Guild Wars 2

You can make multiple chat windows with different filters on them.

I have the standard one, but usually run with one that turns off /map /say and /emote. The game plays much better that way. I still see chat bubble if someone’s in my field of view, and am mostly insulated from people who’d otherwise annoy.

Daryl.4621:

right im confused
If Anet are releasing it at 5pm PST 22nd october then that is 1am GMT 23rd october right?

“past” 5 pm PDT, not PST (we’ll be in daylight savings time for the duration of the event)

the “past” part means ??? But sometime past midnight GMT 23/10.

Ageia.5843:

mulch.2586:

My feelings vary depending on if I’m playing one of my leveled characters or a lowbie.

I really like the lower zones. They are beautiful and fun to play.

Cursed Shores, Straits of Devastation, Malchor’s… these are not at all good looking. The design of the zones is also not very much fun with invisible walls, arbitrarily unclimbable slopes, maze-like structures. It’s impossible for me to suspend disbelief why things are the way there are there.

In contrast, the low zones like Harathi and what not, you can at least pretend to see an environment where it’s conceivable why these Ettins or Centaurs would be standing where they are. And, at the same time, they’re more realistic with respect to how much of the ground is traversable.

I both agree and disagree On one hand, the Orr area is not much fun to look at. That said, its a very ‘nice’ adaptation of what a ruined, undead riddled, …Nether hole would look like

Yes, I get that. They made it ugly on purpose. They also made it difficult and very slow to navigate. They really like to make nearly every gathering node and vista a mini-jumping-puzzle to highlight the harshness of Zaitan’s influence.

The trouble is, a game is supposed to be fun. I find myself just getting annoyed and cranky, the more time I spend there. It’s the same as driving in city rush hour traffic. It’s ugly and takes forever to get anywhere. No one likes that.

I like that distinction between big world vs small details.

Realizing the game is engineered so that everyone bases out of Lion’s Arch instead of the main cities, all empty like a wasteland…

Realizing that there’s no place to sit in all of Lion’s Arch.

Realizing that even Age of Conan (which is a horrible game, despite a great I.P.) provided better immersion….

That set-up, of a player-controlled character leading a party of bots is familiar to players of other NCSoft games.

From my experience, NCSoft games support botting, altho they’ll talk PR for NA/EU games about fighting bots. Automated gameplay is accepted in the culture there.

Anyhow, regardless what profession or dye job they have, it’s the non-standard-client software that’s breaking the rules. Report it.

I’m sorry the OP’s guildmates called her/him a troll.

Is striking that the games referenced were all super-hero genre. I wonder if that’s part of the conflict.

The idea for particle or special-effects on armor… I have a bit of resistance, for two reasons. First, there are a lot of us who want to look good in the sense of handsome or pretty, like a real person could be wearing this outfit. Secondly, we’re already dealing with a game engine that struggles to render even moderate sized group encounters. Looking great in Lion’s Arch is fine, but not when it borks encounters in Tyria or the Mists.

My feelings vary depending on if I’m playing one of my leveled characters or a lowbie.

I really like the lower zones. They are beautiful and fun to play.

Cursed Shores, Straits of Devastation, Malchor’s… these are not at all good looking. The design of the zones is also not very much fun with invisible walls, arbitrarily unclimbable slopes, maze-like structures. It’s impossible for me to suspend disbelief why things are the way there are there.

In contrast, the low zones like Harathi and what not, you can at least pretend to see an environment where it’s conceivable why these Ettins or Centaurs would be standing where they are. And, at the same time, they’re more realistic with respect to how much of the ground is traversable.

regarding points 1 and 3:

I’ve played real pvp games, where your actions had persistent effects on the game world. When you killed someone, they hurt – lost levels and/or gear.
When you took a castle, it was in the regular playing world and you controlled parts of the economy.

In that kind of setting, you do talk with and see your “enemy,” and you define who is/isn’t an enemy.

GW2 was not designed to be a true pvp game. Your enemy is selected temporarily by the game system, and all the pvp is just a game that plays in the mists. No one gets hurt. You only win stuff, never lose. And you’re only on that team until you free-transfer to the next one.

