Guild Wars 2

Rauderi.8706:

Though.. considering my key runs still net me tons of sellable farming mats, I end up gaining gold and a key.

Yeah, but none of the mobs in PS drop anything, and there are no gathering nodes in PS or early zones, so you don’t get mats and stuff anymore.

The crappy RNG isn’t worth the effort and gold to do it now, imho. I loved doing key runs in the old system. I mean, I can’t imagine doing a lot of them at a time, but for those times when I knew I just had 30 minutes to play, and I wanted to do something that was almost muscle memory so that I could let my brain defrag from the day…keyfarming was a soothing, easy 30 minutes that I didn’t have to think about, and in the end I got a chance to play lottery with a chest.

But, in all the chests I’ve opened, I’ve never gotten enough scraps to get a weapon skin; I mostly got crappy boosters, stupid 50 luck bubbles, and other junk like repair canisters. The “biggest” thing I ever got from a chest was a makeover kit.

So, while I liked chests as the cherry on top of my mental defrag keyrun, they are not worth paying real money or spending gold on, for me personally.

But however you feel about keyruns, or the impact on them by the new PS, as has been stated over and over, and here on this thread by a Mod; they are not now, nor have they ever been, an exploit.

Memo to Veteran Risen Subjugator staff:

It has come to my attention that some of you feel as though we, the Management of the Risen team, have not taken your concerns into consideration where it regards the constant invasion of Heroes and the subsequently high rates of death enjoyed by our workers.

Let me assure you, the Veterans are important to our overall plan of success. Your misery may seem unending and pointless, but take heart in the knowledge that your suffering slows heroes along their path to us. Management appreciates your sacrifice.

I raised your concerns at the Cathedral meeting, and Management decided that instead of raises this year, we’re going to spend the budget on inserting Fun for Veterans that the Heroes won’t be expecting.

For instance, you can now randomly spawn multiple, persistent wells that cannot be blocked. You should now notice large groups of heroes writhing about on the ground before you. That’s always fun. Management believes in Fun. Fun is now mandatory.

Management has also provided training that will allow you to use Life Siphon on countless Heroes at an unlimited range, for an unlimited time. See? Fun. Management believes in Fun.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to Management. We hope these new benefits will make your deaths of all Veteran Risen Subjugators on Tyria more Fun.

—Risen Priestess of Dwayna.

Yeah…minions, bless their rotting drippy hearts, are useless right now. They poof into nonexistance if you blink at them wrong. They’re all of them, peaceniks who would rather do ANYTHING than attack something. I swear to god, they should all be dressed in tie-dye, carrying daisies that they sprinkle around the battle…for it couldn’t be any more useless than they are currently.

I think the culling they did to eliminate mini pets has rebounded and is killing our minions. I’ve had them just disappear for no reason. Just poof…gone.

Yesterday on an alt, after I hit lvl 29, I cleared half of the Snowden zone…doing all the hearts, discoveries, skill points and a jumping puzzle, and got less than 1/2 a level from it. I then tried WVW and EotM, and after doing two complete circuits of capturing almost every point on the map, and helping to wipe opposing zergs 3x, I still had…half a level. Exp that should be in the hundreds was registering as, for example; 57 xp for capturing a tower, 12xp for duo-killing a veteran guard, 1xp for killing a PC player.

I finally gave up and used my only level gain book to get to 30, where exp went back to normal.

29 is bugged.

It appears to be true of all the *9 levels, at least that I’ve tried. At 19, 29, and 79 (three different characters), I saw a massive drop in exp gain both in pve and wvw. Once you crest into the next level, it’s back to normal.

I can only think that it’s a factor in the math of how they’ve redefined the leveling structure.

Ques es “new leveling armor”? I must have missed that in the patch notes.

For this character, it was at the end of the first “chapter” of the story quest. I’ve not done that quest line before, but I would guess that the last encounter is probably the encounter that was previously lvl 10.

I wish I had another newbie alt that was created pre-patch so I could test and see if that character didn’t get the popup rewards. It may just be a bug that came from having the story reset.

