Guild Wars 2

Black Scoutsman.5830:

Theres no way LA is being destroyed because that section of the map still has asuran gates to unopened expansion areas. Some of them even have portals with that red no entry sign on them. They wouldnt have designed that area just to destroy it before they use it.

How’s this for a thought..what if the currently active Asura gates right now in LA get destroyed..and afterwards, the map was designed so that the unused one would be a temporary fix? I cannot remember if there 5 gates in that area that was being constructed, but remember, they don’t have to destroy the asura gates. They could just adjust the art so that they were damaged.

It was speculated earlier this week or last week that LA could be destroyed, but many said that this would be very difficult to handle since it would interfere with the personal story and map completion

Now I don’t think that they would make the entire zone inaccessible. They can just make the landscape completely different, which they have always done during the holiday/themed events. For example, there could be charred remains of buildings, the roof of the BLTC can be gone, some of the ships could have fallen off and created new buildings to access, the mystic forge can be partially destroyed (yay?)

There needs to be a permanent reminder from the end of this Living Story, so that people can say, yep, I was there when the BLTC got destroyed. Right now, many of the changes are out of sight, out of mind. It would be nice to have LA completely destroyed or inconvenient to go around, while it steadily and noticeably gets repaired and improved through subsequent patches.

Mike Z said that for however long it is relevant.

So at the most you will have it until the season is over (March)

http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/sacred-destroyed-pondering-guild.html

Better take all your screenshots of LA folks, cause it’s gonna get invaded by a dragon and destroyed ;|

Delvoire.8930:

Amber, Cobalt and Crimson?

ACC
CAC
CCA

Whatever it must be, it must be a name that is cute and makes us not take it seriously, kind of like Bubbles.

This would be extremely complicated to code. I can’t even get my head around it now.

Gibson.4036:

Most of the things in the gemstore aren’t really worth their price.

For example, it would take you a long, long time gathering with an infinite harvesting tool to gather the amount of mats you could get by simply converting the same amount of gems to gold and buying the mats off the trading post.

The same effect is true for pretty much everything in the trading post that isn’t an exclusive armor skin.

But apparently people would rather have the items for the novelty of it, so they keep buying them, so ANet has no reason to lower prices.

People keep throwing this out here. The Gemstore is not for P2W. It’s for convenience. People buy those picks because it’s convenient to never have to worry about buying picks or having 5 stacks take up space.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

What was the final phase?

It’s the one where all three wurms start to move and you have 2 mins to kill them.

I guess we can blame that one guy who didn’t use oil/foods for that failure.

Yep, it’s all YOUR fault. You. Yeah, I’m talking to you.

Rouven.7409:

Karizee.8076:

I would buy that tiny flaming dragon in a heartbeat!

Yeah … ummm … be careful. Flames and paper and such.

To be fair, people don’t care about their mail getting wet while underwater.

The again, that might kill the fiery dragon, forcing you to spend another 2000 gems.

Atlas.9704:

Vol.7601:

I’m in the minority when I say that FSP is one of the better legendaries in the game.

Yes, it has no footsteps, but it’s one of the few legendaries that have a detailed animation to it and a reflective shine not only around the shield, but on the ground.

It is the only Legendary I care to save up for in terms of gold or resources.
So I guess I’m in that minority as well.

Hopefully you don’t regret it like I did. I made both the FSP and meteorlogicus, and I barely get to use them. That’s +5000 gold I threw away!

Where did you see gem store sales are down? All I see is consolidated sales. They do not include any sort of detail.

Now, assuming gem store sales are down, an analyst would investigate why. We know the game released in 2nd/3rd quarter of 2012. So we are comparing two periods with different player populations. That could be the prime culprit as to why sales are down. If gem store sales were up, I would consider that an impressive feat.

edit2: You cannot compare the total sales $ across games. Some of those games aren’t even in the same genre. It’s like comparing General Motors with Harley Davidson and Tesla. Different company sizes, different industries. Irrelevant.

Palador.2170:

She’s annoying, but in a fun way. I’d say she’s the best written character since Tybalt and Sieran.

