Guild Wars 2

I have to agree. I’m really glad I saw something about that before I started buying Ascended stuff.

Sapphirine.1023:

I have seen it happen a lot of times now that a relatively new player spent their gold/fractal relics on two ascended rings or accessories with exactly the same name, not knowing that they cannot equip both of them if they’re marked as “unique”.

In my opinion, just that one word “unique” does not explain at all that you cannot equip two items with the same name, and so it will keep frustrating players in the future, so it would be great if you could find a way to communicate this more clearly in the game. Or just get rid of the “unique” concept altogether and let players equip two of the same rings if they wish to, since all it seems to do is create unnecessary complications and frustration.

MikaHR.1978:

felessan.9587:

Vayne.8563:

XarOneZeroNine.2374:

We are now up to 3 weeks.

Can someone from Anet point me to the official ‘what happens at every level’ guide please?

Up to now, we can only assume that what hasn’t been changed yet is exactly as it is meant to be. If that is the case there are still issues with what is left and the messaging is all over the place about it. There are also still some bugs that need to be worked out.

We were told that there were bugs, misinformation and that somethings were not implemented correctly. We were never told what exactly fell into each of those categories. I feel that a map of the new leveling system along with what exactly the NPE is supposed to contain will help drive feedback in a constructive direction.

Please may I have this ‘road map’. Surely constructive, informed feedback is the goal. If it is not implemented as intended then feedback on it is virtually worthless. Surely you can tell us what it is supposed to be right? I mean it’s live, it’s not like I am asking about future development.

There was misinformation. It was coming from players.

Players claimed you couldn’t dodge, or used the TP, or use an Asuran gate even at level 2. They were wrong to say it, because when tested it was obvious you could. People were confusing what you could do and when you were told about it.

People said you couldn’t get vistas, when what was true was they didn’t appear on your map. That’s the misinformation being referred to.

Since I’m sure that changes are being made to both a roadmap and player feedback I’m not sure how the original plan is going to help you much.

There was also some misinformation in the patch notes, caused by ambiguity like the phrase “starting zone,” which didn’t actually mean an entire level 1-15 map, just the small area immediately around where you load into the game.

It’s clear things have already changed. From Mark Katzbach:

• Skill challenges now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis as originally intended.
• Skill Challenges are now visible at level 13 instead of level 15.

These are specific changes they made in regard to our feedback. The original plan isn’t going to help much now.

There was no missinformation on Anets part, there was no “low level zone” it was low level area, all missinformation was brought on by “community”

My point is that zone and area are basically interchangeable. The words are ambiguous because under any reasonable circumstance they could mean the same thing. There was no specification on what qualified as “low level” or “area,” so from the patch notes alone one could reasonably assume they meant the entire 1-15 map. Once Anet announced there were bugs, one could reasonably assume that anything contrary to the 1-15 map believe was a bug, not working as intended because there was no clarification.

Ohoni.6057:

Look up “female suit” on google images. Now while some of those cuts are equivalent to what a male would wear in terms of skin coverage, plenty them show a bit of ankle, or a lower neckline than any men’s suit would wear. The female clothing in Gw2 tends to display a bit more skin because female clothing tends to display a bit more skin, end of story..

(Also, how is it that some people feel like we want to take something away from them? No. Not at all. We just want something different for a change. But god forbid a game doesn’t cater to your white, male, heterosexual world for once… but that’s opening a whole new can of worms, and to be fair, since GW2 has a character customisation option, it’s rather innocent in that regard. The armour point still stands, though.)

See, it’s off topic nonsense like this that makes it hard to take you seriously. You clearly just have an axe to grind in general, and are misapply it here.

It’s not just “a bit more skin.” Also, it is your perception from where ever you’re from that women tend to show more skin than men. I will take a walk down the street to my local park tomorrow, when it’ll be about 80 degrees, and show you a whole sea of men in thongs. It’s not even unusual for my area. If you want to argue that’s not a market, you might want to check out the guild Rough Trade Gaming Community. They’d probably argue otherwise.

Even if you’re not a heterosexual male, your argument is coming off that way.

Also, I am a professional artist. Art does not, in fact, have to imitate life in a realistic fashion. Or maybe you haven’t noticed that we have plant and cat people walking around in the Tyrian universe. Perhaps our fashion choices should be a little more egalitarian.

More skimpy male armors please!

Also, can we please please please have light armor that doesn’t make my humanoid girls look like streetwalkers? Or full-length dresses that actually go all the way around without ridiculous slits? I had to grind Arah and TA just to get a dress that was a full skirt, and not all of my characters like wearing skulls and plants!

Gaile Gray.6029:

Labjax.2465:

I think the point of her doing that was to make sure those who haven’t been following the thread closely know that there is some dev interaction/acknowledgement on the subject.

Yes!

Blaeys.3102:

Gaile’s comment makes it sound like the idea all along was that horizontal progression applied to those leveling – rather than at end game. That bothers me A LOT.

