Guild Wars 2

Best idea yet!

For 5g, you can hire a Skritt Burglar. These Burglars will go to enemy structures and drain their supply to build “Skritt Nests” that spawn Skritt that steal further supplies and attack guards.

For 500g, you can hire Elite Skritt Burglars that will steal items from enemy players, prioritising whatever is the most valuable item in their inventory. “Oooh, that’s a very shiny Eternity you have there, Mr Gold Raider. Yoinks!” Subsequently, whoever then kills the Elite Skritt Burglar gets to loot the stolen possessions.

They’re well aware of the fallout that occurred after the introduction of Ascended gear. If they were to introduce another, even higher tier, the backlash would be immeasurably worse considering that acquiring Ascended gear is a much bigger grind than Exotics were. (I suspect the only reason players grudgingly accepted Ascended gear was because it does serve a role as a very expensive, long-term goal to work towards, while still not being too much more powerful than Exotic gear.)

However, the future is never certain, and ANet’s been careful to use language that doesn’t rule them out ever raising the level cap or introducing new equipment tiers, because 4 years down the line, maybe that’s what the game would truly need. (It would also be a game that I would be uninterested in playing, but that’s another story.) It’s pretty standard PR policy, and it shouldn’t be taken to mean a confirmation in itself.

It might be an idea to introduce Aetherblade chests throughout the entire game, I agree. The Aetherblade key pieces already get barely any use.

Capes/cloaks would be cool to have, but I think they would just end up being a clipping nightmare. Especially for Charr.

Hmm… What about the following:

1. You cannot revive dead allies while you are still in combat. (Downed allies can be revived normally.) As Grimm suggested, this is to preserve the tactical choice between continuing to attack an enemy, and between getting your ally up, while also preventing extremely large zergs from being able to mass res even dead allies in a few seconds between passes.

2. Enemies which are killed via finishers cannot be revived at all (even when out of combat) and must waypoint. This makes stopping to use finishers on enemies another tactical decision via letting your zerg simply steamroll over them.

The Minor Mad King runes can be discovered.

The Major and Superior versions must be learned from a recipe sheet. Since the Major recipes are much cheaper (and were much more abundant in previous Halloweens), did you perhaps learn those then and forgot about it?

Did you learn it on that character? If so, yes, only THAT character can craft the runes. All recipes learned from recipe sheets are bound to that specific character who used the item.

There are three unique recipes for Sup Rune of the Mad King, one for Tailor, one for Leatherworker, and one for Armorsmith. Make sure that you’ve learned the correct one on your crafter.

An unrelated but also serious bug is where if the Necromancer is downed, his minions will sometimes also all die at the same time. (This only seems to happen occasionally. I have not yet managed to pin down how and when it happens.)

@Pinkamena: “Nearsighted Quaggan Form” – You get transformed into a nearly blind quaggan hatchling that is so cute and adorable that nobody can bear to hurt you (invulnerable buff). You can freely wander to any location in WvW and go right through gates because the guards go “Aww, what can one little quaggan do?”

On the downside, your nearsightedness means you cannot see anybody else on the map apart from yourself, and if you exit the transformation, sacred quaggan magic immediately teleports you back to the safety of your safezone.

To receive this buff, you must find the Hungry Quaggan in your safezone and feed him enough of a random food dish that he wants at the time.

Aha, so someone else thought of the same spot I did. XD

… Hmm, I just had a funny idea. Has anybody tried using the Maize Balm on the Ebonhawke chickens?

I agree! We should be able to hire extremely powerful PvE mercenaries for a big enough gold sink! Like, if your server pays 1000g, you get to hire the Legendary Sand Giant to stroll up to the enemy Keep and capture it all by himself. (He then sits in there to defend it.)

For 10,000g, you can hire the Triple Headed Wurm to attack 3 Keeps/SMC at once. Just like PvE, all 3 heads must be killed at the same time or he just respawns at full health.

Yes, yes, this is a PERFECT idea.

I think that two things need to be done:

1. EotM needs to have more impact on the wider WvW conflict. Currently, all winning in EotM does is give your server a supply drop in the Citadel. That really doesn’t do much.

I think it might encourage more people in EotM to defend/fight more if the score there was also applied to all servers at the end of each match. That essentially turns EotM into a fourth battleground that servers need to be aware of.

