Guild Wars 2

Dedlaw.9130:

Just….no more undead…please?

I’m with that. Zombies are SO overdone, and ever since “Night of the Living Dead”, every – and I do mean EVERY – portrayal of undead in the mass media is follow-the-leader. Whatever happened to the old-school voodoo version of zombies?

Tanith.5264:

The wiki describes the Aetherblades as “sky pirates”.

So either they worship the dragons and are offended by the effigy ceremony, or the waterways of Tyria are so overcrowded by pirates some of them had to take to the air.

Or maybe some Pact personnel went rogue, stole a couple of airships from Fort Trinity and took to the skyways. I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of these Aetherblades in the “Sky Pirates” content coming up later this month.

Lusts.3890:

locoman.1974:

Sorry about the off-topic, but something that I’ve been wondering lately… how do you keep track of how many coffers you’ve opened? I’ve seen people talking about “I oppened about X coffers”, but in several threads I’ve seen posts like CelebrityX that says exactly how many. Do you keep a counter or something?.

Going back on topic, one thing that I’d like to know is whether the DR is affecting the coffers somehow. I’m saying this because I got a ticket (no minis so far, though) with a guesstimate of between 150 and 200 coffers (based on the fact that I had 73/300 holographic things killed back then and I felt I was getting 3x more coffers from mobs), and well, I wasn’t really farming them back then, just getting them as I played, and opening them as soon as I got them, and I know of at least 3 guildies that got tickets while playing that way as well (granted, it’s a very large guild), while at the same time I keep reading of people buying them off the TP in the thousands and getting nothing after (I guess) opening them all at once. Just wondering a bit.

This is actually interesting. I am glad you brought this up, because I am seeing the difference as well. People who buy them rarely get them as drops, but people who actually kill for them do.

Also, most of us can keep track of them because we buy them by the stacks (A stack being 250 each). So it’s just basic math as long as we keep track of how many stacks we buy.

As I intimated in my previous post, it seems that people who are actually going out and killing enemies to get coffers as loot appear to have a more satisfactory experience with the contents than those who rely on buying them from the TP. It may be completely subjective, of course, but that’s how it looks. And it’s a lot cheaper, too.

Mordule Standish.2371:

Sounds like a gambling addiction. The only ‘insane’ thing is that you kept buying them.

I bought 0 coffers, opened about 300 from drops only. I got one ticket, 3 or 4 knight minis, and a wing cover. Oh the cover was from a small chest drop not a coffer. I am feeling lucky now but this is the first ticket of any sort that I have found. The reason for my response is not to gloat but to state that it is completely unnecessary to buy them.

Personally I think buying coffers, rich or normal, is a mug’s game. I haven’t been keeping count of how many coffers I’ve obtained so far from drops (probably a couple of stacks’ worth), but I’ve gotten three knight minis to date (kept one and sold the other two), haven’t gotten any tickets or wing covers yet but there’s plenty of time yet. The only thing I don’t like about the items I’ve gotten from the coffers so far is that fireworks are soulbound, so there’s nothing to do with them but set them off once you’ve gotten your fireworks achievement. It’s kind of irksome to see them stacking up in one of the slots in your character’s backpack when you don’t particularly want to set them off any more and you have no way to get rid of them except throwing them away, but you hate to throw anything away.

I’m enjoying Dragon Bash too. Complainers gotta complain (and by now I think we’ve gotten complaints about just about EVERYTHING in the game), but this event is fun, especially because I was pretty inactive from October-December and missed the first Halloween and Wintersday, didn’t finish Flame and Frost and missed most of the Southsun things so this is actually the first special event I’ve really participated in.

Ken DeBoer.9268:

These people remind me of the 3 year old whiners rolling on the floor screaming that they can’t get the new toy a day before Christmas. JUST WAIT. You will get it, just like everyone else.

Maybe you should take a day off from the game, it is getting too cereal.

The way people are carrying on about those wings and sometimes throwing digital tantrums because they can’t get them, one would think that those were items that you would literally be crippled in playing the game without. This whole overheated reaction would make a lot more sense if, you know, you actually needed these wings for any actual game-related purpose (say, making vistas and jumping puzzles a lot easier by just flying there). No such luck, though; they just sit on your back flapping in the wind and looking pretty.

