Guild Wars 2

It depends on my mood. When I create groups, I usually take on anybody within the dungeon’s level range and who is willing to learn, if they’re new. That also means I have to spend more time teaching possible newbies. Sometimes I don’t have the time for that and would rather just join an existing group who already know what to do.

^ That happened lots of times in GW1 too. Without a central trading post to instantly see the current value of the item you were selling, many unscrupulous traders tried to take advantage of newbies by offering to buy items at a price far below their real market value. (And you can bet that it would continue to happen if a PtP system were introduced since a lot of players would be too lazy to look up the TP to see what their item was worth first. Heck, I consider myself an experienced player and trader and even I don’t always bother looking up an item’s trade history all the time to see what the real price point is, just because I don’t have time.)

Glad you found him!

Feh. I’d have just left the match instantly (note that I only play Hotjoin) when she tried to extort money from us.

Housing kind of already exists in the form of the Home Instances. Being able to pad it out with the various LS nodes and NPCs from the Personal Story are nice touches, although there needs to be more impact for the Personal Story NPCs. For example, I’d make it so that every week (or maybe every month), you can visit the NPCs and chat to them to receive a small gift of free mats or coin, similar to the keyless chests back in Nightfall.

Guild halls would also be a nice way to build guild solidarity. They could serve as crafting/banking hubs for guild members, financed by donations from guild members. (Good sink for excess stuff like Thick Leather or Mithril, for example. Or Bloodstone Dust.) They could also provide a sink for Influence/Guild Merits; some of the largest, most populated guilds, have basically unlocked everything and we gain Influence/Merits faster than we can spend them!

Agreed. It needs to be fixed soon. This bug is making a mockery of all the Activities. :/

On the other hand, I feel no regret for using the “2 crabs” bug against a player who is obviously taking advantage of sigils/runes to gain an unfair advantage in Crab Toss. If he’s going to cheat his way to victory, then I see no issue with using the bug to put myself on the same team as him and gain victory credit alongside him. (One time the entire arena all got victory credit. Was rather amusing to see.)

Yargesh.4965:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Zaxares.5419:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Because Teq and THW are not “meta” bosses. They are World bosses meant to purposely be difficult to beat with an inexperienced group, and impossible to beat with a lack of numbers. Scaling down the event will not be done. Nor should it be done.

Being a challenge for experienced players is a must in this game. Dumb it down too much and it becomes boring. If they removed the predictability of Teq’s attacks, it would still be challenging. If you want a low-count boss to fight, there are plenty available. Teq and THW should remain untouched aside from bug fixes, like Teq chain burning glitch (which Anet claimed to fix, it’s not), and the spontaneous and random descaling of THW (which Anet claimed to fix, it’s not).

I agree with you completely on the first portion (difficult, if not impossible, to beat with an inexperienced group), but I disagree on the second portion (you must have X players to participate). The fundamental challenges of the Teq/Wurm encounter lie in the coordination and everybody performing their roles correctly. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of the Megaboss having insanely scaled up health and overleveled adds.

I think it’s frankly quite telling that the difference between “skin of your teeth” kills and “we killed Teq/Wurm with minutes to spare!” is always down to “did we spam Embers/Whistles/Mortars/Turrets?” That tells me that it’s basically just down to extra DPS, not out of any particular skill or effort from players. What’s the challenge in an encounter that’s made much easier just because lots of players spammed potions/summons?

A challenging boss fight should fail because the players screwed up somewhere (didn’t defend Turrets properly, did not properly coordinate the decapitations at the same time), not because you had X less people than the map cap or because people didn’t bring enough potions.

I’m guessing you don’t kill the Wurm often. You can have all the Fire Eles Powers and Ogre Whistles you want, but if one person isn’t in the correct position, it can ruin the whole run. So if 149+ players in the map all know what to do, all it takes is a single pug not following directions to pull the Wurm Head the wrong way, and you get an epic fail.

To sum it up, you need to DPS properly. Big difference from just having DPS.

The only fails now are because the condi teams could not keep the husks away from the burn, placing bombs somehow becomes disorganized or as Smooth Penguin pointed out someone not listening and pulling the wurm head all over the place instead of getting solid DPS. Pet whistles and powders do help but they are not the main thing that gets the event done.