2. Rewards for defense need to be addressed. Part of the reason why EotM k-trains are so popular is because there is no real incentive to defend objectives. (This applies to both regular WvW and EotM) If there was perhaps a sliding scale where the longer you’ve held onto an objective, the more rewards you get for defending it, it might encourage more people to hold points rather than just doing a rotation through all the zones. Likewise, if the attacking player captures a structure that’s been held a long time, their reward is also increased commensurately.

I’m much the same. I maxed out my bank and bag slots for my characters because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of switching guilds every time I wanted to access my guild storage. Convenience is a big factor in my purchasing decisions. I also have two mules now, whom I’ve kitted out with some old 20 slot bags and the Uncanny Jar/Karka Shell Box/Halloween Pails to store random junk.

I do EotM once every few days when the dailies line up for it (it’s easier to get Tower captures in there than in regular WvW), but I only stay in there for an hour at most. Not enough for it to be my main source of karma, methinks.

Aberrant.6749:

1. Was saying if they were to go try the same rubbish in solo/team que and just leave whenever (since they can’t do things like spectate->join the winning team or purposefully set up an outnumbered match) they would be punished for it. AFKers are a problem as well I agree and could use some more work as well.

2. It shouldn’t even be an option to choose your side initially in hotjoin. Just random, que people in 2 at a time in hotjoin to try to keep teams even. A bonus for joining a team that has become imbalanced sounds fine to me as long as people can’t just go back to spectate then rejoin to get a bonus (etc.).

I find that outnumbering in hotjoin is the biggest problem currently.

1. That’s true enough. Although, I have a feeling that if Dishonored starts to bite, then we’d just have the ragequitters switching tactics to afking and playing it half-reared. It would also depend on whether or not these players even play PvP enough for Dishonored to really be a hindrance.

2. Yeah, I agree. The Random bonus should only be applied when you initially join a team. If you go back to Spectate, or switch teams, the bonus disappears. (Although of course, if you get Autobalanced, the Random bonus is moot since it effectively is the same as the Autobalance bonus.) Again, the incentive here is to encourage players to join early (without stacking the teams), and stay the course.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

You obviously haven’t read any of my posts, or the OP.

• I’m not bothered by 5v4 in hotjoin
• Preventing people to join the winning team is a must (not much to say about this if you really missed this point)
• You don’t do SoloQ, you are playing pvp for rewards and you never stay on a losing team. You reply with: “So, Teamqueue, and solo queue aren’t enough?”
• Its funny that players like you seem to be the only problem for my Fix. At least players like you will now leave the match instead of autobalancing and joining the winning team again and again…
  So to answer your question: my fix will slowly remove players like you from hotjoin, to give room for players that actually want to play. And don’t autobalance the teams each day, every day.

Currently, any fix would be better than its current state. Even mine (which was a 1 minute iteration).

Wasn’t the OP complaining about 5v4 in Hotjoin though?

Becka has a good point; preventing players from joining the winning team will not fix the core issue, which is to encourage players to join/stay on the losing team. Otherwise you’ll just get ragequitters, and then what are you going to do? You either need to allow Autobalance (which puts us back at square one), or one team has to play understrength and basically get stomped the rest of the match because nobody is willing to join the losing team. (And that’s if you don’t simply get a cascading effect where every single member of the losing team quits. I see this alllll the time in online competitive shooters.)

If you kick one member of the winning team back to Spectate, you’re guaranteed to kitten off that unlucky player too, because now they lose out on their chance for rewards/playtime.

I had a MAJOR lag spike two days ago in Battle of Kyhlo. It eventually disconnected me, but the weird thing was that I was still able to chat normally in Guild chat, even though my /say and /map chats were not showing up.

@dgzsl: Of course. As ThFH suggested, a Charr using an Ebonhawke rifle might make up a cover story about how “yeah, I looted this rifle from the corpse of the first Separatist officer I killed. I’m using it because, uh… it’s a battle trophy. And I’m sure it kittenes off the Separatists to see a Charr using their own weapons. Yeah, that’s it.”

>.>

<.<

I want that Dragon Revelry Starcake recipe (it’s the ONLY learned recipe I’m missing), so /supported. I was hoping to get another chance for it during Dragon Bash this year, but as we all know that got cancelled…

It’s possible that we will get access to the various Molten Facility recipes again when LS1 is brought back (at an indeterminate time in the future).