If it is a bug, then I don’t want to do the chapters on my lvl 40s and lvl 70s characters until it’s sorted out.

That’s so weird, did you start the character pre or post patch? Because I didn’t get any of the armor dialogs like you used to. Edit to say: This character was created pre-patch, and originally had the lvl 3 quest at the snow leopard, but then after the patch, the dot disappeared until lvl 10. I wonder if being an existing character broke it somehow.

So, I decided it wasn’t fair to complain about something I hadn’t attempted, therefore I used a new (but created pre-patch) Norn ranger, got her to lvl 12, and started the quest line that had pre-patch been on my story log at lvl 3.

I went through the entire quest line to the point that previously would have ended at lvl 10. It’s important to note here that none of the mobs drop loot anymore during the instances. Also, the option to choose between items that your character might use; i.e., a choice of different chests, pants, gloves, etc., are no longer part of the quest reward system. Instead, you are “rewarded” with loot bags at random stages and then at the end.

I saved all the loot bags until I was done. Here is everything I got for doing the quest line:

1 BLC key.
6 loot bags
1 yellow champ-type bag
(Possibly coin? I didn’t think to annotate copper or silver rewards if there were any, I didn’t notice them.)
Mining pick – cheapest ones available

Opening the bags gave me:

5 bits of armor that were inappropriate for my class; i.e. cloth and chain mail
2 weapons I cannot use – scepter and shield
Trash that sold for about 2 silver total

Therefore, doing an entire quest line that would have previously outfitted me in wearable armor, a useable weapon, and all the goodies that dropped from the mobs, now netted me nothing I could use, and no mob trash to sell/wear/salvage.

I don’t know if this is a bug, if the loot bags are supposed to drop items that can be used by the character playing the quest, or if this is “working as intended” and now the story quests rewards are completely untied to the character, the class, or the story, but it was pretty disappointing to get nothing from a 10 level character story chunk that could be used by the character.

(Edited to clarify that the character was created prepatch, and had the lvl 3 quest on her books before the patch, in case that’s part of the problem.)

The art is stunning. The core engine creates a fantastic living world. The community of people who play are, with rare exception, friendly, helpful and intelligent. (At least the ones that are chatty on my server are. Fantastic people. )

I am not any happier about this update than anyone else, and I’ll admit to getting feisty about it, but I tell ya, a friend at Blizzard gave me a free week to reactivate all my old characters…and these are ranked, raiding equipped, fully tweaked awesome characters of awesomeness that I played for years…and have things like flying carpets and their own dragons and whatnot, and I just couldn’t get in to it again.

I missed the mellow fields of GW2. I missed the open-world cooperative play that means there’s no such thing as kill stealing. I love that players aren’t competing for resources…that node can be mined by everyone. I love that the zone level system and harvesting resources means that that there’s almost always someone in every zone that will come help you out if you ask on /map for help for a skill point or an event.

I love how the quests aren’t just “go kill 12 kobolds and come back” most of the time. I love the cut scenes, and the story lines.

I love how closely they hued to the Prose Eddas when creating the Norn stories. I laugh every time I play an Asura and interact with npc asuras. I love the vistas…although I struggle to get some of them.

I suck at jumping puzzles, really suck…and I love that feeling when I finally beat one. (It doesn’t happen often.)

There’s a lot about this game that I love.

There’s a lot about this update that I really hate. I have to say that I wouldn’t recommend a friend buy a new box right now, because I find the level-lock thing to be problematic, and I’m not sure which parts are bugs and which parts are “working as intended”, but if you already own the game, then it costs you nothing to load it up and see what you think.

For the record, I’m still playing, although that may change if some of the things I think are bugs turn out to be working as intended.

Vayne.8563:

Being 15% of the share holder doesn’t actually entitled you to anything, unless you can somehow prove that Nexon execs have a seat on the board.

Because stockholders don’t make decisions, board members do. They sit in a room and make decisions and every quarter give a report to the stock holders.

So if there’s no one from Nexon on the board, I’m not sure what kind of power you think they have.

That’s not quite how boards work, but I can only speak to the American experience. I am not at all familiar with regulations and procedures on the Tokyo and Korean exchanges.

