Guild Wars 2

IMO.. MF should only apply to yellow drops and above. I’ve never had a lot of rare drops even with magic find booster, banner, gear and food, even zerging in Orrian areas I can count on one hand the amount of rares I’ve had drop in the weeks I’d been farming there, even while in a party of 5. Exotics? Forget it.. I’ve never seen one drop yet, not for me.

Grouping up for anything isn’t mandatory unless it requires co-op team play, but having said that, ANet kind of wants you to group up silently because it’s believed that if you do group up even in a short term, your chances of better loot are increased. This belief can be questioned when you consider an instance I had yesterday when I decided to see what the Southsun Cove area was like now the 15th of November farce had cooled down (the fallout from that is just starting to hit the surface btw). I stumble across a small group of people randomly killing karka and next thing I see an invite… no biggie, I accept and it turns out that these people are just trying to get their monthly reward points for killing 200 karka. But at the same time, I did notice that in the 30mins that I was farming with them, not much was spoken at all, we just kind of went on killing like a mini-zerg and I also got 9 Vials of Powerful Blood (which goes a small way to help with my Gift of Magic for the Legendary), now that the bot-banning has properly affected prices of T6 materials, I need all I can get without having to spend over 26s for the privilege… even the Potent Blood (T5 material) is over 2s per and I’ll need these to craft T6 mat’s eventually in the Mystic Toilet. So the quality of loot really can be brought into question when farming alone versus partying up with others for co-op randomness.

And when they’d finished their achieves they simply said “got enough now, ty for grp”, etc. which is fine by me, and another person comes along to fill in that spot shortly after. Finally there’s just two of us and the other guy says “gotta sell some stuff” and leaves, by which time I’d had enough of the area myself. So that instance kind of worked out well; no one wanted to chit-chat while killing mobs, we worked together co-operatively and got decent rewards out of it (well, it is a L80 area), and it was mutual for all involved to just do our own thing. No one asked us to come together for the group, except for the party invite which you can ignore or turn down at your leisure, but that was a beneficial instance.

Playing this game solo is a double-edged sword; it’s great if you wanna just go about your own thing, explore, whatever, but it’s a menace if you want some help with the harder areas of the game like dungeons.

Some very good points so far, and mostly the very same reasons why I choose to do most things alone. I don’t like doing PvP either, mostly because of the foul taste left in the mouth from the old GW from the player’s attitudes (either arrogant kids or elitists), but also because of severe lag. Being oceanic will do that though.

Just to add to the mix, I’m on at odd hours of the day when the ‘peak times’ of most other ‘locals’ would be gone a few hours ago. I outlast them most of the time, and there aren’t too many on like me. Otherwise I’d like to play alongside other people whom I could help and they could help me, especially with dungeons. I’m even in a guild of my very own so I can earn my own influence and post karma banners for D/E’s in orr zergs. But with the recent changes in game events (karka crap, Fractals crap, needing to do Arah explorable… crap) I can’t do this stuff by myself, and it would be nice to either form an impromptu group or an organised one with TS/Vent/Mumble for making instructions a lot clearer and avoiding the need to type messages.

These are things I’m weighing up right now as I’m looking for help with levelling some alt’s and getting my main through the rest of the game on the way to his Legendary, hopefully with ‘some’ help, if not a lot.

I had the same question, though never posted it on here. Someone chimed in at the right time in-game, the missing PoI was in the Order of Whispers hideout which has a portal that’s in the water (inside the cave). I got my 100% once I visited that.

Give the players what they want; the game that they paid good money for.

Take away the PR hype and be honest with us. The only types of players you’re going to have around after Christmas at this rate are the hard-core “life is for someone else” gamers that are the only ones that will be able to keep up with your vertical treadmilling. No one else here likes it, not casual players anyway. The problem is you haven’t kept the focus on the player, you’re bowing to the wishes of the elitist. Please remember that people bought this game as something to play, not as a full-on challenge, but we would like to be rewarded likewise for our efforts when we can play.

I thought about this earlier on today, and right now it’s mostly about money. The hardcore gamer can get rich as easy as breathing, but for the casual gamer, everything costs money and there’s no real easy way to make it back. It’s like ANet suddenly became a bit like a casino in Vegas.. the RNG is the odds you play, and those odds ALWAYS favour the house.

Is the Elementalist info on Noxxic still current?

http://www.noxxic.com/gw2/elementalist/damage/pve/stat-priority

I’m not sure I’d roll with those utility skills either, but if I want to re-trait I’d rather do it properly. I’m primarily a staff ele but occasionally switch to dual daggers if say my effectiveness in a typical Orr D/E scenario is being undermined. I’m not particularly good up close with and ele, especially with such soft armour, so I’ll tend to kite enemies more often than not. My play style is usually defensive, but not defensive enough to sit on the sidelines and play the missing monk. I’ll cause damage from 1200/1500 range but will mostly avoid direct aggro.

