Guild Wars 2

Let me re-emphasize: It’s not about the rewards, or winning or losing.

It’s about this Crystal Breaker achievement which everyone wants to get and is not playing the game that is ruining the fun.

The problem is Crystal Capper is much easier than Crystal Breaker. Therefore many people need Crystal Breaker rather than Crystal Capper. The result is lots of people standing around waiting for someone to carry the crystal, so they can gank that crystal carrier.

Eventually, nobody is carrying the crystal. Everyone’s standing around waiting for a crystal carrier. Everyone just chases that 1 person who looks like they are approaching a crystal.

The rewards is merely part of the problem. There is no major loss in losing or winning. The players know that and they don’t mind losing, so long as they get their Crystal Breaker achievement.

The whole point is very few people are playing Aspect Arena for the game it’s supposed to be!

The main trouble I see is most of the games I join, almost everyone is just standing around waiting for an innocent victim to pick up the crystals. Nobody else wants to, because all they want is the Crystal Breaker achievement.

As it stands, it’s too easy to bring the crystal to base, but too difficult to get the kill count. Needing more kills than carry for achievement exacerbates the problem.

There is no playing to what the game is meant to be now. It’s just all about getting their stupid achievement points.

Please please please, I beg of some dev who will read this and understand the sheer grief that is going on in Aspect Arena.

Remove the achievement Crystal Breaker! It is totally destroying all gameplay of Aspect Arena now.

Almost every game I go into, everyone is trying to get kills on the crystal carrier because all they want is the Crystal Breaker achievement. Nobody needs crystal carrier much anymore, because that achievement is too easy to obtain and most already have it.

There is no way I can do a proper game of Aspect Arena now, just when I am beginning to enjoy it.

So please, someone, please remove Crystal Breaker. Stop the bad behavior and let those who really want to play this minigame enjoy it.

Terrible terrible minigame, and the achievements promote even worse behavior.

Every game I joined so far, has very few players playing for the team. It’s all about getting the kills for the achievement.

Ever see 7 people standing around waiting for a crystal carrier?

Unless this question is directed at pvpers who don’t go into sPvP, the simplest and most common answer to why sPvP is unpopular is…..

It’s because it’s PvP.

Making a lot of this content temporary is extremely annoying.

Only a small part of the world is affected, which really means that only a small part of Tyria is populated. Walk around all the zones, it’s really bare and empty. Until a world boss spawns.

Making so much of this content temporary makes us players have that urgent need to play the content or lose it forever. Well, to be really fair, all MMOs have a shelf life and all MMOs evolve, meaning all content is inevitably temporary. But 2 weeks temporary? That is way too short. What if you take a 2 week vacation?

Now, many can say that if you miss some of this content, you don’t really miss anything. That is not entirely true for 1 small class of players: the achievements completionist.

I’m not a completionist, yet with so many new achievements tied with temporary content, there is this hurried urgency to get it done and get those achievements or lose it forever! This basically means completionists can never leave the game for any medium period of time. Exams? Forget it, make sure you are online to get your achievements. Need to go on a cruise? Forget it, swim home and get online to get your achievements. Need to attend a funeral? Forget it, he dead. You miss that achievement, it’s byebye achievement forever.

And who knows if one might regret missing out of those temporary achievements? We don’t even know whether the upcoming rewards for achievement points will make players regret not getting those extra points from the living story.

Aren’t achievements supposed to be a record of your milestones and what you have attained in a game? Aren’t they supposed to be always there, waiting to be obtained? Just look at all the original achievements, they can be done anytime and at your own pace. Then look at the living story achievements. Don’t you despair with every single time someone asks if they can still watch the fireworks in Lion’s Arch?

With such temporary content, most just cannot wait. It’s like witnessing a car crash happening on the freeway. Woopee! You witnessed one. Have an achievement. Now enjoy being stuck in the jam. Meanwhile, many people would have lived through life never ever witnessing a car crash happen.

Sorry if I stopped making any sense. It’s late and I’m annoyed.

Caittus.7436:

1 month? You’ve got 2 weeks.

Worse…

If we have only 1 month to get this achievement, then yes, I see plenty of cause for complains.

Poor Vabbi and Fissure of Woe.

