Guild Wars 2

Sorry if that came off snarky, I really wasn’t trying to be — of course you know that chests aren’t monsters ;-) I was just trying to summarize the link.

I guess I’m not seeing the basis for the argument that everything autolootable is affected by MF, aside from a strict, optimistic interpretation of a user-written, authoritative wiki page.

However, I see a lot of information saying that all chest drops are unaffected by MF.

I mean, I guess they could be by some odd bug or inconsistent design decision, we’ve seen plenty of both. But based on what information is out there, I’d say it looks like the answer is no :-(

It’s a good question and the autoloot is an odd inconsistency. Maybe we’ll get a red post to clarify on this?

RSLongK.8961:

dlonie.6547:

The wiki is written by users, don’t interpret it too literally ;-) Check it again.

And the source where the information comes from is from the devs.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Magic-Find-Chests/first#post597487
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Magic-Find-Chests/first#post598159

Oh right, I forgot that red posts used to have substance to them ;-) My point was just to not interpret the words on the wiki too literally, as it’s not meant to be an authoritative source.

Sounds like the answer. Chests != monsters, but it’d be great to have this confirmed.

Good luck!

What? I posted like 4 times on that thing and didn’t get any XP.

:-(

The wiki is written by users, don’t interpret it too literally ;-) Check it again.

DaveGan.8065:

With the red posts in this subforum lately, has there ever been a recent non-moderator red post about fractal drops?

I don’t think so, but if there was, I’ll summarize it for you:

We’re listening, keep up the discussion! We’re aware of the situation and nothing is off the table!

Conaywea.5062:

Nah , i dont want to miss content because the first time i did x dungeon was in a Elitist noob party who need to do everything fast , you know what i mean

Its just stupid

Sigh…what part of “option” did you not understand?

I think we just found the reason for the NPE.

I absolutely respect your wishes, Guhracie, and don’t want to derail the thread. I’ve enjoyed reading your respectful and well worded pleas for communication. I try to be like that, but often get lost in my own frustration.

My reason for posting that was it actually explains a lot. It doesn’t explicitly discuss communication, but it shows that there’s a lot of problems in the company behind the shiny veneer of the GW2 interface or these forums. If the company is directionless and has poor internal communication, that needs to be addressed before we have any chance of seeing external communication improve.

I think the points above add a lot of context and perspective to the communication issues we’re experiencing. In addition to the overall negative tone of these forums, the developers seem to be under a lot of stress from their working conditions, which certainly doesn’t foster a desire to communicate with the players. So they stay silent, and we get more frustrated and negative…vicious cycle :-(

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-ArenaNet-RVW4484689.htm

• Morale is dropping, veterans are departing.
• Company feels rudderless. Upper management are virtually walling themselves off from the rest of the company.
• Decision to move to Living World (with content updates every two weeks) was not well thought through and poorly implemented. Long hours, meddling from upper management, poor communication from the top who expected epic Hollywood production without investing in new technology or manpower.
• Inexperienced producers. Some are struggling but doing great work, others will ride their teams into the ground.
• Long, brutal crunches that can last months. Burnout is becoming commonplace.
• Petty senior personnel who will throw people under a bus if they don’t get their way.
• Poor pay, hard to attract and keep talent. Especially programmers.
• Growing reliance on temp talent. It’s a long, hard slog to get converted to full time. Unless you get hired on as full time, expect to be on a temp contract.
• Willingness by upper management to let designer vacancies stay vacant at a time when talent is sorely needed.
• Hard to take time off without feeling like you are abandoning the team.
• Everything seems one step away from crisis mode.
• Buggy internal tools.
• Problematic staffers who should have been fired long ago are still employed because of seniority/who they know.
• No incentive to reward clever thinking or hard work.

Ouch.

To any of the folks in the trenches who may read this, <3. This sort of working environment is an awful, awful thing, and please know that my none of my many complaints were directed at you. The implementation of the details in the game is great — the artwork is fantastic, the world is beautiful, and the application’s performance is nothing short of amazing.

It’s your management that needs to get their heads out of their kitten, but it sounds like you know this far, far better than we do.

Again, <3. And thank you.