Perhaps you mean Jon’s comments? For I said nothing whatsoever about progression, horizontal or otherwise. Just want to make sure you didn’t read something into my words that reference leveling, progression, or anything of that sort.

~~~

Anyway, thanks for the input added today. And I mean that, especially because I recognize some of you are irritated and would like to post like that one guy who shouted!

The reason I re-posted Jon’s comments involves some level of confession: I saw this huge thread in the forums, kept reading across many sub-forums and posts that ArenaNet was being asked to provide some sort of response, wanted to get you some info (although I knew it wouldn’t be much at this point), sent an e-mail to some devs to ask about how we could respond, then met up with Jon who pointed out that he’d put up a pretty comprehensive post … that I had completely missed.

If I missed it, maybe someone late to the thread missed it, so hence the repeat or re-post. Not to say “share your ideas” if you already have! Not to give a placating “there there” or meaningless non-update. But because I honestly felt that some forum member may have missed the update and input request from the dev team and they may want to provide new feedback.

So you guys who posted last month or two weeks ago or when the thread started? You’re good. Got it, thank you, and really, thank you again if you patiently re-posted today. To you folks who are saying “You need to update that thread,” please note that right now, the only update we have available in the one that was offered – in detail and at length – when Jon last posted. He or another team member will update when they have more info, but do know this thread was and continues to be useful.

Thank you Gaile! You are amazing. Can I buy you cookies?

I feel a little bit differently about this particular thread in regards to “nothing new to report;” it might not seem like it, but even that’s an update and it would be nice to hear just that little bit, since this thread was started by the development team, not the players.

Labjax.2465:

felessan.9587:

Wait, what? Do you mean usability as in a character can or cannot use something in game? Because I see that warning box all the time, especially for rare and exotic equipment purchases…

Nah, usability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability

From the wiki page (part of the definition):

Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?

In this case, the only way to “recover” from the error is to contact support, so it’s a usability pitfall.

I forget sometimes that it’s not a commonly used term, unless you’ve been exposed to software development in some way.

Ooohh, yes. I agree. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat there and triple-checked purchases just to be absolutely sure I’m going to click the right buttons. It’s like when you make airline and hotel reservations – “Did I cover the days correctly or not? No going back once I hit this button!”

Sleepwalker.1398:

Hi Gaile, The repost that you did of Jon says people were not learning about the traits. What does locking them away have to do with this? I go to certain part of map to unlock them, just to see what it does? I don’t understand? I don’t have it, so i can’t experiment, if i want it, so either do as im told by anet or pay gold/skill point to open it to see what it does? And this goes for every other slot i have after April patch?

**Another thing, you are asking us what events are broken that doesn’t let us obtain a particular trait. May i ask what your QA/testers did before this change got implemented? Maybe us players are the testers?

Actually, I think you’ve accidentally conflated the two different objectives:

1. Give people more time to be comfortable with the game before introducing traits, so push traits back to levels 30, 60, and 80.

2. Reward players for pushing their exploration boundaries, so make individual traits unlock through remote/obscure/unusual content.

The end problem is exactly as you pointed out. You can’t actually learn about systems you can’t use, and often you can’t get to the system without significant focused exploration.

Labjax.2465:

Paradox.1380:

How did you accidentally buy Karma Armor of a different weight class than your own? You cannot accidentally buy it anymore because as soon as you click “Buy” it gives you a second dialog pop up that says “Your class cannot use this item are you sure you want to purchase it?”

Honestly, it was YOUR fault for not reading the warning dialog that pops up in a Different spot from the buy buy button on the UI. Its not even in the same play you literally have to move your mouse to accept the dialog.

This is NOT an ANet problem, its yours and your lack of reading, I am sorry but I don’t feel bad for you. Live and learn my friend.

That’s not how usability works, buddy.

Wait, what? Do you mean usability as in a character can or cannot use something in game? Because I see that warning box all the time, especially for rare and exotic equipment purchases…

Vayne.8563:

XarOneZeroNine.2374:

We are now up to 3 weeks.

Can someone from Anet point me to the official ‘what happens at every level’ guide please?

Up to now, we can only assume that what hasn’t been changed yet is exactly as it is meant to be. If that is the case there are still issues with what is left and the messaging is all over the place about it. There are also still some bugs that need to be worked out.

We were told that there were bugs, misinformation and that somethings were not implemented correctly. We were never told what exactly fell into each of those categories. I feel that a map of the new leveling system along with what exactly the NPE is supposed to contain will help drive feedback in a constructive direction.

Please may I have this ‘road map’. Surely constructive, informed feedback is the goal. If it is not implemented as intended then feedback on it is virtually worthless. Surely you can tell us what it is supposed to be right? I mean it’s live, it’s not like I am asking about future development.

There was misinformation. It was coming from players.

Players claimed you couldn’t dodge, or used the TP, or use an Asuran gate even at level 2. They were wrong to say it, because when tested it was obvious you could. People were confusing what you could do and when you were told about it.

People said you couldn’t get vistas, when what was true was they didn’t appear on your map. That’s the misinformation being referred to.

Since I’m sure that changes are being made to both a roadmap and player feedback I’m not sure how the original plan is going to help you much.

There was also some misinformation in the patch notes, caused by ambiguity like the phrase “starting zone,” which didn’t actually mean an entire level 1-15 map, just the small area immediately around where you load into the game.

