Guild Wars 2

Caliburn.1845:

Cube.4905:

Just a WE mesmer, waiting to rez through the gate in our EK, very sportsmanlike. And here he is failing his attempt

You mean WK I believe. And he wasn’t waiting for a res(that was removed from the game awhile ago), he was just hoping Mag wouldn’t mesmer sweep.

From the screenshot it looks like he got his res, then was attempting to escape for a portal back in. He went from being inside dead, to being outside alive. And the tag is clearly WE, and he seems to have dropped the tag before attempting to escape. Maybe he thought that would make ID’ing him harder for any potential reports for exploiting.

Wasn’t the removed aspect the ability to use a portal through a door (requires line of sight now)? Maybe it was just possible to get LoS through that non-solid gate, but I’m pretty sure ressing through a door still works.

TheBigfootNZ.4605:

More of tonight please. I dont mind loosing or small victories, i just dont like loosing badly or getting no victories.

Tonight was what I play this game for.

Tonight was some of the best wvw I’ve had in a long time. The fights at SM and Vel were amazing. I’m glad I stayed up tonight to be a part of it.

Great job to my fellow Yaks, thanks to DB for the great battles, and props to Mag for giving us all a good laugh in between the fights. This is one night I won’t be forgetting.

sabrina as ranger.3125:

I wouldn’t call it a peace march, id say we were all bored because of the outman buff we had for most of the night in EB so we decided to go to Db spawn and dance and it just happened like that, it was still fun though

We spotted you guys in the water between Anazlias and Overlook, and were trying to figure out what was going on. That was definitely one of the highlights of the guild vent for tonight.

I would prefer to have an expansion coming later this year than more of the same “content updates” we’ve been getting. We’re almost 8 months past release, and the content we’ve seen added is nowhere what Factions added to GW1, and that was released exactly one year after Prophecies. We’ve had no permanent content added aside from Southsun, which is a completely worthless map (although beautifully crafted) with a couple dynamic events in it, and FotM for people that enjoy dungeon grinding. Halloween, Wintersday, and SAB are nice, but they are temporary and still very little actual playable content.

Absolutely everything that has been added can be fully experienced in just a couple hours. The only technical exceptoin is FotM, and that’s only because the difficulty increases. The content is still the same, we’re just given reasons to want to repeat it over and over. The same applies to guild missions.

The entire Flame and Frost living story doesn’t have any life to it at all. The majority of it is nothing but busy work of collecting pointless items or interacting with objects/NPCs. I really have no desire to go back to Hoelbrak every day to see if some NPC has a new sentence worth of barely relevant story to tell me. The playable content is just some “kill the horde” events and 2 short instances. I completed those instances the day they were added, and have had nothing else to do with this “living story”, because there is nothing else to do.

I know they said F&F was some sort of test run for living content, but Anet has already proven they can do better living stories with GW1. The War in Kryta spanned months, had multiple long missions that were actually challenging content, had a viral marketing campaign behind it with lots of lore, and played off of lore and characters that were around since release. I can’t even believe F&F was made by the same company/people that gave us WiK. WiK even gave us better/more interesting “busy work” like boss bounties that gave meaningful/useful rewards, compared to F&F’s “rewards” being stuffed behind the horrible RNG of overpriced gemstore chests/keys.

That being said, I enjoyed (still do enjoy) the content the game was released with, and would like to see more of that. I don’t want a time-sink dungeon and daily laurel to grind out for months to gear up characters. If it has to be grind like this, at least make it for optional/cosmetic items, not the only way to get must-have better stats. Looking back at GW1, the daily Zaishen Quests were a much better idea than the current daily/laurels, in both playable content and rewards.

Anet spent 8 years learning how to build upon an amazing game, and they did a great job with it. Now it just feels like every one of those lessons has been forgotten. Look back on those lessons instead of doing these knee-jerk reactions that are pulling the game in several directions at once, and will do nothing but continue to fragment the playerbase.

There was a post about this last week that got a couple dev responses. They are aware of it, and a fix is on the way.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mesmer-shatters-a-checkered-square/

That is epic. Major props to your server for coming up with that tactic. It’s insane, absurd, and completely amazing.

edit:
Just to let you know, a few of us on YB did this for laughs after taking that keep on DB’s borderland. We were massively outmanned, but it was still amusing to see that little thing with a cart, ram, ballista, cata, and treb on it. I’d say DB’s defenders got a laugh out of it, as well.

We will have to do it properly some other time, when it’s more than a ninja capping team.

1. siege blueprints
2. wvw ranks (keep abilities chosen char based)
3. Fractal level
4. dye (this was the way it was advertised to be before release)
5. soulbound weapons – Their is already no ability to sell off weapons you don’t use anymore, other than to a merchant NPC for a few silver.

Agreed that this needs changed, but it’s not just eles or that skill. I’ve had arrow carts get destroyed while using them, despite not taking any damage myself, or seeing any AoE circles near the cart. I’ve had this happen a few times in the last week in situations where any AoE able to hit the cart would have been hitting me as well.

I’ve also seen arrow carts used to destroy siege inside a tower (on the ground, not on the walls) in the last couple weeks’ T3 matchup.

I’ve seen this (usually only in fights with more than a few players around) since the February patch. Seems to happen most often during dragon or other meta events, and in wvw.

Glad to know the issue has been found.

Malevil.2104:

Turning off titles would make exactly zero difference in cluttering your screen in zerg on your picture. As was already said, option to turn off titles would make titles completly pointless. Seriously, you dont even see real names in wsw so actualy that red text is even more pointless than those titles …

Actually, that red text is the nameplates of every character in range being shown because it is very important to know how many enemies you are facing. I don’t care what their names actually are, but I do care how many of them there are. Without the red nameplates there would be no way of knowing how many players were there beyond the models actually being rendered. Would you really want those nameplates gone, and your PC trying to render an entire 100 player enemy zerg, plus your allied forces?

