Guild Wars 2

I believe I’m having this same problem. It happens frequently in WvW when a lot of spell effects are going off. Of course, logging out means starting the queue all over, so I have to fight with the disadvantage of being deaf, but also the advantage of being insane and angry.

Two different problems with the WvW world map (and mini-map) tonight, logging into into Crystal Desert Borderlands from Tarnished Coast server. (This Borderland is the one at the middle top of the screen.)

Problem 1: All of the icons for various factions appear on the map, but the terrain is not WvW, it is parts of pve world map. The borderland I logged into is on Dredgehaunt Cliffs, and the other areas’ icons appear over Queensdale and other parts of Kryta. There are no waypoints. There is no icon for myself or other players on my team. I cannot see my own movements or battles, and if I die, there is no way to waypoint out. (Note that I had a similar problem with the Halloween dungeon, where the map that appeared was an underground layer of Dredgehaunt and had no waypoint; the waypoint in the dungeon did not trigger for me either.) I exit via pvp screen and queue up again.

Problem 2: Now I get the correct WvW terrain map. The other three areas have proper icons and waypoints. However, the Borderland that I logged into does not have any of those icon or waypoints. (It does have skill points and vistas marked.) Also, when first opened (and in mini-map), the map is zoomed in, not on the correct part of the terrain map, but rather on a fog-of-war white spot to the southeast of the actual map. Again, no icons for me or other players. I used a waypoint to teleport to Eternal Battlegrounds and things work fine, except the world map continues to show no waypoints for Crystal Desert Borderland.

Problem #2 is now persistent and preventing me from using that Borderland.

I just played an emote tutorial, aka “Mad King Says,” aka the dumbest major event ever in an MMO, for which I finally got something vaguely Halloween-y for the first time during the entire thing, a hat that I can only wear with the town clothes that no one wears. It’s a fitting conclusion to a Halloween I found intriguing as a spectacle but ultimately boring, confusing, off-putting and otherwise far less fun than normal pve and pvp.

The story and lore are the best part. But ANet failed to explain most of it in-game. Most of the events made no sense. Again and again, ANet had to fill in the blanks on these forums, just like it’s doing yet again today on Mad King Says. No one understands the timing and they have another Mad King Says type event that is not in fact it. It’s just incompetent storytelling and game-managing, a stark contrast to the regular game content.

The thrust of the event was to grind for worthless items, particularly candy corn, while observing flashy spectacle. It did not feel like an actual Halloween event in terms of letting the player participate in a special social experience. Dressing up, let’s face it, most of us would have to pay real money to do. (Witness the infamous Black Lion chest scam.) Trick or treating? Sorry, that’s only for NPCs. Etc. What we got was pvp in bizarre, ill-explained circumstances, and several gigantic grinds. And enough candy corn to clog the trading post for the next 12 months.

I think the event succeeded in its main goal, which was to provide flashy, no-brains-necessary, mediocre content updates to keep people playing and therefore spending on chest keys and costumes. I think it failed in what interests me, which is experiencing something of the cutting-edge quality and coherence that marks the rest of the game. I sampled everything and got my title and all that. But I finished it all as soon as possible and then ran off to have the real fun, which is grinding a monthly and doing world completion. I also didn’t spend a cent on the game, which will either make ANet totally uninterested in my opinion or totally obsessed with how to seduce me with the next event. My advice on the latter: Explain goals and scenarios clearly in-game, and be honest about your sales pitches.

I didn’t take a pass, but the writers did. The majority of the games make no sense in a bad way and have little or no in-game explanation. ANet is trying to make up for it with forum posts and such, but it is still confusing and fails to create any real atmosphere or motive to participate. E.g., entering an area and being told only “Hide!” and “Scare the villagers,” with no explanation of what villagers, hiding from what, what the goal is, etc. I got a bunch of points for literally just standing on top of a rock for 6 minutes doing nothing and wondering what I should be doing. It’s fine to be silly or light, but this is like asking a novice to play Monopoly and telling them only, “Trade money! Move spaces!”

