Guild Wars 2

Purple Miku.7032:

Here are the largest DPS-related nerfs warrior received in the past ~year:

-Ferocity (applicable to all classes), which was ~10% of a DPS loss for the warrior in a level 80 area.

-Torment duration for impale and the time before you’re able to use Rip were both nerfed.

-Strength Runes nerf (7% > 5%) – applicable to both warriors and elementalists, which was a solid 2% DPS loss when this was a very nice alternative to somewhat counter the harsh DPS loss from the ferocity patch. Scholar remained best in groups, but Strength was best for low-manning/solo situations and a very strong runeset for pug groups.

-Hundred Blades + Whirlwind 5% damage reduction

-Adrenaline massively nerfed so that it can’t be maintained at all between fights, resulting in often times a 15% damage loss when using the Berserker’s Power trait depending on the circumstance (an essential one for damage-based builds in PvE, not so much in PvP)

-Burst skills are still bugged with the Berserker’s Power trait because the adrenaline depletes on skill activation rather than after it’s finished executing, so it will never maintain the 15% damage increase before the skill connects.

-Longbow’s arcing arrow got a damage reduction by 15%.

-Bloodlust, along with all other stacking sigils, were nerfed repeatedly so that you can’t maintain stacks when swapping weapons anymore (affected all classes, not just warrior) resulting in most cases a loss of 250 power. Bloodlust stacks were lost on down/disconnect/death, but it was very common for people to build up stacks and swap to another weapon with a different sigil. It made the sigils more useful than they currently are and weren’t a problem at all the way they were. The change made them only extremely frustrating to use overall.

-Might was nerfed from 35-30 power resulting in a loss of 125 power (affects all classes). Because might-generating is a huge portion of the warrior’s DPS and part of what their selling point is, this nerf affected warriors along with elementalists and engineers by far the most.

---

This isn’t even all of the nerfs. This is just as many as I can think of off the top of my head, which is why they’re not all in chronological order.

Some sources:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-July-1-2014/first#post4199424
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-September-9-2014/first

So what you’re actually saying is everyone got some DPS nerfs, and a couple of warrior skills got adjusted as well. The biggest one being the change to the way adrenaline depletes over time.

Wait, there’s a possibility that the little wretched shark toothed kitten might get killed? Heck yes! I can’t stand her! Wait till I tell my buddy this has given us a reason to check out the living story again! Please, PLEASE ArenaNet, KILL HER! She is such a worthless, stereotypical, whiny little goit. Every line of dialogue she utters hurts my ears.

I’ve been playing the living world chapters with a friend, and we can’t get over how badly delivered and illogical the dialogue is. As you’ve said OP the characters don’t seem to react properly to the situation, and the timing of the dialogue and emphasis of certain words doesn’t seem right. High level examples would be

• the encounter with the Sylvari leader (world tree mother or whatever her name is) who appears to know about the dragon, and yet never volunteered any information to anyone (despite world encompassing events occurring around her).

• Requiring to convene a summit of race leaders to convince them to commit forces to the effort when the Pact was already formed for the precise purpose of fighting the dragons whom the player is the commander of.

• Braham’s and Eir’s conversation where Eir at first says the Norn would not help because JORMAG, and then not 2 mouse clicks later decides that actually yes, two dragons are worse than one.

The first two episodes were bearable if cliche, but this particular one had the two of us in fits of laughter and disbelief for the most part.

Did you buy over $800 worth of gems with dollars, or did you farm the equivalent amount of gold and convert that into gems?

Azhure.1857:

@ Those that use the excuse of “real life stuff” pulling you away unexpectedly.

True. It does happen. Life happens.
However too many people use it as a shield. If you can’t commit to starting AND finishing an activity in game – then you deserve no credit and/or rewards for that activity. There is no pause function in GW2. So people are leeching rewards from events that they don’t deserve. Staying dead on the ground but not caring because they got in their “boss tap” and will get credit regardless. Standing afk nearby playing their Xbox instead because they didn’t have to do more than tap and get out (yes, I know multiple people that do this).

Its bullkitten. Complete bullkitten. Maybe taking something away from you would be too much punishment for this because sometimes life does happen, though more people are using that here for the sake of argument than what actually ends up happening. But on the other side of the coin nobody should be rewarded for it. Yet they are. Repeatedly. Every night.