The white title text takes an already cluttered sceen (cluttered for a good reason, however) and adds up to double (even more with long titles) the clutter on top of that.

Substance E.4852:

lol show me a screenshot where you actually have 100-150 people even visible at once.
Really, do it right now, I’d love to see this because it would never, ever happen before the culling changes.

This is just the front end of the zerg. I’m not sure how many are in this group, but there are a lot more around the corner that were in view shortly after this was taken. My screen is cluttered enough with all the red names, I don’t need white titles adding even more to that.

A few hours before this, the other team had a zerg that made this one look small.

Excursion.9752:

Clicking on people is ridiculous just to see that info, I’m glad its out in the open now. I don’t know about everyone else but if someone is proud of something that they done in the game I’m happy for them and I also very happy then can show it off now.

They have been able to show it off since release. If I care enough about you to give a kitten about your title, I’ll target you and see what it is. If you’re some random dude passing by me in LA or an invader I’m trying to kill, I don’t care how many dead bodies you’ve fondled back to life.

g e o.2589:

OMFG just turn off player name visibility, it’s not a big deal not to see a name. If you’re interested in the player you can just get a cursor to them it’s not a big deal to see or not to see green crap text all over the screen.

That might be acceptable for pve (I don’t think it is, however), but it is not acceptable at all for wvw. Showing names is a must in wvw.

I completely agree about GW2 being a game that needs to be populated. But none of this has really helped that at all. FotM actually hurt it at lot by drawing people into “must do” instanced content. What we need is something to get people into the open world as a whole, not just getting them online for 30-60 minutes to do a few dailes in Queensdale.

The only encouragement to fill the open world is those daily tasks, and people either get those with activities they were already doing (like FotM or dragon/meta events) or by going to the starter/low level zones. The level 30-75 maps are still empty most of the time.

The only time these maps get populated is during events with a chest, and that’s from people going to that map and leaving as soon as the event is over. The map isn’t populated, one tiny part of it is populated for a few minutes.

Someone running around on a new level 5 character might benefit from the dailies crowd if they can manage to hit an event mob before 20 level 80s steamroll the entire thing in seconds. This happens at quite a few starter-zone events, especially in the few hours after dailies reset. It’s the players that choose to behave that way, but the dailies are an encouragement to do so.

Get to a level 50 map like Timerline Falls, and you might as well be in a single player game. Last time I was in that map (this past week) I saw more bots than I did actual players…and I only saw 2-3 bots.

The explorable modes for dungeons scale down for level 35, 45, etc, but they are geared towards being completed by level 80 players with exotic gear. It’s not like most other games where a level 80 can just sweep through a level 40 dungeon solo. Downscaling keeps the content valid, even for level 80s. Downscaling could help to make the entire game end-game content, but the downscaling in the open world still leaves most areas as trivial for a level 80.

Even so, I would prefer some more dungeons that were level 80. The downscaling system does kind of wreak havoc on stats like +crit damage, healing power, and condition damage.

EzRemake.1860:

There is no end game though. Time gate grinding is not an endgame, it’s a tranquilizer. Actual end game would be content to persue. Once you get all your ascended gear, you are right back to stage 1 : nothing to do.

I don’t think I’d say there was no end game. The actual end-game goals (at release) are the same as the ones GW1 had. Going after rare/prestige weapons that were only cosmetic upgrades. The difference is how those are acquired. With GW1, most of them were RNG/luck from doing a certain dungeon or other end-game area. GW2 takes the route of making them all a set grind of gathering materials, some with horribly low drop rates (thinking about lodestones here).

People seem to find the former method more enjoyable, and I’m not talking about just for games. As with the slot machine reference earlier, people tend to enjoy getting lucky more than slowly working towards a goal.

Ask yourselves one simple question: Which of the following would you find more fun/enjoyable?
1) Working an hour at your job to earn $15, knowing that no matter what you do, you are getting no more or less than $15.
2) Playing a slot machine(or any other sort of money gambling game) for an hour, and making (or even losing) $15, but knowing you have a chance to win $1500.

Red Falcon.8257:

Hope you guys realize this time gating thing was made as a measure to stop all those people from coming here again to cry there is no endgame all day.
You’re blaming Anet for something the majority of this community has requested.

We’ll never really know of the majority requested it, but I highly doubt that group that wanted it was a majority. The outcry against it was from a group at least as large, if not larger.

To me, their crying over “no end game” or “nothing to do” was largely invalid. Maybe there was nothing to do that appealed to them, but that does not mean there is nothing to do. There was a decent sized group that rushed to get legendary weapons, but was that really the only thing for them to do? GW2 has 8 professions, 5 races, 21 legendary weapons, and numerous other weapons that take a huge effort to craft. If someone decides to ignore all of that, why does that mean there is a problem with the game?

I do think it’s reasonable that Anet wanted to do something to appease this group, but they needed to do so in a manner that was not damaging to other types of players. The post-November outcry that is still continuing today is proof that they failed to do this.

EzRemake.1860:

Time gating like this is not a legitimate way to keep players around. The way you keep players, and get more, is by adding new content – new things to do in the game.

The last 3 weeks have just been:

-Log in
-Do daily Fractal
-Do daily
-Log off

It gets boring VERY fast, and gets you to the point where you ask yourself “Once I get all this daily stuff I’m grinding for, what then?”. You then quickly realize that there’s nothing else to do. You will always be repeating what you have been doing from the beginning.

I’m not to that point yet, largely because of not focusing on a single character. I do want a legendary for my necro (maybe more later), but getting the others in good gear is a priority over that because I like being able to pick any one of my characters for any activity. My necromancer has the commander tag, and will get the legendary, but that it not the only character I want to play in wvw.

The content available at release has been, and still is being, enough to keep me with things to do for a couple thousand hours. I don’t know just how many people ran out of things to do, but I doubt it was anywhere near the majority.