Doubly disappointing because it’s such an original holiday event with interesting lore and villain. It’s well-paced and well-staged over the course of days, but poorly communicated.

I am not obsessed with getting awesome treasure, but likewise I am not obsessed with filling my inventory slots with utterly useless candy corn and crafting items in a game whose blown economy makes crafting pointless. And let’s not forget the Black Lion chest debacle. Bottom line, if you want to dress up, etc., you’ll likely be paying to play.

So far, I have had no more and no less fun with the Halloween event as I do grinding for my monthly and finishing up world exploration, with the minus that regular pve events are all much better explained than the Halloween stuff. Much of the event is basically a grind disguised as a holiday. I would have liked to see the ability to trick-or-treat with other players, not just NPCs. I would have liked to see everyone in some kind of costume besides microscopic devil horns. Something social beyond killing each other in new and mysterious ways and running a meh mini-dungeon (which I did not appreciate being told to rush home at a specific time for to see the “surprise” when it turned out to run for days).

I applaud the innovative approach and great effort, and Halloween is my real-life favorite holiday. But I have to look at what I actually did, and that was avoid the noisy spectacle frequently and head off to do normal game activities as soon as possible.

It’s nice and more natural, with much more impressive effect in-game than can be discerned in these still shots. I did take a framerate hit of about 5 or so, nothing terrible, but enough to make me think twice about using it in pvp or jumping puzzles. The camera itself remains the main visual issue to me, with the odd angle it is locked on and resultant contant hard clipping, the inability to zoom far out (which would give you the same effect as this FOV thing), and the inability to go first-person view. It’s a surprisingly junky, outdated cam for such a cutting-edge game. A friend of mine theorizes the camera’s ridigity is to prevent exploits in wvw distance vision. (The recent zoom-out bug used as wvw exploit seems to bear that out.) I’d say there are ways to restrict it just there. Give us a decent cam and you’d be doing us a much bigger visual favor. This FOV effect could be optional (and on a slider in a perfect world).

The ones that seem to be “stuck” open with nothing happening reset after several minutes. As for the bugged ones, I’ve seen three of them already. Candy corn value just plummeted.

nvm, just found another door and was able to close, so answered my own question… Bug reported.

Can anyone confirm they’re supposed to close? These events are really confusing with no instructions. This is the first haunted door I’ve seen, so I don’t know how they’re supposed to behave.

A drop rate where you can spend the cost of the game itself and not get anything is not only immoral but just not good business. If people got a little something, they’d keep coming back for more.

Are haunted doors supposed to just keep spawn candy corn monsters? One in Gendarren Fields right outside LA is doing so, can’t be attacked or closed. (Server: Tarnished Coast)

Ocellaris.8362:

I still don’t know what to do. I found a kid, got a book with two clues, followed a clue to “where all the garbage of Lion’s Arch flows”. Then I burned through most of my corn using the “Candy Powered Matter Meter” down in the lower depth of the sewers where the broken ships are. Based on the clue, something should have happened?

Aha, so I was not only confused, but ran into a bug. What I did find in the sewers was a ghost running along who disappeared and left some candy corn, which just confused me further.

I, on the other, didn’t scan at all, and she was already there. Then I foolishly blew a candy corn scanning for her anyway….

I guess we know the answer to the question “trick or treat.” Thanks for the warnings.

The only thing that has anything approaching a sensible explanation and direction in-game is pumpkin-carving. Everything else left me scratching my head, while it developed a headache from all the noise.

As someone just trying to join in the very loud, very flashy activity, and with no experience playing original GW, there is no in-game explanation what this and the other games are about or how to play them, or what the point is. I ended up leaving town just to avoid a headache.

It’s very BioWare of them to explain this only via their insultingly jokey dude on Twitter and to offer no form of recompense for an error that really screwed a lot of devoted players. They have a great game and have been generally responsive, but the plethora of progress-blocking errors and this sort of attitude is starting to wear me down.