It’s clear things have already changed. From Mark Katzbach:

• Skill challenges now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis as originally intended.
• Skill Challenges are now visible at level 13 instead of level 15.

These are specific changes they made in regard to our feedback. The original plan isn’t going to help much now.

Guhracie.3419:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Labjax.2465:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

Arena net has some of the worst communication out of any game company I can think of. When they’re not giving crappy non-answers and ignoring problems, they’re outright lying to the playerbase.

you really wont see a change in communication. Josh foreman got yelled at for communicating TOO MUCH. Even if anyone at anet WANTED to communicate, they wont be able to because the higher ups deemed it bad for business.

I’ve only been around for a few months, but in that time, I’ve seen them not only make an effort to communicate more, but Gaile now has the title “ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead” and has been posting in several threads.

If that’s non-answers and outright lying, then consider me fully duped.

Duping!!?! ~gasp!~ Oh, sorry, different type, gotcha.

Things aren’t going to change overnight, but we are making a concerted effort to improve communications. Not every thread gets — or realistically can get — a reply. That is driven not so much by a particular topic but more critically by sheer volume. And yes, not every question can be answered, but maybe it just can’t be answered in the short term, or maybe it’s taken under consideration for a more focused means of communication, such as a CDI, or maybe you’ll see an answer in the Update Notes. And sure, I guess some questions will go unanswered, too, but not for lack of effort or interest.

The truth is, you’re noticing, or I hope you’re noticing: We’re actively taking steps to be more communicative and involved, and we’ll continue to do so as time passes.

Ms. Gray, as I’ve said, I really think you are exceptional. And I hope I have made it clear in my contributions to this thread that the uptick in communication absolutely was noted. I’m wondering if I should change the title somehow, because a lot of people seem to be getting really mired in the idea that I want developers to respond to All the Things. It is simply not reasonable to expect developers to respond to every concern voiced. I am in no way saying that you guys should be expected to do that. So let me try again and be as clear as I know how. (Please note that my “you” in the following points will be directed at Anet as a whole, and not any one person.)

1. When you start or officially sanction a feedback thread, you are obligated to read the feedback you’ve requested. Don’t come in months later and ask for a summary of the thread.

2. If there’s a topic that’s become so widespread as to need to be merged into a single thread, that’s a pretty good indicator that you should make some sort of comment.

3. If you specifically say you’re going to answer a question, do it.

4. If you make plans with people, keep those people updated.

That’s all. I know people will cry that I shouldn’t expect people to mean what they say, and that’s why devs don’t say anything anymore, but seriously. That’s just common courtesy. Nobody would accept that non-reasoning in real life.

I don’t know how to better express that I don’t want you guys responding to every single thread, since that is the best way to burn out the team.

I do NOT want developers responding to every thread. That’s not what this is about.

You can see my words, right? Is this thing on?

Well said! You can’t anticipate everything, but it’s nice to know when tactics have changed. Answering every thread calling out “Can we get a dev reply plx?!?” is ridiculous. Your guidelines are great!

Anyori.4598:

I don’t mind this system
I’m playing since August this year, but I like having to actually work a bit before you can use strong builds with good traits
Oh and I haven’t bought a single trait yet, and have bout 12 more to go before i got them all I think, maybe 15

It’s great the first time around! But how many alts do you have? Try doing some of these things 11 or 12 times and see if it’s still as fun.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Labjax.2465:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

Arena net has some of the worst communication out of any game company I can think of. When they’re not giving crappy non-answers and ignoring problems, they’re outright lying to the playerbase.

you really wont see a change in communication. Josh foreman got yelled at for communicating TOO MUCH. Even if anyone at anet WANTED to communicate, they wont be able to because the higher ups deemed it bad for business.

I’ve only been around for a few months, but in that time, I’ve seen them not only make an effort to communicate more, but Gaile now has the title “ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead” and has been posting in several threads.

If that’s non-answers and outright lying, then consider me fully duped.

Duping!!?! ~gasp!~ Oh, sorry, different type, gotcha.

Things aren’t going to change overnight, but we are making a concerted effort to improve communications. Not every thread gets — or realistically can get — a reply. That is driven not so much by a particular topic but more critically by sheer volume. And yes, not every question can be answered, but maybe it just can’t be answered in the short term, or maybe it’s taken under consideration for a more focused means of communication, such as a CDI, or maybe you’ll see an answer in the Update Notes. And sure, I guess some questions will go unanswered, too, but not for lack of effort or interest.

The truth is, you’re noticing, or I hope you’re noticing: We’re actively taking steps to be more communicative and involved, and we’ll continue to do so as time passes.

Thank you for really throwing yourself in front of a speeding train! This must be the scariest job at ArenaNet right now. With only a handful of you to interact with the thousands of us, when someone is out unexpectedly, it must just be insane. (Hopefully Chris is alright, send him our best).

Would it be possible to have someone give a quick reply to the trait thread again? There isn’t a shared understanding of time between the players and developers yet, so even though we know it takes a while to steer a ship, are we talking weeks? Months? Years? It’s been almost a month since the last red post there.

Behellagh.1468:

felessan.9587:

Behellagh.1468:

felessan.9587:

Suggestions:

• Unlock personal story at level 1 and every 10 levels after, and re-insert “My Greatest Fear” at level 60

