Guild Wars 2

Those dungeon changes they went on about so much.

lordkrall.7241:

nethykins.7986:

Since when was research the same as actual participation?
I thought that was the reason why in general, we separate practice and theory.

Sure, it’ll give you a rough standing on the game, but getting in, trying things at a personal level, seeing how things work is different from just reading a review, or scrolling through endless threads on reddit or here about “QQing”.

Anyway…what’s so bad about allowing a trial period?

You can however get a rather good feel about the game by checking those millions of youtube-videos and such out there.

As for what is bad with it: The massive amount of trolls that will make accounts simply to troll. If it is free they lose nothing by trolling and getting banned.

It’s easy to say “just use youtube”, when we both know that very few of them hold a well rounded view of the game, very few of them are an overall look at the game on the whole, and have been done very shortly after release which means they’re not updated (which should be a big deal since it’s an ever-evolving MMO), and what GW2 videos there are, usually focus on key things in game that an already established player is looking for…not one that knows nothing about the game would be looking for.

Not sure how far the trolling could go in game. I get it in forums, but don’t know about it in terms of In-game. Care to elaborate?

And does this mean the karka event promoted trolling by having trial invites? does this mean every other MMO with trials promote trolling?

lordkrall.7241:

nethykins.7986:

It would be nice if people, like the OP, were able to have a week long trial to try out the game instead of paying full whack and then going through the trouble of asking for a refund which may, or may not be given.

Or they can research the game before buying it. Like most other people do.

Since when was research the same as actual participation?
I thought that was the reason why in general, we separate practice and theory.

Sure, it’ll give you a rough standing on the game, but getting in, trying things at a personal level, seeing how things work is different from just reading a review, or scrolling through endless threads on reddit or here “QQing”

Anyway…what’s so bad about allowing a trial period?

I guess the real question is, if they say in the next hour, does it mean they have to just push it out then and there?
The idea is, you have an hour…so give some players some time to log out or finish what they were doing etc and log off somewhere safe.

How about holding the forced server updates back a little, and posting a global “WARNING – in 10 mins the server will update”?
Is a little more warning, still within the allotted time-frame of an hour, that hard to do?

It would be nice if people, like the OP, were able to have a week long trial to try out the game instead of paying full whack and then going through the trouble of asking for a refund which may, or may not be given.

Geotherma.2395:

But I’m seeing more people throwing the flame ball at Arenanet with no backing of suggestions or constructive feedback.

Indeed, but I also see ton’s of people throwing the blame ball at players for being opportunistic, greedy so-and-so’s, and forgetting that there are two sides to an exploit. Devs CAN create errors in game, by accident… (even though a decent QA team should be able to pick these out and relay this back to devs) but players WILL take advantage of said errors in game.

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

I do find it strange what you guys said about “reporting exploits being a bannable offense”.

That sounds kind of dumb of ANET. Unless you mean “posting exploits on the forums”. In which case… DUH. Don’t post exploits on the forums, because then other players will see the exploits and try to do them.

There was a whole ton of closed threads around the xmas snowflake exploit. Genuines ones asking for answers and clarity on exploits. Even asking for clarity on vague forum rules gets your thread closed.

Of course doing a dungeon isn’t an exploit. Nor is repeating it. Is selling 1 Sharp Claw to the merchant an exploit? No? Is selling 10 Sharp Claws to the merchant an exploit? No? Is selling 100 Sharp Claws to the merchant an exploit? No? Is selling 1000 Sharp Claws to the merchant an exploit? No? Repetition of regular content isn’t an exploit.

The idea that it is an exploit because it makes you “more than any other farming in the game” doesn’t make sense either. Something has to be the best. Being the best doesn’t make it an exploit, it makes it the best. If CoF didn’t exist, then something else would be the best. If that other thing didn’t exist, a different thing would be the best. Being the best isn’t an exploit.

I guess this is where the problem lies. The fact that CoF would openly be considered as an exploit by devs, but it’s lingered too long to punish anyone and everyone that’s run it countless times to farm.

Geikamir.6329:

What about if you go and buy a stuffed animal for $1. You think “Hey, this is a really nice stuffed animal, I bet people would actually pay more for it if I resold it.” You buy 1000 of them, put a bow on their head, and resell at a higher price. Then you get a subpoena to court saying you are being sued because they meant to put the price at $10. This would never hold up. That’s basically how flipping houses works.