High respawn rates are a common issue with this game, though I disagree that every area has respawn rates that are too high. Indeed, what I find odd is how varied it is across general pve areas. There are places where mobs popped in under 30 seconds for no obvious reason. Sometimes it seemed like the rate increased when there were other players around, as if it is dynamically keyed to your killing rate or something, but that could just be perception.

Where high respawns really get my goat is in story quests, where all of these problems are heightened and can reach the point of blocking progress. I’d argue there should be no respawns in a story instance at all, but certainly not fast respawns. Out in the world, you can run away in most cases if things become overwhelming and continue on your merry way.

Still bugged and mobs still o.p.

For added weirdness, I was able to climb the left-hand wall outside the tomb and drop down behind the door into a weird empty space of walls with no exit, pretty clearly someplace I wasn’t supposed to be able to go.

Ravnodaus.5130:

elsbeth.3567:

The TP economy (when the TP works at all) is a mess. Tons of people are selling items at or below vendor prices. So many people playing now that nothing is really rare, and a lot of people must be using the TP interface to sell stuff out in the field for a minor loss instead of going to a vendor.

You cannot sell at or below vendor prices. The interface doesn’t allow you to post it that low. That is blatant misinformation.

You will not make money if you want instant gratification as a seller. The faster you want your gold or items, the more you end up sacrificing from what you could have gained or saved. As it is in real life, so too in the game.

The economy is a mess, that is true. But it has a lot more to do with the trader post being offline most of the time. There was an initial phase when it didn’t come online at all, and people stockpiled a lot of junk in general, this allowed the market to be flooded when the TP came up initially. Since the typical purchase is one of immediate necessity, most people buy what they want/need when they want/need it.

Since they are more often then not, denied the ability to purchase freely, the demand for stuff in general is kept artificially low. But because people are dying to offload mounds and mounds of junk whenever the TP does come back online, supply is still very high.

That’s why the economy is wierd. Use it to your advantage, if you know how.

You can’t list at or below vendor price, but with the listing fee, you certainly can take a loss equivalent to selling it for the vendor price. And many people are doing that. As for below price, I may be recalling incorrectly, or maybe it was a glitch with the TP earlier; but it’s not a planned part of the economy, as you say.

Dortmunder.9572:

While some of that is true, nothing you said addresses what I have said.

None of the materials needed to craft exotic are “going for vendor prices”. So it’s not relevant. If anything, prices for the exotic crafting are going to go up. Making it harder to make a profit crafting.

It completely addressed what you said about your inability to make money. I’m low on telepathy for anything else you meant.

Nice idea. I have no desire to use it, but I might later on, for RP purposes or whatever else.

My pets do fine in major battles. My arcturus has withstood battles with champion-class bosses for 10+ minutes at a time. It has high vitality, good toughness and a self-heal bite, among other things. I never worry about healing it. I didn’t even take the Beastmaster tree. As others have said, it’s about choosing the right pet for the job and filling out the skills to support it. In pve, I just experiment with different animals to see who’s good at what.

If you killed those two mobs with only one other player, you’re not doing anything wrong. Is it possible you are merely facing a challenge rather than having a problem?

I’ve only run AC story with a PUG. I am no mastermind of raiding-style gaming and speccing, and I did fine. Died probably five times, especially until we got coordinated, but fine. Yes, mobs are stupidly steroided up. Yes, the pulls are weird. But basically, you need to strategize and coordinate like you do with any team. I agree that it does feel more like everyone for him- or herself than the traditional heal/tank/dps model. But I still healed up others, knocked mobs off them, and served mainly as a condition-applier. Know your strengths, play to them decently enough, and it’s doable. It was worth it to me to see the story through. If explore mode is harder with low rewards, I don’t think that would make sense for me, and I’m glad I got story mode as a sampling. But I do understand the point of making very challenging content for skill players who enjoy that. From my brief taste, the dungeons are not simply full of hard-mode mobs, but are essentially tactical team puzzles.

The TP economy (when the TP works at all) is a mess. Tons of people are selling items at or below vendor prices. So many people playing now that nothing is really rare, and a lot of people must be using the TP interface to sell stuff out in the field for a minor loss instead of going to a vendor.