Also, it’s “Flame Legion”, not “Fire Legion”.

Kidel.2057:

probably it is not meant to count guys.

If it’s not meant to count, then why go to the trouble of coding it and putting it in in the first place when the rewards (dragon coffer, Zhaitaffy) can be just as easily (or more easily) be obtained other ways? I also think it’s a bug.

I’m also bugged. I finished Dragon Ball Devotee this morning (still need 11 wins to get the other achievement) but the completed achievement isn’t appearing on the Dragon Ball Experience track.

Believe me, it was a LOT worse in GW1, and we didn’t have the option to jump over obstacles there. I guess I have the opposite reaction to the others in this thread so far; I find the GW2 map much easier to move around in, overall, than the GW1 map.

I think I’ve only gotten one gold-seller letter all week. Good work, ANet! Now get started on those pests beginning with “b”.

I heartily endorse this message. It’s a real pain in the gluteus maximus to have to go hunt through Google to find a decent view of the armor or weapon you’re interested in, and the in-game icons are hopelessly generic. Add my vote for a preview option in the Trading Post!

I’m looking forward, myself, to seeing Mad Queen Malafide return. (She made a spectacular departure from the world of GW1 at Halloween 2010, with the promise that she’d return at Halloween in GW2. Note; This is a well-known GW1 player, not a NPC, who used to host a whole day’s worth of events at Lion’s Arch back in GW1 days. Her only drawback is that she can’t stand mesmers, and my main is a mesmer. I’ll have to attend on my warrior alt in case she shows up. :P )

This is an issue where I see both sides of the story have validity. On the one hand, I understand very well that players need to find groups for the various modes of the dungeons and that the current LFG system is badly inadequate. On the other hand, after spending the weekend working my way through Fireheart Rise and seeing the map chat being COMPLETELY overrun with “LFG story CoF” or “LFG explorable (insert path) CoF” messages, I understand why ANet felt they had to do something to get this under control.

The real solution, as I see it, is to bring back a version of the party search system that GW1 had in the outposts, adjusting it for the new environment so that it can be broadcast mapwide. Just click the “party” button in your contacts window, go to “story” or “explorable” and hey presto, you’re presented with a list of people who need groups. Of course, the issue would be that it wouldn’t really be applicable to areas that don’t have dungeons. I think that could be worked around, though…

I FINALLY got that skill point done on my Asura engineer last night (Henge of Denravi server), but that was because I moved in to do it right after the game update. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s broken again by now. ANet – this is really getting to the point of parody. This has been an ongoing problem for weeks now, but it still hasn’t been permanently fixed. I don’t think it’s a minor problem because it’s preventing many people, like me on that character until last night, from completing that map. Any such issue qualifies, to me, as a “blocking progress” bug and needs to be a priority for you to fix, not just left to the weekly server reboots for temporary, catch-as-catch can fixes. Please, PLEASE get on this and repair it for good ASAP.

I actually paid $80 for the Digital Deluxe edition, and so far, I’d say without qualification that it’s been worth. Every. Single. Cent.

I just brought my second character to level 80 today in Fireheart Rise, and she’s still got a substantial amount of map to explore. She’s hiding out in an Ash Legion outpost right now because she doesn’t feel like battling Flame Legion on a Saturday night. :P I’ve been playing many hours every single day since headstart and I haven’t gotten jaded or bored yet, and knock on wood, won’t for a long, long time.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Azjenco.9425:

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to help him out around the starter level. We played quite a bit, the whole morning from level 5-20ish.

Now I wanted him to have the full experience, so we did story, DEs, a bit of crafting and I showed him around. Now, he was teleporting about and I followed. For him it was less than 10c to do so, while for me it was over a silver.

I actually made quite a loss that morning. The scraps sold for few coppers and the rest of the drops were bad. I didn’t find anything useful, or worth selling, so I salvaged most so I could level crafting a bit. I maybe died here and there when I got kitteny and an veteran with too many adds got me, or a huge boss battle, but my repairs weren’t a lot. The waypoints got me, and all in all I lost over 50s.