And I think she’s going to be used in the same way.

She wants to get close to Scarlet to learn from her, thinking that she’s really on the good side. But to do this, she’s helping Scarlet’s enemies to attack her and mess with her plans. So…yeah. She’s going to die. She’s a charming little kid, and Scarlet will kill her horribly. Or mutate her into a monster and make us kill her (though I doubt the writers can pull that off without it drifting into bad comedy.)

I don’t know, it’s a bit gimicky to kill off a ‘significant’ character that quick. At least let it build up, ya know? Gain some emotional attachment.

Killing someone off like Kasmeer would definitely get people up in arms, especially now that shes sleeping with Jory. Heck, there would be even more outrage killing off those two quaggan lovebirds.

BigMoser.8790:

lol flying dolyak

Well, it has been ‘confirmed’

http://i.imgur.com/ENMKX1X.jpg

Anet is missing a big opportunity by not having a gemstore item that customizes your mail delivery

E.g.
-Owl – 500 gems
-Flying dolyak – 1200 gems
-Tiny Flaming dragon – 2000gems

Azreell.1568:

The reality is – GW2 does indeed have less players since you left.

Not sure why everyone is so afraid to admit that.

The lack of any real content being released and a LS which has the player base split that some “like” it and some “hate” it. It’s not really any wonder.

Add into the fact after a 6 week break from any patches and all we receive are 2 poorly designed bosses and some reskins and yes – people will continue to leave.

The reason I am being so harsh on GW2 is because I do like this game, but they are drowning as shown by NCsofts q3 profit reports due to very poor development decisions.

Many people are giving the until the next “large update” patch which is suppose to be in april. If they once again screw that one up – I don’t think there will be much hope in store for gw2.

First off, yes there are less players since release. That happens in any MMO. All games have a huge rush in release and then it tapers down. The good thing, and I believe Colin/Mikez 100%, is that the playerbase is growing.

2nd, anyone with expertise in financials would recognize that just because earnings are down, doesn’t mean the company is doing bad.

NCSoft has several others games and their Q3 earnings were hit by such expenses such as the development of B & S, Wildstar and even the China release. There are also other extraordinary expenses (accounting term) such as a relocation of their offices.

Now on GW2 side, obviously they are making less money. As mentioned again, the boxed sales will always trend downward no matter what. Investors realize this, management realize this, the stock market realize this. What is not available in these reports and is probably only available internally, is the percentage of sales generated from boxed sales, gemstore items, and other materials (merchandise).

This is where you look beyond the numbers. Let’s say total sales have fallen by 30%. The average user will scream “THIS GAME IS FAILING OMFGZ”.

But the analysts and investors will ask, what is the TY vs LY figures for boxed sales and gemstore items? The figures could show that boxed sales have dropped 70% (which is expected), but gem store figures are up by 60%, which is pretty good.

Then you have thorough investors who will ask far more pertinent questions. How is the trend looking, week by week for the quarter? Is it going up? How exactly are people spending money? Is the average purchases per customer rising, or decreasing? Are sales up because more people are spending or because people are spending larger amounts? There are so many questions and metrics that you can analyze that give you a better picture. It’s part of my job, so I’m aware of it. But many times, the average users or even the media (aside from business media like financialpost or bloomberg) fail to understand finance.

I’m in the minority when I say that FSP is one of the better legendaries in the game.

Yes, it has no footsteps, but it’s one of the few legendaries that have a detailed animation to it and a reflective shine not only around the shield, but on the ground.

I love Taimi.

The day the gemstore comes out with a mini Taimi and her mini golem will cause many people to complain about gem conversion prices.

Blueskylightdragon.4876:

skullmount.1758:

Kumu Honua.2751:

I wish the marionette would replace the wurm as the permanent boss…

Same here. Marionette is a much better fight. AT least smallerish servers have a chance, unlike with the worm.
But this is just a test for the Marionette so I can see why they didn’t make it permanent.

Wurm is not unique at all. It just an enlarge version of normal wurm.
But i agree why Marionette is not permanent.

Well why don’t we use this same argument for dragons?