Exactly! The fight failed because people screwed up; this is exactly what I’ve been saying and advocating for.

My point about the Embers etc. is that all they really do is help burn down the massive overscaled HP of Teq/Wurm faster, thereby making the different between a last second kill and a “minutes to spare” kill. That’s not really challenging, any more than having the Shaman/Caledon Wurm being massive HP punching bags that result in the zerg spending 3 minutes mashing 1 instead of 30 seconds mashing 1 was “challenging”.

The challenge of Tequatl/Triple Wurm can be preserved at lower numbers of people as at higher numbers; the encounter just needs to scale properly to take it into account. As Penguin said, all it takes is one person sending the Wurm off into the ocean or into the middle of the valley to mess up the fight, whether it’s with 30 people or 60 people.

For the record, I’ve been to 5 Wurm kills, out of about 14 total attempts with TTS. As a side note, I’ve noticed that success rates have gone up dramatically since the Megaserver’s introduction too.

Wanze.8410:

Sentinel insignias/inscriptions can be salvaged from exotic sentinel gear that is not crafted. Unfortunately that exotic gear only dropped from the flame and frost and recently from the LA Events, so they are expensive as well.

You can also purchase Sentinel insignias/inscriptions from the Guild Commendation trader (I think it’s 80 silver + 10 Commendations each).

Do you have any accounts on 3rd party fan sites like GWGuru? Or did you ever once create a Master NCSoft account? I got hacked once back during GW1, and what happened was that GWGuru got hacked and the login credentials stolen. That ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem since I use different passwords for my forums, e-mails and games, but I forgot that waaaay back during the early GW1 days, I’d created an NCSoft account as part of their Support process, and THAT account had the same password as the forum. I’d forgotten this NCSoft account even existed when I tightened all my security credentials back in the early-2000’s to important cyber-accounts, and so it got missed. One day, many years later, the hackers found this backdoor and used it to reset my GW1 password, which was how I got hacked and cleaned out.

My only consolation is that my e-mail and game passwords are apparently so strong that they’ve never been cracked. I deliberately use easier passwords on throwaway forums too so they won’t give away clues as to the system I use for password construction on my more important online accounts.

@Polismassa: Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the information. During my two visits to that map, I did notice that if I happened to get stunned on one of those glass/energy windows, it was basically instant death, and I thought the grace duration was a bit short.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

nexxe.7081:

They never expanded on the Personality system. It was just useless after launch.

Some of us liked to keep certain personality balanced on certain characters. It added flair.

I’m sad that my main’s profile no longer says “Diplomate”. Or my boyfriend’s main is no longer a “Scoundrel”.

What ratio gave you “Scoundrel”? 50% Charm, 50% Ferocious?

I miss this system too. I liked keeping my Human Noble Mesmer a Diplomat, or my Sylvari Dawn Necro being Captivating.

I want to name all the different pets in my Ranger’s menagerie! XD

Not personally, no. This claim comes to me via a friend who was on another server. (I’m on TC.) I’ll ask him to grab a screenshot if/when he sees it happen again. In my experience he’s quite trustworthy, although it’s possible he was mistaken.

I’m very new to sPvP (just started this weekend!) and only been in hotjoin so far, so can somebody explain to me why Skyhammer is so hated?

Indeed. As a hoarder-type of player, seeing my gold or my mat collection (1500 Mithril Ingots!) in my bank get bigger makes me happy. I don’t spend much on my hobbies aside from video games, so I have the disposable income to drop on gems now and again. It’s quicker and easier for me than grinding dungeons or playing the TP (I’d rather be doing in-game stuff than poring over spreadsheets and placing buy/sell orders for hours.)

At the end of the day, as long as you’re having fun in GW2, in whatever fashion that finds you, that’s what’s important.

Yes, that’s something I found rather sneaky and disappointing as well. Not everybody follows Facebook/Twitter/reddit/the forums, and I wince at how many other players might be slowly saving up for the Winter/Sclerite weapons and not know that this is coming.

For the record, I’m in favour of the BLWeapons staying too. (OR… If they must go, then at least bring them back seasonally. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the Winter weapons came back on sale every Wintersday, or the Sclerite weapons on sale during October on the anniversary of the karka attack on LA.)