Among the many MMOs I have played, I have found that GW2’s mouse cursor has been the hardest to locate on screen all the time.

I have sort of summed up the reasons as follows.
1. The mouse pointer is small.
2. The mouse pointer does not contrast against the screen well.
3. The mouse pointer blends in too well, due to its changing colors on context.
4. Right click to adjust the camera removes the pointer from screen, making you lose focus on where the mouse pointer is.

I would really like to suggest that we be given the option to adjust the size of the mouse pointer independently of the UI. Alternatively, allow us to set the colors of the pointer so we can find one that contrasts better.

I looked at a few of the diag logs, and mine included.

It seems to all point to level3.net losing a lot of data packets. Maybe it’s time to have a chat with level3.net?

I’m pretty certain this is a case of Anet probably believing that this is a situation that will self-correct itself through player actions.

T1 is boring? Guilds will transfer out and correct the situation. The server eventually dies and drops down. The same cycle will repeat itself and guilds will repopulate servers that are considered dead before.

I think it will take a lot more stagnation and servers dying than just 2 T1 servers to make Anet do anything substantial. If Deso or SFR are still gaining good points, that means they aren’t dead enough. Game on!

The point is, that siege engine was placed in an area which is safe. An enemy zerg can sit with those catapults and siege the tower with impunity.

Yes, those catapults can be hit, in fact, we just destroyed 3-4 of them before we took this screenshot, but guess what happened when we tried to destroy those 3-4? We got wiped by a zerg that was invulnerable.

If the developers decided that no siege can be deployed in the safe zones, then no siege should be deployed in the safe zone. Regardless whether the siege engine can be destroyed or not, the defenders cannot be hurt while we try to destroy those siege engines.

Also, correct me if I am wrong, but if siege engines are not allowed to be placed in the safe zone, then isn’t it exploitation of “holes” within those safe zones by placing those siege engines?

Is there anything wrong with this screenshot? Is this allowed now?

The catapult can hit and damage the tower, in case you are wondering.

All this talk about the best guilds in fighting, that’s all in the past. Culling made some tactics, methods and the guilds employing those tactics far better than they might truly be.

No culling is now here to stay. New ways of fighting, new ways of staying alive.

May the new best guilds now emerge.

They are just Clerics, Berserkers, Knights, Carrions and Rabid sets. Armor and weapons, but no amulets, rings or earrings though(unless I never found them or am too blonde to see them).

As an aside…Gift of Battle now costs 50s in addition to the 500 badges. outrage!

I honestly don’t see an issue with improving dungeon chest rewards.

Right now, everyone is just flocking to the open world bosses because they want the rares. If you look at the situation holistically, why do people do that? That’s because of the longest standing complaint since the start of the game, loot sucks.

People are looking for a decent return for the time they are spending in game. The open world bosses currently deliver that. In fact, people are so desperate to get good returns on their time spent that you will find many people just standing around AFK for an hour+ waiting for the open world boss to spawn. That’s how much of a draw that guaranteed rare is. (Or how bad loot is in gw2)

As for the problem with the economy, really? Is there genuinely a problem with the economy now because of the chest drops? I haven’t been doing the open world bosses, but observing the ecto prices, I didn’t see the crash that many anticipated. Honest question, is this more of the ecto prices not meeting some internal benchmark, hence concluding that the economy is being hurt? Even if ecto prices are dropping too low, the other material prices will rise to compensate because those aren’t dropping at any increased rate.

If the number of rares dropping is really hurting the economy that much, instead of a daily chest per account(which is still a lot of chests considering the number of open world bosses), put an account limit instead. Give 1 guaranteed rare for 5 chests per account, be it dungeon final boss or open world boss. At least people have a choice of preferring open world bosses, or rewarding themselves with a rare and some dungeon tokens.

My opinion is that zerging is not the issue.

The real problem is zergballing, stacking as many people as you can in the smallest space possible. Zergballing causes the following issues.

• negates aoe damage due to aoe limits leading to damage being spreaded out.
• abuses culling
• abuses melee aoe by using the 1 spam
• abuses boon and healing stacking
• generates lag issues that destroys the fun for most people

Culling especially helps the zergball way too much. Culling presents fewer targets for the zergball to instantly murder. It also allows the zergball to concentrate damage on fewer targets at a time, so aoe limits don’t hamper them too much. The effective zergball always charges in quickly so abuse culling as much as they can before the engine updates and limits their damage.