Superior Rune of Communication (6/6)
(1): +0.001% chance to take nothing off the table!
(2): +0.025% chance to keep up discussion!
(3): +0.00001% chance to confirm awareness of issue.
(4): +0.0005% chance to not go into details.
(5): +0.001% chance for a feature to be discussed internally.
(6): 0% chance of answering simple questions.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Astraea.2981:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Is it even possible, given the changes that came about in the world?

Well, one thing we now know for certain. There has actually been zero internal discussion on the subject, if an ANet employee came into the thread thinking this.

Please don’t make that assumption. For if you do, you will be very, very wrong.

I am the lead of the Forum Communications Team. I am not a game designer, writer, or programmer. I don’t think I can say that more clearly, but I’ll also add that I have not asked a single team member about this internally. I’ve simply asked the forum members in this thread a general “something to think about” question that occurred to me in the context of this discussion.

I’m sorry if my question was confusing, but please know that it does not in any way mean that this matter is off the table or has not been discussed. It simply indicates my curiosity about the subject, and the fact that I ponder how you can have a battle in a city that is already in post-battle ruins. (And as you can see, folks in this thread have added several ideas of their own about how they feel it could be done.)

Don’t take this the wrong way, Gaile, but doesn’t this seem like a problem to you? Anytime a simple, direct question is asked, we get musings and “keep up the discussion!” What we never get is an actual answer — actual information.

You’re the designated person who communicates with the players, and you don’t have information on what’s in the works, and if you do, you are forbidden to share it! Why can’t we have someone who is more “in-the-loop” on these forums? What would the harm be in answering the simple question in this thread?

You know our frustration. You’ve heard it all everyday, and I’m sure you understand why we’re fed up with the communication policies.

I’m truly sorry that you have to deal with the fallout of management’s paranoia, and I hope that you’re pushing back on them to change their policies so that harmless, simple questions can receive the simple answers they deserve.

spoj.9672:

Its not designed to be replayable anyway. Its like the personal story. You do it for the story and the one time rewards. Only reason to revisit is for story purposes. The only fault with this is the achievements tied to the episodes. Especially when the instance in question involves lengthy dialogues.

Oh, I totally agree.

But they lock the achievements so you have to replay it to get them, and the story journal was their response to “We need more replayable content.”

It’s horsekitten, I tell you.

It was considered “too confusing” for new players, so they locked it until higher levels.

Priorities!

What spoj said. LS2 is much better than LS1, and the bosses have some more interesting mechanics as opposed to just being HP sponges. LS is easily soloable, and I can’t imagine any benefit to running it in a group (Well, other than not losing your instance if you DC :P). I haven’t tried the achieves, maybe those would be better for group play?

It’s still not very replayable, but it is getting better.

For me, replayable means I can fail. It means I need my teammates to be on the ball, or we’ll fail. It means there’s a challenge that needs to be overcome, that learning has to take place and I’ll notice an improvement the 30th time I play it vs. the first. Something like Arah…

LS can be solo’d in a glass build with no problem on the first try. I understand that they need that content for players who don’t want a challenge, and LS is the perfect place to put it. I just want something harder, where I need to know my class to survive :-/

Getting rid of the condition cap so damage-spec’d players can’t overwrite condition-spec’d players’ stacks needs to happen, at least for instanced content. That will go a long, long way towards making condition dealers useful.

With the addition of Sinister Gear and new condition vulnerable mobs, I hope that they at least have a fix to the condition cap on the way. Otherwise, I can’t help but wonder “What’s the point?”

For CC, I don’t really know. There were some interesting proposals coming up in the Raiding CDI, but they killed it right after the discussion started on CCs.

One of the things that really erks me, and this isn’t GW2 specific, is how easy playing a story has become. Think of the Priory “puzzle” in the latest LS.

Before it started, I thought, “Cool! I’ll actually have to think a bit, read a bit of lore, and use my brain to progress!”

Then I triggered the puzzle. Nope. Just walk to the green dot and press F. Here’s your reward.

>.<

frifox.5283:

There doesn’t need to be a fancy fix or implementation. A simple “/cinematic off” in chat should do the trick. “/cinematics on” would turn them back on and just “/cinematics” would echo the current setting.

Sounds like an exploit.