Zhaitain, Snorlag and Shatner are all the same, just reskinned and colored differently.

And people keep asking for dragons?

JohnnySupernova.9182:

Vol.7601:

- Too much waiting around.
-> So you want the boss to be available 24/7, with no respawn timer?

Why do you think a shorter boss timer means no timer at all? Waiting around for an hour and a half isn’t fun.

OK, let’s put it on a 1 hour timer. The fight lasts 20-30 minutes. That would encourage players to stay in their zone for the next boss, leaving little room for other players to escape their overflow to get in the main server. Man, if people complain about overflows now, how about if they implemented that?

Qaelyn.7612:

Vol.7601:

You want them to address it? Then add some constructive criticism and suggestions.

The forum is filled to the brim with them. Do I really need to repeat them, especially when most are so bloody obvious?

Think about a common problem with the marionette, which is a group of 20 people going in but ending up with an uneven distribution of players on the platforms. Do I really need to explain why this is ridiculous? Or lay out the obvious solution, which is to distribute players by parceling them out one platform at a time like a poker dealer rather than selecting platforms for them randomly? Really?

As a programmer myself I was astonished when I found out that it was possible to have 5 on one platform and 1 on another. I mean, this is really basic stuff!

Do I need to be the 100th person to say “let people on platforms who have already completed help out with other platforms”?

Do I have to explain other obvious solutions, at least in the short term, such as lengthening the timers a bit?

Do I really have to be the 10,000th person to say “make it easier for parties to be in the same overflow where there’s actually enough people to win”?

Or the 1,000,000th to say “have the event scale in difficulty based on the number of players”?

Okay, fine, I’ve now repeated all those points. Sheesh.

One constructive criticism point may not make a difference. But ten, twenty would indicate that a good portion of the playerbase on this forum (which may or may not be a vocal minority) is interested in this change. Just cause it showed up already doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post.

-Do I need to be the 100th person to say “let people on platforms who have already completed help out with other platforms”?
→ this fight promotes small-scale strategy and fights. You end up having people transferring platforms and then it becomes a zerg. I don’t think Anet intended it to be that way.
→ As a programmer myself I was astonished when I found out that it was possible to have 5 on one platform and 1 on another. I mean, this is really basic stuff!
Yes, this annoys me, but you have to understand WHY that happens. Players end up being ported in one by one, and they fill in the platforms by sequence.

Now see here, instead of complaining, you should offer a suggestion. And I have one. Instead of porting people in by spamming key, players should get into an aoe circle which will port them all at once. This way the server calculates how many players are in the circle and then divides them by 5, rounding up. 20 people in the circle? Allocate 4 each. 29 people in the circle? Allocate 5 players each while the remaining 4 people are spread out through the first four platforms.

^ That wasn’t hard, was it? As a programmer, you should be thinking of solutions instead of panicking and saying, “THIS DOES NOT WORK!!!!”. Well, why does it not work, and what can be done to fix it?

-Do I have to explain other obvious solutions, at least in the short term, such as lengthening the timers a bit?
→ Why should they? The timer is more than enough. That’s part of the skillcheck. If you want to flail away at that boss that takes no damage from the front, then you don’t even deserve any rewards. I saw that happen in the first few runs and it’s why we failed.

-Do I really have to be the 10,000th person to say “make it easier for parties to be in the same overflow where there’s actually enough people to win”?
→Once again you throw this line out without understanding why overflows exist

-Or the 1,000,000th to say “have the event scale in difficulty based on the number of players”?
This is a world boss event. Scaling has a minimum and a maximum. Do not expect to have an easier fight with 20 people compared to 100.

jmoak.7821:

you can only get exotics from world events if you are lvl 62+ BUT you can also get exotic items from champion bags even at lvl 2.

but to expand on that, I do not think you can get any precursors from the champion bags.

In fact, all the exotics from the champ bags are from a specific loot table of the named exotics that released in that up date – entropy, highborn, e.t.c.

So you won’t find precursors, older named exotics or even craftable ones.