Understood, but from what I know, (only in the UK at the very most – and is most likely covered by the consumer goods act) is that if that item is marked incorrectly, no matter how low, when you get to the cashier, and have 1000 of them, they have to sell it to you at that value. They can alter the value after that purchase, but they have to sell it to you at that value if you have proof that the item has been listed incorrectly (usually in the form of taking the little price label out of the shelf and showing it to a member of staff)

After that, reselling is on the owner, and it’s not illegal to resell items you own. You may be cautioned for selling items and claiming them as your own, but if you openly say “I got this from shop x, but I don’t want it Would you like it for xx price? I’ve also attached a bow on it because I think it looks nicer”

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

nethykins.7986:

Heavy Lulz at people thinking OP is endorsing theft.

In the UK at least, if something’s malfunctioned, or not working as intended and gives you more than it should have, it’s in the companies best interest to fix it, and customers don’t, blame is placed on them. Same goes for mis-labeled items in shops. If you see it mis-labeled at £9.00 instead of £90.00, you get that item for that £9.00 until someone goes and fixes that label.

When it comes to games, it’s never about “you did this wrong” it’s about the integrity of the game, and in this case, the integrity of the in-game market. (which for some reason ANet think’s the game will implode a billion time’s over if it isn’t reinforced with perma-bans)

“Exploit” is now just a blanket word to cover a vast number of things in game…just because.

And I bet this will get closed sharpish, just for bringing it up.

I’m sorry, but have you read this post? Where did I say that people shouldn’t be banned for taking advantage of exploits?

Where did I say stealing is justified?

Please pay attention and read the posts before muddying up the discussion with irrelevant nonsense.

Thanks,

Hey crazy,
I actually wasn’t referring to your post as the “justifying stealing post”, hence, “Heavy Lulz at people thinking OP is endorsing theft.”
I didn’t say you were, in fact, i was laughing at one person in particular that did say you were.

Then off of the back of your analogy, I threw in comment in relation to if it were in the UK, you weren’t liable for an error in part of the company. etc

Not too sure why you’re considering my post as an attack on yours.

Heavy Lulz at people thinking OP is endorsing theft.

In the UK at least, if something’s malfunctioned, or not working as intended and gives you more than it should have, it’s in the companies best interest to fix it, and customers don’t, blame is placed on them. Same goes for mis-labeled items in shops. If you see it mis-labeled at £9.00 instead of £90.00, you get that item for that £9.00 until someone goes and fixes that label.

When it comes to games, it’s never about “you did this wrong” it’s about the integrity of the game, and in this case, the integrity of the in-game market. (which for some reason ANet think’s the game will implode a billion time’s over if it isn’t reinforced with perma-bans)

“Exploit” is now just a blanket word to cover a vast number of things in game…just because.

And I bet this will get closed sharpish, just for bringing it up.

I’d share it out among people through events.

Then i’d immediately be banned for gold-selling.
Funny world, huh?

Seems there is an issue with people just skimming and scanning on lfg and not reading what the post said. So I will make this quick and explained what happened.

There also seems to be an issue with people not using the relevant icons for the types of runs they want to do. Then telling you, “your too low of a level to join us”.

Both sides are a bit kitten at times.

If you remember listening to Anet talk about the dungeons (explorables in particular) they were supposed to be a set of very hard dungeons requiring skill and communication to overcome. they were supposed to be unique paths from the story mode, they were supposed to have a loot system that made it so that you got stuff you wanted and not just crap you couldnt use all the time. They were supposed to be engaging and challenging while making party synergy important and have random DEs that could unfold at any moment….
I have yet to see one of those things in a dungeon.

The main issue here being the talk and hype before and after release. The key focus, after a few months live play, is no longer supposed to be a challenging, useful loot dropping, alternative and engaging dungeon promoting synergy.

I have no idea what the key goal of dungeons are anymore, and I wouldn’t be surprised if any of the dungeon team did either.

They want us to synergise, but we often do less damage or do not hit that dps threshold for specific parts of dungeon paths. (Hello average MMO mechanic. Hello Hodgins path burrows)

They want us to be challenged but give us nothing worth the time or effort involved.