I would love to see them revisit southsun. It’s sort of a waste of space at the moment…

I originally bought the game for my wife as a present. She’s been really big into RPGs for years because she loves an immersive story. I had asked another gamer friend if GW2 had a good story and he told me “Oh hell yeah.”

kittening troll.

Anyway, I develop scientific 3D analysis tools for a living and once I saw the amazing graphics and rendering performance, I ended up buying a copy, too. We had fun running around open world, grabbing vistas (<3 vistas), etc, while slowly realizing….this game’s story is terrible. Linear, uninteresting, unimmersive (OMG those terrible, terrible PS cutscenes. They aren’t even looking at each other!).

Edited to add: To be fair, we were coming from single player RPGs. I’ve tried out a few other MMOs, and GW2’s story is better than a lot of them. ESO was better, but that’s the only one I’ve found that really does an amazing job with NPC acting, etc.

I ended up loving the active defense and creative support mechanics in the combat system and joined a laid back dungeon guild. I’m still here for social reasons (which are dwindling, unfortunately, these mass exoduses get worse with each wave of people leaving) and because nothing else comes close to the fun I have in combat here.

My wife? She’s bouncing between ESO and EQ2. I’d love to give ESO another try at some point, too. They did a fantastic job of storytelling (for an MMO, mind you) and the combat is pretty decent. It just felt like they launched it too soon, it was rather unpolished at launch.

Oh well. I really hope they either put in some challenge combat opportunities (which I think is fair to say why we’re all here), or at least start making the story interesting. I mean, the GW2 books tell some pretty compelling stories. What happened in game…I have no idea. They need to start putting some effort into keeping their players around

I’d love to see this game back to where it was six months after launch, before everything got stale.

Le sigh.

That, and there’s always that kittening cutscene on the way to the ooze in Arah p1. Even with the skip, the itty oozes often catch up and swarm you while you’re clicking “Skip”. Kibbehs me off.

This would be a wonderful QoL improvement, but I don’t see it happening, unfortunately.

I hate to see that. When are they ever going to nerf that kitten bridge?

Oh Dulfy. Forgot about her \o/

stale.9785:

I truly hope that the people who you work for pull their heads out of their kitten and finally fix some of what’s wrong. I just don’t have faith in it anymore.

QFT.

“We’re listening” is a step in the right direction, but right now, there’s not a lot to look forward to in this game, besides watching more people leave…

Give us something for kitten’s sake. Poor Gaile is on the frontlines having to deal with all of this, but is given no leeway to actually say anything useful. I feel bad for her :-(

This seems like a good place to ask — anyone know of a good thief guide for PvE? I’m having a lot of fun relearning mine and want to get some more info on them.

Zaxares.5419:

I do think a change needs to be made so that any interrupted skill, regardless of when the interrupt lands, puts the skill onto its full cooldown.

As someone who is currently relearning sword/pistol thief, I fully support this

Trouble with instances is that I’ve been getting a lot of DC’s lately and it’s frustrating to completely lose the instance >.<

I just did the giant in Harathi, he’s pretty fun. That triple stomp/punch is good dodge practice :-D I only got him to about 10%, I died trying to res a random that showed up, lol. It’s this guy BTW, if anyone is looking for the location:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Help_Shining_Blade_Kimber_defeat_Kol_Skullsmasher

Arah is super fun, but that’s where I usually go for solo challenges. Looking to change it up a bit!

Great suggestions so far, what are some other challenging PvE encounters?

Wait for the dredge raiding map :P

Have fun, guys. If you see me on and are short a spot, feel free to ninja invite me, but only if there’s not someone who needs to learn it

Hey folks,

I’m relearning my thief as a way to stay somewhat interested in the game. What are your favorite challenging open-world mobs? I’m looking for things that respawn somewhat quickly, provide a decent challenge, and will force me to manage my utilities, cooldowns, evades, etc well to succeed. Ideally, these will be in more isolated areas so that a zerg won’t come along and trivialize things for me.

Right now I’m burning down vet giants in Orr, and it’s getting repetitive. Any suggestions of a good practice mob to go after next? I’m thinking karka might be fun.

Edit: This would be a good place to discuss your favorite PvE encounters to give people an idea of where to go for some fun, and give some feedback about what makes these enjoyable encounters fun!