Qaelyn.7612:

Some nice snippy little responses there, which may make you feel smug and clever, but don’t actually address the bottom line.

And that is that, even though I usually enjoy most of the LW releases, I don’t enjoy this one. I’m not alone in that.

I have a few hours a day to play GW2, at most, and I don’t want to spend them standing around, constantly trying to switch overflows. And the times I’ve participated in trying to kill the marionette we have coordinated and planned.. and then failed usually because of issues such as 1 or 2 people being put on a platform.

But by all means, please pretend it is my fault for not somehow single-handedly controlling the behavior and ability of 100 strangers, while also having to fight against some very poor game design that often makes success as much about luck as it is about skill.

You want them to address it? Then add some constructive criticism and suggestions. Otherwise this post is a one-sided complaint, and Anet can’t do anything about those.

My little ‘snippets’ show that your comments just scratch the surface and weren’t thought through at all.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Vol.7601:

- Too much waiting around.
-> So you want the boss to be available 24/7, with no respawn timer?
- Too much annoyance trying to get a party into an OF that actually has a decent number of players in it.
-> Overflows exist for a reason. It’s an inconvenience you will have to deal with

There’s actually several constructive suggestions on this board now on how to avoid these inconveniences. If ANet ignores the suggestions, then of course we have the choice to either live with the situation – or decide that other hobbies are more fun. The point of the feedback threads is that we’d rather have fun and play guildwars at the same time.

I have seen several and they do not address the issue and even make things complicated and exploitable.

One such suggestions people keep throwing around was the districts that we had in GW1.

Ignoring the fact that GW1 is not an MMO and can never be compared to technically with GW2, being able to create custom districts/servers would not help you cause since you would never have enough people to complete the event.

You want to have an empty instance for your 20-man guild? OK, but good luck trying to complete an event that requires 100 players.

Or how about the possible exploits involved with this?
We can talk about botters using their own servers to get away from getting reported and caught.

Or how about the financial costs involved in this?
Having an unlimited number of districts/servers is expensive and uses valuable computing resources. And don’t bother using the ‘anet needs to buy more servers’ argument

I’ll pile on and say that I really, really enjoyed that instance. And I’m not really into lore and most of the time I just skip through it.

But those kind of interactions and dialogue I really like. It had a bit of everything.

Seriousness – dialogue between Bram and Rox
Comedy – dialogue between Logan/Bram/Taimi
Romance/sad – dialogue between Jory/Kas

I also enjoy how it led to one another.

The VA also helped tremendously. I think people wouldn’t have enjoyed it if it were text

Keep it up

- Too much waiting around.
→ So you want the boss to be available 24/7, with no respawn timer?
- Too much annoyance trying to get a party into an OF that actually has a decent number of players in it.
→ Overflows exist for a reason. It’s an inconvenience you will have to deal with
- Too much failure.
→ If you fail to utilize strategy and coordination, you will fail. There are other easy bosses in the world if you are not skilled or too lazy enough to commit
- Too little reward when you fail.
→ You obviously didn’t reach the threshold that gave you loot, which is killing one of the wurms’ body.

Does anyone even remember who exactly killed the first teq? We all know BG did it but no one even remembers the exact guilds or who coordinated the fight. All these world first dramas are quite comical.

Same with this wurm. You get the kill? Grats on the loot! Doesn’t matter if you got it first though.. Don’t expect everyone to put you on a high pedestal that you are more skillful than everyone else. Getting world first is more about luck and getting trial/error out of the way asap.

OP, you’re going to be massively disappointed if you go actively hunting for a precursor. Best to just play the game and not expect it to drop for you.

Talk about premature celebrations

Sinbold.8723:

I liked the bag of coins and the small and medium guild discoveries. Influence is influence! I could always tell when my guildies bought BL keys- the discoveries would show in the guild history.

Anyone who’s champ farmed for more than 5 minutes has more scrolls of knowledge than they know what to do with. Sure you spend the points with Miyani for stuff to craft, but whose main doesn’t have more than they can spend already?