They want(ed) us to think about changing the method of corpse-running, then add mobs that can literally juggle you with knockdow+cripple+bleed combos.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Is there a particular reason why, when I search on the TP for an item, the amount of items listed is usually higher than what is shown when going into the look at the buy/sell of the item?

eg: List All items of rare quality, tick “show available”, select min and max level 80. Pick a highly listed rare at around 100 in quantity. Click the item, and find that the quantitiy has changed from 100 to 33

Thanks in advance

Hawkian.6580:

Can you explain why you think this (unless what you put in parentheses is your reasoning)?

I’ll admit, I may be jumping the gun, but usually game devs don’t state stuff that isn’t in their favour PR wise, which of course, makes sense. While 3m+ sales is great for them, for anyone in fact, it doesn’t make it an automatic success.
We have to throw the same reasoning behind this as we do with F2P’s having XX mil registered accounts but no details on how many active accounts there are.

maddoctor.2738:

Really? I actually watch Anet’s announcements and they said that the population is growing since around December, they don’t give numbers but they DO say that the population is growing steadily.

Analogy time!: “I’m getting better at the French horn every day”…does that mean I am, without showing any evidence? Personally, It doesn’t mean your actually doing it.
I don’t know how they would display that, but it’d have to be better than just “Yup, we’re going from strength to strength”
I tried to check the earnings call to see if numbers were stated on anything beyond sales, but there isn’t and that’s from Q4 of 2012 only (admittedly Jan was when they made the announcement they are increasing every time, but now it’s almost April)

I’m completely fine being proven wrong. I’m even unsure about my own stance because of a lack of evidence.

PVStar.3658:

Apart from broadcasting initial sales and Blizzard boasting that WoW had 12 million players, companies generally don’t give out that information, or they’re very vague with it. Not hearing much about it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not doing as well as they thought.

Anyways, I wouldn’t doubt that the population is growing. When I quit playing back in November it was looking pretty gloom, but since I’ve been back I’m actually surprised at the amount of activity I’m seeing. Apart from the lack of true support for structured PvP, ANet is improving the game pretty decently and people are noticing. People need to realize that most MMOs that are designed around keeping players playing were doing terrible 7 months after release (pretty much every AAA MMO that’s been released since WoW other than Rift), for a MMO like GW2 to still have an active playerbase after 7 months isn’t something to be overlooked.

You are correct. Vague indeed, across all parties, until it becomes a problem and gets mentioned on news outlets.
You are correct though – it doesn’t mean it’s doing badly at all, but knowing that they built an MMO, not a single player game, it’s known that sales alone don’t determine how busy an MMO really is. The difference between WoW and and non Subbed games is that, usually Subs can be linked to time played. Yes, there are few people that sub for a game and then never play it, but I’m sure the majority of players on subs feel that they’re not getting their money’s worth if they don’t play a significant amount during that alotted Sub time.
B2P’s quoting sales numbers holds little weight if they rely on a cash shop to keep them going. Similarly, F2P’s quoting registered accounts instead of active players also hold little weight, and I feel those two, based on their payment model, can be related.

I guess that’s what I was trying to say all along, just in a very, very, bad way.

However, I’d thought that November was when the rush of people came in (the karka event, the game trial keys being used for that karka weekend, big patch/update with content, fractals/ascended gear etc.)

unless someone datamines into their servers we’ll never know.
I don’t think it’s doing terribly bad, but I do think it’s not as well as their forecasts probably were (which is why we’re not hearing much on either side of users vs sales vs concurrent players etc)

Anyone think the devs couldn’t pass on the chance of the naming convention here?

PS: If you don’t know who Nolan North is – go check IMDB :P

I guess you have to put it this way…is it worth the same as an extra alt slot?

the trinity still exists, it’s just not the cookie cutter one that we had before.
It’s now:
CC, Support, DPS
It could even be considered that it’s less than a trinity now – just support and DPS. (Due to CC not having much of an effect/limited effect on bosses)

BTW, saying that there is one, doesn’t mean I dismiss the idea of the game needing some form of backbone to work from. Apparently Anet are working on traits all the time, so who knows. They could buckle under their own pressure and create very-heal-oriented specs for all classes, and more tanky-based skills etc.

If it costs gems…

No doubt.

Hicci.8761:

This is one of the most weirdest questions ever. It’s like comparing maplestory to call of duty.

But…they’re two different games and genre.