Some of you may ask why it bothers me so much. Part of the answer would be that people that are there but aren’t contributing does make it harder for those that are actually working towards event completion. Though some events are so pathetic that even with 1/2 of a zerg dead, the boss still melts before your eyes. (Hi, Karka) Another reason it bothers me is because it feels extremely unfair, again to those that are playing the game as intended. Please don’t try to come back with a “tap and pull out” style of play was how ArenaNet wanted its customers to play this game. Finally I’d say that whether its a reason I’ve already listed, a combination, or something I’m not fully understanding yet – Everytime I see/hear leeching…. it slowly sucks the enjoyment out of this game for me. Soul sucking.

Now some of you are going to go, “Aw kitten she mentioned the Manifesto”. Yeah. Manifesto. There…. I said it. Deal with it. But the part I’m pulling from that is where they talk about how they don’t want you to feel angry or upset when you see people joining in on Events. That it will take nothing from you if people join. That you will even want people to join up with you.

Sadly that’s no longer the case. Now I’m used to a new system, I suppose. Pardon all the “kitten” – Its what my guild has actually heard me say on TS these days.
“Okay, how many of you little kittens are just going to spam skill#1?”
“Mhmm, how many of you are just going to body slam the boss to get your tap and then lay dead or back out and leech the rest of the event?”
“Wonder how many of you little kittens are going to dodge? Listen to /s and /m chat? Learn and play with boss mechanics accordingly?”

Its getting to the point where I’m feeling less and less happy with current GW2 gameplay. Instead I spend more time going between tired or drained to annoyed or downright kittened off. I’m sure some would call that “burned out”. Could very well be right about that. I’ve not been logging in as much.

Yet isn’t “burned out” something you normally associate with work? Stress?
Why is Guild Wars 2 burning me out?

Meh.
Sorry for all the venting and going off on a tangent.

Here here!

The number of bodies lying dead at Tequatl’s feet for the duration of that event is comical. By now I would imagine people would understand that they are causing serious grief for the living by blocking resurrections for downed players, affecting event scaling and fooling warriors into thinking that a war banner right now is a really good idea.

I don’t particularly care about players dying outside the vicinity of an event, but if you die within range of a world event you should be auto-ported back to the nearest waypoint after a few seconds. Furthermore, players that spend the majority of an event either dead or out of its range should have their rewards nullified regardless of whether or not they ‘tapped’ it when it began.

I recently got my mits on a lovely sword which I cannot part ways with. Unfortunately not only is it a sword, it has rabid stats (precision, toughness, condition damage). I plan to MH it, but can’t think of many good builds to PvE with. My best attempt so far is pairing it with other rabid armour and a greatsword, then alternating between hundred blades and sword burst. Phalanx strength and forceful greatsword keep the might stacks up on my team mates and my damage doesn’t seem terrible. That said, I am sure someone could do better. Have at it fellas!

Thanks for the hard work guys!

As a side note, the extra 100 tickets for folk who did the achievement are in the mail, and don’t come in the chests.

Five whole days?! But that’s 120 hours from now! That’s simply not enough time to decide what to do with those extra 100 tickets!

Lagg.3960:

For what it’s worth, I believe I’m enjoying the unfolding PR disaster more than the weapon skins I would otherwise have gotten.

So far I’ve been watching this thread with amusement at the overblown sense of entitlement displayed here by some people, but even I can’t deny that there is a worrying lack of communication.

If you really wanted to go nuclear you could try this argument:

The value of personal information and even personal attention has continued to increase in the post internet revolution era. By virtue of just playing their game for free and at no charge to them, Arena Net most certainly owe their patrons something in exchange.

/duck

Gilgalas.7860:

nosleepdemon.1368:

The main motivator for humanity is survival at all costs, Darwin proved that. The main motivator for people playing this game, the main motivator Arena Net encourage for people playing this game is vanity and the acquisition of material goods. They’ve termed it horizontal progression.

I have one hard time understanding how “vanity” can be an expression of “survival at all cost”. If anything, earning vanity in a “meaningless” video game detracts you for spending time IRL enhancing your skills and getting a better job, a better pay then a better mate, education for your offsprings and, all in all, better chances at propagating your genes.
I am sorry to correct you, but Darwin theories deal with “survival of the fitest”, not “survival at all cost”, which is quite different.

nosleepdemon.1368:

I maintain that one of the problems with Guild Wars 2 is its single minded focus on monetizing almost every aspect of itself.

