Guild Wars 2

Like what Vick says here – the recent change to include PvE client based character model quality extends to PvE.

The two settings are the two last dropdown boxes in the options > graphic options mentu listed as Charcter Model Limit and Character Model Quality. The model limit is the number of character models to load, and will always load nameplates first before loading skins. The model quality relates to what you will see once the skins are loaded. At the lowest setting you will see generic armor for almost every class (devoid of sex) only scaled for height and race. The the low setting the game will at first load the generic armor for the skin, when you get close to the character you will load their actual skin, and so long as you remain close to the character their skin will remain loaded.

are the items you are trying to deposit bound?

Even skins without the “bound declaration” have a secret account bound designation.

tolunart.2095:

What JS has been trying to say, for anyone who bothers to listen, is that the sky is not falling, Anet did not double or triple the rate at which gold enters the game without considering where all that money would go, and there are and will be new things to spend that money on. There’s no reason to panic, the market is shifting, not inflating.

This I agree with tolunart with. Simply put ANET’s addition of champ loot and the scarlet invasions don’t inject pure cash into the economy without people who have played into the champ loot and invasions being subjected to some kind of gold sink. You don’t directly get gold from the champs or the invasion, you have to merch it, or TP it to get the gold. Merching is usually a huge value sink, which destroys the item you merch in exchange for around 50-80% of the value in gold. TP is a 15% gold sink with no destruction of items. While deadeye was ridiculous – it wasn’t so much so that things started inflating just because people had the money. Supply is drying up because we ARNT doing many world events, and we are only hitting champions related to the scarlet invasion – this in itself drive up the demand and cost of the items. The select few who were deadeye farming are not looking to crash the economy, instead they are looking to get enough gold to buy what they want, when they want it.

Stop being overly dramatic about temporary gold sources when we’ve had CoF easy mode 5 gold an hour for several months. At least now content updates are geared with materials and some cash.

Lol Quaggan guardian

In either case Quaggans are rather peaceful and not very plentiful in the world. To have suddenly thousands of Quaggans around us would be… odd.

Out of the other races I think I like skritt a little better for a new playable race – they are plentiful – have charm – are compelling in choosing certain classes – and are encountered easily in the first few portions of the game.

At least not right away – by having a TP bypass people will burn themselves out farming to make ascended items to sell on the TP, or burn themselves out farming to get enough gold to buy ascended items off he TP.

I once thought time constrained / time gated content was not fun, but looking at the alternative, having the chance to burn out and experiencing that on WvW, I decided it wasn’t fun, but it was less not fun than having a burn out.

Hjorje.9453:

I probably should have stated that better. Since we have known that we are getting ascended items for everything (armor and weapons) since November, I have been working towards that completionist point. I have an end goal for my lvl 80s, and that is to have each of them in there main setup fully ascended, then it will be finished, not finished each time they introduce the next item. That is my goal, no one else’s (others probably have the same goal). I haven’t been told that is what I have to do, it is what I want to do.

Yep, I agree with this goal whole heartily, as this is what I am trying to do. I’m giving ANET the benefit of the doubt as well since a) it was “supposed” to be there before launch, b) will benefit players in the long term (better equipment means faster damage / better survivability means less grindy game-play), and c) it supports fractal runs (which I love doing). What makes me rather happy is how spaced out in time the weapons have been from the trinkets in that it allowed me to almost fully equip 5 alts (the other alts are still lvl 60 and under). Imagine if they added everything at once, it would be a horrible nightmare for completionists.

I realize now that by spacing out the ascended offerings ANET is giving alt-a-holics a chance to equip completely without being overwhelmed. If ANET wanted to cater to single character gamers, then they would release alot of the ascended items all at once, and perhaps not time gate it.

The only issue for me is the possible “account bound time gate” which hasn’t yet been confirmed (theres huge speculation here, and I even knee jerked that it would happen). I think eventually ascended equipment will be sold on the market allowing people who haven’t leveled their crafting professions some leeway.

But back to some assertions that casual players are being abused by this whole ascended thing… thats not true. Its some of the hardcore / completionist players who are being hurt. I always thought that I was casual until I realized how much time and money I actually put into this game. Then I realized that the majority of the players (who are reportedly casual) simply want a game which is fun (see tolunart). Others like me and Hjorje want “perfect characters”, but simply put, if we could obtain ascended equipment right away we would burn our selves out to do so. ANET’s solution of time gating ascended equipment and spacing out the offering is simply a prevention of completionist and some hardcore players from burning out…

Anywho! Either way lets support this game in a positive fashion instead of being negative and give input for ascended armor which will make it easier / more friendly to be used by alot of playstyles at the same time…

tolunart.2095:

You’re not being punished, you’re punishing yourself.

The game was not designed for your style of play. Anet is not going to design a game for people obsessed with getting every achievement, every piece of gear, every title, every mini.

Off the top of my head, I’ve seen threads about achievements/titles that literally require years of effort to attain – like “yakslapper” which requires you to kill like a million yaks or something. They changed “Thirst Slayer” when they found out that people found an exploit that gives them a “bottomless cup” to drink from. There’s a recent thread about a mini that is only available from a certain convention. I don’t know if it’s tradeable or not, but even if it is, 99.9% of the players will never own one. The two week updates practically guarantees at some point you will miss a title, an achievement, a reward.