GW1 and GW2 are of the same franchise, fall under the same game banner, and GW2 is a sequel, rather than a spin-off.

/sigh

Should have just started with Guild Trek, Guild Rush or Guild Puzzle at a lower fee.
I’m sure that would be content that pretty much all players would be able to do.

GW2 is more of – use up your dodges, and stabilities and you have to wait for someone to heal you from downed, or dead.

For traditional MMO’s, it’s integral that the healer heal the tank for doing his designated job…soaking up damage for everyone, and keeping agro. It’s not an admission of mistakes if your getting healed. It’s when the healer dies, then there’s been a mistake.

Calae.1738:

GW2 was rushed out to release early by the way. This game needed at least another 2 years of development.

The biggest problem with MMO’s is the budget. Instead of building a small world and focusing on great gameplay systems; they instead spend 5 years all their money and resources on developing a huge open world and a personal story that the average gamer gets bored with in 30 days.

How do these developers expect to take some of World of Warcraft’s market share by making bigger open worlds and a personal story that nobody cares about is beyond me.

I have the strongest inclining that the big problem here was ANet were so heavily geared towards (and probably spent so much investment) re-inventing the wheel, and in turn they aren’t so much adding things that are tried and true ways of getting people to play or easier to implement/tweak/fix. They add stuff to try and “prove a point” that they can be different from all other generic MMO’s.

GW2 was never going to be a wow killer, but now it’s left in a very grey area. Not fair enough to casual’s, and doesn’t hold hardcore player’s interest enough.
Before you know it, NW2 and Wildstar will be out and both those audiences would have ventured further away from GW2.

ANet really need to step up their game, ask directly for feedback, answer them and then make changes accordingly – too often we get reports from people interviewing guys at ANet that ask us for questions. Never the devs directly – (yes, that means take your eye off metrics for a moment, they won’t disappear if you ask people for their opinion once in a while). Have frequent polls on forums, tell us what you learned from previous patches and what you are going to keep an eye on next to make sure people are happy (how often do you hear blog posts say “Everything was fine but we felt we wanted to do more” when it was blatant that the patch was limited, or buggy, or didn’t give many people access to it)

Just a quick post to say I’ve set up a new guild. EU based, on Gandara, named “Newbie Network”

It’s a hub for your to run your story-modes, early fractals and try anything else that you may be discouraged to do if the rest of your other guilds are well ahead of you and won’t give you the time to do so.

PM me on here if you’d like to join and i’ll get you hooked up.

Eventually, when the smaller guild missions get working, and the guild has enough of the pre-requisites, this will be a good platform to getting your feet wet on guild missions.

to OP:

Pretty much agree with you. Also, another thing that I reckon they should make note of is that this game almost is catered to play less and less or at least at more of a casual level (DR limitations, rewarded quite abit for simply doing dailies, dragon chest spawn limits etc)

Though, the only thing i’d say about Robert Hrouda is the fact that he correlates “difficulty” with “fun”, when fun is heavily subjective in relation to difficulty and higher difficulty does not always lead to more fun.

Yes, I was one of those people who scoffed when I read the patch notes “made the encounters more fun”

FrizzFreston.5290:

nethykins.7986:

I said in another post before. ANet devs seem to think that “Nerfing = Balance”
The devs will never, ever see this in their eyes because it’s always changes based off metrics and “what the numbers have shown us”.

You complainers are just bad weather journalists. You have nothing to stand on.

They buffed something so good, impacting the game in a negative way.
As in:

• Overflow servers got hit too much during these events, affecting other gameplay in the same area.
• People with many alts had a huge advantage over people that only have one character.
• People used the guesting system in order to fix their problem of missing out on an event.
• Market flooded (slightly?) with ectos, rares and exotics.
• Specific meta events became more or less the focus of the game and were out of balance with the rest of the game. (Imo, they still are)

With the positive side that:

• People got a much better reward for these group events.

Please, I implore you to read through many other player’s posts on how they think that the dragons could have been more rewarding without just flooding the game with rares. Make special note of those who even take a look at the greater picture of the whole game’s drop quality. The fact that they’ve “solved” champion and vet drops only recently, (to what….certain green on champs and no guarantee on vets at all. And dungeon chest loot being still lame? Sure…great fix.)