It’s pvp-lite, and I am totally okay with that.

Being pvp-lite, we don’t need server forums (which would be even more work to moderate than our wvw forum). And the names — these friends & enemies are temporary and arbitrary, just like mobs and allies at a Dynamic Event.

Re forum avatars, I’m of mixed feelings. They tend to get annoying, as do .sig because it adds more non-message to the screen.

Other game systems may have diminishing returns and/or a soft or hard cap on certain stats. GW2 doesn’t have to worry about stats inflation, so they can stick to this simple system with no DR or caps.

You’re basically capped by whats available cuz there’s only amulet, traits, and runes (gear and traits in pve).

For GW2, DR on armor/toughness would put an exponent on it, so damage reduction would be less than proportional.

If you’re troubled by being a have-not instead of a have, come join up in an occupy Cursed Shores movement.

I imagine some people feel strapped for cash, cuz there’s always those who spend more than they should.

What I’ve seen for newbie crafting or leveling is the prices have come down for 1-79 stuff, there’s still a lot of leveling gear to be had for mere coppers over vendor price, and prices have come down for a lot of the 80/400 stuff, too.

I look for inflation but don’t see it on much.

I’m not challenged by time-zones, as you can set in-game clock to server time.

The part that’s frustrating here is we get ANet employee coming in and saying “past” midnight… so does that mean 12:01 AM or 1 AM or 2 AM or ? all of those are “past.”

AT what time will it go live?

Deliberately vague? Or just really crummy language skills?

There’s almost nothing in-game to encourage forming of lasting relationships. You can go 1-80 and beyond without ever forming a party. You don’t need to form relationships to trade.

In GW2 you only need a party for dungeons and tournaments in spvp. And actually free tournaments you can still pug if you want.

In general, I think when you ask players, they want the ability to play solo forever.

Other games employed social engineering to encourage (or force) player interaction. The good thing is you’d form strong relationships, friendships and enemies, which is what makes humans feel a part of a community. The bad thing is the sense of encourage or force.

Even in GW2, here on the forums we see regular rants against “forced grouping” required to finish your personal story and gripes about having to form a party for going to dungeons.

Arrange an anonymous playdate for me ArenaNet!

The social environment is shallow because the game was designed to be shallow.

nowitsawn.1276:

According to the wiki:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Defense + Toughness).

So, if this is true, doubling your Armor (= Defense + Toughness) should halve your damage intake. This would indeed mean that Toughness has diminishing returns.

The formula isn’t right because it’s leaving out crits and conditions, but does seem correct for direct non-crit vanilla damage.

The formula also shows you that there’s no diminishing returns, but it’s not an additive/subtractive, but proportional.

To call that “diminishing returns” is absurd, because if it were straight up subtractive, at some point if you had enough toughness, you’d be getting healed by taking hits.

That kind of prohibition doesn’t make any sense to me. The walls are meant to protect.

Drop the xp and loot from the mobs and the bots will be gone (from wvw) tomorrow.

Keep the fauna, as they’re part of the environment that makes you manage travel time. Move visibly on roads or with stealth overland?
Try fleeing combat, I know you can outrun me, but can you outrun those wolves at the same time?

If truly you’re on a hopeless server, then server transfers is your only hope for redemption, either get off the server or get in influx of new players transfering on.

No way can you hope to get enough new accounts coming in — it’ll take either transfers or a seismic shift in community spirit.

For what it’s worth, my server lost and lost and lost, starting back in BWEs, and now has grown some competitive legs. And I fully recognize that it only takes one guild to fill a wvw map. Transfers may give you some talent/expertise, but really it starts with fielding a team, and that IS something a group of concerned players can do. Maybe you can’t win the week — don’t think about that. See if maybe you can take a supply camp, or take a tower.

Go out in a lop-sided match and you’ll see, there’s no one playing. Of course it’s lop-sided. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think it’s really over simplifying it to blame it on transfers.

Fer instance – Yaks Bend got pummeled last week. Blame server transfers for why they couldn’t get more than a dozen players on the field. Yet clock ticks, new week and now this same transfer-plagued server is pwning face fielding a good full team.