I agree with you that these daily goals are not enough to keep people playing. If I was only working on a single character, I would have a legendary by now. I probably would have had it a while ago. My focus would have shifted to other weapons, maybe a 2nd legendary or some of the Mystic Forge weapons. After that, if all I had left to do was daily FotM and a daily for Laurels, I would either leave or focus solely on wvw.

RoRO.8270:

Pretty sure anet said themselves they found players getting things too quickly so what better way to slow that down than gated content which artificially extends play time

I thought that was more for those that already had legendary weapons. There were already so many things to “work on” other than a legendary. It’s not like we had no gap between karma/crafted exotics and legendaries. A lot of the named weapons even take a considerable amount of the same items as legendaries, like various Gifts and lodestones. At the time this new tier was added, myself and everyone I play with, were still working on getting exotic gear for our characters. I’m still doing that for trying alternate builds for my characters.

Jski.6180:

Its like ppl who hate RNG but also hate all the different types of currency but in fact its these currency that are a counter to RNG.

I don’t mind RNG, as long as it’s not the primary(or only) method of getting something “required” or better. This was a lesson learned with FotM early on. The tokens, etc are a nice way to make sure those not lucky with RNG get rewarded, but I think RNG still has a place. For example, a rare chance for a dungeon chest to give you a “super token” or enough tokens get an entire set of armor.

It’s the same principle as a slot machine. How many people would keep tossing in quarters for hours and hours if it gave you back 26 cents each time? But they will sit there for hours and happily lose money for that small chance of winning big.

Raine.1394:

The grind is what is being gated by time. The carrot is more powerful gear. Dailies/monthlies/guild missions/fotm are the activities you grind to get the carrot. Standard MMO fare.

I do agree with this. It is a grind, it’s just spread out over time. There would probably be more people complaining about the grind if the timegate wasn’t there. The amount of grind is a lot less than the grind in some MMOs, but that doesn’t take away the fact that it’s still a grind. My problem with it is that there is nothing I can do to make gearing up my 8 characters any faster than going throw the entire wait 8x longer. That’s a minimum of 6 months of doing everything I can get to earn rewards, and I’m assuming there will be more pieces added before that six months is up…adding more months to the process.

I’ve seen all of the Fractals, and I think my guild has killed every one of the bounty bosses at least once. I’ve seen all the content there, so the reasons left to do it again are the rewards. The same applies to the other dungeons in the game, but the difference is those dungeons offer only cosmetic “upgrades” to gear.

Does anyone see a benefit to this, from a player perspective? Other than extending the process and keeping more people in the game for you to play with, is there anything good this does for you?

Maybe some of you like that hardcore players have a limiting fact that prevents them from getting ahead faster. I can’t think of anything else, which is why I’m asking.

My reasons for this thread were mainly centered around the impact this timegate has for alts/multi-character players. So does anyone else think the current system is too restrictive for alts? Would character based timegates be better?

I’m not doing FotM all that often, and my guild is only doing a Guild Missions (we only have Bounty and Trek) a couple times a week(I can only get rewards once anyway), so my daily progress on this gear chase is limited to the hour or so it takes to do the daily. My timegated wait is 8-10x longer than a single-character/build focused player. I have more than that hour a day to play, so should I be able to use some of that time to get some progress on my multiple characters at the same pace?

Vayne.8563:

Surely you remember the number of nothing to do threads from a few months ago. Now they’re the exception, not the rule.

This was discussed a little in another thread, not sure which, and there’s a good chance it’s deleted or tossed into one of the mega-threads. An attempt to compare the number of “nothing to do” threads to the complaints about ascended gear and grind/timegating. It seemed to lean towards the “nothing to do” threads being less common, but it’s nearly impossible to get an accurate picture with threads being lost/deleted/merged.

If I had to guess, I’d say that a good portion of those players left before any of this was added, and that quite a few never looked back, and never will at any time in the future. But, as with the forum threads, we will never know the real numbers behind it.

Forums being what they are, that was likely a situation of one vocal minority vs another vocal minority. The majority of players were most likely happy with the existing content/things to do. Anet’s decision about the “problem” was to actively appease one vocal minority, while creating another vocal minority that was adversely effected by their solution to what was, to them and the majority of players, a non-existant problem.

As a member of the latter vocal minority, I don’t think there was a a problem from a game standpoint. The content locusts surely did not have 8 level 80s, fully geared up for every build they would want to run, and had every legendary/rare named weapon they wanted that soon after the game’s release. If they really wanted something to do, they could get a legendary for an alt, collect every rare weapon they like, do wvw or spvp. They surely had options for things to do, but they chose to ignore them in favor of wanting progression of a single character. There is nothing wrong with wanting that, but Anet handled the situation by giving them what they wanted despite the fact that it was detrimental to another type/group of players.

In the end, we have the content locusts/vertical progression-lovers that are temporarily satisfied, the alt/horizonal progression-lovers that are permanently dissatisifed, and the majority that will continue on like none of this ever happened. My opinion is biased here, but I think I’d rather let the impossible to satisfy group fade away and focus on the group that was satisfied with things as they were. Anet chose to attempt to satisfy the locusts, for whatever reason.

I’m just trying to find the logic in appeasing one small group, at the cost of pushing away another (seemingly somewhat larger) small group.

Vayne.8563:

A cop out, dangling a carrot, instead of actual content. Program much?

Actual content takes ages to develop and release. Lest you forget, the Fractals are actual content. They didn’t write them in a weekend. Most good actual content takes so much time, that there’s no conceivable way that ANY developer anywhere in the world could create content as fast as content-locusts devour it. It’s completely 100% impossible.

So what every company does is make it so that it takes a long time to get stuff. WoW hides it behind raids that take a long time to learn, get the hang of and STILL have lock outs on raids. Guild Wars 2 does it the other way.