Kill the factors that aid zergballing and zerging is really a non-issue.

Play a thief using sword. Let it autoattack and try to dodge.
Play a guardian using sword. Let it autoattack and try to dodge.
Play a warrior using sword. Let it autoattack and try to dodge.
Play a mesmer using sword. Let it autoattack and try to dodge.

Now play a ranger using sword. Let it autoattack and try to dodge. Tell me it’s working fine.

On the other hand, the event “Defend Falias Thorp from the Nightmare Court.” seems to spawn every 5 minutes.

John Smith.4610:

Goldsellers are a plague on the gaming industry, plain and simple, I would sooner associate with Ralphie from “The League”… much, much sooner

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Gold-sellers-vs-BLTC/first#post581941

However, no matter how I look at the game, the way you have set up the economy of the game is totally weighted towards favoring the goldsellers.

Does this event work at all? I have been in Caledon Forest sitting at Falias Thorp the last 3.5 hours and it never starts.

The waypoint is not contested and Gamarien is alive, but nothing. Do I even have the right start point? The meta event text never changes either. It has been constantly “The forces of darkness have been driven back. An uneasy calm has fallen over the swamp.”

And no star over Gamarien ever.

If anyone has done this meta event lately, can you please tell me if I have been doing anything wrong?

There is 1 distance complaint about Longbow which I hope it gets looked at sooner than later.

Have a look at the following below, see if you notice anything? All stats are from the PvP Soldier’s amulet, no armor, pvp weapon with sigil of force with 0 trait points allocated.

Warrior speargun, Mariner’s Shot, 0.25s cd
0-400 range: 283
400-800 range: 424
800+ range: 566

Mesmer’s greatsword, Spatial Surge, 1.5s cd
0-300 range: 402
300-600 range: 501
600-900 range: 600
900-1200: 702

Ranger’s longbow, Long Range Shot, 0.75s cd
0-500 range: 354
500-1000 range: 460
1000+ range: 637

There is strong suspicion that gold seller cartels are buying up all the precursors to craft the legendaries to sell at increased profit. True or not, it’s not in the realms of implausible. Gives them an outlet for all the mats their bots farm.

The only reason I use longbow……

Pure sheer stubbornness.

Favorite: Kudzu. It’s just so pretty!
Kitten??: Moot. The dance club wants their ball back.

Yesterday, I set out to prove a point. Went to Malchor’s Leap and soloed all 4 parts of the Dwayna event chain. Took almost 2 hours.

And the loot?
The Risen Priestess of Dwayna, a blue and some coppers.
The possessed statue of Dwayna? A blue and some coppers.
The chest? 3 blues.

3 champions in the whole chain and a chest for opening the cathedral, nothing better than blues.

And the cherry on top. Because I soloed the whole chain, when I went to farm sparks, I kept killing the veteran risen knight event that spawns within the ruins. What did I get for this level 79 event with a gold ranking? 884 xp and 19 karma. That’s DR rubbing salt in my wounds.

Btw, 37 shocking crystals, not much else. Quite a lot of giant winters day gifts.

I don’t understand how anyone can accept that “stealth” which people accept as hiding, sneaking or camouflaging manages to translate to “total invisibility” in broad
daylight in the open fields.

It has been the lazy solution to a difficult mechanic in MMOs for far too long.

The cost of materials is about 1300g, so it depends on how much you value your time in collecting 500 dungeon tokens, 500 badges of honor, 200 skillpoints for the bloodstone shard, another 200+ skillpoints for the philosopher stones and the 500 obsidian shards.

It also makes you realize that the list of items you need for a legendary that cannot be bought for gold is too short.

It’s not my Incinerator. I’m just reporting that the first legendary that is reasonably priced is now up on the TP.

Well, it’s finally here. Legendaries are starting to be reasonably priced on the TP now.

Incinerator at 1750g. Get it while you can.

Note: I don’t condone or like the situation, but I accept it as inevitable. It’s just a lot sooner than I expected.

edit: Baaaad grammar on title. Can’t do anything about it. Should be First reasonably priceD Incinerator on TP.