So long story short, better visit the vendors and buy what you want before tomorrow.

I have a feeling that Sonders will still hang around though, since otherwise we’d have no sinks to get rid of the candy corn and other Halloween mats we can continue to accumulate via Maize Balm farming or just opening ToT bags.

Yeah, making your own checklist is the only interim solution, but I agree that it would be nice to have an in-game checklist to see what you’re missing. (If ANet wants to preserve the sense of discovery, then only have completed diving jumps show up, so players can see which ones they already have.)

On a personal note, I only have 5 more dives to go, and I know there’s exactly 5 jumps in Orr (the only place I haven’t been to), so I’m good.

Malediktus.9250:

They already ruined achievements with black lion collections

? Can you elaborate?

I still feel that if Gwynefyrdd were tradable, it would solve so many of these complaints. We have the ability to farm the ToT bags all year round thanks to the Maize Balm, so with a guaranteed supply, and the ability to trade the mini, players could at least have the knowledge that they CAN eventually get the mini, even though the price might be atrocious. They have a tangible goal to work towards, rather than just gambling everything away and hoping against hope.

They do feel a bit lackluster, but I’m honestly OK with them staying as they are. The Zenith/Pinnacle weapon skins and the Radiant/Hellfire armor skins are meant to be the cosmetic reward for gaining large amounts of AP. We also gain gold, account-wide bonuses, Laurels and occasionally gems for reaching AP benchmarks. I’m not sure it would be wise to give the AP hunters even more rewards (even though I’m one myself. I’m almost at 20k AP).

I wouldn’t mind a restricted version of an increased level cap, as long as it wasn’t bound to gear. For example, say that players can now reach level 90, but the only thing you gain past level 80 is increased trait points, allowing you to create even more powerful builds (and opening up possibilities for soloing of dungeons and other end-game content). Gear remains locked at level 80, and if you go into PvP/WvW, you get downscaled back to 80, so balance would not be an issue.

I do wish you could trade the Unidentified Fossils for Ambrite, to be honest. A bag of greens doesn’t seem like a fair trade considering how rare these things are. (Especially since if you really want a Fossil, you can just do the PvP reward track.)

At current prices, it’s at least 50-something gold to buy all the Foxfire Clusters. If you want to skip the time-gated stuff, you can expect to buy 50 – 100% mark-up.

Same here. XD I’ve also got 110+ Experience Tomes too, so I’m set if ANet ever releases a new race/profession. Instant level 80 after creation!

And just to further demonstrate the RNGness, I did another Fractals run last night (for Daily Fractal runner). One person in my party got THREE Fractals spoon, all in the same run.

@GreenAlien: The Fractals spoon can drop from any level. I haven’t noticed any difference in drop rates based on the level of the Fractal.

It really must depend on your playstyle. I’m not sure how I’m doing it exactly, but I seem to gather karma quite effortlessly. My most recent big purchase was unlocking all the T3 Cultural armor skins. That took me down from about 6 million karma to 1 million. That was about a month ago, and I’m already back up to 2 million karma. O.o Where it’s all coming from, I have no idea!

I’d go with 3b. It’s the fairest option, and it’s not without precedent either. If you managed to find the rifle, for example, you still retain it even after a Courtier uses MKS on you; it’s just temporarily disabled while MKS is in effect.

Vengeance does allow for some funny situations at times though. Over the weekend I was in a PvP match fighting with a Warrior at the Keep in Niflhel. I managed to down him first, but an enemy Ranger showed up and downed me before I could stomp the Warrior. Then another Thief on my team showed up and engaged the Ranger, forcing him away. The Warrior then used Vengeance, popped Balanced Stance and stomped me. XD

But I took some satisfaction in the fact that shortly after I respawned, I got points for him dying after Vengeance wore off.

If you’re in a guild, you could also maybe try getting your guild together for a “raid” into EBG to kill the Grub. (Subject obviously to things like queues.)

That’s a good point there, Eberle. Feedback and promises need to be followed up with concrete action, or, if no action is forthcoming, then we need to be informed or updated so people don’t get their hopes up. (It’s still a rotten situation if that’s the case, but it’s better than just waiting and hoping in vain.)

