Guild Wars 2

I liked that the circus bit intersected with the Asura Snaff-prize competition.

I want a pony.
/15chars

I actually feel that there’s tremendous flexibility. Consider the game I came from (Rift) where for each tier there’s 3, possibly 4, choices. Tank/DPS/PVP (clerics get 2 DPS/Heal sets). For any particular role, there’s only 1.

Well, ANet sells gold. That part of RMT is built into the game by design.

The top post complaints are from ANet’s inability to secure the game from bots and hacks, not people’s desire to get easy gold.

Basen.8506:

I actually find it too slow… Am I doing something wrong? I mean I only play 1-2 hours a day and in that time I kill everything I see and do every event and quest I can I am only lv.11 :P

I think the average is 90 min per level. If you don’t spend too much time shopping or socializing, you’ll get 80 in 3 months of play. Not bad, considering the first NCSoft game I played would having you spending 3 months /played to get to max.

The dungeons I’ve run, there’s 1-shot range and aoe attacks, too. So it’s not just melee who’re needing a revive when they’re caught sleeping.

I think the worst is that too often you can’t see the mob or the effects, cuz of all the glitter-spam and/or the mob is in a wall.

I turn off map chat. Game is great that way.

I got 9 levels today, almost all from dungeons. My guild (which is ostensibly a wvw guild) had several groups running at the same time. Dungeon zone lines are crowded with people saying “LFG,” and vendoring drops before they go again.

Yeah, no one does dungeons anymore. Too crowded.

Looking back over the last dozen dungeon runs, I’ve never died more than once in a dungeon, and more often than not, I don’t die at all.

My first couple dungeon runs, yeah, we ended up with people in their underwear.

There is a learning curve. It’s best to make your way up it.

I think it WAS fine, until the butter/chocolate fiasco we’re swimming in now.

I’m hoping and praying that they’ll adjust the butter frequency in loot-bags down. WAY WAY WAY too much butter, and it’s making it even harder to get the stuff we used to like loot-bags for.

What I’ve seen is the pvp maps have a lot of structures in them – a few open areas, a few closed in areas.

They’re not like wide-open maps (like, say, Rift’s) where range is always an advantage. That said, you’re gonna want to select a set-up that has gap-closers, cripples, and things like that. And you’re always gonna find mesmers annoying.

At level 30ish, you gotta go 6 levels in the same zone, in the same play session.

At level 70-80, it’s not so big.

The obvious solution is to do it on a higher-level character.

Master-of-Damage seems like a good approach to answer questions about effectiveness.

Can we save a log of our combat tab?

I definitely feel the human norn and charr got more attention in design. Sylvari in particular feels thrown together and not as functional. You get fewer dynamic events, it seems, too, which is the big thing that slows leveling in comparison to other zones.

I thought sPvP was the same as WoW’s arena. For the non-WoW-fanbois, what’s the diff, aside from being skill-based vs gear-based?

I thought there was a LFG system.

I dunno – I figure /g works just fine, and pretty much anyone who’s so low on friends they need a LFG system, they prolly isn’t gonna work out to be a good party member.

I really think ANet’s plate is very full trying to get basic functionality in the game to work right now, without adding new stuff. Bugs enough with parties and guilds and squads…

Much rather prioritize 5 players with good situation sense and balanced character abilities than any particular set of professions.

Thanks for these tips. Seems like we may be living with these bugs for a while, it’s good to have a set of things to attempt fixin.

If you’re thinking the renown hearts and things on your map equate to finishing a zone, you’re mistaking it. Look at triggering the dynamic events. Helps if you play in a group.

But regardless, if you feel you’re behind, you can do every other starting area, if you want to focus on renown hearts and map completion.

XP from
dynamic events
exploration/renown/skill points
WvWvW
gathering
crafting
quests
dungeons
killing mobs

The most troubling part of that switch to me is it’s showing us that ANet will patch a bandaid rather than fix what’s really wrong.

The problem was that everyone was screaming about when they’re tryin to loot they’re stuck rezzin your dead pet instead.

The source of that problem is the loot button being inseparable from revive, talk, interact, etc.

Instead of fixing the poor design, ANet decided to add more abitrarily unfun design and make pets unrezzable in combat. Didn’t really hurt rangers much imo, just F4. But it didn’t solve the real problem.

I mostly run with axe/horn, cuz I wanna run fast XD

at least one of mine is a bear always. it’s very rare that I have a downed pet and F4 isn’t ready yet

choose ‘em, just like you wouldn’t automatically use greatsword for each and every fight…

Your first dungeon run or two will prob’ly feel very difficult.