That they do these things sends a clear message to me: “it’s impossible to finish the game, no matter what you do there will always be something you don’t have, so don’t worry about it so much.”

And you say you plan your vacations around the game? You seriously do not see something wrong with scheduling your life around achieving virtual rewards that are completely meaningless to the other 7 billion or so people in the world? What would happen if Anet’s servers had a massive crash and both live and backup info was lost, and they had to begin the game all over again?

Anet designs this game around casual players who pick up and put down the game at a casual pace. Checklists of achievements and time-gated gear is there for hardcore players who want long term goals, but they are optional and completely irrelevant to enjoying the game for what it is. People make the mistake of thinking those goals are the game when they are just busywork put there for people who need that kind of thing.

And that’s the grief I face. I know that I’m not supposed to get all the achievements, I know that there will be something out of my reach if I do one activity over another. And I know that ANET did not design GW2 with the 100% person in mind. I’m just trying to point out my feelings and have a discussion / give my take on what I think is going on and how it affects me. Some other talk by some other users claims to represent more than themselves, this is inherently flawed. We need to all give our inputs and with that information make an informed recommendation for what we as a player base want.

What I want is soulbound gates, not account bound gates. That itself would help me tremendously. Imagine that a single character can only refine 1 t7 a day, my other crafters could refine another t7 that day as well. The issue would be if they were lvl 500 crafting or not, thats all.

You know its funny – 7 or so months after we got ascended accessories we actually can outfit most of our characters with all ascended accessories (just as some had predicted) and we aren’t complaining about it so much. It would be funny if it only took 5 days of time gate per ascended 1 handed weapon or 10 for a 2 handed. Then 1 month = 6 hands of ascended weapons. Even for a guy like me with alts that’s only around 1 month per character. But still – feels like altaholics are being punished haha.

Yeah well – it has been negative as of late.

With a separation created by harder content, changing build metas in pvp and wvw, and an introduction of ascended weapons (not so different when they added ascended gear).

Interestingly enough there are still people out there who want to have a discussion with like minded individuals.

But the playing part is a bit complicated I think. We play for different enjoyment, with different play styles. For me its not enough that I log in and do a few dungeons or events, I need a goal – something to tell myself that my characters are worthy of my time playing – like completing every Achievement point, or getting max stat items for equipment. With that in mind I still find that there are things in this game I really don’t like (QG for example, and exact build counters in pvp and wvw) but I force myself to do them for the sake of AP and worthiness of my characters. I don’t typically vent on the forums like now, but I feel like I’m drowning in content which I label mandatory (because of my playstyle), in which I have to go through hours of abuse to obtain.

Unless you are a masochist, abuse is not a fun thing to go through, especially if you only care about the outcome, not the challenges of getting to the top. And that’s why I think some players come on the forum to complain – because they feel their play style is being ignored and that they are being abused.

I envy your ability to enjoy the game as much as you do, but I hope that you continue to play the game in such a willing fashion, despite calls by forum posters that certain content is not enjoyable. GW2 is such a beautiful game, with a beautiful world, worthy challenges (some may not be satisfied unlike me), and vibrant activities.

The Devs don’t get enough credit for their hard work.

tolunart.2095:

Crapgame.6519:

And actually you are correct. Anyone can take a break. But let me know how that goes when new content is coming out every 2 weeks. See, I do see your side of the debate. I just don’t agree with your assessment of only a few.

The pace of new content is irrelevant. If you don’t want to play, don’t play. I took a break from Lost Shores until Flame and Frost. Not because of anything that was introduced to the game, I just got bored with it and played other games for a while.

If you feel compelled to collect all the minis, the back pieces, the titles and achievements that come with the LS updates, that is entirely within you, it has nothing to do with the game. I pick up and put down games as I choose because it is my choice to play them or not.

Thats the issue tolunart, that you may not care about some of the content and rewards, but others do. The sheer reason I play GW2 is to have a “perfect” and “godlike” character who excels at what he or she does. This is my fantasy realm, this gives me enjoyment. Also connected to that is perfect equipment and achievement points. I don’t want to miss any content 2 week releases because I will miss AP (I missed flame and frost dungeon achievements) and I WON’T go on vacation unless I’m SURE there are no big AP events. Back to equipment – having 8 alts is rough when faced with time gated equipment. This is what I face, an imperfect character with imperfect gear who I am compelled to gear to ascended but can’t.

I’m not saying that I represent a group of people, I simply represent myself, and I don’t like being punished for my particular play style (achievement hunting, gear perfection). The achievement hunting part is unavoidable with a 2 week release cycle, but the gear perfection is simple to solve with a soulbound gate, not an account bound gate.

Gabby.3205:

MastaNeenja.1537:

So dungeon gears will get ascended variants or upgrades?

Otherwise what’s the point of doing dungeons unless you really like the skins.

That would make sense. I ran dungeons both for skins and stats. Now I’m done equipping my characters and I don’t run dungeons anymore, but I would, if there were new ascended equipment to be bought with tokens.

It would be awesome if we got ascended weapons with new skins for each dungeon. They would cost more tokens than the exotic ones, of course. Later on, when we get the ascended armor, they could add ascended armor sets with new skins to the dungeon vendors. More foliage skins (TA) would be highly appreciated by people with sylvari characters, like me.

+1 on that idea for ascended weapon skins for each dungeon.