I was going to buy keys, and if I wasn’t so tired last night, would have done it before logging and going to bed. I want a Zodiac skin for my ascended weapon. However, now I think I should just buy the skin from the TP rather than buy keys, hope I get tickets or scraps, and be happy when I got cash back or influence. And tbh, was hoping for a name change contract for one of my alts. Now, if I spent gems to buy keys, I’d be seriously cheesed off if I got Essence of Luck (50), Essence of Luck (100), and a Scroll of Knowledge.

Those were worthless items, not sure why you would miss them when there are other available efficient options.

Bag of coins gave you no more than silver. Small/medium guild discoveries are pathetic when you compare it to the influence drinks you can buy.

You can make big bodied humans/norns (well norns are default big).

But if you’re asking for huge Asurans, you’re breaking the fantasy/lore rules.

Not sure if serious…

Charak.9761:

Seems some people understand its not worth doing, so only like 20 people are showing up now. This doesn’t bode well :/

Um well yesterday was patch day, where everyone is excited and flocking to rush the content. Not to mention it’s not even prime time, so of course not many people are going to play.

“Another option that would be great for big guilds like say TTS, is to add an option to create your own private Overflow like an instance, and the only people allowed in would be people taxi’ed in AND people in the same guild.”

This increases server resources since it creates another copy of the map. It’s unnecessary and it would be extremely costly for Anet if a bunch of people decided to make their own private server. Not to mention, it would be a haven for bots.

It doesn’t even take 15 minutes to get from 400 to 500..

Death Snakes.8193:

I feel a 10-15mins cooldown would have been met with much less anger.

I guess the way it was worded in the patch notes also annoyed a lot of people. It’s understandable that these are being used to make hard bosses a lot easier to a point that the designers hadn’t anticipated, but the notes only addressed performance issues rather then the obvious fact that these were being kindof exploited (spamming to the point that teq could be done while half asleep). This was patched so further bosses could be designed without having to take into affect the extra dmg these did which is understandable seeing as 2 new world bosses also were released at the exact same time.

Well the two are related, but they don’t need to point that they nerfed it cause of the DPS.

Since players wanted more DPS, they kept spamming the fire ele, which caused intense graphical lag and possibly increased server resources. And at that point they said enough is enough.

root.9415:

Wish this game had the GW1 system of selectable districts instead of random overflows.

It used to be WAY easier to meet up with friends and guildies for large events.

Now it’s either camp the main server map for an hour beforehand, or try and meet up in a specific overflow and hope for the best

That doesn’t solve anything.

Sure you could say to your guild to meet up in District 10…but at that point you don’t have enough people to complete the event.

Overflows suck, I agree. But it’s the ‘best’ alternative or solution out there.

Squishy.3694:

I have started gathering runs but am not high enough lvl to dungeon and our world doesn’t really do meta stuff

I suggest you guest to the higher-tiered servers, they usually have trains running before reset.

Yaks Bend has a mega blob that starts collecting for Karka at 6:45. Although with the new update it may take a few weeks for players to go back to the train.

Thank you for you detailed reply Anthony.

A few questions
-Do you think you still could have combatted this by reducing the timer to 5 minutes? That way it won’t be spammable as before and players who use it while solo’ing can still be effective rather than waiting 30 minutes.
-Do you think that a higher vendor price for elementals (let’s say 20s) would discourage spamming (since it would be costly)? I know people have already stockpiled them, but this could be the ‘best’ compromise.

Tolmos.8395:

Vol.7601:

xarallei.4279:

Maybe the cooldown should only go into effect if the pet is used in combat? Not sure how to fix the situation if it is really causing issues at big events like teq. The teq I did yesterday, however, went over just fine even with this cd implemented.

All other alternatives are too expensive,time-consuming, or difficult to implement.

There were two changes they could have done:
-increase cooldown timer
-increase ember price from vendor to make it more costly to spam

Considering that there are plenty of people with stacks of embers in their inventory, I think they felt that the 1st choice was better

A long term solution for this and other things, something to work on over time, could be an optional and more prioritized culling.