If you continue to play like it’s some other game, they’ll continue to feel difficult.

If you play GW2 style, you’ll find them to be a lot of fun and decently rewarding.

Last night I was in a group that just could not get our dungeon instance to load for all members of the group.

Standing in the zone, we kept trying to get the same overflow, but it wouldn’t work.

We’d get the pop-up “click to join your group in the dungeon” but clicking didn’t do anything.

In short it was the same bugged group crap that’s been going on since launch. Not the first time I ran into it, prob’ly not the last. Literally spent more time tryin to zone in than we did in the dungeon. And later with a different group, everything worked as it’s supposed to — it’s not like it’s 100% of the time bugged, just a lot of it.

I was wondering if people had any strategies for how to circumvent the problem, specifically how to get your group into the same dungeon instance when the game bugs.

Khaldar.7486:

mulch.2586:

Thellena.5967:

You can’t know for certain, but they won’t be simply banned without an investigation (which is why it takes so long to get the scammers and goldsellers banned as well I think).

If they’re just standing there, not moving or using a heal, using the same ability over and over then they’re probably a botter.

Real players will move unpredictably and heal themselves at least once if they’re getting attacked. Even bad players. Observe their behaviour for a couple of minutes and if you genuinely think that they’re botting then report them, if you’re still uncertain then leave them alone.

This is NOT the behavior of the bots for GW2. This is the behavior of someone who’s using the standard interface with auto-fire turned on.

Bots for GW2 do move around and use abilities, gather loot, and whatnot. They’ll either follow a path, or roam a particular area.

Not if they are Event spawn camping!

Event spawn camping isn’t botting, though, and certainly doesn’t require anything more than the built-in GW2 interface.

Thellena.5967:

You can’t know for certain, but they won’t be simply banned without an investigation (which is why it takes so long to get the scammers and goldsellers banned as well I think).

If they’re just standing there, not moving or using a heal, using the same ability over and over then they’re probably a botter.

Real players will move unpredictably and heal themselves at least once if they’re getting attacked. Even bad players. Observe their behaviour for a couple of minutes and if you genuinely think that they’re botting then report them, if you’re still uncertain then leave them alone.

This is NOT the behavior of the bots for GW2. This is the behavior of someone who’s using the standard interface with auto-fire turned on.

Bots for GW2 do move around and use abilities, gather loot, and whatnot. They’ll either follow a path, or roam a particular area.

Standing where your pet aggros a spawn certainly does not require a bot.

Standing with skills on autofire does not require a bot — Just a control right-click with a standard mouse.

There are bots for the game, but they don’t look anything like the behaviors described here — they’ll move around, navigate the zone, pick up loot, and look more like a person playing than a person afk.

It’s not actually losing money, if you got the items “for free” or were just making them to get xp from crafting.

It’s just selling for less than you might have.

But looking on the TP, it seems it’s only vendor trash that’s posted for vendor price — blue and green items, and crafting materials that are in surplus.

Anything that people actually want is buy/sell above vendors’ floor price.

The big limitation for lower level is not being able to zone or take a break and log back in.

I ran with 3 Els and 2 Rangers last night, we did fine with no “tank,” in fact very fast runs.

If you stand still when the attacks come, you’ll be revive, no matter what armor you wear.

If you want to play Rift, play Rift. It works great and is a fun game.
But if you try to play Rift (or WoW or etc) in GW2, you’re doing it wrong and will be frustrated. Not cuz the game doesn’t work or isn’t fun, but cuz you’re playing it wrong.

myyth.6798:

mulch.2586:

Get slots, if you’re into alts.

But the top post has some misconceptions that will hamper good decisions.

There is no tank type.
There isn’t really a stealthy type — thief stealth lasts for just a couple of seconds.
Ranged dps — one of the strongest professions for this is the warrior.
Control-support type — if you’re in a dungeon, that’s at least part of what you’re doing.

All professions do all roles (cept for pet, that really is the ranger thing).

No stealth type? What makes the thief different from other DPS then?

If all the professions do all the roles…then I guess its just a matter of the how they do it and what style they use. But some must be better at some roles then others?
Like a light wearing type wouldnt last long holding aggro?

The thief’s abilities and style of combat favor a lot of bouncing around with medium armor and small weapons. What sets them apart is they use an “initiative pool” to limit how many skills they can fire off, whereas other professions have cooldowns on their skills. The other unique thief aspect is they “steal” which has them shadow-step to the target and they “steal” a special ability that they can then deploy.