Just to hit on your points:

• Yes they did…but does this stop that from happening? Not likely.
• People with alts always had an advantage. This isn’t new news. “Run dungeons on an alt? SURPRISE! You can get that dungeon skinned gear quicker than someone with only 1 character!” If you didn’t know, now you know.
• People were always free to use guesting. This can’t be labelled as an exploitative behaviour and limited, otherwise guesting on the whole becomes redundant.
• People have said that ectos do their usual fluctuation when something involving ectos is added or changed in game. It returns back to a stable price in the end.
• Yup, they’re the focus now. So as I said, Pay attention to those who say there should be more incentives to explore anything beyond chest events, and fractals.

And after they saw what happened, they nerfed it down again. Because , seriously, this game is not only about farming the same group events with 5 billion alts over and over and over again.

It’s not about farming but a fair chunk of the game DOES require farming. All optional, just like group events but still a farm to get good loot.
Full dungeon set? = Token farm. Legendary? = JP farm+other mats farm, Karma Exotic (skin)? = Farm

Farming exists. You may not like it but again it’s OPTIONAL. You can’t tell people an optional part of the game shouldn’t be allowed because you don’t like the fact they make multiple characters, level them to 80 and farm it.

Zosk.5609:

Soulbound gear is the big problem, IMO.

People with alts feel they deserve more loot and to get around timers because they need more to equip their characters.

However, this immediately opens to abuse, as it really doesn’t take a high character to get the loot…basically you can make twinks to get more free loot and never build up those other characters.

The answer is to stop soulbinding this stuff completely… make it so you can easily do hand-me-downs and make it easier for people to get gear for multiple toons without opening it up for exploit.

Only thing that should e character based are “progression” type stuff that is intentionally created to indicate how much you played a certain character (levels, certain titles, and WvW/PvP levels if they add them).

I’ve always thought, if they want to keep things soulbound, then open stuff like karma out to account bound. Many people are sitting on piles of karma for one character that simply doesn’t need it, and having to buy endless amounts of orrian boxes just to transfer this is just cumbersome and you lose a lot of karma in the process.

Vol.5241:

Alur.7510:

@nethykins.7986 @DarksunG.9537

To be honest, they announced already that the 26th is the patch for culling and other changes that are already done, I have no idea why not include them on the pre-patch notes so people can see them.

Meanwhile I understand something can get delayed, the subject that they already announced them and nothing is up yet, does not worry me, but something is not right either.

Why does it matter anyway? People keep making this type of thread before each patch. This is how they’ve done patches before. There is no benefit for them to announce something very detailed in advance when something can go horribly wrong and they have to pull back.

There’s a ton of benifit. Perhaps not in a raw physical form, but for ANet’s reputation on “priding themselves on communication” and getting people excited and drumming up that anticipation before a patch drops – tad more space for media coverage.

Because reading a 2 paragraph article on “Hey, so this patch is going to be dropping and everything is in vague territory”
…is not as interesting as…
“Hey so this patch is going to be dropping and here are the things that we and many have been exited about – item1, item2, item3”.

Anet is well known now for its vague approach so it would be an improvement on communication and would be the start of better “messaging” in the grand scope of things.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: They said they need that extra time because they work on patches down to the wire. What you see in patch notes will be what they managed to fix, not what they intended to fix. Even big things like the ‘culling gone’ part of the patch are subject be be delayed if it doesn’t work on patch day.

Astralporing.1957:

Balance doesn’t mean nerfing everything down to the same level.

This. x1billion.

I said in another post before. ANet devs seem to think that “Nerfing = Balance”
The devs will never, ever see this in their eyes because it’s always changes based off metrics and “what the numbers have shown us”.

ANet Dev 1: “Oh, Look guys. Stats tell us that people are farming Dragons since we put the changes in. Should we start making the game a little better rounded with the rest of the loot tables and curb the very high quality rewards fromDragons?
We wouldn’t want everyone to just farm Dragons! We worked really hard to give them an open world. I’d like them to explore that and get rewarded for it. Or maybe open a thread asking why people flock to dragons only then work from there?”

Anet Dev 2: “Nah, Just nerf something on the dragon’s side and cap it per account – making sure alt’s aren’t exploiting whatever may be exploitable. That should give us the correct stats we expect for the future.”