I prefer the Guild Wars 2 way, personally. Expecting enough content to keep people playing indefinitely shows a lack of understanding of how games are made.

No game I’ve played has come out with more initial content than Guild Wars 2. Then they’ve released the Fractals and some other cool stuff as well. The game is being built, like every MMO gets built. A bit at a time.

Look at how small Rift was at launch, or how much content even WoW offered at launch. We’re six months into the life cycle of an MMO. I think the company is doing pretty good.

In two years, there’ll be a lot more content. But until then, yes, there will be measures taken to slow people down.

I don’t see how that’s a cop out.

You’re right, they can’t keep up with the content locusts. No one could. But I think they are doing more harm than good in trying to keep that group occupied. You can’t keep them occupied with stat progression without making that progression a ridiculously slow progress for other types of players.

I’m not expecting any more content that what we’ve been getting. The cop out I was referring to is expecting this progression element keep people busy, when there are other options that would have taken similar programming efforts and kept more than a single type of player satisfied. This system might be great for the single-character content locusts that do Fractals every day and rush to get every guild commendation possible, but it’s a disaster for those that love alts. To me, that’s a cop out to everyone outside the content locust group. They added something to temporarily occupy one group of players, while at the same time alienating another. Alienating a group that GW2 was touted in pre-release blogs as being “friendly to” and even encouraging it as a playstyle.

The content locusts already have all their ascended gear now anyway, or will have it very soon. They had their rings a couple weeks after the Pristine Relics were added (before if RNG liked them), they got their amulets in February, and now they are finishing up the last guild missions for commendations to get their accessories. They are done, and will move on or beg for more to devour, while many alt-loving players stare in disgust at the year long (and growing) timegate-fest we have ahead of us.

I think Fractals were a nice addition, and some of them are fun dungeons. But I don’t want to do them every day for the next 6 months on the same character just to get 20 rings. That’s 2 rings for each char, and 2 more sets for my guard and ele that commonly use different builds. Minus any RNG luck, that’s 200 days of fractal dailies.

This is the same developer that kept people playing a game with zero gear progression for many years. I know they can do better than this, because they have done it already. I don’t expect more content that what we’ve been given, but I do expect them to at least live up to the points they advertised, and to the standards they proved themselves capable of holding to for 7 years.

Kiza.5630:

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

Which will eventually happen anyway after ascended armor, weapon’s’stuff. And then? More ascended gear? Which will make it even unlikelier to catch up after a break or multiple characters.

IMHO this “complaint” can only be ignored if you don’t want to create yet another standard mmo. None of the people I know in-game ever complained about that there was nothing to do. Some played hardcore WvW, the others casually with either one or 8 characters. We had a blast with the Karka event even though some didn’t get a chest but never complained.

Nowerdays content is just about progression here, progression there. Which in turn has led to almost everyone of our group, including me, to not play anymore.

Like I said in my OP, if this is the main reason for the timegating/limits, it’s just bad system. To me, that is just a cop-out on actual content in favor of just dangling a carrot that we are only allowed to crawl towards. It’s a stop-gap system that doesn’t work in the long run, unless they keep adding even more gear, which I really hope they don’t do. I’m not saying the game lacks content, because I’m still working on dungeon gear, getting a legendary, and doing a lot of wvw.

I guess I just feel like I’m being punished with a horribly slow system (it’s ok for single character players, but it’s terrible for multi-character) because someone else rushed to get everything on a single character, then complained they had nothing to do.

I prefer a horizontal/cosmetic progression, but I wouldn’t have a problem with the current vertical progression if it was set up to be viable to more than a single playstyle.

I do think some cosmetic items (rare exotic skins, etc) with RNG drops would be something to keep people busy, without creating any issues with how hard it is to get. Just like legendaries and existing rare named items are now. This worked pretty well in GW1 with rare skins dropping only from certain dungeons.

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

I think it if wasn’t time gated, the actual effort required could be adjusted to compensate for that. But yes, the most hardcore gear addicts would have it long before everyone else…and that is even the case (to a lesser degree) in the current system.

I’d rather have “something to do” other than stat-chasing better gear, but that has been thoroughly discussed in other threads. We have the gear chase, but we can still push for it to be improved upon.

I agree that this timegate is probably better than sticking it all in some super-hard dungeon, but couldn’t the limits be relaxed some and still maintain the same goal?

Even shifting the daily FotM to maybe an “anytime” chest you can do 7 times each week. So you can do 7 runs on a Saturday if that’s your only day to play. The same time constraint, but in a more flexible manner.

As it is now, I think it’s set up for a certain playstyle, and being very harmful to others. Doing everything once every day, on a single character. And if you miss out a day…you’re just out that reward and have to wait longer.

The worst part for me, and I’d imagine quite a few others, is doing this on multiple characters. For those of us that have the time for alts, would there be any harm from having these limits character based?

I’d like to be able to do some extra daily tasks that were character-based to earn some character-bound Laurel type reward. It wouldn’t speed up the process of getting gear for a single char, but it would enable those with the time for alts to put more effort into getting gear for them at the same pace.

I’m trying to figure out the logical reasoning behind so many rewards like the Pristine Fractal Relic and Guild Mission Commendations being limited daily or weekly. The same applies to dungeon tokens limits to a lesser extent, but there are ways to minimize the impact of these limits, and dungeon gear itself is primarily a cosmetic-only “upgrade” aside from some stats not available in crafted/karma armors. I’m not questioning the reasoning behind dragon/meta event chests being limited daily, as those have clear impact on the rare item and ecto markets. The primary issue I see is the limits on ascended gear and the other items available with the same tokens.

Ascended gear doesn’t have any market impact at all, unless someone decides to skip exotics/rares completely and go straight to ascended from masterwork. It’s all bound on acquire, so once you have it, you’re stuck with it. So why is process of getting it so artificially drawn out over a long period of time?