I’ve never helped a low level character after that.

It’s understandable but to be honest… why did you way-point everywhere? Level 1 thru 20 on my alts I barely use way-points except to divinity’s reach for a number of times. You waypointed at least 25-35 times during that time. I dunno what area you are in – but that’s an fair guess at the number of times. My suggestion if running with a lowbie – plan out your trip a bit more carefully next time. you already been thru the zone – if I’m leveling with a lowbie for example in queensdale, I know exactly what hearts to hit in what order and what waypoints are worth taking and when. for my lowbie alt that I currently have – I only used the way-point an handful of times to divinity’s reach during questing.

I agree the waypoint cost fee is a tad too high in lower zones sometimes. But you can’t be waypoint happy either.

I agree with that last. My own policy is to try to keep waypoint travel to an irreducible minimum and use it within a zone only for recovering from a defeat and getting to a major event quickly. Otherwise, I have my character run everywhere, and use the PvP window to travel back to Lion’s Arch for free between zones and then to one of the racial home cities. It doesn’t usually take that long to get to your target zone from one of the home cities if you’re careful to avoid big fights and stick to the main roads which are (usually) more or less free of enemies. Frex, I can generally get across Plains of Ashford from the Black Citadel to Blazeridge Steppes or Iron Marches in about 15 minutes, with only a few clashes with enemies en route (and you can usually outrun them if you don’t get distracted). The exception, of course, would be the Orr zones in the south, but those are really remote areas.

For instance, to get to Frostgorge Sound, my warrior character will start out in Lion’s Arch, then waypoint for free to Hoelbrak, go into Wayfarer Foothills, and run north to Solitude Waypoint, marking the portal to Frostgorge. Total cost: zero. Total elapsed time; maybe 15 minutes, counting loading times, if, as I said, you take care to stay on the main paths and avoid getting into serious battles.

My norn warrior, Anita Sentasdottir, at the asura gate in Black Citadel, in transit to Fireheart Rise (having just finished the Iron Marches and offloaded her collectibles at Lion’s Arch). She’s just about 100k from level 80.

Running around in circles…heh heh. I remember how, during slow patches in GW1, I used to amuse myself sprinting around outposts as though I were competing in the Tyrian Olympics.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Confusion. What area is this?

Bloodtide Coast. The character (and the renown heart he appears in) are shout-outs to the classic musical by Gilbert & Sullivan, “The Pirates of Penzance”.

Server: Henge of Denravi (US)
Location: Metrica Province – Loch Jezt
Skill challenge: Defeat Utcua
Bug: NPC is lying dead

As of today, this skill challenge is still broken some 2 weeks after I first started actively playing my Asura character. In fact, somebody in map chat told me just now that this might not be so much a bug as that some people might be actively sabotaging the skill point by, and I quote, “leashing the NPC outside of the range for which it’s been coded”. I think this should be investigated.

I did this quest on my warrior this morning and succeeded the first time; the only real issue I had was that I got confused on where the southern exit was and wandered around for about 15 minutes until I figured out I had to go back into the cave.

Seems to me that you need to do three basic things:

1) Follow all the steps that the game gives you (in the upper right corner of the screen).
2) Related to that, hit all the locations that the game points you to. In particular, going up to the top of the slope where the first group of researchers is/breaking through the barricades/popping in and out of the lean-to at the top of the slope might be a requirement to trigger the next step.
3) Make sure that the NPC’s are able to deliver all their dialogue and that all the cutscenes play out. SuperSonic pointed out something potentially very important here; after the second team is located, Trahearne gives a brief cutscene, two sentences, but if you engage in combat immediately after reaching the team, he might not be able to do that cutscene and that might block the quest from completing.

The message “That content has been temporarily disabled” has nothing whatsoever to do with this specific quest. I assume you saw it when killing risen grubs; as pointed out in many other places, it was part of a fix ANet was putting in place to deter people who were overfarming risen grubs.