Except that violates the reasoning behind the change, to unlock a chapter only when a player can binge it in it’s entirety.

I’m not suggesting they change their binge storying, just that they give access to it at level 1. So story would go 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, instead of 10, 20, 30, etc. To make up for the missing content, re-insert “My Greatest Fear” at 60.

So you want the entirety of the first chapter to be doable at level 1?

Key farm much?

If they want to keep the silly 10-level blocks, I guess so. There was a complaint that there’s not enough to do, and since the Personal Story is, you know, content that can be done with very clear guidance, maybe it would be a thing to do.

If you’re so concerned about key farming, then move the key to the level 20 story step. Frankly, I don’t care, I’m just trying to think about what’s best for the flow of play without having to re-write an entire patch.

XarOneZeroNine.2374:

shadow.6174:

Not sure if it’s what you are asking for, but here is a list of what each level gives now: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leveling_rewards

Castrin.8972:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Level_rewards

Only one I know of and was updated as of 9/25.

I am aware of the wiki guide, but is it correct? I mean is what we have now final? Are all the things on that guide implemented as Anet designed? Is that list definitive? Is there anything on that list that is part of the “bugs, miscommunications and improper implementation” we were told about? We were specifically asked to wait until things were fixed before judging the NPE. Is now the time?

I asked for this same list 1 week after the patch and received no response. So I ask again, can we expect more changes or is what we have what now what was originally intended?

There was the patch last week where they adjusted Utility 2 and 3 and Elite unlocks, and clarified a few things that are supposed to be account unlocks that weren’t (skill challenges, for example). Nothing has been said since, largely since Chris was out with a family emergency and Gaile has been very selective on what she’s engaging with. I would assume that the NPE is in its “final” working state since we haven’t heard anything.

Behellagh.1468:

felessan.9587:

Suggestions:

• Unlock personal story at level 1 and every 10 levels after, and re-insert “My Greatest Fear” at level 60

Except that violates the reasoning behind the change, to unlock a chapter only when a player can binge it in it’s entirety.

I’m not suggesting they change their binge storying, just that they give access to it at level 1. So story would go 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, instead of 10, 20, 30, etc. To make up for the missing content, re-insert “My Greatest Fear” at 60.

Nabrok.9023:

http://www.gw2tp.com/item/39475-pendant-of-arah?full=1

Less than a month ago Pendant of Arah was 60g.

Supply only starts showing up in the past few days, and already has been undercut down to 1,250g.

As it’s nothing special as an item (ascended amulet would be much easier to get and better stats), I suspect the price will drop.

I believe this item didn’t exist prior to September 9th. The first data point on that tracker is from the 12th and in the year and a half I’ve played this game and searched over and over again for zerker trinkets, I’ve never seen this on the TP before.

@OP – because I believe this is actually a new item, give it more time for people to farm Arah explorable. They will, and costs will drop over time. They’ll probably level out at 200g, so your point still stands, but it’s possible!

I do hate that this collection is so grindy (and buggy). It would be nice if this was more like a component hunt like Mawdrey was. But let’s be honest, the only reason that took any time was because it was time-gated and everyone seems to hate those kinds of things too.

fellyn.5083:

Roundabout.1752:

fellyn.5083:

Roundabout.1752:

Using the Living Story as an excuse to grief the farmers is nonsense, you don’t have to even do the Coiled Watch events to do the Living Story just go there and find the spot to enter the instance. I just this afternoon did this with a friend of mine, no event going, at least be honest about why you’re going after the Farmers.

Actually you’re wrong. You have to do coiled watch because it’s the event that opens the doors so you can get in inside to the place where the story is.

Don’t like people interfering with your farm? Go somewhere else.

You can farm in other areas. You can’t finish the living story in other areas.

Greedy little farmers and their illogical arguments.

Actually you’re wrong and you apparently didn’t read what I posted. We weren’t farming we went there after doing the Giant Ooze to unlock a trait and then because 1 of our party had a green star on her map we went to Coiled. We did not do any events there because there weren’t any going on, perhaps the Doors stay open until the event resets, I don’t know I haven’t been there often enough to know how that event chain works I just know you don’t need the event to get the Living Story because we did it and did not do the events.

You tell me I’m wrong but then admit you don’t know what you’re talking about. Righto…

You have to finish the event chain to open the doors. Simple as that. They stay open until the event resets or a minute or two before it resets, at least. I’m not sure on the exact timer but it’s probably around 25 to 30 minutes.

Now, if the start of the event is being intentionally failed then I’m sure you can do the math.

It’s great that you’re friend got in and did it easily. That’s fantastic. But on most maps the event is being farmed making it so people can’t just walk in and do their living story.

You can get in as long as the escort chain hasn’t started yet, BUT you can’t claim credit for destroying the totem and enter the instance once the defense/capture Coiled Watch event has started until the event chain is successfully completed.

(inb4 you’re the same person posting on two accounts. Coincidental names!)

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

But the early hearts being changed…as in the first 1-10 area?

I just don’t see this as something to rebel against. People talk about the “chess” game in metrica being taken out, even though it was ridiculously easy to win at and maybe I’ve spent 10 minutes out of all my time in game doing it.

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

I love platitudes that people say but can’t be proven. I mean aside from being factually true, what it’s implying is anything but.

The first Star Trek Pilot was, after all, rejected. But a second was was made.