Again, that’s why one of my original suggestions was that each major sub-forum should have its own dev representative, so that the burden doesn’t just fall squarely on Gaile or any single person. John Smith is doing a great job for the BLTC forum, as are Maclaine Diemer and Cody Crichton in the Audio forum. We need more people to handle the Living World forum, the Dungeon forum, the PvP (although this one has been getting more attention of late) forum and the WvW forum. Possibly the Crafting and Racial forums could use one too, but these tend to be slower moving and don’t require as much feedback.

Yeah, it seems that the recipes DO drop (although I’m not sure if they potentially only drop from Personalized ToT Bags; the loot tables for both seem to be different), but they’re extremely rare.

Still, you’re not supposed to use these forums as a way of advertising your goods or your desire to buy. We don’t want to see this forum turn into another Spamadan, after all.

Hope you get your warhorn though, OP.

Aberrant.6749:

Zaxares.5419:

I’m not sure that would be a wise move, Aberrant. Removing rewards from Hotjoin is more likely to result in the following:

1. All those autobalancers/team stackers currently in Hotjoin just move into Solo/Team Queue instead. If you think the two modes are bad now, imagine how much worse it would be with even more afkers, quitters or IPHIW types in there.

2. The Hotjoin players just leave PvP altogether. You might think that’s a victory, but it also deprives newbies to the PvP scene of a place to get their feet wet and learn without real consequences, while also still leaving players feeling like they’re being rewarded for their time. Events in GW2 over the last year have made it abundantly clear that players will only stay in a map or game mode if they feel it is profitable to be there.

1. Fine, let them get punished for their bad behavior with dishonored and be unable to play then.
2. They don’t care about pvp, they just want to abuse 5v4 to get PvE rewards. People seeing constant 5v4 etc. does more harm to people actually interested in pvp.

1. Dishonored only kicks in if you quit the match, right? So afkers (the ones who play juuuust enough to avoid the afk detection kick. You know the type I’m talking about) and “rubbish players” would be entirely unaffected.

And once somebody quits, you then have the problem of 4v5/3v4 anyway. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was told that Autobalance does not apply in Solo/Team Queue? So the people on the shorthanded team have a lousy experience anyway through no fault of their own.

2. Unbalanced teams is a big problem, yes, but I think it would be more effective to encourage people to join/stay on the losing team rather than punish leavers. People stacking teams so that they have the numbers advantage is only one half of the problem; the other, more insidious reason people wait in Spectate is because after a match, you pretty much know who are the good players are. (It’s not hard. Just watch and see who has the Dragon/Phoenix/Shark finishers, or who have “Champion X” as their title.) You then wait next round until you see the skilled players join one side, and then quickly join their team. You are thus pretty much assured of a win, even if you don’t have an initial numbers advantage.

That’s why I’ve suggested in the past including a new buff that gives you double the match rewards (capped at the winner’s usual reward) to anybody who picks “Random” when starting a match. When coupled with the fact that rewards are handed out based on how long you’ve been in the match, this means that if you’re after PvE rewards (as you call it), the smartest thing to do is just instantly hit “Random” when the match starts and then see it out to the end. Teams don’t have to suffer through 4v5 or 3v4, and people who play for the thrill of winning can still make their best effort (and possibly carry their team, depending on how good they are).

Ahh, you’re right. I missed that part.

Then the question now becomes, “if you’re halfway through a reward track when it becomes unavailable, do you just lose all progress/access to it?” Does anyone who’s been in a similar situation with time-limited reward tracks (e.g. a dungeon track that you haven’t unlocked yet) know what happens then?

That is a fair point. Personally I also think the rats should have been removed, but I guess ANet’s crunched the numbers and figured with only a two week window for Halloween, it wasn’t worth putting a dev’s time onto changing the instance.

I very much doubt that it’s Logan. He’s just not the kind of guy to have extensive information networks and operate clandestinely. Besides, if your character is human, he’s already on a first name basis with you. Why would he bother concealing his identity with the player?

It’s also worth noting that a lot of Charr do not really see the Six Gods as true “gods”. Yes, they are incredibly powerful beings, but they can be fought and even killed, as Abaddon’s death showed. To the Charr, that means that the gods are not truly divine, omnipotent beings. A god who can be killed by mortal creatures is one that is unworthy of worship.

The Charr are pragmatists above all. If a human-made rifle turns out to be more effective, more reliable or even more aesthetically pleasing than other options, the Charr would not let pride stop them from using it on the battlefield.