I have to admit that I think I’m missing something here, because I did Forging the Pact this morning on my warrior and completed it; the only issue I had was that I went the wrong way and fumbled around for about 15 minutes until I figured out that I needed to go back into the cave and go to the blocked exit. I think what would help is a walkthrough, step by step, by the players who are having problems completing the chapter, because from my (admittedly scattershot) review of the threads it seems like something small but important is being missed by some players that’s causing them to not be able to proceed. One thing that you might need to look at is whether you’re going all the way up to the top of the slope where the first group of researchers is, breaking through the barricades and entering the lean-to at the top of the slope (which triggers, if my faulty memory serves, a brief cutscene). In short, I think “Forging the Pact” might be one of those things where you need to do everything in a certain sequence or it doesn’t work right.

Are you absolutely sure it’s a bug, or perhaps some step that you might have missed in completing the chapter? I ask this because I did “Forging the Pact” on my warrior just about an hour and a half ago and completed it successfully. From what I’ve read, and it’s a bit scattershot, the problem seems to be coming because the barricades in front of the first group of researchers are often not being cleared/destroyed (I did that so didn’t experience the bug, if bug it actually is).

Overall good patch, but at least one of the skill challenges (the hylek chief in Metrica Province) still needs to be fixed.

I always took off any piece of armor that was to be transmuted before the procedure anyway because I assumed that that was necessary – I never knew about this nudity bug/glitch. Can’t see that this particular update makes any practical difference to the way I do things.

I just arrived at Loch Jezt all ready to finish this area (which I’ve been waiting for since last week) and the skill challenge is still broken. I’ve already submitted a bug report but I wanted to make my opinion known here. This really is out of order, particularly when you’ve fixed so many other skill challenges and events. You need to get on this right now even if you have to do a hotfix.

As I suggested elsewhere, one thing that could help bring bots under control is to take out or alter the dynamic events that seem to be most bot-susceptible. The Kessex Hills bridge-repair battle is a good case in point, as are other events that basically consist of defending a static location against waves of enemy assaults. Those events seem to be the most liable to exploitation by botters since, as Alesana pointed out, “Bots stand around in one area with events that respawn in short timer periods”. Taking out or changing those sorts of events would be a good way to ameliorate the bot problem without having to go to alternatives like DR.

I’ve got about 60 of those chests sitting in my own bank storage by now, with no keys to open them. And, honestly, I don’t feel inclined to buy the keys necessary to open them, because I just don’t think what you get out of them is generally worth it. Especially the tonics, which seem to be purely for fun in GW2 as opposed to GW1 where you could at least get party points by using them. I’d be all for a system of recycling the chests through the Mystic Forge.

Ha ha – got me going there for a second.

RaZaC.1963:

caresse.8642:

RaZaC.1963:

Rise.9702:

Is the botting really that bad in this game that you would just up and quit after spending 60 bucks for it? lol. I give it time and let Anet do something about it…Lord knows when, but soon™ I hope. xP

I’ve never seen a bot in my 170 hours of gameplay, though i’m just level 60 and i suppose the bots are in level 80 area’s.

Kessex Hills. The broken bridge the centaurs want to repair. At least on the eight servers I’ve played on – they never go away. There are other prime spots, too. that one is just a classic. It can be fun to sit there watching all those ‘players’ firing at nothing and spamming F and hearing the NPC greetings every two seconds for half an hour.

Well i’ve been there once so cant really comment on that. I never really “look” for bots, maybe its my ignorance but i just dont really see any obvious bots. The bots i’m used to are the ones from Aion. In Aion (NCSoft MMorpg) you have to grind allot and bots ruin the grind cuz they “steal” your mobs. Thats where i did notice bots allot, in GW2 though because of the way the game works bots dont really anoy me(yet).

I’ve been there several times during the BWE’s and several weeks ago when I was taking my first character through the game (I’ve only now just gotten another character into the area, so I have to go down there again and see for myself how things are), but I do remember that during beta, and several weeks ago, that place was a magnet for players anyway, never mind bots. I got irritated with that particular DE because it was always so swarmed with players that it was difficult to even be able to kill anything to get credit. That’s probably one thing that made it an attractive target for botters, and as I suggested in my previous post. ANet should probably look at changing or removing DE’s like that that depend too much on waves of enemies attacking a static location. DE chains involving a lot of movement and several events spread out over a sizable area don’t seem to be hit nearly as hard by bots, in my own experience.