I think anyone that stops playing a game because they don’t like dancing with cows is someone I wouldn’t care to play with anyway.

I’d say anyone who doesn’t get up to level 20 before they judged an MMO, probably isn’t suited to MMORPGs.

You realize the people who quit before 20 is the people for whom npe was made?

They essentially are trying to target the first impression first hour of play crowf

Yes. The old system with all that cool stuff didn’t keep them. But the NPE wasn’t just about dumbing things down. It was also about pacing, reward and direction. It does feel more rewarding to me, and that stupid arrow definitely provides direction.

You seem to think it was entertaining enough before, but that didn’t hold those people. I don’t think those people mostly left because it wasn’t entertaining enough. Anet at least believes that tests show that they left because of a combination of factors including the ones I listed above.

The arrow is great, but it’s really scatter-brained. It doesn’t provide enough consistent direction to really help you find things to do. Perhaps having a new setting that limits it only to DEs or Renown Hearts would be even more helpful?

The other reason I think people are saying it feels like there’s nothing to do is because it’s not immediately obvious there IS a personal story when you first start out. I just finished the last available story block (;evel 60) on my new alt and saw that the green personal story text disappeared from my screen entirely. There is no mention of “Forging the Pact (unlocks at level 70)” or anything. I’m not sure if that is standard behavior, but that might be why people are feeling like there’s nothing to do and no direction at the beginning.

The personal story gave me that direction when I first started playing and only after a while did I realize that the story and the renown hearts were going to be two separate systems.

Suggestions:

• Unlock personal story at level 1 and every 10 levels after, and re-insert “My Greatest Fear” at level 60
• Put a clear message on screen that the next personal story block unlocks at X level.

John Corpening.9847:

Anyway, this discussion made it clear it is who you play with that’s important and a number of ideas in this thread preserved that without restricting the number of people who could play at a time. These have had a number of names but for the sake of discussion I’ll go with Alliances. The idea that I liked for Alliances is that it is a group of guilds and people that are guaranteed to stay together no matter how things are rearranged. There would probably need to be a size limit on Alliances and several of you pointed out that whatever limits are put in place it should be based on WvW participation.

A few of you noted that things will always be changing over time so the system would have to be dynamic. There are a couple of ways of addressing this discussed in this thread. An idea that would be a small incremental change to how the game plays would be to create a new set of worlds then fill them up with our Alliances of guilds and players that are guaranteed to always play together. This would happen at regular intervals, the intervals were all over the map as were the size of the worlds in this thread so I will propose this cadence:

• Off Season
• Tournament
• Restructure
  • Create new Worlds
  • Redistribute Alliances

This cycle would take a few months given the cadence of tournaments we have had which is about the time that we would want to rebalance populations. After the restructure, players could transfer like they do now if they so desired.

Alliances would provide continuity for the community. I see the server pride of today becoming Alliance pride because of that continuity. But I also see the off season as a time for the newly formed world of alliances to develop their own identity as they head into the tournament. Keep in mind that if an alliance was big enough to fill a world that mapping becomes one to one. If that became the case maybe the world could just take the alliance name. It’s interesting because that time together gives everyone involved a chance to see if they all want to ally together to truly solidify into a world. If not, you are still playing with your community for the glory of your alliance in the next restructure. But your community would be playing with other communities new to you and maybe this new bunch is a better fit for you and an opportunity for your alliance to grow.

The pieces for this idea comes from a number of posts in this thread. There are also some thoughts in there from some discussions I’ve had with several guild leaders. I just glommed it all together into something that I think could be a workable solution. I do want to emphasize though that this is all brainstorming

Let me know your thoughts and thanks again for all the great and constructive discussion!

John

Sounds like a really excellent compromise!

My only question is would Alliances be completely guild-based? If so, what about someone who joins two guilds that find themselves wanting to be in different Alliances? How would you restrict that player’s access to both WvW sides at once?

Endgame to me means stuff to keep learning.

New maps and continents!

New professions!

New races!

New rewards! (Collections are an awesome, if expensive, step in that direction)

The way I see it, battle clusters are a good way to go, balanced against the populations of the t1 servers.

Map caps are a bad idea because it actually forces some players to stop playing.

Server merges have the serious consequence of removing what little server identity some people have.

Battle alliances (or whatever you want to call them) seem to be a better bet because, if temporary, they can adjust for fluctuating populations, and can correct for rapid gains in score. Plus, (hopefully) players won’t be forced to play with servers that they just can’t stand.

On organization – I started on ET a year and a half ago and we sat at the bottom because we didn’t have the population. It’s not that PvE players refused to go to WvW; we just didn’t have enough players. Period. If we had had the numbers, maybe there would have been more of an attempt to organize. But you can’t tell me with a straight face that we had the numbers to compete with BG or JQ, even if the organization had been there.

Vayne.8563:

It should. Most of them are positive.

Look at the aspects that are positive versus the ones that are negative. It sounds like ArenaNet is a great company to work for and for the most part a very positive environment. But the cons are the things that impact us as players most: A lack of clear direction from management is called out in 8 out of 10 reviews on the first page. Unreasonable expectations and resource mismanagement is also mentioned more than once. Management walls itself off and refuses to share its grand design. The company feels rudderless with eleventh hour changes. All things that players have been commenting on here are being echoed by “former employees” (not sure how much of this to really believe…) It sounds like people still have faith in the company, but like us, aren’t really sure where it’s all going.