Enemies always visible
Players in party always visible
Guildmates and friends more likely to be visible than others
Everyone else less likely to be visible

Go to escape -> settings -> graphics -> Enable culling. What is and isn’t visible is determined by FPS- it optimized to put you at 20-30 fps, or an fps you choose. Removes players and non-aggressive NPCs as necessary

That would pretty much render this issue moot, as players can turn it on and no longer worry about lag from too many objects on the screen.

I agree – long-term they should make culling a bit more customizable so that you can separate pets/minions/npcs/partymembers/mobs/players.

I highly doubt it. Doing so would cause a massive outcry on these forums since it would cause some races to better than others, and people would want a refund or re-rare item.

Even if you give something as passive as say, +10 precision, people will still min-max and get angry over it. Just go look at how angry people get over ascended gear.

And then you restrict it to certain races? Oh boy.

Squishy.3694:

Well i only play for about an hour or two 3 times a week and i dont have any valuables to make huge profit off

If you only have an hour, I suggest doing a few easy dungeon runs (minimum 1 gold each), meta-event chains (30s per boss), or even gathering runs.

xarallei.4279:

Maybe the cooldown should only go into effect if the pet is used in combat? Not sure how to fix the situation if it is really causing issues at big events like teq. The teq I did yesterday, however, went over just fine even with this cd implemented.

All other alternatives are too expensive,time-consuming, or difficult to implement.

There were two changes they could have done:
-increase cooldown timer
-increase ember price from vendor to make it more costly to spam

Considering that there are plenty of people with stacks of embers in their inventory, I think they felt that the 1st choice was better

Tolmos.8395:

DarcShriek.5829:

Is there a prize to whoever is the most offended by the dev’s statement?

Mostly I’m terribly confused by the blatant bug comment. How does an entire line of items and graphics end up in a game when it wasn’t intended? =D As if someone could just like forget to carry a zero in the pvp ranking code and the end result be that a bunch of erroneous summoning items poof into the game out of nowhere. =D

You’re not the only one confused. And this is exactly why it points that he mispoke when he said that. He more than likely was trying to say that the fact that you can spam these items was clearly a bug.

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Rising Dusk.2408:

BillFreist.1527:

The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

As for the Charrzooka, I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that change was. That wasn’t part of the change to summons, or at least that I’m aware of.

The bringer of bad news,
-Bill

This is one of the most inappropriate, accusatory, and unfortunate posts I have ever read from an ArenaNet employee, and I hope dearly that you get actioned for daring to post that to your customers. We are not the problem here, communication like this is.

Please enlighten to me how he offended you. I obviously don’t have the apathy or capability to understand where all this outrage is coming from.

The first line of your post is where you set the tone for the reader. The first line of Bill’s post was extremely condescending and unprofessional, making the rest of his post seem condescending and unprofessional.

Well let’s read over the semantics here.

“The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug”

While I personally believe he mispoke and said something different than what he was trying to come across, let us assume for our sake that he did believe that Fire Elementals were not an item that were supposed to be in the game, but a bug (seriously, read over that, it’s absurd and clear that he mispoke)

Can you please expand on what exactly is condescending? Is he insulting your intelligence? Is he ignoring your existence or concerns?

As far as I can see, he is laying the groundwork for why this change happened. That’s a neutral response. The only reason why you and many others are taking it as an offense is because you disagree with the change and reading his response with anger due to this change.

And so you end up reading his remark in a biased mindsight

Using words such as blatantly or period to emphasize your point makes you sound condescending. Perhaps he wasn’t trying to sound condescending, but that’s the feeling I got when I read his post.

I don’t get the association of ‘blatantly’ with anything negative. ‘Period’ I already discussed above – it’s meant to explain that this change was from and only from the performance perspective – nothing else.

Telling someone that something is blatant or obvious tends to offend the person if they don’t see it the same way. You might not have been offended by what Bill wrote in his post, but that doesn’t make it any less unprofessional.

You only get offended if the person receiving the remark refuses to accept it.

If someone tells me Eternity is a hideous weapon and I’m someone who is 100% deadset that Eternity is a beautiful weapon, then yes, I’m offended. But a normal, average person would accept that people have opinions and that we can all disagree.