I hope I don’t end up just ranting…

When the game launched, the TP had a search filter for legendaries. I have long always accepted that legendaries can probably be sold and traded on the TP, which I am perfectly happy with.

Why? That is because we were also sold on the idea that there is no special tier of stats for the legendary. We all assumed exotics and legendaries had the same stat tier. All you got out of a legendary is a skin to parade yourself with.

That’s now changed. Ascended gear guaranteed that. Legendaries are now always going to be the BiS weapon. The legendary chase is just going to get rougher now.

I can’t believe support……

Look at this screenshot! I have an Incinerator that I just crafted, not used yet. I right clicked on it, and selected Sell at Trading Post.

I don’t have to do funny things to induce any bugs. It’s just SELLABLE!

I would gladly have legendaries account-bound though. If you have a d/d elementalist and a d/d thief, I don’t imagine you want to craft 4 Incinerators, do you?

Edit: Besides, making legendaries account-bound is a huge improvement on QoL without much effect on the rest of the population. If you have a guardian and warrior who both use the Sunrise, making it account-bound will allow you to share the Sunrise between his characters rather than craft 2 Sunrises. Eases the strain of demand for the mats needed to craft 2 Sunrises too.

Is the 3rd attack in the sword 1 chain supposed to apply a Might boon or not? I never noticed it until I decided to learn to read and noticed the description said so. I have never seen the boon ever applied though.

This patch is sort of neutral for me.

Positives

• Opening strike finally works properly. This is huge for longbow users.
• 25% movement speed for Signet of the Hunt.
• Nature’s Protection triggers a lot now.
• Melee pets seem to definitely hit a lot more now.

Negatives

• Arrow flight speed increase barely improved our hit rate. It’s the tracking that is kittened and needs fixing.
• Sword “rooting” is still a massive issue and seems to be intended. I have fallen off cliffs because I use the 3rd autoattack(Pounce) at someone and he dodges out of the way with me falling off the cliff….
• Rangers still lack a trump card to turn a fight around.

Was the legendary in an invisible bag? That would have prevented you from putting it up for sale.

Arrow flight speed is increased, but the tracking algorithms are still the same. I’m not hitting at any higher rate.

Legendaries are tradeable and sellable.
Legendaries can be sold on the TP.

Edit: Stupid mapchat had lots of offensive talk.

Thinking it through, I know this is not the ideal state of affairs, legendaries being traded like simple goods in a market.

However, it’s a strong indictment of exactly how “legendary” the legendaries really are: a simple grind for a BiS weapon.

I see it as inevitable. Eventually, I predict within another 9 months, you will probably see at least 1 of each legendary available for sale at more reasonable prices(eg about 1500g for Twilight, 800g for Kudzu, etc).

Some people are more willing to trade money for time. Some people value gold more than time, and they will supply the legendaries.

I just wish I can go back in time and find the first MMO that decided that stealth means total invisibility in bright daylight out in the open fields.

I think they are immune to name changes. I changed the sigil in my legendary and it’s still Kudzu.

All buyers want a bargain.
All sellers want a profit.

Clash of 2 worlds.

It’s a noble cause Sudden, but I don’t expect anyone to heed what you say simply because buyers will always want to save some gold. Don’t forget also, the market is an anonymous brokerage with no empathy between the buyer and seller. There is no hope of communicating, nor any way to reach a negotiated deal, other than take the price or leave it.

Massively broken. Just tried going for a vista in Blazeridge Steppes. Fell to my death 4 times because jump did not jump.

77 out of 205, but I finished it 1 month ago. No idea if there has been changes, but it seems like they can make tiny code changes with lots of unintended changes in hundreds of different places. (ie. unintended increase of drops for unidentified dyes?)

What Logun simply did was nothing wrong. If anything, I would say he’s given a clue to all of us on what is the problem.

Low drop rates.

Just think about it, and why Logun is able to do it. Simple concept of economics.

NoOneShotU.3479:

As far as legendaries are concerned, you guys have your 77 clovers right? You know that the byproduct of clover farming are T6 mats right?