Business Week reported that nexon is the largest shareholder, and the shares that were sold were preferred, whereas many of the public shares are non-voting. Ergo, a 15% share, even in an American traded stock would be enough to have directional vote power, but in a system where a 15% preferred stock means that you have a majority voice in vote…

It’s hard to dig up accurate information on the crosslinks of companies traded in the Asian markets because they have different disclosure rules, and stricter privacy policies protecting the upper echelon of the business community. Ergo, their filings are not easily searchable like using Edgar searches in the US, and in those instances where searches are available, like Edgar, they are available in the native language of the country, and I am illiterate when it comes to Asian languages.

However, there was a significant crossover in executives. Four or five directors from Nexon moved over to ncsoft. Many of them noted it themselves in their linked in profiles.

I do not know the Asian markets well enough to be able to untangle the differences in the reporting required when people on are multiple steering boards, but there were lateral transfers of knowledge workers at the director level from nexon to ncsoft within 6 months of becoming the largest single shareholder.

Additionally, nobody buys a minority stake in a company unless they intend on steering the direction of said company. A minority stake isn’t like the stock you and I might buy. Nexon bought 3.218 million shares of ncsoft in a private purchase from Taek Jin Kim, the ncsoft chairman and founder. The details of the transaction were not required to be public information like an exchange on an American market would be.

So really, you and I have no way of knowing what caveats and benefits came with becoming the largest single shareholder.

And like I said, it’s a theory. It’s a theory that I think has a lot of circumstantial evidence, but no bloody knife. To be completely fair, I’m not married to the idea, but I’m willing to go have a coffee with it.

I too would like this.

Na, I’ve been talking to some ex-ncsoft guys.

If the rumors are to be believed, this is all coming from ncsoft, who want the game to be more like the Korean grinders. Those games make a lot of money for their primary single-voice shareholder: Nexon. Nexon bought a 15% share of the company, making them a huge, huge, huge voice in the boardroom. Nexon was the originator of the the pay to win model, and still escrows billions of fiat currency in it’s NX currency.

Anet is small fish compared to the sharks in the pool where they swim. If the directions are coming from nexon and ncsoft to make the game match what the Korean and Chinese markets expect from an MMO; then there is nothing Anet can do about it.

I mean, look at what happened with Garriot and Tabula Rasa. Sure, ncsoft eventually had to pay him 30 million dollars because of their fraud, but in the mean time, a game idea with great potential was destroyed by a company that wanted it to be a different sort of game.

Or ncsoft and City of Heros. My point being, if ncsoft has decided that GW2 is going to the pay to win model whether the players and developers like it or not, then that’s the direction the game is going to go, and there’s not a kitten thing that the devs at Anet can do to stop it.

This is my theory, and I stand by it.

Dear gods in heaven, yes. Please, for the love of keeping this the game I love so much, please, please, please institute a test server and roll this stuff to it months or weeks before you roll it live, so you can see how it actually works.

Na, they just made our pets act like minis, so they disappear if anyone shows up on the same map as us. They’re shy, our little dead things.

(sarcasm, not really what’s going on.)

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hey everyone,

While this is currently working as intended, it’s definitely something that we’ll be working on and tweaking in the future. We want you to be able to enjoy your minis so hang in there!

Wow. Just. Wow. So, there was this big push to get everyone to put their minis in the wardrobe, just so you guys could remove them from the game?

That has to be the most stealthy gold/gem sink I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve been playing games since the days when I was being eaten by a gru.

Working as intended, indeed.

I used lich last night in Dry Top, and my damage was significantly, dramatically decreased. I’m not a numbers person, so I don’t have comparative analysis data, but (round numbers I’m making up), I used to consistently see damage over 2k in lich, and last night not a single hit, in a fight that lasted long enough for me to use lich 3x, not a single hit was more than 800.

Nothing in my build/runes/weapons has changed between Monday and today. (Except for, ya know, losing most of the utility of my elite skills.)

eekzie.5640:

duckideva.6358:

How could you have unlocked an elite, if you can’t buy them until level 40?