But my take on dungeons is to get armor for alts – sure it might not be the best armor in the game, but its something.

I’m just sad I have 8 characters my OCD wants to equip with ascended weapons – at least I have enough rings / laurels to equip ascended accessories now (I’m around 80% on my 5 lvl 80s after 1 year of gameplay)

Well considering they will give us an OOC reset for the legendaries – it would stand to reason that the transmutation would be ok.

Either way I took a risk thinking that we would need to transmute again to get the right stats, but I was wrong. We shall see what ANET does.

wookiee.4631:

I don’t care about their genders. I only care whether the individual character is good or bad. I don’t think that Anet has some kind of man or woman hating agenda its trying to implement. I wish people would stop reading into what’s not there.

Also:

It’s a game, they are caricatures, nobody cares.

But that’s the issue – media plays a role influencing a persons acceptance of something. To simply say potentially sexist media has no effect and is just a game for which people will not be influenced isn’t productive. What is productive is producing positive characters for which people can look to change ones views. Its true that while media can’t change your beliefs, it can change your view on something. Look at some elicit material featuring two women, it may have helped the LGBT movement gain acceptance by otherwise hostile peoples who didn’t originally support LGBT, but thought that if the material featuring two woman was “ok” to watch, that all LGBT should be accepted.

What countless posters have said here – its OK to have a woman in power and for a portion of the leadership to be made up by successful (if sometimes dull) women. At the same time, its OK to have dim witted male characters who use more brawn than brain, but this doesn’t denegrate the male portion of the population. Where as I agree with some posters that Female armor is at times too revealing (I myself am determined to keep my heavy female characters in super tanky armor), I disagree that thug male characters are denegrading to the male population. The fact that some male characters are made as thugs highlights thier character strengths and weaknesses, just as female characters who are made as high status and power rulers. I more so disagree with the assertion that personality flaw = sexual denegration, where as clothing IS a KNOWN method of denegration, acting out a personality flaw ISN’T.

What some posters have said about “deal with it” is an improper path to gender equality – simply put nobody, regardless of gender or sexual preference should be held above another due to societal expectations or so call “norms”. The path to the right need not be tread on the pain of the group who once dealt the pain.

At the same time, we can’t continue the path to equality without first eliminating inequality, or the denial of inequality in media.

TL:DR – People care about equality, media affects our views and can change them, clothing is not the same as personality flaws, and we don’t need to punish one sex’s sins for the others well-being to make it equal.

That is actually not a bad idea – the issue is how to obtain said signal flare – how to balance it so there’s not 500 of them spammed – and if it can be seen past the visibility limit.

I say that to obtain a signal flare, the treb/mort user would use skill 5 or some F1-F4 skill to generate a small bundle item on the ground – a single use item – a runner would need to use in the particular location (it would cost the treb / mort user 1-2 supply or so to use each time). GW2 is not bad for keeping track of effects – but at the same time it would be interesting if the effect was persistent for 3-5 mins with an appropriate cooldown on the F1-F4 skill for the treb/mort user. Also, each of the F1-F4 skills should have different colors – for variety sake.

To make sure that they can’t be spammed is the cooldown. Yes another person could just spawn more from the same treb / mortor, but thats indicative of how broken siege is for multiple people with special abilities. Also the 1-2 supply cost could limit who could use this.

The last issue I see is visibility – who can see it and how far can they see it. Where as its conceivable IRL for everyone to see it for miles, in game its not balanced at all. Should enemies see it? Should allies only see it? Should both sides use it in their tactics? What is the counter play to it? These questions are the hardest to answer without really introducing ways to deal with the smoke (allowing enemies to “stomp” the charge) or simply avoiding it (if enemies can’t see it it could be used to signal an enemy at a choke – and would be really detrimental to lighting strikes / resupply runs). I say if allies can see it – enemies should be able to see it too – and if enemies are able to see it, they should be able to “stomp” it out – if enemies are able to stomp it, then allies should be able to move it – and if allies are able to move it then it becomes reusable and potentially un-counterable.

Other than the 3rd part its a great idea and can be used for the betterment of the game.

Thats the hard part – keeping this just a game, where enjoyment is the key.

How each of us enjoys the game is different – where as Kain just likes good fights (CNB open field is VERY coordinated and has good communication) – SoS likes to see the map their color – EBay likes disruption play (non – ppt objectives).

The main issue is when these gameplay methods collide, there’s alot of hurt feelings. From Kain being marginalized (which they shouldn’t be), SoS being upset about a 15 point swing (or change in map color), or EBay (supposedly) using spies to further their disruption techniques. All hurt feelings, all caused by clashing play styles…

In either case – its been fun at times to see the battles in the SoS borderlands between CNB and FTF and the random SoS zerg – has no other borderlands seen so much bloodshed since the SoR TC SoS match-up when SoR and TC made a bet on a certain garrison way-point.

This is a huge fallout of the “leashing” that GW2 was designed with. Other games would simply maintain aggro with any mob you actually aggroed, regardless of how far you went, or what skills you used (save for a stealth or deaggro skill). Where as GW2 they leash and deaggro on their own. This is an attempt by the designers to give depth of play, in that you can fight monsters you want to fight without having to kill everything. This is especially important in solo play / dungeons, where not all the mobs you fight are worth the time / risk of your eventual goal / destination. The issue with pulling a mob to the edge of its leash and it just walking back without regen (a player getting out of combat will also regen) creates a huge issue in that the mob sitll has low health and now is at it’s original spot – making hit+kite+leash kills easy and trivializing mob mechanics. The issue is that players – when hitting the leash – don’t regen themselves, and don’t automatically get their skills refreshed.