Hmmmmmm. Not quite on-topic, but regarding Kessex Hills and other such DE’s that are bot magnets, I should think that a possible solution would be to just take those particular DE’s out entirely and replace them with other DE’s that are much more difficult to bot. That particular DE, as I recall from beta, seems to repeat too often and in too predictable a pattern in the first place, which is probably why it and similar DE’s are lucrative targets for bots. Conversely, DE chains like the one in Harathi Hinterlands that begins with Kol Skullsmasher and ends up at the centaurs’ HQ camp in Kingsgate are complex, drawn-out affairs that are comparatively difficult for a bot to set up for (especially as that chain involves a long run halfway across the area map, killing things as you go, and if I understand correctly most bots are set up in one place to stay in that place and just kill things over and over again in a static fashion), or the DE chains in Wayfarer Foothills involving the Svanir Shaman and Svanir Marauder as the end bosses, which are similar in involving several different events and a lot of movement, so you just don’t see as many bots in places like that.

vjek.4270:

CC Eva.6742:

… Nynja, we delete those specific posts here because this sticky will benefit all of us if we keep it for discussion and feedback only. Thanks for your understanding.

The report function doesn’t work, Eva. The bots are everywhere. This is the only way to get any kind of a response. If you agree the bots are everywhere, go in the game and ban them. Otherwise, what else are we supposed to do as customers? Stop playing? How is that good for you?

“The report function doesn’t work”? I really don’t understand that statement when people make it. How do they think it’s supposed to work? We’ve been arguing about this issue for at least a couple of weeks now and we have ANet’s statement at the beginning of this thread. They’re collecting and analyzing all the information on bots that comes in to them via reports and when they have developed strategy and programming to really deal with them they are going to go after them. They’re not sitting on their hands doing nothing. I think the problem here is that people are expecting instant action on an issue that won’t respond to off-the-cuff action (I mean, look at how many people have pointed out that the buggy, band-aid DR system hasn’t really done that much to slow down botters).

I also don’t understand all the continued pleas and demands for “information” and “response” on this matter when the fact is that business security is involved here. Don’t you think that botters and gold farmers are monitoring this thread and similar ones? ANet has to be very, VERY careful about what they say about how they’re going to deal with this problem because if they let slip something they shouldn’t, botters will be able to figure out what’s being proposed to be done and work out something to get around it and then we’ll be right back where we started or even worse off. Bluntly speaking, we don’t have the need to know the details of ANet’s developing response to botters. Anyone who’s ever worked with safeguarding classified or business-confidential information should understand.

Nosferatu.7418:

It seems everyone want to exploit the Magg’s path in order to get an extra loot chest. It has gotten to the point that I just got kicked out a group when I mentioned it, meaning my time was just wasted, with no tokens to show for it. This makes me extremely angry as a player, since I feel forced to exploit if I want to pug the content and finish the dungeon. Please fix this Anet, and punish those that have been knowingly using this.

I believe there is already at least one thread about this over in Game Bugs, though I don’t have the link, and IIRC it’s been announced that the dev team is proceeding to look at closing this exploit with tonight’s update or next week’s.

The “game day” starts at 12 midnight GMT, which is 8 pm Eastern Time/5 pm Pacific Time. Since today is the last day of the month, fairly obviously the new month began at 12 midnight GMT forty-two minutes ago. It’s unfortunate for those who didn’t manage to get their monthlies completed before the cutoff time, but that’s just how it is. ANet has to set a schedule somewhere and basing it on Greenwich/Universal Time is pretty much the most reasonable option IMO. Somebody is going to get the short end of the stick no matter what time a certain event is scheduled at, and that’s also just how it is.

I had to turn it over mentally for a moment before I figured out, but now I get it, and you’re right. The filter is much too restrictive.