Speaking for myself, I love underwater combat and exploration. I’m not sure what other players are doing, but I feel OVERpowered in underwater combat. Luring enemies into water so I can kill them more easily is something I do on a frequent basis.

captainteemo.6537:

you can’t. I bought a few thinking I could after unlocking the skin. I can’t salvage or put them in the mystic forge.

Well, that’s a downer. Might hold off on unlocking Order gear for a bit then (no rush. They’re always gonna be there), just in case they do get changed again down the line.

Approximately $400, spent on account upgrades (bank slots, collection expanders, bag slots), a couple of extra character slots, and 5 full sets of unlimited tools for my 5 mains. Still have some gems left over for any new purchases I might want.

To the OP: Congratulations. Regardless of how you obtained it, that’s an impressive accomplishment.

Now, who will be the first to post proof of a complete Wardrobe collection? If you think 19 Legendaries is impressive, consider that that’s only one step on the road to fully completing your Wardrobe.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Because Teq and THW are not “meta” bosses. They are World bosses meant to purposely be difficult to beat with an inexperienced group, and impossible to beat with a lack of numbers. Scaling down the event will not be done. Nor should it be done.

Being a challenge for experienced players is a must in this game. Dumb it down too much and it becomes boring. If they removed the predictability of Teq’s attacks, it would still be challenging. If you want a low-count boss to fight, there are plenty available. Teq and THW should remain untouched aside from bug fixes, like Teq chain burning glitch (which Anet claimed to fix, it’s not), and the spontaneous and random descaling of THW (which Anet claimed to fix, it’s not).

I agree with you completely on the first portion (difficult, if not impossible, to beat with an inexperienced group), but I disagree on the second portion (you must have X players to participate). The fundamental challenges of the Teq/Wurm encounter lie in the coordination and everybody performing their roles correctly. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of the Megaboss having insanely scaled up health and overleveled adds.

I think it’s frankly quite telling that the difference between “skin of your teeth” kills and “we killed Teq/Wurm with minutes to spare!” is always down to “did we spam Embers/Whistles/Mortars/Turrets?” That tells me that it’s basically just down to extra DPS, not out of any particular skill or effort from players. What’s the challenge in an encounter that’s made much easier just because lots of players spammed potions/summons?

A challenging boss fight should fail because the players screwed up somewhere (didn’t defend Turrets properly, did not properly coordinate the decapitations at the same time), not because you had X less people than the map cap or because people didn’t bring enough potions.

Hate to muddy the waters, but GW2 DOES have a newsletter they send out notifications to once in a while. It’s possible that the e-mail was actually genuine, but to be on the safe side, I’d ignore it anyway. The newsletters don’t mention anything you wouldn’t see on the website, so you’re not really missing out.

The standard response time from Support is within 3 business days. There also seems to have been a surge of hacked accounts over the weekend (speculation is that a 3rd party fan site has been breached and login account details there stolen), so there may be a bit of delay in the response.

If you still have not received a response within 3 days, update your ticket. (Inculpatus can probably answer this better than I can.)

They CAN make the Citadel waypoint contested though. If that’s the only waypoint available on that server’s map, that could constitute as severe harassment/griefing as it badly restricts the server’s ability to respond to assaults or even to respawn after a death.

Most RP tends to happen in Divinity’s Reach. RP does happen in other cities and out in the world, although it’s more sporadic.

For specific events, I recommend visiting www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/ and finding either scheduled RP events, or joining an RP guild.

Trade is still conducted during wartime. The Asura likely would not have stopped shipments of food, construction materials and even travellers going through the gates to Ebonhawke, even though technically all of these could have helped the Vanguard’s war effort.

Most likely the Asura allow free passage of anything through the gates as long as it’s not with direct, immediate hostile intent. Sending a bomb through a gate would have been a big no-no, but the materials to make said bomb? Sure. Of course, the authorities on either side of the gate may have their own customs and border agents to restrict the flow of such materials, but as far as the Asura are concerned, that’s not their business. They keep the gates open and collect fees; that’s all that matters.