I went through and tried three trait unlocks last night: Dredge Commissar, Lord Ignius and Branded Devourer Queen. I’ll be darned if all three weren’t bugged at some point. After five hours, I had finally found a working copy of Dredge Commissar (and about a billion people waiting for the chance at something that costs 160 gold). Still no luck on the other two.

On the plus side, we finally own the entirety of EB, so I managed to actually rally five players and kill that Overgrown Grub! Hooraaay!

aerial.7021:

calyx.9086:

aerial.7021:

Which is exactly the position I am in, “Gate of Madness” doesn’t even get a look in most of the time other than it’s own self named map which it mostly owns, now I suppose I could server switch for 1800 gems, and I seriously considered this until I realized that if I in time got all 8 of my toons to map completion I would have to spend 43200 gem server switching I packed that idea in quickly.

Your realize that server transfers are account wide right? It’s not per character. You can’t have one toon on GoM and another on JQ, it doesn’t work that way.

Yes I am aware of that, my maths;

(9 Classes) * (3 Sides Red / Green & Blue) = 27 for each switch cost is 1800 gems, 1800 * 27 = 48,600 gems

Time is a factor so you ‘may’ be able to get all 9 classes through on just 3 switches, but you wouldn’t be very relaxed while doing this, the figures above are based on “absolute” worse case scenario.

The point is we should not have to pay money for map completion if our server that we joined isn’t into PvP, it wasn’t like the server was noted when I join mine if it was PvP, PvE or even somewhere in between. Naturally when I opened my account the first thing I wanted to do was play not research servers, in retrospect would I have chosen differently knowing what I know now? not sure, I don’t think so.

That’s not how that works. It’s 1800 per account, not per character on your account.

On topic: I’ll admit, I got my only world complete when I was on Eredon Terrace. We had a miraculous break about a year ago where we shifted from 24th to 22nd and suddenly I was able to get the whole thing done. I waited… three months for that to happen? It was awful. On top of that, I generally resent having to be put up against other players in order to get something. I choose not to play games where competition against other players is a driving factor. Internally, WvW really should not be considered a PvE game mode.

I completed the chain leading up to the Defeat Lord Ignius event.

The NPCs finished their dialogue about the summoning stone, Lord Ignius loaded, but then nothing happened and he didn’t become hostile. Now he’s just flying in the air with nothing happening. Trait progress blocked.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

felessan.9587:

Really, not rhetorically, does anyone have those numbers?

ANet does. But, that’s it. People have been trying to estimate current user numbers for ages, and we just don’t have any real way to measure that.

Yes, I should have said: “Anyone outside of Anet.” I’m really curious to see what healthy retention rates are considered to be.

Anet seems to think that people were overwhelmed by too many options when they first logged in, so they reigned them in. Hopefully the NPE does what they hope it will.

• All future content changes conceived of and voted on in-game. Full democracy!

• More skin and less covering for male characters of all armor classes

• Impose an EXP penalty when you die. And then make you run back for your corpse.

• Allow player corpse looting.

• Allow player corpse destroying.

• Make you walk like a zombie to the nearest waypoint before you can rally.

• Require that food be eaten every 1-2 hours (or every 6 in-game hours) or you start to lose health every second.

• Use Asurans as projectile weapons. (can we please use Asurans as projectile weapons?)

Tryxtr.6295:

One fundamental problem with this that I have is that according to Anet they surveyed people that stopped playing the game and based their changes on the leveling system based on their answers. But did they survey the players that are actually still playing the game? Don’t our opinions count for something?

If I made a movie, showed it to 500 people, and 20 of them walked out angry, I wouldn’t change the movie to suit them, because 480 people seemed to enjoy it. It’s not a perfect comparison but you get the point.

Why didn’t they do a CDI on the leveling experience?
Why isn’t there an in-game survey system that periodically asks me questions about in-game features? Wouldn’t that be super helpful if you’re interested in what your player-base thinks? (which, admittedly, Anet definitely seems to).

These forums are full of amazing ideas, but it’s no secret that we’re only a small part of the GW2 population. An in-game survey system would reach 100% of your current player-base and would provide an amazingly accurate idea of what your players want. And I know that personally I wouldn’t mind answering a few questions here and there in order to make the game better. There would also be a great opportunity to link directly to the CDI’s on these forums from inside the game. Collaboration is a great thing, but I feel like 80% of the player-base is upset with the new changes and that is not good.

You’re assuming a 96% retention rate with those numbers. I haven’t seen the metrics and not being a game designer, I don’t know what retention rate is considered superior. However, my guess is it’s no where near that high. It may even be sub 50%. Either way, what I would surmise is more people buy and quit the game than stay and play it and that is expected. But, it seems the current percentage simply isn’t high enough for the company’s standards. We’re falling into the trap of thinking that “we stayed so obviously everything is fine,” but do we know what percentage of activated accounts we are?

Really, not rhetorically, does anyone have those numbers?

Same here. Bags can’t be picked up.

Same. Just tried on a new level 24 alt and can’t use any goggles I’ve found. I have 11 level 80’s, this shouldn’t be a problem.

I am a PvE player. I loath PvP, but even I have to admit the achievements for this tournament are surprisingly easy. It seems very unfair that a group of people can jump into a “tournament,” sit for about 20 mins in a map that has no relation to the outcome of the tournament at all, and get full rewards. The bar for participation is so low, you basically end up with the serious WvW players carrying and earning rewards for their entire world. Am I missing something, or are rewards based solely on weekly standing?