Last-long holding aggro:
When you’re dealing with serious mobs, no profession can take direct hits. There’s not well-specified aggro like there is in other games, no taunts, no de-taunts. There are different approaches to survivability. Best is not to be there when the strike lands. Do this by being at ranged (mobs tend to attack the closest), by blocking or reflecting, by healing thru damage (which works on normal mobs but not in a dungeon), and by evading.

I think it’s spamming. A scam is something else.

My mailbox overflows, but my fiance’s doesn’t. She doesn’t ever post here, and only hardly ever talks in public channels, so I’m thinking that’s how the bots harvest names for mailing.

The absolute fastest leveling is WvW. But then you’re doing the same 2 maps and same activities all the way to 80, which might get old, not to mention the hours-long queues.

When you get up a bit, doing dungeons will zip you along. I get about 2/3 a level for a 20-minute run thru CM.

There’ve been a few surveys. The top main profession shows as Warrior, but only with 15-17%

Warrior (go figger, it’s the top kill-speed)
Guardian
Elementalist
Thief

bottom two consistently are
Necrom-answer and
Mesmer (go figger, the slowest kill-speed)

I’ve been wrestling with this since launch and it is possible, but many nights you’ll spend far more time trying to get in the same instance than you’ll spend actually doing the quest.

Note: just cuz we’re on the same story line doesn’t mean you’ll get credit for doing my quest. We’ll have to do them once for each person, who serves as the main character.

Get slots, if you’re into alts.

But the top post has some misconceptions that will hamper good decisions.

There is no tank type.
There isn’t really a stealthy type — thief stealth lasts for just a couple of seconds.
Ranged dps — one of the strongest professions for this is the warrior.
Control-support type — if you’re in a dungeon, that’s at least part of what you’re doing.

All professions do all roles (cept for pet, that really is the ranger thing).

There’s only 8 professions. We only have those choices.

Say I want a heavy armor shadow-knight.
Say I want to play a melee fighter who wears light armor?
An elf like Legolas?

Well, I better play a different game, or adapt my choice.

I think mostly you guys are talking about blues and greens equippable gear, i.e. vendor trash.

Try selling things that are actually desired.

If you’re wearing lvl 30-ish gear, I think we’ve found your problem.

Give it some time and practice. I did two CM runs yesterday with 3 eles in the group where no one died. Yes, some people got downed, but no one died.

It especially takes practice if you’re used to other mmorpgs, and AC trash is particularly difficult.

There’s about 200 skill points in the world. There’s another 75 (?) that you get leveling from 1 to 80. After 80 you’ll continue to earn skill points, as you’ll get sp instead of levels.

So relax, having spent those points won’t slow you down to get the legendary.

There ARE items that sell well above their trader value.

Iron and soft wood don’t. But Small Scale, Vial of Weak Blood, and similar blue items used at the same level as iron and soft-wood do sell at a price substantially higher than the vendor price-floor. The price on those things is going up because the drop rate’s gone down with the flood of butter and chocolate.

So… if you want to farm something and sell it for good $$, make it the expensive stuff.

Think of why the market works the way it does — we’ll always be adding loads of metal and wood because it’s easy to get and we get xp/achieves for gathering it, as part of the daily achievement. There’ll always be lots of surplus armor and weapons cuz of drops and cuz each crafter has to make way more items than they can use just to level up.

To make money, try trading the stuff that’s in demand.

Would be cool if you could pay for repairs with karma, cuz you get lots of that in wvw

The best looking is to unclick the show-helmet box on your hero’s paperdoll.

Well I think the actually trading of matches would totally fit with the ethic of the game.

Sorta like in WvWvW, if blue and green agree to beat up on red, or to trade an asset between themselves, that’s really just part of politics, just like real life.

What do you suppose they’re getting by doing it? No big advantage over you, so what do you care?

ha, those gambling debts — hey, my check is in the mail. Really it is.

I don’t see it working with a trading-post based economy. Cuz you’d be doing it all by mail, what a hassle and not much fun.

It’d be nice if there were a guild-tax system that would automatically skim a couple copper off member’s drops to gather up funds for guild stuff.

prob’ly commercial glory powerlevelers

there ARE items that sell for substantially more than the vendor price

so the proper conclusion isn’t that the tp is broken or people are stupid, but that the vendor price floor must be set higher than supply/demand’s equilibrium

Butter and chocolate have completely taken over what’s inside all my loot bags. It’s really not cool.

But the title question about whether crafting is worth it or not —
you can get most crafting stuff for substantially cheaper than the price of the ingredients. From that point of view it’s not worth it, and never will be.

On the other hand, you get xp, achieves, a feeling of accomplishment from gathering and crafting. So people will always be doing it, regardless of the relative value of ingredients and products.