It’s not cuz of a sudden influx, but rather the way NA players in particular view the field and the scores. We don’t see just a tower or keep to take, we see the whole score system. Winning a keep, if you’re gonna lose anyway, doesn’t seem to hold value. And of course there’s the real double punch in the face of having no supply facing reinforced gates and a 3-orb buff.

Note: you can drop blueprints to trade them.

“The 3 dungeons ive done ive just joined up and everyone says hi then one mass attack as we progress”

It will get that way once you’ve all learned your approach.

I just thought of another bit – there’s potions of outlaw slaying that’ll help turn the odds in your favor (you do more damage, take less damage, and +10 xp per kill). I think most people eat magic-find food, but consumables can help.

Personally, I’m still far from expert, but got over a hump to where I find them very fun. I still often find myself after a fight thinking “oh yeah, we shoulda done X or used Y”

You truly can go to a dungeon with any combination of the professions. The fastest CM I ever did was 3 eles, a thief and a ranger, not all 80s. No one died, either.

Somewhat you have to adjust for each fight. But IME the trash in CM is at least as dangerous as the bosses. The first fight with the golem, I can not do well in melee, because my character relies on blind and block, but you can’t blind/block AOEs. 2nd fight is the same thing, his sword flurry is 360 aoe. The rest of the fights, I can melee.

Suggest read the mob’s and decide if it’s kiting time, evading time, or what. One of the mobs says “does more damage to moving targets”. that should be a hint. The packs of dogs apply a bunch of conditions. Please remove them!

As with dungeons in any game, you’re best if you control the pull, rather than having adds jump on you.

And most of all, come at it knowing it is winnable, and you only need to solve it.

My engi is about lvl 20 is all, so I can’t be specific help on that, sorry.

Engi can be great support, I know.

On the way in to the dungeon, everyone can select useful utilities and traits. I like to have at least one that does a revive. You’ll want condition removal for some of the fights. You can also reselect your trait selections (not the points, but the roman-numeral parts) to be party friendly.

Work out amongst your team how you can avoid damage. For example on my guardian, I have blind and block up a lot of the time, and share protection. If someone else can manage a few more blinds, interrupts, and the like, you can all be a little less jumpy on the dodge-rolls.

Use combos as much as you can. Some of them are awesome. All of them are handy.

Hope this helps a bit.

the status seems to vary over the course of the day, which makes me think it’s at least loosely based on how many players are logged in or have been active in some period of time, not just how many are based on the server.

Maybe we could help more if we knew your profession.

It sounds like you’re doing CM-story. There are some really tough fights in that now, and some tricky mobs that have to be handled strategically.

Not saying it should be a wipeathon, just that it is a beatable dungeon by normal players with typical gear. It’s not that you’re not good players, but that you’re trying a difficult task without a lot of experience at it yet.

Keep at it. Dungeons are very different from dungeons in other games, and I’m afraid the open world pve is too easy to have taught players how to manage challenging mobs.

Once you learn it, you’ll see you can be successful without a designated tank or healer.

The key isn’t to be able to take the hits and heal thru them, but to use blind, aegis, block, dodge, etc, and most of all positioning.

Beast.9516:

Nothing I’ve bought gives me any advantage over other players.

Let’s clarify that. Using the gem store definitely CAN make your character better than it was before. Better looking AND better performing than it was before. That’s ok, and part of the game.

What it won’t do is give you a play advantage over another player who doesn’t buy gems with $, but acquires the same items using in-game methods.

i.e. maybe I buy it with $$ and maybe you have to farm for it.

Before the game was released, gem store was part of the ruleset. So it’s not at all something to feel good or bad about in-game.

Now your pastor might think you should donate the money instead of spending on a game. Or your romantic partner might rather you spend it on him/her. Maybe your nephew needs new shoes. And there’s millions of people out of work, growing #s living in poverty…

In-game, tho, it’s been part of the rule-set from the beginning. Just cuz it’s a cheesy cheat in another game, doesn’t make it wrong here. That’s like feeling like a good hard hit in hockey is mean or unsporting, just cuz it’s against the rules in non-contact sports like baseball or basketball.