Dalanor.5387:

dlonie.6547:

Reminds me of those old “Unnecessary Censorship” gags, lol.

Like these?

Oh sweet jesus. dying irl xD

J Eberle.9312:

NoTrigger.8396:

illegal picta sis. you must read COC with concentrat

Many CoC later I em educate neow

i laf at yu zerks j eberle oxtred not rigger. u slats and the rest of ur gild is very verbal abusing. you talk about CoC but i dont tink u reed it

No one said that there’s anything wrong with that, just that you can’t do it outside of a story instance.

NTDK was merely pointing out that cheshirefox was being sarcastic — mounts and housing are two things the community has been very vocal about wanting, but will never happen in this game.

ArenaNet’s resources are tied up producing living story content and struggling to keep up with maintenance, thus it’s very unlikely that they’d be willing or able to devote anyone’s time to opening up that small map. They have a cornucopia of bigger fish that need frying.

Best kitty ever:

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’re looking at a different want to offer CDIs. Fully as welcoming of involvement, but perhaps with a few modifications to normal posts that will allow Chris and his team to more efficiently kitten player input.

Reminds me of those old “Unnecessary Censorship” gags, lol.

WereDragon.6083:

These forums need a downvote button

I agree, it would be nice to downvote/hide useless posts that contribute nothing to the conversation.

>.>

Warrior.

Endure Pain (2x with trait), Defiant Stance, Healing Signet, Balanced Stance, Berserker Stance, WWA, Riposte, …

Posting the second year stats when we have access to the first year stats would be the opposite of “good PR”. So no, we won’t see them.

It’d sure be interesting to quantify the difference, though.

Case and point, we didn’t need megaservers to make a map feel full when that first infographic came out. The raw numbers certainly wouldn’t put the game in any sort of positive light.

I thought this post had some good points:

phys.7689:

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

i showed this during the last discussion so yall may have already seen it.
basically bosses should build a resistance to control effects that lowers the effect duration based on how much CC and how powerful/long the CC that has been done to it.

so when you use a few cc effects, your 2 second effect may only last .5 seconds(when its at 75% reduction)

When it reaches 100% it will completely negate all crowd control until the resistance degrades below 100.

here is an example with jsfiddle, if you press the hsho(headshot) button and the stun button you can see how the resistance goes up.

i would, upon adding this system increase the base boss action speed (so they do more stuff)
Also, though i didnt program it in, i would make stuns under a certain amount of time get negated, but still add to the meter.
so lets say you headshot 75%, it wont actually stun/interupt, but it will add to the meter.

http://jsfiddle.net/phyicus/N3WCk/

so now, stuns would become less effective when spammed, but still usuable unless you are spamming.
a pro at using control would maximize the use of the CCs, and what they have available. Some times using fast interupts, some times using long controls. when his bar is high, only the strongest(longest CCs) will get through his resistance, but only last a moment (basically an interupt)

Play around with their javascript example they linked. Seems like one of the better proposals.

Sprinkles Forum Flakes into the Forum Aquarium

Eat, forum bug, eat.

Modclose is the new linksville. I’m sad that I missed the exciting conclusion of that pisking* contest.

*Adjust as needed.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

I do not want this argument to last until the release of Game of Thrones in April

…You’re aware that you’re the one that hijacked this thread in the first place….right?

Do either of you think you’ll ever convince the other of anything?

Will anything anyone says change whatever happened?

Oh well.

throws popcorn in microwave

That last story instance…definitely designed better than I’m used to

Could have used more combat IMO, but things seem to be moving in a good direction. Gives me some hope for raids

achoo

http://gw2.tips/d/

Not perfect, requires some manual effort, but given the attention paid to dungeons…it’s the best you’re going to get.

Get your raiding ideas in while you can.

I’ve been staying out of these discussions because I’m not exactly sure what I’d like to see. It’s difficult to just come up with a detailed plan forward, listing out all the bits that would or would not work, and frankly, others have put much more thought and have much more experience in this area.

While not about the actual raid content, my Big Three concern the development of the content:

1) Prototyping.
2) Iteration.
3) Follow through.

Prototyping to avoid putting out another unpopular Aetherpath. Let players test the elements of the raid as they’re coming together to determine what works and what doesn’t. See my earlier post — this could just be a zone that we can opt into entering that has stripped down versions of some of the encounters. Find out if the encounters are enjoyable before putting weeks/months of effort into polishing them.