Yeah, what Ensign said. While it IS true that ANet does have the power to drastically change the trading landscape by altering the frequency of drops, it’s still up to the players to determine how much a particular item is worth. Not only that, but I think people also frequently underestimate just how wide the seller base is, even for very rare items like Precursors. It’s next to impossible for a single player (maybe even a cartel of players) to successfully corner a market thanks to random players selling their drops at any one time.

Is there perhaps cause for ANet to look at adjusting loot rarity/frequency? Maybe, but that’s an entirely separate issue from what the OP is suggesting.

It’s one of those things that can only be addressed by having a staff member whose specifically involved looking through the forum and responding to posts, alas. I can’t think of any way that this could be automated because people would find a way to get around it; only a real life human reading the thread would be able to make that call.

(As Gaile said though, somebody constantly bumping their own thread would run the risk of getting their thread locked or moderated.)

At least the Mini Polar Bear could be traded.

The player who was banned (suspended, more accurately) in that situation was one who was consistently attempting to get back into that ONE specific instance to disrupt the farmers there. They could have just as easily stayed in their own instance if they wanted to farm for themselves, but their actions made it clear they were doing it specifically because they wanted to aggravate the farmers. As per the ToS, trolling or griefing other players is not allowed and appropriate action was taken.

Now, if you have a problem with farming or the Maize farm in general, you’re more than welcome to continue discussion about it here, but ANet’s already made their stance on the matter clear, and I for one, think that they’re correct. These farmers are essentially providing a year-round source for ToT bags, which means that prices for the various goodies from them will be kept at a reasonable level for the foreseeable future. This is a GOOD thing for the player base at large, as it means that stuff like the craftable Halloween weapons, Zuzu and related stuff will never spike to prices where the average player feels they’re unreachable.

And if you need gold, you’re more than able to buy your own Maize Balms and find some quiet spots with lots of ambients to generate your own ToT bags.

(For the record, I’m not a farmer and I have simply been selling any Maize Balms I find.)

Actually, I think it MIGHT stay. After all, we already know that the Maize Balms were intentionally introduced so that PvE players could continue to farm ToT bags all year round. It thus makes sense that the reward track would stay so that PvP players can do the same.

Furthermore, there’s no indication on the Halloween track that says it’s going away, like the temporary dungeon/regional tracks.

Don’t take this as a guarantee, of course, but I think there’s a good argument for the Halloween track possible staying.

It wouldn’t work anyway, since the NPC we need to talk to as the final step in getting the backpieces is no longer available. I’m sure that the ghosts showing up is an unintended bug.

Still, I hope this thread has shown ANet that there are many, many players who want a chance to re-earn the Mad Memoires backpieces.

Yes, I’m aware of the story behind the OP’s complaint. Basically, he is using the SE ledge in Lunatic Inquisition, which some players feel is unfair play given the difficult in getting up there as a ghost. This has resulted in some people reporting him for “exploiting”.

While I do feel that standing up there on the ledge is “unintended”, it’s ANet’s final call as to whether or not it’s an exploit. At its heart though, Lunatic Inquisition is badly in need of some rebalancing.

minbariguy.7504:

Actually, I do, too.

When someone posts in a thread and then doesn’t return to it when they see new posts, it’s a pretty clear indication that they were only interested in blurting out their opinion, and not at all interested in what other people had to say.

Forums are about discussion, not just dropping opinion bombs. Discussion is a two-way street.

Same here. If the topic is one of interest that I’m following, I will return to it frequently (or whenever I see it is on the first page) to see what the current situation is.

Someone earlier mentioned that "if Gaile receives a response from the devs that “we’re not working on it at this time”, or “we’re not allowed to talk about that”, then what should she do? I say again that THAT should be communicated to us, along with maybe a brief statement as to why. Simply leaving the players in the dark with no further contact is the worst possible course of action, because that just leaves people feeling like they’re being ignored or dismissed. I surmise that this feeling is largely what has contributed to the general rise in toxicity in the forums over the years, because players feel like “ANet doesn’t care enough to address our concerns”, and this ill-will doesn’t just disappear whenever new content comes out, no matter how fun or awesome it is.

That’s why I raised the idea of having that sticky thread where we can call attention to outstanding issues, because I DO understand that people get busy, that there are many different things on the go at the same time, and sometimes things WILL fall through the cracks. If we can just get some feedback or status updates from time to time on matters of importance to different player circles, it might make a world of difference.