You can purchase everything at level 13.

That is not true in all cases.

When I mouse over those skills, (using a lowbie created pre-patch by a day or two), even with enough skill points to buy one, it has a lock over the icon, and a mouseover message that says elite skills cannot be purchased until lvl 40.

Ergo, the bug may not be a system wide, reproducible issue, but is in fact a bug related to certain builds or races or something.

How could you have unlocked an elite, if you can’t buy them until level 40?

Wow, that’s crazy pants. I didn’t realize they were gating gem bought items.

Unstable Light.3649:

Countess Aire.9410:

That is the problem with the BL chests. I won’t purchase keys because of the stuff you get in them now. You haves better chance of getting a pre-cursor drop from the Mystic Tiolet. You have play the game and take your chances. Or you just walk away and play the keys when you get them.

Actually, right now BL chests aren’t bad.

I dunno, man. I realize that all RNG stuff is anecdotal, but I opened 10 chests and out of it, I got one scrap, some unidentified dye, a bunch of junk boosters, and a handful of repair canisters. Total crap.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

You mean you were also OK with the ever enlightening “Dodge into and stand in the red circle to get your loot” lesson?

Oh sure, no worries. I danced. It’ll be fine as long as you dance. SparkleMotion! What could possibly go wrong, with the Power of Dance?

Speaking of login, is it just me, or has the typeface changed on the login screen?

As we’ve all learned from MagicalMike:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y , Interpretive Dance is the key to completing the “tutorial” boss mob. (Poor Mike didn’t believe in the power of dance later, so he was brutally nuzzled to death by a dolyak. I doubt his commitment to sparklemotion.)

While I’m thrilled to bring Martha Graham to the New Player Experience, what I haven’t seen is any tutorial that explains fields, and how to combo, blast finish, etc.

Now, I realize, it’s going to be difficult to teach it to a group of people who can only press 1, then press 1 again, but seriously, it’s a core game mechanic.

In this level-gated, game-on-rails, New Player Experience, is there anything anywhere that was designed to explain how fields work to players who don’t understand it? Or is that a game mechanic that’s just too advanced for people to understand? (Like feeding cows, or getting skill points, or ya know unlocking the weapon skills. )

I’ve mostly done wvw with my guardian lately, but I do some duo/solo running around. I’ve got my full set of soldier’s armor, plus exotic or ascended weapons, but I haven’t picked a complete rune set yet.

It seemed to me, and I could be mistaken since my guardian isn’t my main, that this rune set was tailored for guardians, especially if you’re using greatsword or hammer.

If not guards, which is the target class for this set?

Morsus.5106:

As a Guardian, I felt like Light Fields were pretty subpar. Light Aura actually feels pretty cool. Perma retaliation, and vulnerability. Thanks ANet!

Yeah, I’m trying to decide if a full set of Superior Runes of Radiance may be in my guard’s future. What do other guardians think?

Superior Rune of Radiance:

+25 Vitality

When you receive an aura, you gain 5 seconds of swiftness.

+50 Vitality

When you use a heal skill, you gain 4 seconds of light aura.

+100 Vitality

The duration of auras you apply are increased by 33%.

New Aura: Light Aura

Gain 2 seconds of retaliation when struck. (Cooldown: 1 second)

Apply 8 seconds of vulnerability when struck.

Light Field:

Leaping through a light field now grants 5 seconds of light aura.

Well, quite obviously, interpretive dance is the key here. I mean, if it works in the tutorial, it should work everywhere, yes? Ergo, MagicalMike only died from things twice his level because he didn’t truly believe in the Power of Dance. Dance, Mike…Dance!

New Player Experience: Bringing Martha Graham to a whole new audience.

Yeah, I’m sad that I unlocked two of my favorites and now they’re invisible wardrobe pets, but I’m just not pulling any more out of the bank, and leaving the ones in my inventory where they are. At least when I use them from inventory I can still see my mini, even if I do have to double click on it when I zone.

Heh, I was just coming over to post this.