But back to the issue, the mob deserves to get regen after hitting its leash, just as a player who deaggros gets regen. It would however be nice if they added regen / ooc to the player once leashing occurs. I however don’t agree that there needs to be an indicator for leashing (that can lead to trivialized encounters as well).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Technically, we only know the Six Gods didn’t know of _Zhaitan_’s location. They may have known of Kralkatorrik and thought it best not to tamper with it. They may have known of all Elder Dragons, just not where they were.

That makes a ton of sense – we as player characters don’t really care about the aftermath of our exploits (going to CoF and murdering hundreds of charr) and don’t need to really deal with it. However if the 6 were to take on the elder dragons no-doubt there would be massive fallout. (taking on Zhaitan wasn’t pretty – but at least we fought him away from civilization, where as kralk was well within the range of other innocents).

Sigh, But the gem store does make money for ANET, and that money is used for future releases. The issue is that onshi implies that if you don’t buy gems with real monies you aren’t supporting the further development of the game. That’s simply not true, in order to get people to buy gems with gold someone may have to buy gems with real monies, and sell it to people with gold. The main point of contention is if ANET is padding the gem → gold market or if it is a controlled market with players selling and buying.

There’s nothing wrong with grinding for gear – its just the act of doing the most lucrative content over and over and over again. Its tedium, its boring, its the opposite of skillful play rewards. If I wanted gold I would grind for it as well. There is much harder content which has a higher variable reward rating, however why risk it when you could just forge farm or deadeye farm?

But back to DR – yeah deadeye should get some DR placed – but I don’t think we should put down people who choose to grind. Its just another play style – as long as it doesn’t hurt you / your play style – it should be ok / allowable.

Kagamiku.9731:

VoxShatterfall.5470:

and if you are one of them I say that achievements ARE for EVERYONE).

No they’re not. The very definition of achievement explicitly states that achievements are not for everyone. Unless everyone is equally as skilled and capable of obtaining said achievement. And they’re not.

You didn’t comment on my statement above that – I just suggested simply that achievements should have multiple ways to obtain, there by making skilled players fulfilled by doing the “fastest and riskiest” route, where as other players would need to sink hours into one achievement.

It doesn’t change the fact that you don’t want others to have an achievement unless they are either a) as skilled as you b) used the same strategy as you or c) met a certain minimum worthiness requirement you placed on the achievement. The issue is achievements should only matter to one person – yourself – who cares if someone can grind for 2 hours to get the Liadri achievement, where as you can do it in 2 mins? I’m just saying that hard work should be a valid way to get achievements as well as excellent play. That’s what I’m trying to get everyone to understand, that all achievements should have multiple paths so that people with different play styles can actually earn them!

I think that the dragons are more of a MacGuffin, in that we still have 6 or so dragons to defeat – and that the world is still heavily influenced by their control. Its funny that the dragons don’t just destroy all our main cities to leave us paralyzed. But that’s not how they are supposed to interact with the world. Once we thought that the arrival of primordius would be a horrible cataclysm from which we wouldn’t survive, but we know now that the dragons aren’t really interested in killing us all off, save for their own machinations.

Although I agree we need more living story dragon content – I think that dragon content is campaign related with major game releases, not in the living story mode.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

1) Spiders need to despawn after each attempt. It should not be more of a hassle to keep trying than it is to restart the whole dungeon after one failed attempt.

I agree with this – even if you retry the boss it takes like 5 – 10 mins to clear the adds before you can try again.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

2) The boss’s mechanics should be better conveyed. They don’t need to be changed – just better conveyed. There is no indication that the spiders are a dodge-able attack – yes he shakes his head, but there is no indication of a hitbox or a “dodge now” or even an “I should dodge this” to portray the mechanic. The very concept of dodging an add spawn is just silly – “Oh, they evaded, looks like my spiders can’t get here now. Well, **** me.”

Red circles / reflex circles – that would help immensely.

So any-who, this stems a lot from the friction generated when an achievement is either too grindy for a person who doesn’t have enough time or isn’t challenged by the content versus a person who is too challenged by the content who would prefer a grind to get it done.

I am operating under the assumption that achievements should be universally fun to get, and that EVERYONE should be eligible for achievements (pertaining to play style). I am tired of people saying “then don’t play it” to people who’s play style is not optimal for the content associated with an achievement, and seek to rectify the situation. NOBODY should have to do content in a way which is not fun for their recognized play style.

I hereby propose that ANET make dual / multiple paths to obtain the same achievement for a few existing achievements, and the future living story achievements.