Getting back on topic, though, I don’t know what all is going to be in the 10/1 and 10/8 patches, but I definitely do hope that something will be put in place to fix (more or less permanently) the ongoing problems with broken skill challenges, at the least. I have a relatively new character who hasn’t been able to finish the two areas that he’s done everything else in (Queensdale and Metrica Province) because of a broken skill challenge in each zone. Two other characters are waiting to complete Gendarran Fields because the skill challenge at Vigil Keep has been broken for a week or more. And let’s not even get into DE’s.

I’ve filled two folders with screenshots already and am working on a third.

Well, maybe not botters, but I think it’s fairly inarguable that a substantial portion of the people complaining about DR “ruining their game” are farmers of one item or another.

Guild Wars 2 is, without a doubt, the most complex game I have ever played, and I’ve been playing PC games for nearly 20 years and board games for pretty much my entire life. Back in the old days (circa 1980!) of board wargaming, one company released a game on the North African campaign during World War II that was so complex that it even included rules for measuring the water used by soldiers for cooking. GW2 makes that game look like checkers by comparison with the sheer scale of the programming that’s been done. I’ve done my share of griping about bugs, but I’ll be honest; the real wonder is not that there are so many bugs in the game, but that it works so well – others who know better than I can tell you all about the far, far worse foulups that have afflicted other games (e.g., the notorious Diablo 3 fiasco where the servers wouldn’t let anyone log in at launch). I still think that a number of problems are down to the servers’ being left to operate for too long at a time and could be solved by re-instituting daily reboots, but I also recognize that with all the code that the dev team has to go through, one does, to use the old meme, not simply whack away at a line of code and declare a bug fixed.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, the servers were rebooted without fail every day at midnight Pacific/3 am Eastern/8 am Greenwich. I don’t know what changed this policy, but since ANet went to weekly instead of daily updates, we’ve obviously seen these problems with bugged events and skill challenges multiplying. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; daily server resets need to be re-instituted ASAP. That won’t solve every bug issue with the game but it’ll solve many issues with events that are breaking down because the computers have been left running too long.

The reason you are seeing that message is that some people were exploiting that event to farm risen grubs without killing the giant. Therefore, ArenaNet has temporarily disabled drops from risen grubs entirely.

I thought I would attach a screenshot of the bugged skill challenge as it exists this morning. The NPC hylek chief is now lying dead well inside the enclosure, whereas befroe the patch it was lying dead at the entrance. This has been going on for well over a week, since I started playing my Asura character actively.

Same bug on Henge of Denravi. My asura elementalist has been waiting a week or more to finish his starter zone, and I went back to that location yesterday to see if the bug had been fixed; it had not.

Couldn’t you have just switched to your elementalist and picked up the gear on that character, or purchased another bank storage pane?

That happened to me last evening during the personal story episode on my engineer where I was exploring a cave near Junction Haven for the Priory. I thought it was a bug until I saw a thread earlier today where somebody was complaining about not being able to farm risen grubs anymore (during some event where a risen giant spawns these creatures) and mentioned the message.

Have you been killing risen grubs? That message now pops up when you slay one; it’s a by-product of a routine ArenaNet put in at the last patch to fix an exploit where people were overfarming risen grubs.

See elsewhere in this forum. ANet disabled drops from risen grubs temporarily to shut down an exploit where some people were over-farming them during an event.

No, this isn’t a bug (I thought it was at first). This message is due to ArenaNet’s attempting to close down an exploit where some people were overfarming risen grubs during an event.

What’s the best way to complete this episode successfully on a warrior? I tried this but the Risen kept coming in wave after wave after wave and I finally gave up after having ten pieces of armor damaged (yes, you read that right, ten; I had several pieces in reserve in my backpack). I think I must have done something wrong last time but I’m not sure exactly what. Maybe I made a mistake in defending too far forward instead of back toward the mass of hylek defenders. Does anyone have any advice? (My warrior, by the way, is level 50, doing a level 47 quest, so level isn’t an issue here.)

When I was last through Gendarran Fields on my way to Lion’s Arch this morning, the bugged skill challenges and DE’s in that area pretty much dominated /map conversation. I imagine it’s the same way in any other area that has several bugs blocking people from completing the map. Harathi Hinterlands and Lornar’s Pass are still working OK, but I don’t know how much longer that will hold up if the servers aren’t rebooted soon.