Stephapanda.5804:

duckideva.6358:

Stephapanda.5804, I love you. There I’ve said it. Come with me into the dead zone formerly known as leveling an alt.

Let us join our newbies together, and follow the arrows into zones where we can press 1. And then press 1 again. Let us marvel at the vistas we’re not allowed to see, let us wonder at the resource nodes we’re not allowed to touch until lvl 10. Let us gasp with wonder when our 3 button becomes unlocked.

Come with me, Stephapanda.5804, and we shall make beautiful drooling noises as we bang the keyboard with our foreheads! (Assuming our keepers untie us enough, else, I’m afraid I’ll have to use one of these sippy birds to hit 1 for me. It probably won’t be a noticeable difference.

[img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8IjodUA1Jlc/UILy9d6aWUI/AAAAAAAACFU/N8Vp408q5ek/s1600/birds2.jpg[/img]

I never thought I’d propose marriage to a random stranger on the internet, but here we are.

duckideva.6358, will you marry me?

Yes, Yes I will. But only if you promise to hold my hand for the dodging tutorial. Dodging is scary.

Stephapanda.5804, I love you. There I’ve said it. Come with me into the dead zone formerly known as leveling an alt.

Let us join our newbies together, and follow the arrows into zones where we can press 1. And then press 1 again. Let us marvel at the vistas we’re not allowed to see, let us wonder at the resource nodes we’re not allowed to touch until lvl 10. Let us gasp with wonder when our 3 button becomes unlocked.

Come with me, Stephapanda.5804, and we shall make beautiful drooling noises as we bang the keyboard with our foreheads! (Assuming our keepers untie us enough, else, I’m afraid I’ll have to use one of these sippy birds to hit 1 for me. It probably won’t be a noticeable difference.

[img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8IjodUA1Jlc/UILy9d6aWUI/AAAAAAAACFU/N8Vp408q5ek/s1600/birds2.jpg[/img]

If it makes you feel better, my 11 year old quit too. He didn’t cry…cause ya know, 11…he saves that for cruel and evil math homework that I force him to do…but the changes in traits were enough for him to switch to another game.

Since my mains are already 80, and my guildies are quitting, and my family is quitting, and I can’t imaging trying to level and alt now with the spoon fed non trait China game on rails that Anet wants us to play, I’m pretty sure I don’t have much longer in the game either.

Which is sad. I loved this game.

Yeah, I just started a brand new character to test it…bleah. I would be furious if that’s the game I’d gotten out of the box, I can tell you. I mean, I’ve had the game for 2 years, I’ve gotten the $180 plus dozens of gem cards the family has purchased worth out of the game. I don’t resent or begrudge them the money I’ve spent. I had fun.

Now…I’m certainly not going to level an alt in a system where I don’t get weapon skills or story or anything unless it’s spoon fed to me in teeny little bites. Yuck.

I would love some recommendations from folks on other games to consider, because my kid has totally lost interest, and my guildies are going back to WoW, and frankly, this new Play Like You’re Chinese game isn’t what I want to play.

Maxwell, I just ran a test alt through the human starter quest, and yes…that appears to be true. Also, you open weapon skills by level, rather than by using weapons, so that at the end of the human starter intro, you still only have a single weapon skill.

You no longer get to choose between 3 items at the end of the quest, Anet gives you a replacement weapon for whatever one hander you start with, so instead of picking a weapon for second hand, you get a new crappy mace, or whatever your profession’s weapon is.

Personal story stops after the starter quest. Rumor has it that it returns at 10, but I can’t verify that.

Nodes were unavailable to me at lvl 2 after finishing the starter quest. POIs were locked. That easy skill point over in the norn starter area is also locked. I got annoyed and quit before checking the vista, but it’s my understanding those are locked until 10.

I’m starting the search for a new game that doesn’t assume the user base are too stupid to play it.

I just started a test character on the new patch. You don’t unlock weapon skills by using your weapon, instead they are opened by level. So, for example using the human starter quest, by the time you’ve defended the fort and killed the giant wagon hand thing, you still only have one weapon skill.