Arale.4207:

I can’ believe everyone who is saying ‘’guess my alts are useless now’‘. If the only reason you had or used your alts was to farm dragon chests all day, I think you should use a different term to describe your other characters. To people who play on their alts to have fun, and enjoy them, more power to you. This loot crowd that’s slowly growing in this game is becoming absurd.

That’s a bit of a naive statement. Sure people will role alts, but if they’ve done all they want to do one 3 80’s then why on the 4th and 5th are they to force themselves to “have fun” running through the same old content again?

Alt’s aren’t meant to be trashed as soon as they hit 80 just because farming becomes it’s sole purpose at that max level, Alt’s shouldn’t be disposable.

I don’t get this “argument”, you will fight the big bosses for the same reasons you always did… you will not get extra rewards for killing them with alts though, and that’s what they are -finally- changing.

I’d totally agree with you if DR didnt effect rewards like karma or money (or exp?) when you want to do them more than a few times in a row but it does.
That only adds to the “so…why should I do more than one? Why should I continue to play more of your content if all I’m going to get is less?”

Aelaren.3784:

I was under an impression they rehashed the loot to be higher quality, with a minimum of one rare. Now they change it to provide SINGLE rare via additional chest and bring normal chest rewards to the way they were before.

If I am right, then the loot will be godawful again, it is basically just a rare per event, close to zero chance for extra rare or exotic. Forget Final Rest if you ever wanted it.

All this because they are unable to make a chest lootable once a day per account.

I’m more inclined to think they’re doing it because the can’t “test the water” in any other way. No amount of metrics, or “internal testing”(!) or hard numbers will give them data on how people will react to loot drops being changed.

Some people could call it Trial and Error. Some could call it Flip-Flopping.

I, on the other hand have 8, and if I use all 8, I should get 8 rewards. Its taken me 8 times longer so why no cake?

Because the cake is a lie.

Secondly, because ANet are protecting their economy. They don’t care if you spent hours speed-crafting your way to your 80’s or if you’ve got world completion/personal story completed on every single one of them, you’ll always get treated as if your effort and time put into the game is worthy of minimal reward – and it’s all in favour of keeping the “open economy” under a tight control.

Hey, I don’t blame them. They’ve got to keep people stuck on the game. Some ways more annoying than others.

Writetyper.1985:

Titan.3472:

Welcome to the “Dungeon AC revamp for more fun”

Story wasn’t touched, bandwagoning genius.

@OP: This is not a game where one “tanks”. You’re doing it completely wrong.

Actually, the troll is the exact same on both story and explorable. Skills have changed, which makes it a strange difficulty curve when/if you reach him on story, but challenging if you meet him on Expl.

Spooghetti.4256:

nethykins.7986:

It’s so conffffuussiinggg.
“The current chests will stay lootable once per day per character, but each boss’s guaranteed rare item drop will be moved to a separate chest (visually similar to daily achievement reward chests) that can only be acquired once per day across an account.”

I’m assuming this is a nerf on rares. So your second example would be:
- Rare or higher <—— Account bound chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest

I dunno. :S
Any more clarity on this?

I’m fairly confident the -random- rares you get, like when you get 3 from a chest currently will remain in the primary chest, you still have the -chance- to get rares on alts, it’s just no longer 100% for each boss.

When I would normally get 3 rares on an alt, I would now get 2 because the 3rd rare would’ve been the 100% one which I had already gotten for the day on my main.

Cheers, kinda clears it up.

I know the rare is Once per account per day, but are the chests that spawn normally at events are still at once – per char – per day? (but obviously with less chance of a rare at all)

azizul.8469:

basically 1 boss chest per account per day…….

“basically 1 “worthwhile” boss chest per account per day……."

Fixed it for you.

Spooghetti.4256:

Right now the single chest is like this(example loot):

- Rare <—— Boss chest
- Rare <—— Boss chest
- Rare <—— Boss chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest

All in one chest, under the new system it will look like this:

- Rare or higher <—— Account bound chest
- Rare <—— Boss chest
- Rare <—— Boss chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest

Everything besides that SINGLE piece will stay the same.
At least this is how I’m understanding this change is ment to work?

It’s so conffffuussiinggg.
“The current chests will stay lootable once per day per character, but each boss’s guaranteed rare item drop will be moved to a separate chest (visually similar to daily achievement reward chests) that can only be acquired once per day across an account.”