You are aware that on average, most people get their 77 clovers in about 220 attempts? Even if we take an upper ceiling, say 250, that’s still 173 failed attempts. Considering that each failed attempt gives 1-4 t6 mat, that is if you get t6 mats because it can drop a lot of other stuff, you are still going to be very short. If I am bring extremely generous with my math here and say you get 4 mats each failure, 173×4 is 692 t6 mats. You need 2000 t6 mats in total.

I have no sympathy for anyone who complains about their value loss in the precursor price crash.

What is a precursor? It’s just a berserker exotic with a superior sigil of rage and a common skin. People attach greater value to it only because it’s a component of the legendary. It almost feels like precursors are derivatives. You are buying it for it’s potential future worth.

Yet somehow, Shaman’s Etched weapons are nearly worthless, despite them being precursors for corrupted weapons.

Ps: I got my precursor through the hard and expensive way of throwing bows at the MF. And I still would like to see precursor prices fall to normal exotic ranges.

When Guild Wars 2 was announced with their goals, intentions and very importantly, their manifesto, everyone had a good image and impression on what game is all going to be about. Guild Wars 2 was going to be a game with its own rules, its own setting, its own environment.

The problem is somehow, in the world of MMOs, people are more than conservative about the concepts of what an MMO should be. Everything seems to stem from the mould of EQ and gamers can’t seem to ever let go. Is this a problem? Perhaps.

Gamers talk a lot about how they constantly want something different. They whine about how this is a clone, that is a copy, this is a rip-off, but ultimately look at the sales figures. Quake, Halo, Half-life, Call of Duty, shooter after shooter comes out each year. Same old concept copied over and over. Yet it continually sells. We are such hypocrits. We keep yelling at the games companies for new IP, for new ideas, for new concepts, but really we only want the games companies to tweak it to our taste. And we will keep yelling until something fits in our exact hole for their peg to squeeze in. New IP has continually shown to fail or sell poorly. We haven’t been able to put our money where our mouths are.

With Guild Wars 2, the developers started out well. They showed us previews, they gave us trailers, they posted blogs and they actively engaged in the community. Very importantly, they announced a manifesto, something very few developers dare do.

There is a problem with manifestos though. People attach a lot of importance to them. It becomes a promise made by them to us. It becomes an established standard of what you should expect from this game. It was the rules of the game to us.

Games around the world all have established rules. Tennis has set rules for players to play by and follow. Football has rules for your gear and how to play. Basketball has rules on the court, how to play, the ball size, etc. All games have rules. You learn the rules, you stick by the rules and you play the game by the rules. Rules do sometimes change, but has anyone seen any rule change that turns a game into something you don’t recognize?

Guild Wars 2 tried to be different. The manifesto showed us that. It was a game that established a few groundrules that we expected to be followed. Problem stems with us. Gamers are too conservative. There is a concept of MMOs that must be followed and Guild Wars 2 did not follow it. The extreme few yelled loudly enough about it and now we see Ascended gear thrust upon us.

What did that ultimately prove? History shows many MMOs promising plenty at the beginning and changing direction a few months or years into the game, turning into something that is wasn’t meant to be. Yet why is it MMOs can continue to persist in such changes? MMO histories have shown that such major changes have rarely ever worked for the better. Apart from 1, every MMO has consistently showed that such changes always worked against the MMO. Somehow, MMOs persist in this behavior, self-destructive as they may be. It is almost like not only do gamers remain overly conservative in their mindsets, but developers are also unable to break the mould of continually doing more of the same.

Ultimately, the outcry over Ascended gear is that the manifesto promised no gear progression. Gear progression eventually crept in. The outcry is expected. However should I be continually surprised that this would happen? I guess I should be jaded enough to know that throughout the history of MMOs, the more they try to be different, the more they end up converging as much as possible.

Still, doesn’t mean I have to like what has happened.

Just imagine the outcry if Americans watching soccer wondered why if soccer is called football around the world, and yet you couldn’t run with the ball, whined loudly enough that FIFA changed the rules of soccer to allow you to run with the ball. I can imagine the world will not tolerate it.

In the world of MMOs, we always tolerate such changes. Maybe the reason it happens is us.

My worry is what will happen to all those exotics that needs gifts to craft?

So many exotics recipes, which even Linsey claimed is still undiscovered, are going to be ignored artwork now because the people who are not going to grind, won’t get them. The people who can grind for them are going to go for the Ascended gear instead.