After you finish the quest, your personal story is finished for X amount of time. (Where X is a number I did not test, but China suggests it is lvl 10.) Weapons are unlocked by leveling. You don’t get to choose rewards, instead getting a replacement for whatever one hander you start with. (So, no more shield and mace at the end of the quest, now it’s just a new mace…or whatever your starter weapon is.)

There are no more key runs.

POIs seem level gated…maybe I missed something?

Auction house was down, no idea how that looks/works.

But yeah, Anet, in the interest of lowest common denominator had reduced the starting game to spamming your 1 button. Whooo!

I’m sad for key runs, they were often the only thing I had a chance to do that would give some feeling of accomplishment in the 30 minutes I only have to play sometimes. A bunch of my guildies are all going back to WoW, which I don’t miss, but with all the problems Blizzard has, making the game appropriate for brain dead morons with a sippy bird that can hit the 1 key randomly, isn’t one of them.

WTF Anet?

Yeah, I mean, that’s the bit that’s most annoying. Since the day the April patch dropped, this thread has been active. Then, after months and months, they come in and say “Oh, this thread is too long to read, could you summarize why you’re all so unhappy?”

Summary: The system sucks. It’s absurd to gate character development that way. The cost to “buy” your character is completely out of range for a new character. The quests are absurd. Complete zone completion for a single trait on a single character? Madness. Quests that require champ trains, quests in zones 20 levels higher than the player, WVW objectives that nobody wants to do. The whole thing is stupid, game breaking, and frustrating, and will probably be the reason many of us never level another character. Thus, when we get bored with existing 80s, we’ll probably stop playing. New characters are already leaving when they realize the game is dead levels between 10 and 80.

There. Summarized.

Talk about insulting.

Maxwell.7843:

This way even the most clueless new player knows exactly what’s going on!

Yes, exactly. A tool tip would be great; but the important thing is that there needs to be an entry line that shows net proceeds.

Maybe they intentionally left that off because they know that when players realize how much money they’ve been leaving on the table with the invisible arbitrage fee that most players don’t know is there, the market for mats is going to surge. I, for one, have stopped listing stuff on the AH. I’ll just start storing mats in guild banks, rather than have to do the math to figure out if I’m losing more money to the invisible gold sink.

This current implementation will show the gold sink, which is an improvement over the invisible fees, but it still keeps all but calculating players in the dark as to what their total proceeds will be. I shouldn’t have to alt-tab out to get a calculator, or keep a 10key on my desk so I can drop linen off at the AH instead of hording it.

I mean, the overall revamp of the AH looks awesome, but this decision just doesn’t make sense to me. It strikes me that there is no ethical or good reason for the proceeds tally to be missing.

I was really excited to see a lot of these changes, and I agree that the filters are things that players have been asking for since day one.

I’m sad to admit that I am one of those people who thought “projected profit” was the net profit including all the fees. I’m willing to bet a vast percentage of the “I have an extra 5 linen” type sellers were not aware that there was an additional, invisible arbitrage fee.

But, be that as it may, it’s gold under the sink, but looking forward, I fail to understand how putting an honest Net Proceeds number on the screen was overlooked, or decided against in this iteration. What on earth could be the logic for withholding that calculation, when the numerical data is already on the page?

Seriously, I don’t want to do the math for the mats I’ve just gathered by disenchanting after a run, I want you to show me the market price, the market spread, the fees and taxes, and give me a grand total at the bottom that equals the amount that will be in my pickup when I choose to sell X#item(s).

It doesn’t even make sense that you would leave an honest net proceeds number off the screen. It really doesn’t.

Tachenon.5270:

…So, somebody there (probably somebody too high up on ye old totem pole to talk sense to) decided it would be a good idea to put square wheels on the bus …

I think Tachenon has probably nailed it. This had to have been a decision by someone who doesn’t actually play the game, just markets it, analyzes it, massages it looking for ways to expand certain metrics, but isn’t someone who sits down and plays the game for pleasure. Whomever decided to gold-sink the ability for characters to actually play a full character, cannot possibly be anyone who has actually tried to run a new, untweaked, unfunded character through 80 levels.