Existing achievements:
Any achievement based on number of runs in a challenge orientated setting (Fractal frequenter) where as a run at a higher challenge rating should result in more ticks for the achievement.
Dailys / Monthlys: where as you need to complete 100x of a class of mob, you should be able to beat harder mobs to tick it up faster

Examples of Living story achievements:
Queens Gauntlet – defeat liadri on “easy mode” (no death curtains) 10-15 times OR defeat liadri on “hard mode” (with everything enabled) once
Queens Jubilee representatives – defeat 100 vets while representing OR defeat 2 Legendaries while representing
Queens Jubilee Balloon chests – access 30 chests in balloon towers OR complete a tower unlock quest 15 times
Zephyr sanctum Professional – play 10 games of racing placing in the top 5 OR place first once
Southsun crab toss – play 10 games while placing in the top 3 OR place first once

Casual players will be enthused that they can get the achievements done, while hardcore players can get the achievements done WITHOUT repetitive game play whilst getting challenging game play.

Sigh – Back to ideas on how to fix this issue instead of pointing fingers at each other and saying that the other person is not being tolerant of your play style…

Like I said earlier – the issue is that there is an achievement tied to this particular boss fight, and that it rewards a particular play style. Where as others who don’t play in such a way want this achievement as well – they just don’t see it as fair that the other group has “exclusive” access to an achievement. IF Liadri gave NO achievement then those who don’t have the particular play style wouldn’t complain about it, and we wouldn’t be having any arguments.

I hereby again propose that ANET make dual achievement reward paths for future living story achievements in that the “hardcore” can complete the achievement with a single very difficult boss fight, and the “casual” can complete the SAME achievement with doing an easier boss fight at least 5-10 times.

Many casual players will probably be ok with this, and those of the hardcore variety will see that they CAN get all the achievements without the grindy repetitive feel whilst being challenged. The only issue I see is with some players who want people to do it exactly as they did it to get the same achievement (and if you are one of them I say that achievements ARE for EVERYONE).

TA fwd up is indeed hard. You can do it one of three ways, two which are extremely team based, the 3rd which requires a particular class. First way – Full on face tanking with 2 guards and 3 zerker wars – it works as long as the NPC dies first, but will not work after a wipe. Second way – running clock or counter clock and dodging on animation – it can always work but you will need to clear the adds on fail (usually you fail with not many spiders). Third way (will probably be nerfed but still doable) – getting a ranger, or two, or three to 1600+ range the boss – 1500 range trait + peircing can give you upwards of 1700 total range, need at least 2 front liners (preferably guards) who “tank” the aggro of the tree, they will be in the range of the tree’s spider spawn ranged attack, and they will be the ones dodging, the rangers are out of range of the spawn attack but will still get hit by massive range from time to time.

OR 1 Logan + 1 Jennah gives you a thakery and a gwen.

But all jokes asside, 1 Logan + 1 Jennah + 1 Caudecus + 1 Anise = personal mini which you can change the appearance of – or one which takes your appearance in your town cloths.

Shiren.9532:

I really hope we see a lot more deaths of Personal Story character just so we never have to see that stupid argument ever again. People who are spouting that are making stuff up and it’s time we end it. No-where did ArenaNet say that Personal Story is untouchable, it doesn’t even make sense – it goes against the concept of the Living World.

I think thats the opposite of what they said. The developers for the Living Story claimed they had to balance where people are in their current personal story with world events (Living Story). They didn’t say they would’nt kill off a major character, but they implied that they would NOT break the continuity of the personal story with a change in world events. A death IS a break in continuity.

Or…. What if she is already dead…. And this is the Underworld…

But all movie references aside. What if she was an undead queen, it would make sense that in the human personal story interesting things happen. If she was truly not undead she would have allied with the other racial leaders – since they all hate the elder dragons that much, and ordered a hit on Zhaitan. Instead she is worried about “preserving her people”. All context leads me to believe she is going to make a huge sacrifice of all the people in DR to revive Zhaitan.

But all my remaining sarcasm aside – she probably won’t die – she may simply move from DR to LA and assume world control. Remember that the last bastion of the royals (Salma, the child of the king and an unwed priestess) dec;ared Lion’s Arch her home. To have Jennah not in LA is odd…

Well for Laidre – gear can be important – not as much as for the other fights due to the insta death attacks. If you have a war – supposedly its easier on sword/warhorn + rifle with a condi sustain build (perma swiftness and vigor).

Anywho, back on topic, many people are just simply upset that ANET didn’t design this encounter for many play styles in mind (or more importantly “their” group in mind). I encourage ANET in the future to make “either / or” achievements in which you get the same rewards, but doing it the harder way yields the achievement in a faster fashion. This in turn will reward risky behaviour with a faster desired outcome, where as safer behaviour will simply just take longer.

For example – Achievement “Light in the Dark” defeat Liadri without her death clones 8 times OR defeat Liadri with her death clones once. Maybe make it so the ones who do defeat Liadri on “full on hardcore mode” get a title as well.

Imagine if they did this for the dailies as well – Shiver peaks daily killer (50) OR shiverpeaks daily vet killer (10) OR shiverpeaks daily champ killer (3) OR kill one of 4 VERY hard shiverpeaks Legendaries (1).

But I digress. I do agree with your believe that ANET did intentionally design QJ/QG to be separate in that QG was supposed to be the elite content, where as QJ was the time consuming content. I just disagree that doing so in future content will be beneficial for the community as a whole, until they implement same rewards – more risk more challange = less time.

Nettle.9025:

Sean.6105:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

There’s no stealth inside the arena. That mechanic is working as intended. As for spawning on a mine, I’ve never seen that happen. Perhaps you walked over one?

That would explain why it didn’t work, but then why rule out a number of class mechanics? Is there an npc that explains this?