Next time, maybe 20 events per week, but require that it be 5 in each of the four core WvW maps. That way players are at least contributing to (or detracting from) their world’s success in some small way with a more meaningful time involvement.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Remember we were talking about how to improve communication from a personnel and structural level. Well the personnel level is right here along with an update on fixes to NPE:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Changes-Coming-to-the-NPE/first#post4419233

I hope everyone will join me in giving Gaile a warm welcome back. Personally I am super happy.

Chris

HURRAY!!! Welcome back Gaile!

Behellagh.1468:

New Patch is out.

For you gate haters.

• Utility slot skills 2 and 3 now unlock at levels 17 and 19, respectively.
• The elite slot skill now unlocks at level 31.
• Elementalist F4 commands, mesmer F3 commands, and guardian F3 commands now unlock at level 17.
• Mesmer F4 commands and engineer F4 commands now unlock at level 19.
• Skill Challenges are now visible at level 13 instead of level 15.

Also a number of bugs including the diving goggles fixed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-September-9-2014/4420127

So much all these things! Thank you Anet team for delivering this to us.

A few suggestions, albeit minor now:

• Utility Skill 1 at 10 or 11 maybe?
• Elite Skill at 30 instead of 31 (Only for those poor souls who want to venture into Ascalonian Catacombs)
• Weapon Swapping at 10 instead of 15?
• Gain Skill Points every level instead of in chunks

Vayne.8563:

There isn’t really a pace of reward levels. A new person wouldn’t question it is much because they NEVER got one skill point per level. They’d see at different levels I get different stuff….cool.

One of the problems with the old system that annoyed me early on, was that I was getting 1 skill point per level, but I needed to buy 6 point skills at that point and it was like really? It was annoying to be getting something I really couldn’t use till I got a bunch more. I’d look around for skill challenges on maps, and farm a few skill points to buy the next skill, but it wasn’t fun.

This way you get stuff every level. You have a mouseover thing that tells you what you’re getting next level, and what you get at which level, if it’s not already, will be in the wiki.

But the expectation of getting specific stuff at specific levels is only going to affect current players. The rest will see it as cool rewards as they get them.

The problem is I have to go to a third-party source just to see “when can I unlock a new skill?”

With predictable rewards, like skill points every level, I can accommodate for my mistakes if I buy skills that aren’t particularly helpful plus it helps me to save up for targeted acquisition.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

After last week’s patch, I’ve noticed a LOT of the Guild Bank NPCs have been removed, especially in Lion’s Arch. There was actually one of the NPCs in the Mystic Plaza that you could talk to to gain access to your bank vault, but since then that option has been removed from her chat window. Now, she only lets you edit your guild emblem and expand your roster.

This particularly urks me because the ONLY Guild Bank NPC in Lion’s Arch now is the one at Fort Marriner near all of the crafting areas. You know, by that waypoint that was removed from the game.

This makes it extremely inconvenient to gain access to your Guild Vault, not being able to teleport straight to it. Does anyone else have something to contribute to this?

… there was? FML. The only one I could see was at Fort Mariner anyway Yeah, I just did everything from DR instead, unless it involved forging.

It seems like people still aren’t clear that “starting area” doesn’t actually mean the whole 1-15 map. Anet should have been more explicit by saying there are no bundles, condi mobs, or gathering resources in the 1-5 sections of the starting maps. Clarity of language is missing across this whole patch.

Thanks for this great write-up. I’ve taken a new character to 20 so far and found that it’s not really that painful.

A few small complaints:

• Guardians could use a different starting weapon. Mace is slow and very low damage.
• It would be really nice to have a weapon and salvage vendor near the starting hearts.
• 13 is a little late for skills to unlock. Maybe they could start at 10? (above comparison of previous level 6:current level 10 is very helpful, thank you! Waiting for the next set of fixes before I comment more on this)
• It would be great to be able to interact with skill challenges before level 13. You only have to backtrack on your first map, but it’s still annoying.
• Earning skill points in bundles instead of one every level is not my favorite choice.

Can someone else comment, is our first automatic skill at 13 a condition cleanse?

Feel better soon Chris!

No, this is a widely reported problem. Level 29 seems to have some extremely weird bug where experience falls into a fraction of what it should be (20-30 xp for event completion, compared to 1k for example). Reports have been that hitting 30 returns you to regular XP gain.

On topic: I too would really love to see a roadmap, and when it hits a dead-end, hear something about that.

Get well soon Chris! You’ve been a huge wellspring of morale the last few weeks.

Iason Evan.3806:

Astralporing.1957:

Iason Evan.3806:

The Exotic Collection is only the exotics out of the Champ Bags making named exotics more expensive and therefore providing less means of forging a precursor because their cost now is prohibitive to do so.

Wait, what? That doesn’t make sense. In fact, since a lot of those named exotics are a sideeffect of precursor forging, the cost of making a precursor (after calculating gains from selling any more costly forge byproducts) should go down.

The named exotics like “Crystal Guardian”, “Bonetti’s Rapier”(The Champion Bag named exotics) etc. have gone up in price significantly for the most part because they are a part of the new collection system. Those used to be the cheapest named exotics because they were the most readily available. It’s not the case anymore.

Umm, I don’t know when the last time you checked those items on the TP were, but Bonetti’s was 27 gold just last month, and Crystal Guardian was around 20. They both went way up in price back in April because they have Superior Sigils of Bloodlust. No, the collection didn’t help but they were in no way the cheapest named exotics as you claim.

Explicitly not an exploit.

I’ve heard the fastest way to level now is to use karma and train up in Chef?