Adding shiny new weapon rewards or whatever for leveling in the Sept patch doesn’t take away from the fact that you cannot really customize/play/try out your character until almost level 80, and then only if you’re willing to do 65 tedious or darn near impossible freaking tasks, or farm skill point scrolls so you can buy your skills and your traits.

It has to be glaringly obvious to Anet that the players have been unhappy about this change since April. The forums have not been quiet here, or at any other site with a dedicated GW2 community. Map chat has players with the “Wait, I have to do what to get a trait?” all the time.

For them to then come into this thread, with it’s thousands of messages, and say (not real quote) “Oh hai you guys? So, you’re unhappy with the traits, is that what I’m hearing? Ok, could you give me a bullet list? Oh, look a bullet list of four items? Perfect, thanks you guys, we’ll talk about these four bullet points. I mean, we’re not planning on doing anything, but we will totally talk about it in this week’s standup, I promise, you guys.” is just beyond aggravating.

Lytalm.5673:

Sigh

If you’re not happy how unlocking traits works, BUY THEM.

Sure, if you’ve got a lvl 80 or two, already grandfathered in to the traits, that you can spend all your time farming gold and skill point scrolls…then maybe the 400 gold and what is it, 800+ skill points, is possible to raise to bring a new character into parity with a grandfathered in character.

But how, in the name of all things chevron shaped, is a new character supposed to get all those skill points and all that gold?

That’s the point here, those of us that were grandfathered in, got to play with ALL of our traits once we unlocked them for a gold or ten (or whatever it was), my son and all of his friends have quit playing, because they don’t want to play a game “on rails” that forces them to do thing X to be able to play their character the way they want to play.

So, while I’m still playing my level 80s, and leveling my characters that were grandfathered in, I know a double handful of kids who got gem cards as rewards for things that have all stopped playing. Most of those kids never got a character to 80, they all get online, and do alt-itis with their friends, so they unknowingly deleted all the characters they may have had that were grandfathered in.

And now, since none of their characters have any traits unless they play the game the way Anet wants them to play it, they’ve all started looking at different games, or playing xbox instead.

I think reverting traits back to the way they were, and instead putting in achievement points for those areas Anet wants to see more populated would generate significant improvement in both player experience and player goodwill.

I have a few lvl 80s, and a couple more almost there that were grandfathered in, and therefore haven’t had to unlock the traits, but then I started a new character to play with my son’s new character, and holy mother of all things sloggy, the new trait system is gawdawful.

Now I understand why eotm is stuffed full of underleveled players spamming the 1 key, everyone is just getting to 80 so they can go start unlocking the character they want to play.

This was a terrible decision on Anet’s part, imho. To put unlocks in crazy places 20 levels above the appropriate level, to depend on dungeons or group events is game destroying for people who either don’t have big guilds, or in my case, are playing with kids who don’t have the patience to leave their character parked somewhere for days on the off chance an event chain will happen. And setting the “buy” price so high that it is prohibitive for new/inexperienced players gates the game in such a way that new players are, for the most part, crippled until lvl 80.

I think it was a mistake. While I’m still playing with my lvl 80s, the kids have mostly moved on to other games because leveling just wasn’t fun anymore.

Well, you could think that you’d be “collecting” a new race, and learning a new “trade”. Ok, you’d probably have to be pretty high to think that, but you could, you know. What? It could happen. Thinking that, I mean. Not the new races or profession. That’s totally not happening.

Yeah, I have to agree that April’s Trait Fiasco was horrid. Having leveled some characters to 80 in the original system, and now trying to level a character in the new trait system…holy mother of all things sloggy, the new system is the suck. There’s no way to try different traits easily, there’s no way to try and figure out how you want to play the character…from what I can tell, people go see what the “meta” for the class is, and then just go get those traits as they can, but are mostly powerleveling just so they can go get traits. This change didn’t make anyone want to go explore new stuff; it’s just locked away a big part of being able to play a character unless you have 400 gold and a zillion skill points to buy your way into a full character. I mean seriously guys, events that may take days to spawn? Adept skills in lvl 50 zones? It’s just madness. Frustrating, frustrating madness.