Iteration to improve on the weaknesses discovered by testing the prototypes and respond to feedback from the community. Let the raids evolve, rather than just strictly following a predetermined design plan. Strengthen and reuse the bits that work, and scrap the ones that don’t. Don’t just assume that you’ll hit the bullseye because an encounter sounds good on paper.

Follow through to continue improving the content after its release. If it flops on release (hopefully iteration and prototyping will prevent this…), don’t just let it flounder. Find out why it’s not popular and fix it. For example, the popularity of the Aetherpath would have been much, much higher if the rewards/time were proportional to the other dungeon paths, but no (visible) effort has been made to correct this. A simple gold adjustment would make an enormous difference, but instead the company seems content to just let the path fail.

Ultimately, it is the players who will make or break the content. Don’t cut us out of the loop after the CDI ends.

cesmode.4257:

1. - Be transparent with how you are developing this. Don’t go away for 6 months, come out and say BTW we got raiding coming and this is what its going to be like. In the spirit of collaboration and CDI, keep a continuous dialogue open with us. Tell us how you are going to begin development on it, and keep us updated. This way we can give you feedback early on if we will like it or not, rather than after its implemented and now annoyed with a rage storm. Let us build it with you.

This, this, and more this.

To add to this, I think it’d even be worthwhile to introduce small prototypes/proofs-of-concept for us to test out and give feedback on — like a new instance in DR/LA/anywhere with a temporary 12 man raid boss. This could be used as a testing ground for anything from new attack animations, new CC/defiance models, or even environmental puzzles. Nothing fancy, just an empty, untextured room with a boss. Don’t worry about the art, just test the mechanics. We could provide feedback (rather than making you guess) and would have a sense of where things are going.

A valid concern is that unpolished content shouldn’t be put into the open world — maybe hide an option in the settings menu to enable/disable a shortcut that would trigger the instance (like how we enter HotM).

ArenaNet has been keeping absolutely everything behind closed doors until last minute, and as they’ve seemed to realize over the last few months, it hasn’t worked out well. Players are suspicious that development on “X” aspect of the game has stopped, new additions are very poorly received (Aetherpath, EotM, etc)…these problems can only be solved by being more transparent.

Lately we’ve started see a lot more red activity on the forum, and that’s great! But it’s typically just a post saying “Keep up the discussion guys, we’re listening!”, and it often feels like lip-service when there’s no meaningful information coming back our way. I know ArenaNet has some draconian policies in place that prevents community liaisons from sharing information. It’s time for this to change.

Lots of trait tooltips have been worked on, and they redid the trait system (now you have to do things like map completions/events/etc to unlock specific traits, rather than buying book). There are a couple new traits and some skills have been adjusted for PvP.

Other than that, LS HYPEHYPEHYPE, two PvE maps, and gemstore items are about it.

phys.7689:

here is an example with jsfiddle, if you press the hsho(headshot) button and the stun button you can see how the resistance goes up.

i would, upon adding this system increase the base boss action speed (so they do more stuff)
Also, though i didnt program it in, i would make stuns under a certain amount of time get negated, but still add to the meter.
so lets say you headshot 75%, it wont actually stun/interupt, but it will add to the meter.

http://jsfiddle.net/phyicus/N3WCk/

so now, stuns would become less effective when spammed, but still usuable unless you are spamming.
a pro at using control would maximize the use of the CCs, and what they have available.

This is one of the better ideas I’ve seen to solve the CC issue, props for putting up an interactive example that really clarifies the concept!

I was under the impression that argumentative/off-topic/sphincter-gazing posts would be admonished/deleted to keep the discussion on point?

Personally, I’d rather see that plan put into action instead of shutting down the discussion. More challenging instanced content is something that the game has sorely needed for a while, and I’d hate to see the CDI shut down over a few narrowminded individuals.

No changes to dungeons, either.

Were you a big fan of open world zergs and mindless farming? If so, then boy, are you in for a treat!

Yup, there’s a thread about it here, a lot of people seem to be having that problem.

Kasia Sawicz is a kitten-poor english teacher from the sounds of it, too.