It matters a LOT more in pvp than in wvw.

There’s no payoff in being a glass cannon, imo, especially with the way the game plays currently. It’s hard to avoid attacks from someone you can’t even see.

Are there cases where the green server wins EB but doesn’t win the borderlands?

I hadn’t noticed a map superiority by color, myself.

Most of last week there was hardly a Yaks Bend player on the map. Server transfers or whatever, no one wanting to queue. This week it’s time for “payback” and a chance to queue with obtainable orbs. Expect renewed enthusiasm.

The game plays much much better with /m turned off.

I was logged on and pressing finished by 9:01 pm the night before headstart began, and I still couldn’t get my 1st or 2nd choice for name.

What you can do is have the same name you wanted, but add a surname. Or spell it creatively. For example the OP’s Frostbite, try Frostbeit Frostbyte Frostbhyte etc.

If they did happen to free up a blocked name, you’d have the same disappointment again as someone else snags it before you, seconds after server-up, regardless.

2 million accounts, 5 slots each. EVERY decent name with correct spelling was taken long ago. Not to mention the millions more names reserved for GW1 account holders.

IMO game companies would do well in mass-slaughter games like we’re playing (not to mention the ERP altho I don’t see much RP in GW) to just go ahead and let the dreaded “M” rating happen.

On the other hand, when it comes to naming, if you compromise you can find a name that’s permitted and acceptable to you.

Reality: if Frost Bite were a permissible name, you couldn’t have it anyway cuz it would have been reserved by one of the other 2 million accounts long long ago.

It’s not just transfers that’s causing the poop-out effect in some tiers.

Look at Yaks Bend. Last week, you’d see maybe a dozen on a whole map. This week, they own everything, like ants on a dropped sno-cone. It’s people not even trying to queue more than transfers.

Note that EU have free transfers too, yet their matches stay fairly competitive from week to week.

It’s more of a bandwagon while we win/quit if we’re behind that’s mucking it up. Some perception that if the map isn’t your color, you won’t get karma (which is a self-fulfilling prophecy).

1) yes I got bank slots and character slots for me and my son, $50

2) no immediate plans to buy more

3) Bugs. Bots. Bugs. Bugs. Specifically the “culling” or rendering in WvW, but also basic bugs in the abilities — like my guardian sposed to add boons when remove condition rarely (never?) actually works, the queue system where you can queue at the exact same time as the person sitting right next to you and wait over twice as long before you get in, yet guildmates queue after you and get in before you.

“When it’s ready” yeah right.

Grats Yaks for pulling out after last week.

@gibson “Why allow free character transfers in the first place”

The early promotional materials for GW2 touted that you’d be able to play with friends no matter what server they’re on (not for wvw, but for pve).
As it turns out, launch came and went without them getting fully functional party capability, much less cross-world guesting. So it’s the lack of guesting ability that requires they keep server transfers freely available.

I think they’ll always have server transfers available, because of the one-server-per-account design. Perhaps they’ll cost gems in the future.

Something notable — EU has free transfers, yet all their wvw are at least somewhat competitive. So there’s more going on than just free transfers.

Seems like the EU tiers are always reasonably competitive.

Somehow, despite server transfers, EU had reasonably close match ups for all their tiers last week. Somehow, despite server transfers, 3/8 of NA tiers had good matches, too.

I’m not saying server transfers haven’t affected some worlds. But it’s insufficient to explain all of wvw performance.

Especially when it only takes 100 players or so to really fill up a map (that’s 2 full squads), and you can’t go too much over that. On average there’s 40k accounts per server, if we believe ANet’s claim of selling over 2 million copies. So out of your 40k, really we’re to believe so many transfered off that not 100 remain? And yet, the EU folks don’t.

I dunno what it matters.

GW2 was the 5th highest selling video game last month. Some 2 million sold already. That’s enough to show commercial success.

There’s game-affecting bugs in pvp, wvw, personal story, party & guild, … That’s enough to be alarmed about the potential longevity.

They got a load of money. Let’s see if they can get the game running right. It’s sub free, so no barrier to people coming back.