I don’t think it is to keep a hardcore player from gaining an advantage over a casual player sooner. This doesn’t really make sense, as the casual player is likely going to get ascended gear slower even with the daily limits. I doubt the casual player is going to do a FotM 10+ daily, get the max possible Commendations each week, or even do every single daily for laurels. Ascended gear is already setup to be something the hardcore player is going to get faster, and time-consuming enough that many casuals will be put off by it. Would anyone be hurt by having the ability to get more than one FotM “daily” chest, or more than two Commendations per per week? In my opinion, this would open it up more to casual/weekend players, giving them a chance to earn several Pristine Relics in a weekend instread of just 2.

The other likely reason that comes to mind is simply keeping people playing by dangling a carrot on a stick in front of us, while forcing us to wear concrete shoes to slow us down. We were told when the ascended tier was added, that it was a step between exotic and legendary, and was intended to be in between those two tiers in terms for effort/difficulty to get. But are such strict and absolute time limitations necessary for this? To me, that’s a really cheap/cheesy way to keep people playing, and one that is not likely to work well on the casual players, which are probably the majority of the playerbase.

I’m somewhere in between the typical hardcore and casual, and this system doesn’t do anything for me. In fact, it’s done nothing but put me off to the idea of even bothering with ascended gear. I have a considerable amount of time to play, but I don’t do dungeons/FotM constantly because I only do them with friends. I would love to be able to do a couple FotM “daily” runs when my friends are actually on, but trying to organize this once every single day is just not feasible or desirable.

So, what is the real reason behind these reward systems being limited the way they are? And who is it supposed to be benefiting? As someone with 8 level 80s, and no real “main” between them aside from my wvw commander, this is certainly not benefiting me in any way. It’s a ridiculously long process that gets even longer with every piece added. The fact that I have to always use the same character in FotM (since level progress isn’t account based) makes it more tedious.

I don’t have any problem with holding it down to look/pan the camera/character direction, but what I do have a problem with is right click being a secondary “select target” and secondary “interact/attack”. This causes so many problems with losing the intended target in a group, becaues you start holding down the button to turn while it’s hovering over an ally or the wrong enemy, then that target gets selected when you release.

A toggle option would definitely help this, but I think what we desperately need is an option to disable the right click’s target/interact/attack function, making right mouse only camera control

Right now there is a total of 15% fee/tax (split into a 5% listing fee, and 10% sales tax) on any TP sale, I don’t have an issue with this percentage but I think there is a better/more friendly way to handle it. One of the main reasons for suggesting this is seeing quite a few players complaining about the listing fee making it difficult for them to sell high cost items they got as a drop, because they can’t afford the listing fee.

A few changes that should make this no longer an issue, without altering the end result of TP fees.

1) Increase the sales tax to 15%
2) Remove the 5% listing fee
3) Add a 5% de-listing fee to replace the listing fee

All that really changes is moving the 5% listing to either an additional 5% of tax or a de-listing fee, depending on whether the item sells or de/re-listed. Completely doing away with the listing fee would make it too easy to re-list/adjust prices and the TP would turn into more of an undercutting price war than it already is. Replacing it with a de-listing fee puts the same loss on re-listing items, without making someone have to earn more gold just to be able to sell an item.

Astral Projections.7320:

As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another way for me to save money by not buying items in a failed cosmetic system. Every time I look at the town clothes I remember how much money I spent on costumes in Guild Wars 1 versus the zero money I have spent here. I’m voting with my dollars and if everyone did that, maybe they would change the way they handle costumes.

I bought the Halloween costumes because I liked them. I regretted the decision when I realized they were stuck on just one character unless I went through the hassle of moving them around via the bank and shuffling around the default town clothes I did not want to destroy.

Those were the first and last costumes I will have in GW2 until this system is fixed to at least be on par with the one they managed to wedge/hack into GW1 years after release. This is coming from someone that bought every GW1 costume. Just another lesson learned in GW1 that seems to have been thrown out the window for no good reason.

I’m not going to spend 5600-7200 gems (700-900 per char depending on hoodie type) for set of town clothes. Especially not when I have no place to store them while not in use, other than taking up valuable inventory/bank space. Putting an alternate set of gear/trinkets in that space is a much more important use.

We need one of two things (preferrably both of them) for these gemstore clothes to be reasonable options.
1) Something equal to the “Costume NPC” of Guild Wars. A way to retrieve a new copy of an outfit we have purchased.
2) A storage/collection section dedicated to town clothes so we have a place to store them without taking up valuable slot space.

The only “reason” I can figure out for not implementing a retrieval/re-creation mechanic is an expectation of us to buy multiple copies of a costume. But I doubt many people would do this. I think many of us (myself included) would be more likely to buy costumes with this mechanic in place. I didn’t buy the wintersday outfit because I did want to be forced to waste slot space on trivial/useless items. This isn’t an issue if I can retrieve the costume any time I want, or at least have a dedicated place to store it.

Healix.5819:

How is overflow denying you the ability to do content when it is doing the exact opposite? Overflows give you the ability to play the game when your server would be full otherwise. If this was a typical MMO, you truly would be denied access to the content by being forced to wait in a queue with the inabiltiy to play at all. Would you really want overflows disabled in favor of a queued system, or how about the permanent overflow approach where zones are dynamically created to fit the needs of the population, removing the ability to keep track of any timed events.

The only reason you even think you’re being denied is because you’re abusing a timer to determine when an event is taking place.

I think it’s a bit more complex than this. So much that the exact opposite could be true. He could be denied because others are abusing a timer. Being put into an overflow gives an entirely new wait for the event’s start. In the case of dragon events, that is up to a 4 hour additional wait. A lot of people don’t have that long to play each day, so getting put into overflow denies them access to the event. Whether or not you are “abusing” a timer yourself, you can be effected by this problem. And in either case, the issue would be less prominent without guests from other servers.