Will we ever see an Oceanic-based server? People in this area will never see ping rates under 100ms like most of the US and EU people with their own servers do. Latency of this kind makes it completely unfair on anyone from this area having a level playing field with someone else with 20-40ms ping in something like sPvP and the like.

The closest we got to this in original GW was the Asian-based servers which were eventually merged in with the US ones anyway.

At the risk of causing an outrage… make ecto a drop in high level areas? If not then make it as part of dungeon loot or something, just a measure of getting more ecto into the game and help stabilising prices.

Demand CLEARLY outstrips supply, and that’s a fact that won’t go away any time soon.

I’ll start farming fractals for exotics and the like once they’ve dealt with the connection issue to the server, culling, etc. Until then I’m not going near the place because I don’t want to let any PUG down by disconnecting on the 3rd fractal in a series like what has happened to me numerous times so far.

I’m on Lvl1 and destined to stay there for now. It’s just not worth the effort.

Hobocop.1508:

I’ve gotten almost 50 ectos in three days just running dungeons. Supply has actually gone UP, but there are also more things to use them on.

The problem with that is those ectos aren’t reaching the market. Flood the market with supply and you start to level the supply/demand equation.

I personally use BL salvage kits and lately I’ve been VERY lucky to pull one ecto off a 70+ rare in the last 12-15 salvages. So either my luck is really crap or the drop rate is diminishing.

Welcome to being in a persistent world. Instancing like in the original GW ensured mobs never came back to life. But since this is a world where you can have other people join at any given time and go where you have just been, the challenge has to be presented to them as well. Otherwise we just get trolls on here saying that it’s not a persistent world anymore and it’s all too easy, even if it is just for world exploration.

If you don’t want to face those enemies again, you have to option to WP out (waypoint) to a safer area that’s nearby, but I don’t care what Arenanet has to say about costs being minimal; at level 80 it’s never a cheap option if you’ve been unlucky enough to die near a WP and have to fork over 1s-39c for the privilege. I’d rather fight the mobs again for the extra XP, but if they’re tough you may well find yourself forking over just as much if not more cash to the armour repairer eventually. Crafty ANet, always getting cash from the unsuspecting players.

“Are you sure you wish to purchase Icy Runestone?”

Is this something new? I don’t remember being asked to say yes or no to buying icy runestones before…

invizo.5408:

I thought every aspect of this “Lost Shores” fiasco was ABYSMAL.

On lowest ugly ugly UGLY settings I ran at 25fps
On highest settings I ran at 19fps.

1920×1080
Intel i5 2500k 3.5ghz x 4
Nvidia 560Ti OC x 2 in SLI
120gb SATA3 SSD
8gb DDR3 RAM
Win7 64bit
and i’ve been a computer systems builder for 15 years.

You wasted all of your money and resources on creating one-time only events that were PAINFUL to complete, LONG as hell, and i felt REQUIRED to be there because of all the loot.

I don’t see how anyone can enjoy ANY video game at under 30fps.

I think you’ve missed the fact that your PC- and game-specs have little to nothing to do with server-side lag. When, as a server, you’re trying to govern the actions and content of hundreds of people, it’s just not viable to go above a certain limit before the game looks and feels too chunky. If it’s gonna drop, it’ll drop people because it can’t handle the load.

I am running a PC with similar specs to yours and mine was just as bad, although the FPS rate was way worse (max 12FPS in only the first phase of the event). Why? Simple. My connection from half way around the world in competition with everyone else who is 95% guaranteed to be closer to the server than me. If you can’t drop the latency you can’t pick up the FPS.

I do agree that the event was abysmal, totally. But do be thankful that you got to be there for the final event… others were less fortunate, myself included.

Me too please!! I’m hanging out for some Arah explorable action, I need my shards as much as everyone else does. Hit me up in-game and I’ll most likely be free for a run whenever. I guess the timing is most important here, as we’re worldwide.

You’re missing the point. A critical one. Keep the group together – at this stage it’s luck of the draw with connections to ANet’s servers. If this can be managed so no one gets kicked or d/c’d then you can worry about team management.

My connection can sometimes be iffy (speaking of lag, that is – that’s what you get for living in Australia), but that says nothing of the amount of times I’ve disconnected from ANet’s servers where no fault was on my end. At no time have I ever D/C’d from the game because of my connection while in a server. That’s ANet’s problem. I designed and built my PC to run way above required specs of GW2 as most gamers would have. It’s been able to handle everything the game has thrown at it so far, and even though the game is very pretty in places, it still doesn’t help us clear a fractals run without interruption/disconnection.

