be improved in SPvP. Once again, I don’t see a reason to change TPvP to fix this issue.

The idea of a pug tournament doesn’t make sense in my opinion, paid or not.
That being said, it sounds like the main issue here is the lack of options and the poor quality/quantity of rewards from SPvP moreso than the fact that PUGs are getting clobbered by premades in TPvP.

The way I see it, TPvP is, or at least should be thought of as little more than SPvP for premades. It’s more competitive, and yeah, maybe it does have a bit better rewards because of that. But if the rewards are so much better than SPvP and/or the gameplay options are that much more preferred that people are being drawn away from SPvP, then it sounds like SPvP should be fixed rather than TPvP.

Solo queuing tpvp shouldn’t be possible IMO. It’s a tournament, it should require a full group to be queued together.

Wiser with Age.3714:

1) ArenaNet didn’t want to deal with Trade window “scams” which are caused by slight of hand and clicking reaction time. Technically the scammers didn’t do anything illegal, even though they essentially have. In far too many MMOs that I’ve played, Customer Support has always got bogged down by these issues. That’s their officially stated reason for not having a Trade window in GW2.
Like I said, this is no excuse. Making a trade system that makes it easy to notice what you are giving and receiving as well as when the other player changes one item in the trade window with another is very simple. Add a ready button and a trade button and a confirm trade window; all three have to be approved by both players before the items are traded. Make sure the items being traded have all the detail as if they were in your own inventory. If either side changes the items in the trade window, then unready both sides. They could even show the buy/sell price of the items in the trade window from the TP.

2) The whole point of the BLTC auction system is to act as a Gold Sink to remove money from the economy as a means of preventing inflation. If ArenaNet were to create a Trade system that was user friendly, then that would encourage people to bypass the BLTC (and thus lead to more currency inflation). As a ripple effect, ArenaNet might then feel compelled to raise the Gold Sink costs on other game aspects like the Waypoint travel system. People already complain that Waypoint travel is far too expensive, so increasing those costs would just cause an even bigger set of problems.
The auction system is a fine gold sink. Trading systems are free because it takes a lot more time to find a buyer/seller than an auction system. If ArenaNet was really worried, they would add a tax, probably based off TP prices, to the trading system.

3) Back during Beta, ArenaNet basically said that player to player trades were a complete gamble. If a player did get ripped off through an attempted Mail trade, then ArenaNet wouldn’t feel responsible to help the “scammed” party because that player voluntarily ignored ArenaNet’s anti-scamming system of the BLTC. (The fact that the BLTC imploded for a couple weeks after the game launched is rather ironic after ArenaNet put so much importance on the system during Beta. However now that it’s functional, their original philosophy should apply.) Since the game has gone live, ArenaNet has backpeddled from their original stance and claim that they will “try” to help the injured party. However I still swear that I once saw a dev refering to Mail trades as a game of Russian Roulette. I really think that ArenaNet is claiming to help Mail suckers as a means of PR and not out of a genuine desire to protect people from their own gambles.
I haven’t seen them do anything about scammers. At all. A trading system doesn’t have to be a scam-heavy system if it’s built smart. A mail system being the only alternative to a trade system can be and is indeed a scam-heavy system.

My responses are under yours in bold.

Samfisher.7942:

TimeBomb.3427:

Third party FoV modifications aren’t allowed, Samfisher.

It’s posted by ArenaNet themselves…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/FOV-Field-of-View-Changes-Beta-Test

Ah, I thought you meant third party mods. The vertical FoV is nice (and, for the record, should work fine if you don’t have a widescreen resolution), but there’s still a lot of room for improvement IMO.

Third party FoV modifications aren’t allowed, Samfisher.

Heh, relax a bit guys. There was another word that was censored in the English version which was a bad word in another language, and they fixed it. Just report it – it is a bug – and move along.

Effect.6408:

I think it has something to do with “WTB” and “WTS” spamming in the general or “map” chat. I guess they’d rather have it be a social experience as opposed to seeing your chat box being spammed up with useless items for sale at a ridiculous price.

Not an excuse. A trade channel could be made and use of it could be enforced.

Jestunhi.7429:

The gold sink (tax & listing fee) is in the TP for a reason.

I doubt they will decide to add a trading system to help people avoid it.

Also not an excuse. Auction houses always have extra fees because of how much easier it is to use to buy/sell in most scenarios compared to normal trading. The auction house would still be used a lot, and it would still be a noticeable gold sink. Player to player trading works quite well alongside an auction house.

kiranslee.4829:

Not having trade is idiotic. But also supports all other claims that GW2 is in any way forcing ppl to buy gems. Like everything i seen so far is purely focused to GW1 fans (im not i think it was terrible game) and Gem store. But since there are ppl willing to trow away 700$ on gems, oh well ….

Hrm? I don’t see how a player to player trading system has such a direct relation to the gem economy. Could you elaborate?