Some bosses do have in-game reasons for returning though. One such example is Vilnia Shadowsong, the evil Raven Shaman in Snowden Drifts. When “killed”, her corpse takes on that translucent hue common to phantasms, and the Norn hunter NPC just outside mentions that Vilnia’s been thought killed several times before, suggesting that she’s used her Mesmer magic to fake her death and escape.

Wait, so Order armor can’t be forged? What about Order weapons?

Equinox.4968:

Avascar.9237:

What happens if… I buy 15,000 gems and convert them all to gold? What’s going to happen to the market?

The supply of gems would probably increase slightly (considering the vast number of gems out there) and thus the price of buying gems with gold would lower slightly.

Note that 15K gems isn’t really a lot in light of how many gems must be out there in total. You’d likely have to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars in real money to really cheapen the price of gems bought by gold, and even then, the low prices would entice a lot of people to buy them while they’re cheap, thus forcing the price back up towards where it is now.

I remember there was a player on these forums once who used to spend cash on gems every month. One time he did a binge and bought up something like 20,000 gems and converted them all to gold. Apparently even that big an injection of gems didn’t even cause a twitch in the exchange rate. The velocity of gem-gold trades must be incredibly high.

No, it’s not fair. I want to get at least 10 gold for my 100 gems. Move up higher, exchange rate!

But seriously, the exchange rate is controlled entirely by players. It’s as fair as can be.

Astral Projections.7320:

You have to consider the reason behind it from their point of view.

(Thinks hard about a possible reason)

(Thinks even harder for a possible reason)

The programming! That tab was filled up and they would have to make and put in another weapon tab! That would take up valuable time that could be used to work on other projects.

So, you see. If you consider the matter logically, they do have a good reason.

And that’s the truth. :P

I know your post was half (all?) sarcastic, although that is actually a potential issue down the line if they keep releasing new weapon sets every 2 months or so. But as my solution, I’d instead change each of the BL weapons skins to a Weapon Chest. Like other weapon chests, once you open it, you get to pick which skin you want. That cuts down 19 weapons to one, and the skins can be organised in tabs according to either year (2013/2014 etc.) or by theme (festival = Winter/Halloween/Dragon Bash etc.)

My preference would be for by Year. If GW2 is still going by 2020, I think at that stage ANet wouldn’t be making any more new weapon/armor skins for the game.

It does have the potential to slide back into oversupplied territory, I’ll admit. Still, it’s holding steady at about 1.75 silver right now, and I believe that even with a reduction to 50 Silk Bolts, it likely won’t drop below 1 silver thanks to Damask being used by all 3 Armor professions. A reduction in price might also spur more people to craft Ascended armor, thereby keeping demand up near the same level despite the reduction.

That said, I hadn’t considered the possibility of reverting the Scrap → Bolt conversion back to 2. I think that if this were implemented, along with the general 50% increase in cloth scraps from salvage, then the requirement of 100 Bolts could stay.

Would depend entirely on the character. My Norn Ranger got the Quiver. My Asura Elementalist got the Book. My Human Mesmer is going for Light of Dwayna one day, as is my Charr Warrior with the Static Tempered Spinal Blades.

“Sprinkle Bloodstone Dust liberally on your Creme Brulee for that extra magical flavour!”

I am firmly against this move too. I really don’t understand how removing more choice from players is a good thing. Making these limited time weapons forever available from Black Lion Weapon Merchants was one of the best moves that ANet ever did; it made it possible for players to obtain the skin they wanted as a long-term goal. Now players who want these skins, but were content to slowly work towards them, will have to scramble to buy them or gamble on BLKeys. It’s an obvious marketing ploy to increase short-term sales, but at the cost of harming customer loyalty and goodwill. It feels like a pushy salesman trying to get you to buy something, and I HATE feeling pressured into a purchase.

I’m guessing that the Winter and Sclerite weapons were chosen because they’re the most unpopular sets, but instead of removing them, why not make them cheaper? The reduced price on BL weapons caused notable interest on many weapon skins, but I suspect many buyers stayed away because they didn’t have anywhere to store them. Now that the Wardrobe is here, that problem is eliminated.