There are countless times I have participated in these events where the timer had nothing to do with my presence there. I was simply in the area for leveling/dailies/farming/etc and it started, or a friend was there for those reasons and told me the event started. In either case, someone is on the “outside” being informed of the event’s start with no aid from a timer, and will likely not be able to get in because of others flooding the zone.

Of course, there are many times I participate in them because I, or a friend/guildmate, were watching the online timers. If you want to consider that abuse, the players from other servers using my server to bypass the respawn timer is even more abusive. They could kill the same dragon/boss multiple times in a matter of minutes (using alt characters), each time contributing more to those servers’ overflow problems and preventing their home players from participating in the event.

Amun Ra.6435:

This was not an issue before questing…I should not have to come earlier. Anet needs to make some changes to their servers. I paid to play the game, same as the person WHO TAKES MY SPOT when these evetns spawn, plain and simple.

This was not an issue after guesting, either. Guesting was added over a month ago. This dragon/meta overflow problems started with the Feb update because of the chest loot changes. The home populations of every server now have much more reason to make sure they do these events daily. I’m not saying that guesting isn’t a problem, but it’s not the only problem, it’s only a part of the problem.

Something does need to be done about the guesting, like making guests not get the chest. But getting all of the guests out isn’t going to prevent overflows completely. The per map player limit is still going to be a lot less than the number of people on your server wanting to get the chest.

Best option would be to get screenshots and fill out an online form here https://en.support.guildwars2.com/

Other than that, the closest in-game method would be the “botting” option in the report system.

BadHabitZz.1856:

Now it feels like Anet is just dealying everything with this once per day/week system and influence unlock and thats whats kitten me off…

That’s the exactly the reason for it…artificial time sink. Delaying those of us with the time to play several hours daily to prevent getting ahead of those that don’t, and trying to keep playing longer with a low-speed treadmill. This “problem” didn’t even exist before Ascended gear invented the issue and made the “fix” necessary. Exotics took some effort to get, but you weren’t forced into waiting months to gear a single character unless you had very little playtime. And those of us that had more playtime just had the option of working on alts or getting more costly vanity gear.

The time gap between acquiring exotic gear and ascended gear is absolutely massive Now everyone is forced into the slow progress on a single character playstyle. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you play, it’s a forced wait to get every piece of gear.

Zumy.6318:

In one year you will have 500 laurels and wont know what to do with them.
You are not supposed to gear up every toon yesterday.
Keep cool and enjoy the process.

I’ll have just under 500 Laurels in a year if I don’t buy anything. It would take 1440 laurels to get a set of ascended jewelry for every character. This is not including any infusions. This would be getting all gear through laurels only, which is the only viable/“desireable” option for many. Those in small guilds, or those of us that do not want to do Fractals every day.

The minimum laurel requirement would be 240 for the 8 amulets. Add another 160 to get the infusions for those. That’s 10 months, for just the amulets, or 7.5 months if you do every monthly as well.

Out of all the methods, FotM seems to be the most alt friendly…but it’s still pretty horrible, and you can’t get amulets or earrings from it. It’s fastest, though it’s still 10 days per piece, plus the chance of RNG luck speeding that up. It’s not bad, if you play only one character.

Unfortunatly, I don’t play just one character, I actually enjoy playing all 8 professions. It could still take months to get just the rings for them all (16 rings at 1 every 10 days). Even getting half of them with RNG luck, that’s still 80 days for only 2 slots. And since I like playing all of my characters, I don’t want to be forced to always play just one for Fractals, but that means I have to get each up to level/difficulty 10 in order to get rings/tokens to drop.

The time restrictions on Laurel/Commendation-purchased items is just ridiculous. A month for every amulet? That’s an automatic 8 month wait for me, and it’s safe to assume even more ascended gear pieces will be added before that time is up. Then add in the fact that I don’t always use the same gear/build. Then my (original, at least) intention of eventually starting a second character of some professions to see other race stories and have more build variety without having to retrait or fill my bags with gear sets. It quickly becomes obvious that the “alt friendly gameplay” hyped pre-release is quickly being removed in favor of waiting (it’s not even a grind, it’s a forced wait) to gear up a single “main”. I don’t mind having to work for my gear (I kind of like that), but this artificial time sink/delay is simply unacceptable and completely against some of the design principles so heavily flaunted before release.

I still love the game, but the entire idea of trying to please everyone with ascended gear is just horribly implemented. I essentially have to ignore the top tier of gear if I have want to keep enjoying the game. I’m not picking a main because I shouldn’t be forced to. That’s not playing my way.

For reference. Over 2500 hours played, not a single piece of Ascended gear, and it’s staying that way until this mess is fixed.

vince.5937:

I’m going to keep posting it because it’s the easiest solution:

No group event chests if you’re not on your home server. Everyone goes back to their home server, “low pop” servers are repopulated, people get their rares and stop gaming the system. Problem solved.

I agree with this. It would help fix the portion of the problem caused the guesting, but it’s not going to remove the overflow problems completely. What it will do is give more people a chance to get in on their home server before it hits overflow. With the huge amount of people wanting to do these events now, overflow is still going to happen on most servers even with this change, but it’s still an improvement.

Horrorscope.7632:

MrInfinit.1864:

It’s reported and assumed that guests are creating the lag, I still don’t buy it.

I’ll tell ya’s what is creating the lag, that is simple. GW2 has high demands on your system, it always has. If you aren’t running a top end processor and people are maxing a zone and in the same place, you are going to lag. You would have lag’d day one through today if those things happen. I have 2 solid systems and 2 below par. The bottom one’s are barely fine with general every day play, but you put 30+ people on the screen it gets painful. GW2 has been getting by without a lot of griping recently because in most places people were spread out (game is dying type spread) or in an instance. Go back to release when it was all zerg, what were you performance experiences with mid to low end hardware?