Kaizer.7135:

How the heck did you get scammed? If you played the trust game with mail, then that was a dumb move. The reason there is no trade system is because there’s no need for one, you can see the lowest buying prices and highest selling prices on the Tradepost.

He got scammed because he was using the mailing system as a trading system. There are reasons for a trading system.

Example: You, Player A just finished an explorable dungeon with a PUG, and thus you haven’t known anyone in the party for more than maybe an hour. You have Item X that Player B wants. Player B has Item Z that you want. Although you don’t really want Item X, you could get some okay money for it on the trading post. You really want Item Z, but you don’t trust Player B to give you Item Z if you mail Item X first, and rightfully so. Likewise, Player B doesn’t trust you enough to mail Item Z, but also wants really wants Item X. You’ve both hit a crossroad. You have three choices:
1) Risk getting scammed and mail Item X first.
2) Try to get Player B to mail Item Z first, albeit Player B knows they would risk getting scammed.
3) Back out and sell Item X on the trading post. You don’t get Item Z.

This is just one example of many as to why there should be a player to player trading system.

Stone Shards is a channeled ability.
It looks like there’s a bug report on the first page of the stickied thread that says Stone Shards doesn’t work with a channeling trait. So apparently numerous traits aren’t counting it as a channeled ability. Just another one of many bugs.

TheGuy.3568:

Whats wrong with conditions?

The stacks don’t work well when 2 people or more run condition. Run with a necro, a guardian, a P/D, or D/D blossom thief, rifle warrior, short bow ranger, P/S P/P engineer and some staff mesmer builds and you will understand. The overwrites are a pain. That doesn’t mean condition damage is bad. Theoretically in a long fight you do more with condition damage (if you have enough conditions) than you will with direct.

In the long run though power crit combos just mesh better with others. There is 0 wrong with going with condition damage as long as you have enough power to back up all the direct damage you have.

Michael.1268:

I had said that better players will clear off conditions quickly in a previous post. I still stand by that. Luckily, enough people in WvW either don’t know they can clear conditions or don’t notice they have conditions on them. I often see my bleeds go their full duration.

I know that I’ve made assumptions that people are bad, but until I’m proven wrong it is working for me.

Got to sort of disagree. Burst players usually don’t carry enough condition removal to survive the dots anyway. Good condition spammers wait for you to blow the cleanses then dot you again or just continuously dot you. The more conditions the more likely you cant get rid of them all.

I will say this I usually heal through/cleanse conditions in such a way its not to big of a worry. I have faced some rifle warriors that just continue to pour it on.

This guy put it the best. Condition cleansing isn’t that big of a deal, conditionmancers specifically are much more of a worry.

But the biggest issue is that if you get 2-3 condition damage players together, they just about cancel eachother out.

Also condition damage doesn’t work against objects, ex. WvW doors or oh so many aggressive things in the ground in PvE. Since conditions don’t work, you have to rely on pure damage. I know that ArenaNet is aware of this issue, but I haven’t heard much on it in quite a while. I’m sure it’s in a priority list somewhere.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k3c;0J0B2VY0B57N-Z0;9;6TT9;417B02A4;08w;1Z;0sV2DsV2D9Fh
(Link doesn’t work due to forum bug, either copy paste it or click: http://tinyurl.com/aldyw3t)

Replace D/F with D/D if so desired, though you’ll gain a lot more survivability if you’re able to use focus well.

Healing+Armor+Defensive Abilities will make you extraordinarily difficult to take down. Your >1k condition damage will be allow you to deal some decent DPS to your enemies. Once you learn all the ins and out of the build and how to efficiently play it, you survive so easily that you may actually get bored from the lack of challenge. Works in sPvP and PvE; not so well in dungeons or WvW.

They do not want to add in player-to-player trading. The only hint of a reason we’ve got is to prevent scamming. There may or may not have been an economy-specific reason as well, I can’t recall.

I’d really appreciate an in-depth reasoning from whatever developer decided this was a good idea. I’ve tried to fathom a moderately logical reasoning for this, but alas, I am unable to. If it’s just simply “players can scam other players with a trade system”, that’s bologna – a player-to-player trade system can and has been designed to make it virtually impossible to not understand what items/currencies you are giving and receiving to/from the other player.

ArenaNet is full of really intelligent developers, especially their game designers. I imagine there has to be a very good reason that player-to-player trading was excluded, and I’d love to hear it.

When I was doing story mode, the first quest from the orders I did was w/ Order of Whispers. Then the next one I had a choice of vigil or priory – assumingly because the last one I did was w/ whispers and they wanted me to see another order. The quest after that had me pick one of the three orders for real.

I play an extremely resilient Elementalist.
0/0/30/30/10
Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Arcane

Dagger/Dagger or, for ridiculous tankiness and less offensiveness, Dagger/Focus.
Build for healing, toughness, and condition damage.
Use signet of restoration.

You just… won’t… die. It takes a while to kill you not even counting all the awesome defensive abilities (focus primarily, and utilities depending on build) you have.
I started getting bored of the build because combat wasn’t a challenge. Sure, it took a lil longer to kill mobs than it would with a dps build, but I could take on groups of 5+ in Orr without trouble.