If the issue is having too many tabs in the merchant, then here’s a suggestion: Change each of the BL weapons skins to a Weapon Chest. Like other weapon chests, once you open it, you get to pick which skin you want. That cuts down 19 weapons to one, and the skins can be organised in tabs according to either year (2013/2014 etc.) or by theme (festival = Winter/Halloween/Dragon Bash etc.)

Astralporing.1957:

Though instead of OP’s queue/separate instance idea, i’d rather see it scale better – and not with the best geared level 80 experienced players used as a basis.

This. I have no problem with Teq/Triple Wurm remaining in its current state as a challenge for large, organised guilds, but it really, REALLY sucks to get stuck in a map with too few people to do it. (Or worse, if you queued in the map for an hour or more, only to get disconnected at some point, or the map zerg hops to another map and you can’t follow them quickly enough. An hour’s game time wasted is a big ask.)

I really don’t see why Teq/Wurm couldn’t scale down better so they could be completed by, say, a group of 10 – 20 (for Teq) and 30 – 60 (for Wurm) who are experienced with the roles that need to be done. Difficulty does not necessarily mean “you must have this number of people to participate”.

The scaling technology was, and still is, one of the best and most amazing features of GW2. To have it absent from the mega-bosses is really bewildering.

I’d support a move back to monthly releases too. Two weeks was just too rushed for content (both from a release quality perspective and a time to enjoy it perspective). I’d also prefer it if each release also left more permanent content in the world. It saddens me that so much amazing content (the Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat, Marionette Battle) will never be seen again in their original glory after all the time spent working on them.

Dragon Bash will almost certainly be returning this year, and my bet is that it will be tied in to some kind of reconstruction effort that involves players donating lots of oversupplied mats and items in the game (Blade Shards, Thick Leather, and possibly Bloodstone Dust are all good candidates).

^ What Seera said. Odds are that a 3rd party fan site got hacked and the hackers harvested all the login info there. The people who got hacked likely used the same password on the fan site as they did on their e-mail and as the GW2 password. (This is how I got hacked many years back in GW1. GWGuru got compromised and they stole the passwords from there. I was careful enough to use a different password for my GW2 account, the fansite and my e-mail account, but unfortunately I’d forgotten that way back when I first started GW1, I’d also created an NCSoft master account for a one-off support issue and THAT account used the same password as the fansite. The hackers used that master account to get in and reset my GW1 password. Lesson learned. I now use unique passwords EVERYWHERE.)

You need to be FAST on taxis though. Generally when TTS switches servers, if you’re not into the new server within 10 seconds, you can pretty much forget about trying to get in. The map will be hardcapped.

I will agree that Megaservers has made it possible to fill anywhere from two to five (as I’ve seen once for Tequatl) additional maps. That’s extremely welcome. But you’ll still have the stragglers who get left behind, or they queued onto the wrong taxi and by the time they actually get into the party the map is full. I just think that having Teq/Wurm scale so it’s still doable by less players (who know what to do, I feel I have to keep emphasizing this) would be very welcome and eliminate situations where players arrive in the map an hour beforehand, yet still end up missing out on their chance to kill Teq/Wurm.

Fundamentally there’s no reason why players trading on the TP should be taxed either, but the tax was put in as GW2’s primary means of fighting inflation. (And considering the horror show that was D3 before the latest expansion came out, GW2 has been incredibly successful in that regard.) Ergo, in GW2, trade is intended to be taxed. Players who want to circumvent this should be discouraged.

I am adamant in my belief that allowing players an in-built player-to-player trading system WILL increase scams, because scammers will immediately start using it to try and hook unwary or greedy players. (It’s just the way the world works, sadly.) Currently the default response of players seeing someone trying to trade outside of the TP is, “Are you trying to scam someone?” It’s unfortunate, but as I see it, it’s the lesser of two evils.

Then why trade individually? If you want to send gold and gifts between friends, the mail system lets you do that perfectly fine. If you want to buy/sell something at a specific price, the TP already lets you do that (although you may need to wait longer if your price is not near equilibrium). The only obvious reason I can see for wanting a personal player-to-player trading system is a desire to avoid paying the TP tax, which as you yourself agree, is needed for the game’s overall health.