There are no traditional quests. Roam around and pop-ups will tell you about things to do, which you can report to an NPC. You probably should read up about the game’s basics on the wiki or Google.

Without knowing the child, it a fair guess that this game is too complex in playing skills, focused attention, and stat-building choices for a first-grader. The adult themes and violence of the story also might well be unsuitable.

Ah, the great LFG tool wars. As context, a lot of the antipathy toward WoW’s tool comes from WoW being a game with dedicated roles that inexperienced or lazy players could screw up. GW2 is a very different game that equalizes the classes while demanding higher skills from every player. Let’s also remember that WoW needed that feature because so few people were running its older dungeons. As for the rest… It is quite possible to form a group without a tool. But to argue that a state fair style line of people standing outside a dungeon spamming chat and wearing an LFG flag to find a group is somehow more pure, more social and more community-minded than an LFG tool is unconvincing. They are both awkward and artificial, so the only question is personal preference and plain old efficiency. I say the more options for people to play with other people, the better.

I agree with the o.p. that loot is often lame, bizarre or even missing altogether where it should be placed after a major encounter. I don’t think you should be guaranteed to find something awesome and perfect for your class every time. But there should be a suitable treasure, not lowish-level gunk or nothing at all. It’s good psychology and good gameplay theory, straight back to first edition D&D. I prefer finding my gear to crafting or buying, as it makes me feel immersed rather than an American consumer in King Arthur’s court. Trading treasures among party members is a good tradition, but many major encounters, such as dynamic events, do not make that likely at all.

To focus on the actual issue at hand rather than a debate about this class: It seems like the poster is highly discouraged and confused by GW2’s play style and lack of direction. The fact that many thousands of people are playing this class successfully to high levels suggests that it is not a fundamentally broken class. Wizards are usually the most difficult class to master in any fantasy game (video or pnp), and this game is less forgiving than some other MMOs. At this point, the o.p. appears to be seeking sympathy rather than advice, which doesn’t really seem constructive. I would simply recommend trying a different class (as you have four other character slots, after all) to see if your issue is with the game or with the particular class. And read or view a tutorial about building that class as you roll it up. (Google will find lots of suggestions.)

I’m sure o.p. is long gone, but I also played a WoW druid for the flexibility, and I’m playing a ranger in GW2 for the flexibility. Different approaches but similar flex, shapeshift and heal abilities.

ArenaNet’s rules seem like common sense, and private chat is a perfectly viable option for people who can’t control their tongues. All I know is, I’ve only blocked two users so far, whereas with WoW, the perpetual issue was filling up the block list and running into yet another troll, racist, bully and/or person too immature to realize some kids might be playing alongside them. And the game is far from silent. Chat is quite chatty, at least on my server. There are a lot of straw-man arguments and rebellions without a cause here.

In Moriarty’s Hold in Bloodtide Coast, I had the quest to improve order among the pirates, including by throwing water on drunks to wake them up. But throwing the water on them did nothing, whether I did it myself through the action bar, or by clicking F when the environmental cue option came up.

I am not color-blind, but I fully support the o.p.‘s suggestions. The game interface should be fully functional for color-blind people through whatever means are simple and common-sense. (Scaling and/or color variation seem sensible.) I agree that the nameplates (especially for players) are often hard to see, and so are the AOE circles, and that is without having this person’s issues with identifying reds and greens. MMOs are a great way for people of all types and abilities to come together and socialize, and many big-time MMOs have taken pains to be accessible to people with various visual impairments. GW2 should follow suit on this issue.

Server: Tarnished Coast.

Issue: My friend and I form a two-person party. But we cannot see each other. Our portraits do not appear to each other. The “join” button is disabled. We are plainly on other servers and are not joined on the same server. As far as I can tell, this happens when one or both of us are an on overflow server. It happened repeatedly tonight in Lion’s Arch. We have been playing since headstart and have seen each other exactly once on a single map (Hoelbrak).

A couple days ago, I had no issues forming a five-person party with everyone on the main for a run of Ascalonian Catacombs.