I only used it briefly for sPvP, but the build appeared to work quite well based on my experiences. It’s not an easy build to play. Ele is a bit more difficult to play already because you have to use 20 abilities in synergy rather than switching occasionally between two sets of 5 abilities. But knowing when to and when not to use your defensive abilities is also quite important.

Vangy.7403:

I disabled Video and Broadcasting but i still getting GW2 Crash… This time though Worked when i did Disabled ‘In Game X fire’.. and ofc that makes xfire useless for me… so i guess ill have to uninstall.. thanks all for the try and help

edit : So can anyone suggest a similar program like xfire that is able to capture>compress and also upload my videos on youtube or somewhere? :P and ofc that can be compatible with this awesome injector! xD

Overwolf.com and Raptr.com are the two that come to my mind. I don’t personally use them so I don’t know if they work or not w/ the injector, and I don’t know much specifics about the features, so I apologize if neither do what you want. But they are both moderately popular alternatives with some similar features.

Update: This appears to be an issue only with Windowed Fullscreen mode on W8.

SMAA may be more difficult to notice with SweetFX’s emulated HDR on. I wouldn’t be surprised if certain rigs made SMAA more blatant than others, but technically speaking, using SMAA+HDR with SweetFX should be visually different than using just HDR. Though this also depends on your specific SweetFX SMAA and HDR settings!
Do note that AA appears to be most noticeable on plant/grass/herb edges. It can be largely unnoticeable elsewhere, especially to the untrained eye.

CelticWish, you’re wrong. First of all, the HDR SweetFX includes isn’t technically HDR, it just attempts to mimic HDR.
Second, I can assure you that SMAA+HDR is visually different than HDR w/o SMAA. Zoom in closely on an herb leaf and you will notice that it is much more jagged w/o SMAA than with (even with HDR enabled).

Dutch Rental.8360:

i really want to use this but cant anet give an clear clarification about this gettin u in trouble or not i know its just an visual tweak and stuf but its still concidered as an third party program
as for gw1 we had texmod to change the visual effect and it was allowed but anet wont provide support about client isseu`s and noone was banned from using texmod
would be nice if anet could make an official statement about using sweetFX
cheers

If you think this even “maybe” breaks the third policy program policy, then don’t use it. I and many others don’t believe it even remotely breaks any part of the third party program policy.
As far as anyone is aware, no one has been banned for using these injector applications. Hell, no one’s been banned for using combat mode, and that is way more questionable in regards to the third party program policy.
They aren’t going to vet individual applications.

The thread title says it all. The game works wtf amazing in Windows 8 – no issues and my FPS rose from average 25-30 to average 50-55 (after brief testing), I have to alt tab to get to the game – there is no icon in the taskbar as there was in W7.
The FPS rise makes it worth it… though it may be in part due to ATI perhaps having a much better W8 driver than a W7 driver of the same version.

FWB.1704:

Yeah, I have been actively avoiding combat when unprepared… but the whole reason of this post was to point out that the slow initiative regen out of combat doesn’t really follow ANET’s stated objective of trying to reduce the down time between fights, or to put it another way, help prepare us more quickly for combat. That’s why they gave us quick health regen ooc. I don’t see what you were trying to add with that rottaran…

And yeah I understand that while other classes cooldowns don’t speed up ooc, melee thieves are basically impotent sitting ducks without their skills far more so than any of the other classes. Also, maybe some of you don’t realize this, but you wouldn’t be getting more initiative than you otherwise would have in combat. The only thing that would change is the time you spend standing around waiting for your initiative to fill inbetween fights. I don’t see why anyone would have a problem with this. It simply makes for smoother gameplay.

To add onto what’s already been said, keep in mind that, while you may be a sitting duck w/o initiative, full initiative = much stronger thief. Thief’s shouldn’t be able to full burst any faster than they already can after just depleting all their initiative on a now-dead enemy. If it’s that problematic for you, you may want to look into better initiative management.

I was going to agree with you FWV and argue that it’d be a good idea as long as the timer before “quick initiative regen” kicks in is longer than the quick health regen timer, but Coffeebot makes an extremely good point that seems to nullify your proposal.

I’d like to suggest that the wording for thief’s “Off-Hand Light” weapon listed in the weapon skills window is changed from “With Off-Hand Light” to “Without Off-Hand”, which is much clearer.

I wasn’t at all certain what off-hand light was initially, and had to come search the forums to find out. In my opinion,“Off-Hand Light” does not make sense; “Without Off-Hand” is quite sensible.

Thanks.

Tharjax.9068:

If my white colors seem to be a bit to bright how do I tone them down? Some of the reflections off of light sources seem hard to look at because of the brightness.

Disable post processing (bloom) on the ingame graphics settings. My latest graphics settings are also back a page or so; I did my best to address, amongst other things, bright light issues.