I’m assuming this is a nerf on rares. So your second example would be:
- Rare or higher <—— Account bound chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Green <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest
- Blue <—— Boss chest

I dunno. :S
Any more clarity on this?

To me, It sounds very much like an “oh kitten” move.
They’ve jumped at this one very fast – perhaps because it involved the economy rather that the fact it was effecting people on home servers getting kicked to overflows.
(because then they’d have just done a quick priority flag over guesting instead of changing loot parameters)

Not saying it’s good or bad, but definitely a very hasty move.

Nerfed? No…Balanced? Yes

However, as of the first patch ever added to GW2, devs always seem to imply, Nerf=Balance.

Unfortunately, regardless of what we think, they operate on statistics and are likely to change things based on that.

Templar.4512:

nthykins, thank you for the reply, Bloodstealer and the others too. I have invested in my skills and trait points, but I’ve found no use for the given skills/traits, and that saddens me. Autoattack is sufficient in most fights, maybe the Necro staff’s second skills to heal myself back a bit, but otherwise, I find them not worth using, for some reason.

I have tried looking into the skills, a lot, yet I only see forced synergy, if any. Mind you, I come from other MMO’s, RPG’s and MOBA’s in which synergy is very important.

I feel that the Necromancer and Ranger have no general sense of particularity, neither through clothing, nor through spells, visually or mechanically.

I’d not worry too much about it. Both Necro and Ranger along with engineer are the borked classes in the game. Very few play them, because of their troublesome balancing with skills, traits, etc that are worthwhile.

If all else fails, make a warrior/guardian/elementalist alt. You’ll feel SO much better when you level them up with little to no issues. And that in turn will cause you to have more fun.

Angry Joe is a fun guy to watch, and it’s always good getting an opinion of someone who’s not directly a jounalist or games reviewer that will often gloss over elements.
However, his review was based off of near I think a week or two of playing an MMO.

You can not buy, play and review an MMO in the space of two weeks, and use that as defining reasons for people to buy it. They too will get to two weeks (or usually more) then hit that wall where it’s not as fun. Anyway…rant over.

I may start doing this book stuff – I’m trying to read more in my spare time, but only often do it travelling to and from work. Since about this time last year I’ve read about 5 books, which is a huge change from reading almost none at all.
I’m more inclined to do artwork (I work in the creative field), some illustration or animation, but having to alt-tab continuously is a tad bit troublesome.

Anyway…No. it’s not how the game should be played, but there’s a whole lot that it shouldn’t be that it is now (I’m looking at you 80’s only groups).

PS: Any Books people could recommend to me, since I’m coming up to the end of my current read.

Welcome to the forums.
First thing’s first, I think you need to take a few days to look at each point in your post and figure out if this is actually a game fault or user fault

• Summons appear at the location’s “effective” level, not your base level. So if you’re lvl 17…it’s because you’re in a lvl 17 area or zone.

• Skills are useless at the moment because you’ve not given yourself time to unlock the next tiers. (you need to spend 5 to unlock the next tier of skills, and then again 5 for the next etc.)

• Conditions like 1sec blind are helpful when you cue up just before an attack. It was guarantee a miss. Which leaves you more time to attack and less time worrying about dodging, or being hit. They’re not really for spamming.

• Pets are NOT all similar. Get a pig. Then go get a wolf. Then go get a bear. they all have different skills and attacks that grant benifits to the player.

I can agree with you in some parts.

• Yes, Taming a pet with “F” is lame.

• All in all, yes, the core element of all classes is “DPS > support > healing”. You can get through the game alone on DPS without much trouble or dying a handful of times as long as you stay slightly above the mob and apply cripple/bleeds.
  Focus on support and you’ll not die as much but as a necro you’ll take LOADS of time killing mobs, which is boring and not as much fun as the devs would assume.

• All Allied AI is crazy stupid. It’s well known, and well documented. So you’re not alone there.

Just give the game some time before you decide to rant. I’m coming close to 3 80’s and I only just think I can give a rounded view on what the game succeeds and fails at. But if you’re still at the starting areas, you still have a LONGGGGGGG way to go. Get at least 1 char to 80, then come back and discuss with us your thoughts. I’m sure you’ll get a lot less hassle from anyone and everyone.

Good luck.