People who are getting offended by Bill seem to be deadset that there was nothing wrong with Fire Elementals .

Maybe if people came into this thread with the mindset that maybe, just maybe the devs have a different opinion on the item, they wouldn’t be so offended.

Again, this is all about semantics, and is all just a huge misunderstanding.

I’m extremely disappointed in these skins.

Seriously? Red? Green? Yellow?

Why aren’t they shiny?!

ChaosKirin.1328:

Uh.

I really don’t see how the existence of these things can be a bug. What I see is that someone noticed that people were using the pets in order to take down one world boss.

Honestly, we found a way around that last night on Teq, and I’m not going to say what it was for fear that THAT will be nerfed, too. We actually beat her in less time than we usually do using embers.

There really is no one here who actively wanted this nerf and thinks it’s fair, save for the people who didn’t use embers (and who technically shouldn’t have a say.) I don’t WvW, so if a nerf comes across WvW, I don’t comment on it. It’s not my place.

However, I do use embers, and I cannot imagine that this was JUST done for server load, especially because of the fact that only a few servers even do Teq, and that’s only at certain times.

Fire ele’s weren’t only used on Teq. Several servers use them on bosses in order to meet their loot threshold or even tag mobs. It happens on Maw, Melandru, Grenth, e.t.c.

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Rising Dusk.2408:

BillFreist.1527:

The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

As for the Charrzooka, I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that change was. That wasn’t part of the change to summons, or at least that I’m aware of.

The bringer of bad news,
-Bill

This is one of the most inappropriate, accusatory, and unfortunate posts I have ever read from an ArenaNet employee, and I hope dearly that you get actioned for daring to post that to your customers. We are not the problem here, communication like this is.

Please enlighten to me how he offended you. I obviously don’t have the apathy or capability to understand where all this outrage is coming from.

The first line of your post is where you set the tone for the reader. The first line of Bill’s post was extremely condescending and unprofessional, making the rest of his post seem condescending and unprofessional.

Well let’s read over the semantics here.

“The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug”

While I personally believe he mispoke and said something different than what he was trying to come across, let us assume for our sake that he did believe that Fire Elementals were not an item that were supposed to be in the game, but a bug (seriously, read over that, it’s absurd and clear that he mispoke)

Can you please expand on what exactly is condescending? Is he insulting your intelligence? Is he ignoring your existence or concerns?

As far as I can see, he is laying the groundwork for why this change happened. That’s a neutral response. The only reason why you and many others are taking it as an offense is because you disagree with the change and reading his response with anger due to this change.

And so you end up reading his remark in a biased mindsight

Using words such as blatantly or period to emphasize your point makes you sound condescending. Perhaps he wasn’t trying to sound condescending, but that’s the feeling I got when I read his post.

I don’t get the association of ‘blatantly’ with anything negative. ‘Period’ I already discussed above – it’s meant to explain that this change was from and only from the performance perspective – nothing else.

Rising Dusk.2408:

While I appreciate your concern for the ANet developer, I’m certainly not going to discuss (off-topic, mind you) whether or not my feelings for his post are valid or not. I have reported the post to ANet, and have posted my opinion here (as have you), and that’s really all needs be done. If the community team at ANet agrees with you, he’ll be fine, if not, he’ll be reprimanded.

And for the record, I never used the consumables that were adjusted with this patch. I just read his post, read the context, and was appalled by the lack of professionalism in the response. That post absolutely should have been written differently, and I say that as someone who deals with multi-million dollar customers on a weekly basis in the systems engineering field. I kid you not when I say that if I sent that to one of my customers I would lose my job. It’s a matter of professionalism.

And what if you sent a completely neutral response explaining the reason why systems were changed, but your customer responded with unjustified insult?

You would go to your manager and explain that you were misinterpreted or your comments were not properly explained and came out wrong.

But your client would continue to complain and ask you to be fired, while you are left wondering how in the world this customer came up to this conclusion that you were offending him.

That customer is pretty much you and everyone else right now that interprets Bill’s remark as insulting.