Please implement the same system you had in GW1 where you had a rejoin timer of ~10mins before they were kicked from party. This is unacceptable.

I can already smell this thread getting merged.

TBH I haven’t had the nerve to try again after I got disconnected 5 times during my L1 fractals attempt. I don’t want to let anyone down as much as they don’t either for anyone else in the team, but while this isn’t getting fixed, those people on more ‘solid’ connections will continue to skip away and form their little elitist club. Seriously?! I haven’t even progressed from L1 yet!! This makes me feel kind of useless as a player, and I’m certainly not enjoying all the rushed content which was lobbed on us all at one time… which I think is half the problem with why we have so many stupid bugs of such epic proportions in this past week.

The other reason I think the troubles exist are because LA is becoming (as someone said earlier) the fractals hub and “LFG” central. I don’t know about anyone else but I haven’t been able to log straight into my homeworld server on entry into the game while in LA since the weekend. All this demand on the servers would be causing the lag and subsequent culling of people from the servers… regardless of if they’re in a fractal of whatever level. The more demand for content/services a server has to deal with, the higher the chance someone will have to get booted because of that load.

Come on ANet. This is totally unacceptable. And while you’re all at home stuffing yourselves on turkey we’re still here lamenting the decisions you ultimately thought were best for the game in releasing a crapload of new content. Protip: More QA PLEASE! Honestly would you like this if someone else did it to you? We paid good money for this game only to have it riddled with bugs left right and centre.

For those people wanting a fix on this I don’t think you’re gonna find one before next week. Arenanet, after you’ve basically destroyed the concept of your manifesto, I believe you guys have a lot of soulsearching to do. All I can say is may our complaints and sheer frustration from dealing with basic idiocy weigh heavily upon you. I hope you find the path… while I sit and watch people spam LFG lvl ‘x’ and I think to myself “will I ever get there”.

bluewanders.5297:

Be happy you got something. All I got was a lot of lag and a disconnect.. When I managed to get back into the game the event was over and I got no loot at all.

Be happy that you got to play in this ‘money’ phase at all. Others couldn’t get on for various reasons because of real life and arenanet’s VERY bad timing.

+1 to OP.

Not sure why they’re so silent, perhaps the karka got their tongue.

Going from my experiences in GW1, I was in various guilds as a member and officer, only to find most times I wasn’t really doing anything much with other guildies. I’d just pack the heroes and go vanquish or something. Rarely would a guildie accompany me through story-related stuff, but I’d usually be there to help them out.

The breaking point for me was when there was no one left on at my time (I play with other Aussies mostly but they usually pack up and go to sleep when I’m getting warmed up) so I find myself in a gap between when the Aussies retire and when the Yanks start up. This led me to being in a guild by myself which I created; I didn’t have to please anyone else, bow to requests from anyone when it wasn’t convenient and I could just roam as I wanted. I know that’s not very social but what more can you do when you find yourself in a gap like that? Sometimes you gotta be the bridge. Sure there were some regulars that I played with and had some marvellous times with along the way, but most of us know that nothing like that lasts.

I sometimes question why I made my own guild in GW2 because now it’s rather counter-productive if you want anything like what others have in the way of guild buffs and perks from masses of influence. I think the most I’ve ever had at one time was about 3000 influence which came from zergs in Straits of Devastation, but didn’t last too long after researching different levels of disciplines and crafting stuff like a guild vault, etc. which now seems like a massive waste of influence because I can’t put a great deal of stuff in there. :P

Still, even going through L80 zones I feel rather soft and vulnerable by myself basically because I can tend to be this loner that kind of doesn’t really fit in all that well. This is why ‘zergs’ are a good idea for me because you can help out a group of like-minded people and be rewarded for it.. just get a decent number of hits in or you won’t be rewarded at all drop-wise but just get the DE completion with the coin/xp/karma.

Overall I believe anyone can take on an enemy by themselves, or (typically) maybe even 2 or 3 if they’re good, maybe even a veteran.. but if you’re alone, larger mobs will always win if you’ve underestimated the aggro.

Lastly I believe what other people have said has merit; yes we do need an LFG channel because the /map chat is over-crowded in areas like LA, and we need more dots (other players/allies) on the minimap, similar to what WvW has.

So they’re managing a reimbursement of sorts for people that were culled from the servers or who lagged out during the event. What about the people who did the first two phases but couldn’t get on for the money phase? I did everything asked of all the people who did these events except for the last phase. Maybe even just the 20-slot bag as a ‘thanks for participating’?