You may not have seen it happen. This doesn’t mean that it can’t. No, I spawned on top of a mine, not dead centre but underneath its circle.

I highly highly doubt you spawned on a mine. I’ve probably killed deadeye 400 times or more by now, and not once have I ever spawned in on a mine.

I think what he is referring to is at the start of the fight when the entire middle section of mines despawns (after spawning for a brief second) to help you with the initial dodge roll towards deadeye. However if you wait too long the mines in the middle respawn – and if you have culling, you may not have spotted their original location until after they respawn. It happened a few times to me – but then I decided to wait out the events, and the culling got better.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

So wait. You’re basing the whole game off of a single challenge in temporary content that was meant to be extremely hard? Sorry, I didn’t realize that casuals and people who aren’t equipped for elite content is being forced to do the Queen’s Gauntlet. The Torch Run outside might be more in line with your definition of “casual and fun”.

While I agree with your sentiments that the above poster imposed a particular play style on GW2 as being the majority… which it may not be… I disagree that casual / different play style people should be left out of the loop of fun.

Queen’s Gauntlet was meant to be extremely hard – but is easier based on your class and armor sets. Not everyone has a zerker set, a tank set, and a condi set ready at a whim. Heck – even with all my 8 characters (only 5 of which are lvl 80) only two of them have two armor sets (not all 3) – my war having a tank and then zerker set, and my mesmer having a condi and a zerker set. I think the point which is rough is that alot of casual gamers can’t just go get a particular armor set (complete with exo / ascended accessories) and due to the fact that exo armor (while relatively common) is expensive for a player with 8 alts to get, for which a person has a set build / compatible builds with.

While some players have the gear / know how of class mechanics – others don’t. This illustrates a fundamental divide – gear may never reach a stable point, but knowledge of class mechanics can defiantly help. The issue is that ANET has never forced a player to refine their gear or knowledge of class mechanics in an innovative way before in GW2 (like in GW1 with the new zones and expansions with entirely different monster skills).

People who casually play are just frustrated, since they may not know what to do since they were never given the tools to adapt. Its not that casual gamers are forced to do elite content, its that they want to do it but don’t know how.

Calae.1738:

Once the risk is removed the sense of accomplishment is diminished. If it cost nothing to get in the gauntlet and you spawned right next to the ringmaster with full HP after failing; the achievement will feel empty. Just like whacking down trees in the gathering dailies. It’s just an item on your laundry list.

Well this implies that many people like the risk, and that risk is directly correlated to achievement enjoyment, and that the stress derived from the risk of losing and the time lost is alleviated by the achievement enjoyment.

Your laundry list can be someone else’s sense of accomplishment.

Case in point – when WiK was first introduced I thought the content was very hard and challenging. Flip forward to 5 months after I had done it on EVERY single of my 8 characters. I did every wanted every day. And I LOVED doing them. They gave me a sense of accomplishment in that I was able to find a build combination which worked well (of which I modified based on the area at times) and could now easily clear the wanted quickly. Do I think they challenged me up till the day I stopped playing GW1 to play GW2, yes. Do I think the sense of accomplishment is diminished due to the routine nature of the wanted and the fact I had very little risk to fail, no.

However – this is due to my play style – I love having godly control of the situation and not dying – this gives me alot of enjoyment and increases replay value. Where as getting to that point is frustrating (I chain – swore in GC when first starting WiK) the simple act of completing the now mundane quests was very rewarding in that it fulfilled my play style.

I know of people who wern’t satisfied with that kind of content – that we would do different things such as HM in asca (that was fun after I rolled my prot monk haha). I know that those people ARE satisfied with QG due to both thier play style and how the mini-game is setup.

Implying that removal of risk saps sense of accomplishment isn’t a full picture of the different play styles and why a gamer plays GW2. QG is indeed good content, and is super fun for certain play styles. However I think there should be something for most everyone in the same mini-game (alluding the the fulfillment of different play styles at the same time whilst offering the same reward to all). That’s probably what ANET was trying to alleviate with their use of the 2 tiered event achievement lines.

Eurafrica.9307:

If I can do Light Up the Darkness or kill Liadri and you can’t, chances are I’m better than you at this game.

This, good sir or maam, would depend on the desired play style and / or a better measure of your superiority over him. In any instance I encourage people to not claim superiority on a particular subject area due to being able to do something that another isn’t able to – concerning a small part of the game.

I admit that you are justified in that you make a clear separation from IRL to game achievements. Its just that with such a statement you are implying beating Liadri is somewhat of a measure of a players aptitude. Simply put you have proven yourself to be better than others (including myself) at killing 1 boss of a mini game, in which you enter solo combat with, of which you know a strategy and like a play style which can beat her. Compare that to others who a) don’t know a strategy b) don’t like the play style c) use other builds.

I liken it to something of a mastery of Liadri, not a mastery of GW2…

But I digress. Liadri is hard, as you admitted, until you get a strategy, play style, and proper build.

Neural.1824:

Let me just ask this. Kamra spender is small time, to be sure, but if some bug pops up and people start losing their legendary components in the mystic forge and getting no legendary weapons for it all, is this going to be the answer?

Well – to be fair – this 1 AP bug affects EVERYONE so nobody can get ahead of anyone else. If the suddenly fixed it tonight after I go to bed while another person can get it, is it fair for them to even get it?