@Aidan: Scaling would also mean reducing the minimum number of people needed to fire harpoons at Amber (from 20 to 10 to 5, for example) if there are fewer people around. Same goes for the bombs needed for Cobalt, and the amount of phytotoxins each player plugs into the collectors.

As a member of TTS, I have nothing bad to say about our guild. We were formed to do these mega-bosses, and we do it well. But that doesn’t mean I’m indifferent to the complaints of people who get stuck in overflows with too few people to make the attempt. Scaling would allow these players a better chance to take part, without affecting the experience and challenge of TTS when we gather in large numbers. (This part is half in response to Thobek.) If we enjoy the challenge of fighting a giant boss with a large organised group, then we can do that by showing up to Teq/Wurm with our giant guild. It takes nothing away from our challenge or fun if Teq/Wurm scales down for a map with less people.

Scaling does not necessarily mean less difficulty, you know. How is Tequatl at 80 people any different from Tequatl at 20 people if the additional 60 people are all at his feet mashing 1? All that’s different is that Tequatl has ginormously more health and the minions at the batteries are Elites or Champions as opposed to Veterans. A defense group of 5 players killing 3 Elites is really no different to 1 player fighting, say, 2 Veterans and killing them in the same amount of time.

Tequatl at 20 players would still require the same dedicated roles, the same coordination, and the same skill level of players knowing what to do as Tequatl at 80 players. Likewise, for the Wurm, each Wurm basically needs a reflect team, a condi team, and maaaybe a Power team if the reflect team isn’t that good. The rest is just extra meat.

Tequatl is definitely doable. However, I do agree that he could perhaps scale a bit better for smaller groups. I wouldn’t want him to be soloable (he IS supposed to be a Dragon Champion, after all), but I don’t see why he couldn’t be taken down with, say, a group of 10 – 20 people who all know what to do. You get some people on turrets (and they do the bulk of the damage to Tequatl. Shooting giant stakes at him sounds more lethal than a horde of players hacking at his toes), some people to defend the turret users, and any leftovers can join the foot group.

The same could apply to the Triple Wurm too.

No, the Fishing Pole can only be used on enemies.

That’s why I just stuck Crests on my aquabreathers. Since I have several armor sets and I can’t predict which one I’ll be using at any particular time (I swap between my armor for various roles, or sometimes just because I feel like seeing a particular “look”), I just made my aquabreathers as generically useful as possible.

It’s usually because people crafted those items to level their crafting discipline and now want to try and recoup their money as much as they can. But there’s less demand for finished products and crafting components, so they go for less than the value of their raw materials. (Prices for finished armors and weapons have gone up lately due to people buying them to pad out their Wardrobe, however.)

I take advantage of it by buying crafting components for cheaper whenever I do the next phase of my crafting binges.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

There’s rumors that there’s an exploit that allows you to skin an item, and not have it Account/Soul Bound. If this is true, the security team’s gonna be busy banning a lot of accounts.

Ahh, mass bannings. The best way to take massive quantities of gold out of the economy.

A player to player trade interface also wouldn’t completely eliminate scamming. GW1 had this system too, and plenty of people still got scammed. There will always be people who are naive or not paying attention. Here’s a few methods scammers used:

1. Put an item that has an identical icon in the trade window, but is a much cheaper or worthless item. In GW2, imagine if somebody was offering to sell Dusk, but instead put in the much cheaper Naegling (that shares the same skin and icon), and a player just glanced at it (or are blinded by the thought of getting Dusk for cheaper) and accepted it.

2. They put the coin in gold instead of platinum (platinum was the higher currency in GW1). This was easily missed if you weren’t paying attention.

3. Some icons made it difficult to read the exact quantity of the item due to colour schemes etc. Scammers would put lower quantities of the item knowing it was harder for the buyer to see exactly how much they were getting.

GW2’s TP completely eliminates scamming if all players used it, so why would ANet hamper themselves by introducing player-to-player trading and opening them up to support tickets and extra work?

And as Astral pointed out above, the TP serves a vital secondary function by acting as the game’s main gold sink, helping to keep inflation in check. If most or all players bypassed it, the economy would be in a much worse state. (Or if you kept the taxes even on player to player trades, then what would be the point of having individual trading?)