Game performance/framerate and lag/latency are not the same thing. I can have a comfortably playable framerate, yet my skills simply will not activate. My internet connnect is nowhere near saturated by GW2’s traffic. That leaves lag on the server side as the problem. The fact that everyone else in the map, no matter what PC specs, are having the same lag just confirms this.

As for guesting, it’s most likely a part of the problem. I’m sure most servers are capable if filling a dragon event map with their own population, so guests are just forcing home-server players into overflow and making them lose out on the event. Even without guesting, the home-server crowds on most servers would fill the map and cause the same lag. This wasn’t happening 2 weeks ago because the rewards were usually bad. With better rewards, everyone wants to get the chests.

I wouldn’t call them weak or bugged, but there are some mechanics issues. The only real problems are the limits on stacking in group play (mainly large events) and the fact that you lack damage against non-creature enemies like destructable objects(turrets/wvw siege) and world bosses like the dragon champions.

This happened for Yak’s Bend right before Teq spawned. We were waiting when it crashed, then Teq was up when I got back in.

Same issues with WvW, as well. Others in guild were reporting seeing matchups that didn’t even include YB. The matchup I saw was Yak’s, Anvil Rock, and Borliss Pass. We are actually against Ehmry Bay and Crystal Desert. I attempted to load into YB borderland, and was sent to Ehmry’s instead. I had someone in spawn next to me labeled as “Yaks Bend Invader”. It’s possible it was just a coincidence, and that was an actual players name, but I find that unlikey given the cirumstances.

Vayne.8563:

A mod decided the first title of this thread was sensationalist and put there just to get the thread hits. The mod made a decision to change it, wrong or right.

Once someone changes it back, ignoring the mods decision, in my opinion, that’s ground for banning. Because if everyone can ignore mod decisions, whether they’re right or wrong, with no warning at all, then there IS NO moderation.

This wasn’t badly done. Changing something back after a mod changed it was.

I agree that changing it back was a bad idea, but I also think the mod changing it in the first place was completely unneeded, and the change made was rather insulting to forum community as a whole.

The later comments made after re-modding the title were completely unprofessional. That belongs in private message, not on the public forum.

maddoctor.2738:

New pieces of gear can be acquired from different parts of the game. It stands to reason that armor/weapons will also be available from another part of the game, so if all those ways were available now, it would take you far less than 3 months to get everything.

The only exception is laurels, they already shown us that everything will be available with laurels (but at a high cost). You can only get Rings from Fotm and only Accessories from Guild Commendations, maybe in the future only laurels will have everything, that would mean it will take a long time to equip a character if you only do it through laurels, if your playstyle is diverse enough it will take far less time.

The only semi-reasonable way to get them right now is Fractals, and that’s only rings and a back item. And even then, it only applies to people that actually want to do Fractals…and doing so daily if they want to get this stuff without taking a ridiculous amount of time. I currently have no desire to do Fractals. I’ve seen all them a few times, and that is enough for me. Granted, that is partially out of disgust towards the gear grind they represent. I shouldn’t have to do them because Anet decided to leave Ascended rings out of Jewerler crafting, karma vendors, non-FotM loot tables, and dungeon token vendors.

I’m not even giong to attempt to call Guild Commendations a viable means because that leaves you completley at the mercy of when your guild leadership decides to do these, and whether you happen to be on. There is also the issue of small guilds having to deal with the massive influence requirements, and the fact that they can’t even complete most the missions anyway. Realistically, getting a piece from these will most likely take much longer that doing Fractals. Unless you’re lucky enough to always be on when you guild is doing a mission.

That leaves laurels, which are just a time sink. There are a lot of players for which this is going to be the only option. All of those players in small guilds of friends that only get around to doing a dungeon/Fractals when they’re all on at the same time. This is our way of playing, and now we’re being punished for it. And that is why I don’t trust them any more.

The most important part of GW2’s philosphy was getting rewarded for playing how you wanted to play, and that has already been tossed out the window. I don’t want to do Fractals and 500-player raids, so I get the short end of the stick and have to wait a month to get every single piece of gear. What about all of these crafting professions I wasted time and money leveling? Just let me craft this junk.

killcannon.2576:

It is a gear chase, and it will always be. Before ascended, it was a gear chase. It’s a mmo. I have five alts as well (my poor mesmer is neglected). What is your answer, then, to the gear chase problem? Once you buy something for one toon they all have it? It’s a juggle to try to keep people satisfied and to keep them playing.

It’s a juggle that I thnk Ascended tips way too far into the grind category. I don’t think that buying something for one char should give it to all, that would be too easy. I think exotics were fine, and about the limit for what the gear chase should be. We don’t even have full ascended gear in the game (only 6 out of the 16-18 pieces of gear), and it already takes a month to get just those 6 pieces. By the time every piece is added, we’ll be up to 3 months (maybe more if weapons/armor take more time/items) to equip a single character.

One thing I do really miss is the ease of experimentation. I don’t mind the NPC/fee for changing trait points (it’s cheap anyway) but the gear limitions are the killer. In order to try a new build, you are very likely to need to buy a lot of gear.

In GW1, you could usually get away with just changing skills/attributes (free), and maybe a new weapon or rune. With GW2, you need a new set of armor (exotic armor in GW2 is a lot more trouble to get than max GW1 armor), a full set of runes, new weapons, and new jewelry. And if it doesn’t work you, you’ve wasted a good bit of money. At least in GW1, you can pretty cheaply repurpose armor with new runes/insignias.

killcannon.2576:

Take it from a 7 year vet of WoW, there isn’t a gear chase here yet. They may start one, but it isn’t here yet. This is Happy Fun Princess Island of gear grinds compared to other mmos. I still can’t get over how nice it is here compared to other mmos.