PS: I’m on EU as well, I picked a very busy server before server change charges came into place. You can still change your server if you delete all your characters (if you’re not happy with ranger and your necro then this should be ok for you) and transfer over to one of the higher populated servers.

WonderfulCT.6278:

Black Wolf.7348:

most of the people who used to do AC before the update is now skipping the whole dungeon. says a lot about the update.

No it doesn’t.

Did all three paths the other day. One death the entire time and did kholer on all three paths. Not everyone was 80 btw.

This still says nothing about the update.

I can only speak for my own personal example, but I saw much less reluctance to do Kholer pre patch.
I have killed him since the new patch, but only once. And after doing it on one path, we all agreed we’d not be bothered to do it on the other path. Just felt pointless doing it when we could skip it and there not be much of a difference.
Then other runs have just consisted of:

“Skip?”
“Y”
“yes, pls”
“yes”
“yeah”

Advert Paperer.7059:

You know how your #1 weapon skill is normally cycled to produce a continuous attack “chain”? It’s possible to do the same with some utility skills (such as “For Great Justice!”) so that they’re automatically used whenever the cooldown is complete. If the player has chosen a skill with a sufficiently low cooldown interval, then their weapons will remain unsheathed.

More information: Auto-attack

Last time I checked, those utility shouts weren’t able to be put on auto-attack.

I know that the recent patch change kholer, and while some people say it’s a great change that varies the fight, for me, and in my experience, people are more adamant to skip him than take him on.

That leads us to believe that the intended thoughts on making Kholer a better and less “skippable” fight are in fact a failure on ANet’s part. it’s not impossible to do – I like the ghostbuster themed fight at the end of one of those path and think it was a great change that varied the fight and, although it can’t be skippable, it gave more emphasis on the ghost traps (previously turrets) and stop the fight from being like all others where you basically follow and auto-attack.

I’m not saying Kholer has to be buffed or nerfed, but I personally thought that Kholer summoning more mobs over certain phases was a pretty sub-standard idea. Adds nothing to the fight apart from annoyance, irritation and “oh look…more Ascalon rangers/monks/necros/elementalists”

Anyway…what are your opinions and experience with Kholer, and what do you think could be changed to actually make people want to take him on?

i’d love to see it happen but ONLY…and i stress “ONLY” when the rest of the game is fixed and refined the current game as it stands, because that’s still in an unpolished state.

Woah….Bobby is on fire! Answering questions left and right. Good on you.

As a semi-casual player that can be and most times want’s to be drawn into the lore, the living story “teasers” have yet to make me care about dead and injured refugees, or that there’s an orange portal instead of the normal blue one (Maw event) in Wayfarer foothills, or the supposed threat that had eradicated people’s homes.
(P.S: Where are these homes? My assumption was that near all people live in the town hubs, bar a few here and there, but as the story is unfolding – and those houses remain intact and those dynamic events still run – there’s a mismatch between what you’re telling me and what you’re showing me)

In light of it being a teaser, it’s supposed to grab me, and make me desperately want to find the answers and be eager in the next instalment. I think a mixture of things caused it not to work as well as intended:

• Length of time between teaser sections
• “Just Another Event” syndrome – which I’ll say is pretty much stomping all over Colin’s “Hey, I swung a sword…Hey! I swung a sword again” comment, where in this case, it’s “Hey! I plugged up those holes in the ground and closed a portal….Hey! I plugged up those holes in the ground and closed a portal again…” which unfortunately due to the nature of the game, makes any effort for emphasising urgency, and worry in at a story level worthless.
• Over-hype = Under-deliver (this can be managed. Just remember.. The higher you hype, the harder it is to reach average expectations and the further it is to fall)

Personally, I think is that the hype behind this is nothing short of a continuation of bad messaging that can be found all over the place for GW2.
From what devs say in interviews that eventually get debunked by players when implemented – to hype around what the personal story should have been and what it actually ended up being.

I hope that in the coming months, we don’t end up with the Living Story being the awkward cousin of Personal Story.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I’d rather get drowned in lag/particle effects by dozens of players rather than feel forever alone because of the stupid culling effect. But that’s me XD

I get what you mean…but then it doesn’t solve anything.. It just bottlenecks the problem elsewhere.

Which, most likely, we’ll get a fix for 7-8 months later * Roles eyes *