But back to resources from ANET – a bug fix may already be developed – but a deployment test can take hours at a time – a minor bug like this shouldn’t really need a quick patch to fix just by itself..

There is a monster “buff” called unstoppable which is used by risen abominations – it makes them immune to condition derived CC regardless of their stacks of defiance.

I hope Kiel will give us something for our unused Support Tokens – like a cookie or something… perhaps fortunes.

edited to correct name.

Meriem.3504:

I see zero reason why they can’t make both fractals.

Except that a Dev who was working on one of the fractals said they wouldn’t be releasing both at this time.

So when we get Thaumanova, we will NOT get Abbadon’s Fall.

At least not for the forseeable future.

Before the update about 2 weeks ago, jump shot on the engi rifle 4 bar would occassionally fail for very obvious reasons (immobilize, knockback, what not).

Now jump shot will fail to move you around 25% percent of the time (when you are in combat), without you being immobilized, or knocked back. You will get the green target circle which indicates you have a legal target to go to – and you would just jump up and down vertically…

Also of concern is that you wouldn’t always get a clear indication of the skill failing due to buggy animation which wasn’t originally buggy – in the bugged animation you move from your current point to the point you are shooting at only after vertically jumping to the point you are originally standing only to be warped forward to the target area after your vertical fall. This issue causes me to que skills incorrectly in that I am expecting a failed jump shot so I que for a long range skill, when in fact it succeeded, and I was supposed to que for a short range skill (which does alot more damage).

I understand that sometimes the server thinks I target the ground beneath my feat when I actually target something off in the distance, but the combination of the fail 25% of the time and the buggy animation is totally throwing my game play off.

Any other rifle engies out there experiencing the same thing?

Well – how about this top 10 reasons why we use Robots to Guard the Queen:

1) Robots can’t be mentally corrupted by certain other draconic influences.
2) Defending the Queen is not a risk to sentient life
3) We have a surplus of guard / attack golems left in the wake after defeating certain other elements
4) No additional wages required means the skritt king gets his shineys
5) Swimming swimming swimming all summer long

Shanna.4762:

Hopefully whatever replaces it is awesome, then. But I won’t lie I am disappointed.

Well, the gladiator arena needs to go somewhere – where else but that huge tent in DR collapse?

Was happening massively today durring a CoE story run – I the Party leader DCed AFTER the boss died during the cut scene which I skipped.

During this run we had another member who kept on lagging out while still being able to talk on TS3.

What makes me the most mad is that I go out of my way to get 1 lousy AP only to waste an entire 30 mins of my time getting no credit…

Its not like I have infinite time.

What would be cool is to have latching credit which doesn’t require you to be on just in case you disconnect.

“Due to time constraints the district was replaced by the Great Collapse” Also taken from the wiki…

Its like when characters are first designed, sometimes they start out as a female, then become male… (someone put in a Pre/post searing reference here, I’m blanking).

In either case it doesn’t matter until they reveal it to us.

And yes, I am making a ton of assumptions.

I know alot of players who go for all world bosses – the daily chest ones at least.
But as you say this is not indicative of the “typical”.

I just want to spur people to analyze the possible benefits based on some speculations I have based on language ANET has used in the past.

Who people vote for I don’t care about.

Why people vote for who they vote for is what I care about.
What I hate more about elections are people who don’t know REALLY how each candidate can affect them.

If I avoided words like typical and generalized we would be in for a long day and analysis, in the end, I want people to disagree with me and analyze for themselves WHY vote for Kiel or Evon.

I’m sorry I made any recommendation – I’ll take that out soon.
For whakittens worth, do you have other monetary advice to add to the topic?

Evon’s benefit helps ANET’s bottom line, where as Kiel’s reduces the effect of a gold sink.

I agree with Konig – ANET is stacking Evon – but to a certain player base. IF you buy keys – you will want to vote for Evon. IF you dont – you will want to vote for Kiel.

But lets take a look at why Evon is a more lucrative choice -

Assuming a 33% discount on keys: Each set of 5 will cost 150 less gems which now cost around 3 gold per 100 gem set. That’s a raw savings of 4.5 gold on a 5 key purchase.

Assuming a 33% discount on WP costs: I expend around 45 silver a day in normal play – I think others like me likewise would spend around 12 gold per month on WPs. The raw savings are around 4 gold for the entire month. If you do dungeons double the gold savings.

It would take just 5 keys to make Evon a better monetary choice, and 10 makes it better, where as Kiel just makes it cheaper to do things you already do and won’t change your plays tlye that much.

Konig’s point is that ANET can unfairly stack an election by offering an “unlimited” discount which requires almost no opportunity cost (in time) versus offering a “limited” discount which requires a person to sink more time in to do more things. Lets look at it this way – since when did WP costs prevent you from killing that one monster on the other side of the map? Even if you reached 0 copper WP costs are free, there’s really no reason to get reduced WP costs, its just icing on the cake.

Konig doesn’t get into the idea that financially ANET would want Evon instead as it
a) generates income via gem store
b) doesn’t limit a previously admitted gold sink
c) gets more GW1 players interested in GW2
But I went there.

And I think I want to vote for Kiel – but Evon’s benefits are just too good to pass up.