It puts me off that this event was so bugged in the first place. Perhaps the one-time event thing shouldn’t be limited to a one time zone. As others have said here, make it instanced to alleviate lag and have it run for more than just those who can make it on at one particular time. It’s quite obvious that Arenanet’s GW2 servers can’t handle the load of hundreds of thousands of people and have smooth server-lag-free gameplay, so I believe the instancing thing has some merit.

The other way they could make up for it is have a redux of the entire event. This makes it not so much one-time only, but at this point, who really cares. You have so many more annoyed people that couldn’t finish the event for one reason or another, a redux (with plenty of warning) would be a fine idea.

I’m going to paraphrase quotes from the Guild Wars 2 Manifesto video which I believe was released about August 2010…

Mike O’Brien – “A game that defies existing conventions… an opportunity to question everything… a new event system to get people playing together…”

Colin Johanson – “Most games you go out and you have really fun tasks occasionally that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff… WE JUST DON’T WANT PLAYERS TO GRIND IN GUILD WARS 2, no one enjoys that, no one finds it fun…”

Ree Soesbee – “As a structure, the MMO has lost the ability to make the player feel like a hero, everybody around you is doing the same thing you’re doing, the boss you just killed respawns 10 minutes later… the most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

For me this smacks of airy-fairy. Although they’re real people explaining real instances that they wanted / didn’t want in this game, almost all of it is contradicted according to the quotes versus what we actually need to do to get anything that is considered decent in this game.

ARENANET, Be the change you want to see in this game. SET THE EXAMPLE

Nowhere do they mention that for best results you have to adapt to the North American timeframes and have exceptionally good luck not only with your chest drops and internet provider’s latency, but even if you make it that far without being booted/dropping connection/lagging out, or my favourite, not even being able to make the event at all, no matter what intentions you had, no matter about the notion of finishing a one-time-only event… you have a life to live as well, and a good deal of us have a job to work. I personally didn’t get to do the final phase of this weekend’s event because I had to work and the event started at about 7am my time. I have integrity and I’m not going to call in sick to play a game. But what I did do was exceptionally buggy and possibly not the best move made to introduce trial accounts for this weekend for a seemingly ill-planned, rushed and (from what we saw in early phases) barely QA’d NPC’s and waiting for events to be fixed. Leave aside the fact that they did manage a work-around solution to enable continuity, the event sequencing needed more time for less bugs and a proper execution.
For people with those trial accounts to see the bugs in the event system happen the way they did, it’s one hell of a first impression to make.

Even the Euro’s would have had a great time of it, they would be playing in the evening their time when the main events for each day’s phases start. Lucky them hey, they also got a localised server so their lag isn’t catastrophic. But for us poor Oceanic’s, we’re the bottom of that barrel. Guild Wars 2 was lucky to even get advertising upon pre-release, but it’s never rated a mention at local conventions like Supernova (oh, hang on, one banner). All we know of Guild Wars 2 down here is that QVS distributes the localised hard copies and that’s about it. We don’t have a server of our own, but we do have a presence. And with this presence comes the largest lag latency to be found anywhere in the world. Tell me how in any way is this fair for a game to be played INTERNATIONALLY?

So people who actually got to play the game are whining that they didn’t get a precursor… it was mentioned that the drop rate was going to be upped and a scavenger hunt implemented to ensure that those super-rare precursor weapons didn’t slip through the hands of those dedicated souls who are working extra-hard and spending heaps on gold to acquire materials through the gem store (most of which requires REAL MONEY PURCHASES), which have escalated in price astronomically thanks to the stomping out of bots. Bear in mind that the precursor weapon is very hard to get your hands on, but if you know anything about making a legendary weapon, it’s only one tiny piece of a much larger picture that has to be assembled, and takes an enormous amount of time for the casual player to actually craft.
But if you did get to play the final event spare one thought for those who missed out on the final phase of the event altogether because they wanted to be there and couldn’t make it. Who knows, it could have been YOUR lucky precursor weapon loot from the chest that escaped your hands because more people were online at the same time and YOU were either kicked from the server or that person made off with your super-valuable loot. The shoe suddenly switches feet.

My 2c * clink *.. spend wisely.

-V-

I didn’t get to do the last event because I had to work (I know a LOT of people in various overflow servers were in the same boat), and timezones are a bugger when you live half way around the world from the nearest server. I can’t tell you how many times I got disconnected from the game during the 2nd phase of the event (Sunday morning our time) so I only got to stay on maybe 10 minutes at a time thanks to being kicked with monotonous regularity.

Can anyone tell me if the event is still going and if this chest is still there at the end? I got all the magic find gear in the world but I don’t seem to have the luck to land my precursor weapon.