To someone that has 7 (close to 8 ) level 80s, it certainly is. I’d be looking at a minimum of 8 months to get ascended jewelry alone. That’s not including a back slot item, or any infusions. It might be better than a lot of other MMO’s, but I just don’t see how it’s not a gear chase if you have more than a single character.

killcannon.2576:

Gotta love the GW1 player base. Always good for a chuckle. Still upset this isn’t GW1 part 2, or an expansion of that game. Because, really, that’s what it breaks down to.

GW2 is very fun to play, as one GW1. But the promise of “taking what made GW great and putting that into a persisent world” is just flat-out being destroyed in favor of “taking what kept the gear-addicts playing insert every other MMO and putting that into what was supposed to be a unique game”.

GW2 isn’t GW1, and it wasn’t supposed to be….but the great things about GW1 they did keep are being killed off in favor of being like everyone else.

Look at Guild Missions. All they are is raiding, on an even bigger scale. A raid that takes an incrediable amount of influence (and then Merits) to unlock, not to mention the disaster of trying to organize what is essentially an up to 500-player raid. It took long enough in GW1 to get a 12-player ready to do the Canthan “Elite Missions”.

Guild Missions sound a lot like this “preparing to have fun” part GW2 wasn’t supposed to have.
…I earned some influence and merits. …I earned some influence and merits again. Hey, I earned some again. That’s great!

Fortuna.7259:

I wouldn’t assume a corporation has any self-imposed moral limits. The behavior of corporations is governed by profits, and “moral” behavior by a corporation is about preventing the erosion its customer base. To project morals onto a corporation is a serious error in judgement… A lesson I believe Alan Greenspan claimed he was astonished to discover.

The only “self-imposed moral limits” here would be the from the devs because of their reputations and the playerbases’ opinion of them. They are a personal/identifiable facet of a company that we don’t usually get with corporations. Unfortanetly they represent a subsidary of the faceless corporation and don’t have absolute control over their statements and decisions.

I think that most of the things said before release were true, or at least believed to be true, when they were said. There were some misleading statements closer to release that I find hard to believe were last-minute changes or something the dev making the statement didn’t know about. One that really stood out for me was a video where legendary weapons were discussed that went into detail about them requiring items the player “can’t just buy” and requiring a large effort from the player, which while this is technically still true, was very misleading to imply that the weapons themselves were bound in some way on craft. This doesn’t really bother me, but it’s a definite blow to being able to trust anything these people say.

One thing that really does bother me, although it’s much more subjective, was the statements that went from early in development to near/after release about GW2 being alt-friendy and encouraging alts as a playstyle, especially as an end-game option. The addition of ascended gear and the extremely time-consuming methods of getting it, are ridiculously counter-productive to encouraging alts as a valid playstyle. Aside from RNG drops in Fractals, it would take minimum of 1 month to get a set of ascended jewelry/trinkets.

I’m basing this timeframe on the following
– 10 days each to get 2 rings from FotM tokens
– 30 days to get 1 amulet from the Laurels vendor
– 7 days each to get 2 accessories from the Guild Commendations vendor (based on reward info here http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-guild-missions)

This is all assuming that you do every daily(and don’t spend Laurels on anything else), do FotM daily at level 10 or higher, and do every Guild Mission each week (requires a guild that actually has these unlocks, and being online at the time they are activated). This is feasible with the dailies, but a lot don’t have the time (or desire) to do FotM daily, and the Guild Missions can be very restrictive for the reasons stated above.

I’m fairly sure the reasons for the artificially/arbitrarily drawn-out process is to “balance” between casual and hardcore players, as well as keeping the hardcore crowd playing longer with this forced slow progression. Slowing down the hardcore players to what Anet thinks is a good rate for casuals kind of makes sense for single-character casuals versus single-character hardcores, but what about multi-profession players?

From what I’ve seen, a lot of hardcore players (especially the “content locust” type) focus on a single character, or have alts but only care about their “main” enough to get this type of gear. On the other hand, I know of a lot more casual players (some do spend a lot of time playing, but are not what most would call hardcore) that spread their time around alts and don’t focus on a single character. I consider myself part of the latter “hardcore casual” group. I have good amount of playtime, 7 level 80s, but no real “main”.

The single-character hardcore player has a huge advantage in this system, because a single month gets them everything they need for their “maxed out” character. On the other end of the spectrum the casuals and hardcore casuals with multiple characters have months/years to get the same for their characters, unless they are forced to choose one, which is completley against their playstyle. And this timeframe will continue to get longer as more ascended items are added with the same arbitrary time sinks. It’s already lengthened significantly if (like me) you don’t want to do FotM often, or have a small guild that will take months to even unlock Guild Missions, let alone the difficulties in getting the maximum number of Commendations each week.

As a member of this multi-char group, being forced into this choice is not “playing my way” or alt-friendy, it’s “playing Anet’s way” and devastating to alt-a-holics. And it is certainly not the gameplay I used to trust Anet to give to me.

I, for one, refuse to step onto this course, and will not be forced into Anet’s image of the “ideal player”…at the cost of knowing I will never have a “maxed”/completed character.

Same thing on Yak’s Bend at the most recent occurences of Claw of Jormag, Shatterer, and Shadow Behemoth. Mass reports of being unable to activate skills.

At Claw, the dragon didn’t even lift off/re-land after his initial landing, remaining on the ground till at about 30% HP. This was after a very long delay in the landing after the final crystal. Before landing, he appeared on the ground and vanished several times before finally landing behind the ice shield. During the second phase, after losing his wings, the skill lag made anything but auto-attacks impossible, and even those were very infrequently casting.

jazzllanna.1278:

Apparently you do not get commendations. I really hope this is looked at and you can get them from helping out other guilds in their missions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-bounty-hunt-Mission/first#post1519303

Nice find, that answers it pretty clearly. So there’s really no point in going along with another guild’s mission unless you just really want to do what (for a non-member) is just another random dynamic event.