One thing I noticed was a lot of lore / emotional reasons for voting for either of the two candidates. While I love lore and the excitement behind it, I believe that players need to metagame more, and vote with their gold bank.
As follows is a quick breakdown of costs savings – build your play style considering it and determine for yourself which is worth more.

This is beaten down – everyone should know it by now – but I’ll be assigning discount values based on language included in their “promotions”.

For Evon – we will get a discount, not a “steep” discount”, on black lion keys. The previously used language for discount vs “steep” is 25% vs 50%. I’ll venture that Evon will give us up to 33% (its unique, and is a bone thrown to get us to buy gems with cash). Key price (purchased in packs of 5) will go down to 300 gems for 5.

For Kiel – we will get a discount, I’m thinking it might be 33% (since we already have a guild derived 15% WP discount). As a player who plays around 3 hours a day and does almost every world event, I spend around 45 silver a day on WPs. Per week I estimate that I spend around 3 gold when chasing world events. When I didn’t do world events, the WP cost per day was around 15 silver.

With the above information set – lets take a quick view on the cost savings of both candidates and come up with a gold representation based on different play styles.

Nicko – the efficient world boss master who also buys around 15 keys a month, will save 4 gold from Kiel, or 5 keys from Evon (about 15 gold savings).

Minh – the dungeon master (+50% WP costs) who doesn’t buy gems often (maybe buying 3 keys a month) but also does all the world events, will save 6 gold from Kiel, or 1 keys from Evon (about 3 gold savings).

Matt – the just have fun master of fun who does around ½ of the world bosses but doesn’t buy any keys, will save 2 gold from Kiel, but none form Evon.

Given the above people you can see that if you buy just 6 keys with gems or gold you will actually save more gold / gems than if you had an all world bosses play style. If you do every dungeon and do all world events I’d instead double the savings from Kiel instead but thereby you would need to buy around 12 keys before Evon will save you more money.

Disclaimer – any names and references relating to real life players and friends of Vox Shatterfall are not meant to be representative in any way shape or form.

Decided to pop 125 of my useless chests – This still is not statistically valid though:
13 ticket scraps, 2 tickets, 18 support tokens

Also of note 0, thats right ZERO, extra keys / retry rolls.

Also being talked about is the universalness of these new tickets – so the drop rate shouldn’t be too high anywho.

The issue which is brought up here is a clear misconception about issues in the game: either a) its ANETs fault, or b) its the players fault. I believe we are being too kitten either party in that there is an option c) no party at fault.

In this case Living World Achievements being missed can at times be the players fault – such as a person deciding to go on holiday during the time period even after knowing about the event. However, there are many external factors outside of both ANETs and the Players’ control which make participation in the event very very hard.

Case in point – Tornado hits the main power plant in your town – you lose power for 2 days, you miss the dragon bash fireworks (at least until next year).

Everyone should understand just because these “acts of nature” occur ANET or the Player are not intrinsically at fault. Rather we are suggesting here in this thread that ANET could add some type of way to accommodate our busy schedules which has a) minimal impact on the game economy, b) is easy for them to implement, and c) satisfies a minimum desire for linking past events and completing some achievements.

Also to add more fuel, WP in a single map is free if you a) dont have copper on hand and b) dont have copper in the bank.

You will miss out on any copper dropped (but thats really small anyways).
So all the Lvl 80 toons can be WP around for free in reckless abandon.

But back to a better suggestion – making the holo projectors act like FE chaos material does would be very helpful – then people would really want to work together / stack.
Imagine 40 people chaining a single projector… Or a 10 man guild group.

Burma.5796:

RE: N. America servers. At this time, with two exceptions, the matches are hardly competitive, as predicted. “Winning” in each match parallels each server’s Rank. I believe the unlucky server is the highest ranked server in each match. Their opportunity to gain Rank Points, Karma, XP, etc., has diminished. The other two servers in the match have increased opportunity in those areas if they set their goal to be farming rather then winning. Likewise, completing the daily achievement takes more time for people on the top ranked server, less for those on the other two.

I personally think it goes both ways – Daily achievements like Caravan and tower attack can take very long to achieve as some servers may have a 5 man hold team for everyone of their yaks and can wipe a tower attack at will. Being the achievement earning guy I am, I feel thakittens unfair to match up people from different tiers for which dailies and achievement points are involved.

We had a dolly parade!!
Where do we sign up! I’ll bring either an infinite cat tonic or my plush gryphon tonic.

In another note, poor Indo losing his armor like that, but if you want to pull shenanigans just team invite and we will happy to accommodate your request

And back to Coron – It would be cool if we could get together to learn how to do effective zerg busting with militia and a spread line of defense… I know it involves a few lines of warding, null fields, plauges, and some dagger storms, but I don’t know how to implement it. Anywho I’ll send you a message later as I assume you are busy with wvw training (everyone needs some downtime and this matchup gives SoR a change of pace to do efficiency training).

+1 saelune – the out-manned buff is fine as it is, we don’t really need a debuff for zerging, however we do need a few more tactical elements in every class to make zerg busting viable.

For example the following classes can use the following skills to really help / break zergs up:

Ele – tornado, denial AoE
Mesmer – temporal curtain, feedback, null field
Ranger – traps
Necro – wells, plauge form
Guardian – line of warding, ring of warding, sancturary
Thief – caltrops, daggerstorm
Engineer – Elixer X (50% chance)
Warrior – combustive shot