If it hadn’t been for Living Story, and playing Barbie with my characters, I think I probably would have moved on already, and I’m not seeing much in this patch that makes me want to keep buying gem cards. (Which I admit, I buy with shocking regularity.)

From how I read the announcements so far, they’re dumbing down the beginning experience, they’re gating story content behind level locks, they’re giving the entire dungeon lfg experience over to the griefers and trolls, and they’ve told us to wait with baited breath to see what else they have planned. Oh boy!

I mean, to be fair, we’re also getting candy colored commander tags, and backpacks…ya know, so there’s that.

Gribold.4298:

What I would like to propose, if it hasn’t been already, is the ability to hire NPC bots to allow one to solo instances.

I am intrigued by your ideas, and would like to read your pamphlet. Actually, for about the same reasons; I only have small windows to play, and often pulling a pug together in that time is cumbersome, and often filled with trolls, I would love an opportunity to at least do the story dungeons with hirelings. That would be awesome.

The problem is that a massive botnet dropped about 36 hours ago from China. It has spread, and is now doing huge 100gbps attacks on a lot of the Tier 1 backbone. Anet is a casualty, but there’s not much they can do about it, because the entire internet is under attack. See this map: it shows about 1% of the attacks currently happening in real time. (1%, because any more than that and the map would be invisible. Note that Russia and Canada look quiet more because of lack of honeypots than a lack of activity.)

http://map.ipviking.com/

TLDR: Not Anet’s fault this time. Big ol botnet on the loose.

Ahahahah. Just listening to the commentary was hysterical. Bush attack for the win!

I’ve shared this on so many threads, I’m afraid Anet will get annoyed, but here’s the map of 1% of the attacks currently ongoing. http://map.ipviking.com/ The whole internet is under attack right now from some massive botnets. Not much anet can do, when the Tier One backbone is being hammered by 300gb per sec attacks.

Edit to say; it’s actually pretty slow right now, compared to what it looked like last night when most Americans turned on their PCs after getting home.

Swc.4985:

At the same time, I’m starting to think my quaggan stomp started this whole worldwide war on the internet

Well…you’re a bad man, and you do bad things. Breaking the internet by stepping on poor defenseless…whatever they are. Look at that widdle face:

scirocco.9805:

Or to be even safer from Linux the command is traceroute [insert the IP you want to trace]

Don’t be silly. I’m as big of fan of Linux as anyone…but there is nothing insecure about windows traceroute, or it wouldn’t be a core function of Nmap for goodness sake. It’s an outgoing request, there’s nothing returned that can be insecure.

However, the syntax for tracert can confuse people. Here’s some core syntax:

There are several command-line switches that can be used with TRACERT, but they are usually not needed for standard troubleshooting.

TRACERT syntax:

tracert [-d] [-h maximum_hops] [-j host-list] [-w timeout] target_name

Parameters:

-d
Specifies to not resolve addresses to host names.

-h maximum_hops
Specifies the maximum number of hops to search for target.

-j host-list
Specifies loose source route along the host-list.

-w timeout
Waits the number of milliseconds specified by timeout for each
reply.

target_name
Name or IP address of the target host.

You can use the -j option to force the outgoing datagram to pass through a specific router.

That said; you can do all the traceroutes you want, using whatever toolset makes you happy…and it’s not going to change the fact that the internet is under massive attack right now on all Tier one providers. The very backbone of the infrastructure is being targeted. Stuff is falling down all over.

I refer folks again to IPViking’s map , which shows 1% of all the attacks being recorded by honeypots at the moment…in real time.

For other real time/short window time/ maps, see also:

http://www.trendmicro.com/us/security-intelligence/current-threat-activity/global-botnet-map/index.html

http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/Stats/DDoSMaps (Updated daily, not real time.)

http://cybermap.kaspersky.com/

http://atlas.arbor.net/worldmap/index

Google has one too, but it seems to be behind by 3-5 days: http://www.digitalattackmap.com/#anim=1&color=0&country=ALL&time=16265&view=map
http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/dataviz1.html