600 points?!? Wow! grats!

(give up on WvW this week, grumble about insurmountable deficit, blame free server transfers)

Is it “when queues are full the score is even” or “when score is even the queues are full?”

Blix.8021:

mulch.2586:

When there’s such limited space on a wvw map and queues, how many people on a server does it really take?

I’m imagining servers as having say 2000 inhabitants playing (keeping in mind they sold over 2,000,000 copies and there’s about 50 servers for NA & EU, making 40k per world, figuring 5% playing actively).

Out of those, you can’t get a team for wvw?

Even if you do get a guild together and capture some things, the enemy just comes and takes it back because it puts a big “hey, there’s something to do here” sign over what you took. Even if you manage to hold them off for awhile, the fully populated enemy realm just takes everything you worked for when you leave. Not to mention that any guild capable of fielding 50+ have left our realm, and it’s really hard to convince people to join a WvW guild when the only WvW experience you can get on our ream is getting owned because we’re completely outnumbered.

The situation is hopeless, so most people just transferred to other realms or quit playing. Last week we held on to our corner of EB for the weekend, but when sunday night rolled around we lost everything. I’m not sure we’ll last even that long this week.

I guess, having watched WAR and other games flop tragically, I can remember what a rapidly-emptying server feels like.

At the same time, I’m remembering some truly grand sieges in Lineage-2 where server capacities were just a couple thousand…

For GW2, s’posedly you can only even fit 130ish on a map. With an average of 40k initial accounts per server, here in the 2nd month I’d have hoped you could get a hundred players to play. Not even Age of Conan servers flopped that fast.

Mesmer brings a lot more than thief to the WvW table. Greater utility, boons, and conditions. Thief has acceptable range aoe with shortbow, moves fast. But mesmer has speed to share…

The fights that matter are bigger scale. A flame ram does the damage (or other siege) while you keep it safe.

In terms of unique contribution, mesmer for certain.

If you’re actually in melee range, chances are it really doesn’t matter. One team is going to win, plunder, and revive their dead. The other team will flee and/or release to waypoint.

When there’s such limited space on a wvw map and queues, how many people on a server does it really take?

I’m imagining servers as having say 2000 inhabitants playing (keeping in mind they sold over 2,000,000 copies and there’s about 50 servers for NA & EU, making 40k per world, figuring 5% playing actively).

Out of those, you can’t get a team for wvw?

It really matters whether you’re looking at pvp pve or wvw.

100-blades is area of effect, which really doesn’t matter too much in pvp. But is huge in wvw and pve. You get the 20k 30k totals cuz of all the targets you’re hitting. Especially with a zerg in a crowded lord’s room, invisible warrior lays waste to everyone.

Pistol-whip is self-rooting and single target. So in spvp it takes special planning to be able to hit anyone with it. You need to immobilize and prob’ly use up the target’s escape cooldown(s). In PvE, mobs are too stupid to move. In wvw, if you’re in a situation to get melee, your target prob’ly hasn’t rendered you yet.

So it all really depends which situation you’re addressing. I’m afraid ANet has trouble balancing pvp without borking pve or wvw (and pve without borking pvp and wvw, and…). It’s not easy to balance because the approaches of the players & targets are so different in the diff venues.

oh my god, not yet another stupid bugged story quest…

I put mine on hold a few weeks ago because of getting stuck so many times.

It’s inexcusable that at least “This is my story” stuff should have been ready for launch.

— I’m stuck with unopenable door, too.

optional cosmetic and frivolous — I 100% think this is what a cash shop is for.

re: the thief

I figure every thief that runs away from me is a personal victory. I also count alt-F4 escapers a victory, too. They are the mobility class, with the fastest base run speed, plus ports, plus stealth, but weak range.

Mesmer is also designed to be an unpleasant profession to face, not because they’re deadly (which they can be, but not all are), BUT because they were designed to be freakin annoying.

It’s odd. Every pvp match there’s a mesmer, but I don’t often run into them roaming wvw maps.

I’d prefer if they were account-bound, too. It’s not just the money, but the bag space, to have to carry a stack of prints on each character you like to wvw.