That is a strange quote. I get the feeling we are not playing the same game. When I look at the gemstore, what do I see ?
- little boosts
- some utilities (several of which have been mathematically proved to be of little use to their ingame available counter parts)
- huge lots of vanity items (skins, pets, music instrument)
- custom arena passes

How is this monetizing every aspect of the game ? There is only one community that could really complain about the state of the gemstore, and that community is the role players. Anyway, in the current state of the game, the gemstore has little to do with WvW

nosleepdemon.1368:

Threads full of bile and hatred like this one are a result of a community fed the idea that in order to advance in the game, they must tread upon one another or throw money at the company. As such, many players feel that they earned the WvW rewards through hard work, and that this hard work was going to pay off and elevate them above their peers.

Funny to hear that about one of the games that least emphasizes the competition between players.
I know we all are different, yet I think it is very sad if you play to elevate yourself above others. You should play to keep on elevating above yourself, not above others. WvW is not about treading upon one another, it is first and foremost about playing as a community, managing a lot of players that act together.

How did you confuse vanity and survival of the fittest? I didn’t equate the two as meaning the same thing (I did mean survival of the fittest when I said survival at all cost, I just worded it poorly).

How can you describe this game as anything other than extremely vain when the end game content progression is almost entirely based upon the idea of acquiring a more and more impressive wardrobe? This is what I mean by emphasizing the worst kind of competition among players, the desire to look good is clearly at the very least equal to every other desire a player has in this game and if nothing else, in game rewards tend to be tied to this.

The gem store items are not the “monetization” I was most closely referring to, I’m implying that the game encourages you to purchase short cuts, most explicitly seen through constant reminders that gold can be purchased with gems. Another example is new weapon sets (arguably the “coolest” feature in terms of looks) usually being tied to RNG and not even being directly purchaseable with gems.

WvW is absolutely about treading over one another. Think about how many players transferred to more popular servers just to be on the winning side, about how many 2v1 scenarios erupted in the season just to ensure a win. These are features that Arena Net have explicitly allowed! You might have a rosey outlook on how WvW is conducted, but let me tell you the reality is far, far nastier.

The fact is, at no point does this game emphasize working as a group and respecting one another to achieve a common goal. Material gain is king, and rage is the result.

In reply to Xia:

Hopefully they can push it live without requiring a full patch, despite the complexity of the issue!

It’s always nice to have an interesting debate about human psychology, good luck in your travels around Tyria.

…

And yes, there may be some over time in order for tonight.

Xia.3485:

nosleepdemon.1368:

In order to prevent threads like this from occurring, there needs to be a bit more humanity injected into the way the game and Arena Net deal with its players.

Do you have any suggestions in mind regarding this? They are reading the thread after all.

nosleepdemon.1368:

You are right to call Guild Wars 2 a theme park MMO, but those theme park features haven’t really been expanded upon in a meaningful sense for a while now, giving way instead to countless new ways to monetize the player’s experience through gem store items and RNG loot box keys.
There is a lot of bitterness among players that has spilled forth in this thread, and their reaction may seem overwhelming based upon the premise that they’re just missing some skins, but for some this may have been the spark that lit the whole house on fire.

So you’re implying that lack of new content (and possibly lack of permanent content) lead to this frustration?

One thing I really like about GW2 is the general lack of a gear treadmill. That being said, I can take 2-3 weeks worth of gaming time and poor it into another game.. then come back. No monthly fee means no guilt of “wasting money”. No gear treadmill means I can run whatever new content when it arrives.

Now if only that other game wasn’t such a colossal disappointment…

The point made a few posts above about players playing through their misery for a carrot on a stick is a good one. I feel that perhaps the mechanics of this game cater to that frame of mind. As an anecdote, every single one of my RL friends has stopped playing this game regardless of the fact that they could come back at any time risk free. I’ve tried on multiple occasions to get them rejoin me, and their responses range from “there’s no end game” to “their monetization is evil”.

The “no end game” point is important, because although it is incorrect – there is an end game, but it is locked behind stacks of gems or massive amounts of farming – the perception that an end game does not exist is all that matters.

As for “injecting more humanity” into the game, I don’t have a good answer. The game-play and monetization model Arena Net have developed is first and foremost an evolution of making an MMO in the post WoW world profitable. The downside to this is, well, how do you convince players that constantly badgering them to buy the latest knick knack isn’t evil?

Perhaps one approach that might be explored is removing random chance from obtaining any item related to the gem store. However I understand that the random chance is there to give those items value and lasting appeal, as it is not feasible to constantly build entire weapon or armour sets.

Another approach could involve looking at the method in which precursor weapons are obtained, and allowing players to work toward them (a popular idea seems to be rewarding a choice of precursor through an achievement point chest). Such an over-arching reward would ensure players are contributing toward a truly legendary reward over time. On the flip side, I’m sure that everything suggested thus far with regards to precursor drop rates has been explored by Arena Net and found to be wanting.