Dear OP – L2P.

You never have any problems when you spam AOE and are all “FACETANK LOL NEWB.” Then you’re all “Come at me bro! I can take a whole zerg!” But no, someone mows over you for a tree and you get all wangsty even after you just made us waste an hour of our time by murdering our friends who can’t even 1 spam yet.

Early on the trade-in value for junk can cover some WP costs. Not a total loss.

I always wondered about this too. For those that have strong feelings about the difference between “character” and “toon,” do you often refer to your characters by their race/profession “my Norn Engineer” or by their name? I find that I prefer using “character” and usually, in my head at least, refer to all my characters by name. Could be because I come from table-top RPGs with a heavy emphasis on RP. I always laugh when I see people say “rolling a new toon” because I really doubt they know where that comes from.

I really, REALLY dislike all the shiny flashy pop-ups. It was bothersome with renown hearts, but now that it happens every time I level, I just can’t take it. Too much useless going on on the screen!

Moyayuki.3619:

felessan.9587:

Moyayuki.3619:

SkylightMoon.2098:

This much gating in the leveling process is awful. I like the old system because of how much freedom I had.

Makes me want to, if I ever make a new alt, level up simply by mapping cultural cities… Oh how fun.

… you mean people don’t do this normally…? >.>

Have you guys sat down to make a new toon yet? I watched a friend of mine do it last night and it literally only took him an hour to get to level 15. Do we know yet exactly what level you can start doing skill challenges and diving goggles? Something to note – we no longer gain skill points every level. I just took a toon from 55-56 and gained 7 SP. I guess I hadn’t gained any for a while previously?

I’m going to make one tonight and see how it goes.

But at level 15 you still can’t do everything, right? More things remain restricted to you, from what I hear. Sure, they are things that maybe not every player does early on but, still…. freedom of choice, of how you want to play the game, is what made this game great.

I’ll try to make a new character soon, too, but i sure hope that Anet fixes some of the glaring issues with the changes they made eventually. Heard that Personal Story has been turned into a real head-scratcher near the end of it.

Yes, admittedly some things (like skill slot 8-0) are still locked. And, well, I question the wise of that decision (if that is in fact the intended choice). It’s just not actually that hard to get to 15 and out into the world is all I’m saying.

I have heard this about PS as well. I have a level 80 character who is still on the level 2 step of personal story, so I might just run through it and see what happens.

zenleto.6179:

felessan.9587:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Abe Kleine.3568:

Correct me if I’m wrong… But people are saying that you can’t dodge with low level characters anymore. Is this ACTUALLY true?

This is incorrect, you should be able to absolutely dodge at any level. There is a lot of misinformation (and some bugs) going around about systems the game teaches you about, but are totally available from level 1 if you want to go do them. The level many of the things the new level up system tells you about doesn’t mean they are unlocked at that level, it simply exists as a reminder if you haven’t learned it by then. Feel free to dodge away! You can also go do jumping puzzles any time you want for example, the game just gives you a heads up they exist at level 21 if you haven’t found one by then, etc.

We’re also seeing a lot of bugs, and unintended functionality folks are reporting in a number of the threads on the new player experience that don’t align with what we announced the system to be. We’re working on identifying and resolving all of these issues as quickly as possible, some of the absolutely legitimate concerns folks are bringing up (like some of the bigger issues with alts) are not intended and appear to have been flagged incorrectly when they moved between development regions. Fixes incoming soon as we can identify everything.

Please continue to give feedback and suggestions, we very much appreciate it as it’s allowed us to identify a lot of not intended issues, as well as bugs.

Thanks!

Thank you! Would it be possible to start an official feedback thread like after the April Feature Pack?

NO! not one of those! How about one where both sides come to talk?

If you saw my post in the Communcation thread, you’d know exactly how I feel about the effectiveness of the Trait feedback thread. But it would be nice if there was one thread we posted in, instead of 100+.

Small anecdote:

I have a friend who decided to start playing this game four days ago because he’s been watching me and my husband play for months.

As of Monday night, he had three characters, all between level 5 and 11. He had played for several hours already, spread out between the three toons.

Yesterday, he came over and made a character, a Sylvari Ranger. In an hour, he had almost reached level 15. The leveling process is /clearly/ faster. He also avoided the cow debacle everyone seems to be so upset over.

He had some notes that I wanted to post here. He is a long-time WoW player, so he is not new to MMOs in any way.

• He was very glad he didn’t have to grind out his weapon skills again, as compared to his first few characters.

• One of his first questions to me was “What craft do I have to have to mine ore?” Then, it was “Where do I get tools? All these vendors look the same until you talk to them.”

• “What the heck are all these icons on the ‘hero’ panel? There’s a /lot/ of unexplained clicking going on here. There’s also a ton of stuff in these menu buttons at the top that I have no idea what they do.”

• He had no idea that there was a hot key for access the trading post.

• “What’s up with being able to go to these POIs and Vistas, but not seeing them on my mini-map anymore?”

• He thought the personal story was great now because he wasn’t getting lost between hearts and the plot.

• “I have no idea how to craft. This isn’t intuitive at all.”

• Dodging is really hard to learn to do manually when you come from a game that does it by stat.

• “Wait, why is it just now telling me that I unlocked salvage kits? I was already doing that, wasn’t I?”

• His final comment: “GW2 is awesome and I’m really loving it! I just really wish there was more explanation for what the heck the mechanics of the game are. You know what would be really helpful? An in-game tutorial that tells you how to do stuff. Maybe something that you could skip after the first time, but something that explains to you what all of these buttons mean.”