I have a feeling that Living Story Season 2 could go a way to alleviating some of the angst felt by players by giving them a permanent, tangible expansion to the world they have invested their time in.

Of course, each episode appears to be monetized should you miss it…

On a personal note (and hopefully at no risk of turning this into a match up thread), do you regularly WvW? I’d be interested in joining you in mashing some faces while we debate the philosophy of game design among piles of corpses.

Xia.3485:

chronometria.3708:

Be thankful, considering that there are servers out there that use DDOS….this could get a whole lot more serious.

Is that a threat? Is that wise?

“Grab some popcorn, this gonna be good!”

=^_^=

Yeah I’d kill that reply real fast or the thread will get locked, I think we’re having an interesting discussion here and considering some of the… vomit in this thread it’s surprising that Arena Net have let it continue. Don’t give them a really, really good reason to remove it.

[edit]

Thanks Jessica, the update is most appreciated! And thank you for allowing the thread to remain alive, considering some of the content in here.

In reply to Xia:

The gem store argument wasn’t meant to imply that items purchased from the store would be broken. Imagine Arena Net announcing a bunch of items would be available for purchase, but then were delayed, or part of the store going down for some period of time preventing the purchase of items from it.

Because of how aggressively the “micro” transactions in this game are marketed, players will fight tooth and nail for any small reward they are able to squeeze out of the system. In fact I’d wager that a fair number of players do see this as an issue of fighting The System. There was a lot of complaining going on during the WvW season, and players who became invested in the event were basically putting themselves through a meat grinder day in and day out, and now their reward is nowhere to be seen.

In order to prevent threads like this from occurring, there needs to be a bit more humanity injected into the way the game and Arena Net deal with its players. You are right to call Guild Wars 2 a theme park MMO, but those theme park features haven’t really been expanded upon in a meaningful sense for a while now, giving way instead to countless new ways to monetize the player’s experience through gem store items and RNG loot box keys.

There is a lot of bitterness among players that has spilled forth in this thread, and their reaction may seem overwhelming based upon the premise that they’re just missing some skins, but for some this may have been the spark that lit the whole house on fire.

Xia.3485:

nosleepdemon.1368:

If you treat your customers as clients and nothing more, then nurture their most basic instincts of greed and self gratification, expect them to come for blood when you don’t deliver.

I see your still on the subject of vanity and still believe its the main motivator for humanity. I met your challenge; you ignored it.

Nothing anet did deserves this thread. Not the way the game is designed nor the bug with the ticket rewards. In fact, its a small minority of the playerbase posting here. A very vocal one.

But I can’t help poking them!

=^_^=

Edit: I wonder what the statistics on WvW players vs PvE players looks like, how much overlap they have and the income derived from both these demographics. I wonder if that also corresponds to manpower dedicated to the mini-game. Would be fun to see.

The main motivator for humanity is survival at all costs, Darwin proved that. The main motivator for people playing this game, the main motivator Arena Net encourage for people playing this game is vanity and the acquisition of material goods. They’ve termed it horizontal progression.

Riot Games have tried to curb the poor behaviour of players in League of Legends through a tribunal system and by allowing you to vote team mates and opponents up for exemplary conduct, not player skill. It’s a rock in an ocean for sure but still a step in the right direction.

I maintain that one of the problems with Guild Wars 2 is its single minded focus on monetizing almost every aspect of itself. Threads full of bile and hatred like this one are a result of a community fed the idea that in order to advance in the game, they must tread upon one another or throw money at the company. As such, many players feel that they earned the WvW rewards through hard work, and that this hard work was going to pay off and elevate them above their peers.

If some items in the gem store, for example boosters or the reskinned infinite mining pick were bugged and disabled for some reason, I wonder what the response from the player base would be? I would put money down that the threads created would be far more light hearted in nature. Yet these aspects of the game run without a hitch or are fixed incredibly quickly. Your assertion that development time for a feature is correlated with how much money that feature can make for the game makes sense. The problem is that players know this, and it merely feeds their sense of injustice.

StudioDraven.6538:

With the amount of vitriol poured out in posts in this thread I don’t blame the devs for not wanting to set foot in here and update us.
(not that they did that on Monday or anything like that, of course. Oh, wait, yes they did.)
I also don’t blame Mark at all for getting a little annoyed with the number of people who seem to expect ANet to work round the clock for them.
Seriously. It’s a reward chest, not the end of the world. If you’re so incredibly hung up about not being able to spend your shiny tickets yet, imagine how those of us who haven’t even gotten them AT ALL YET feel. I didn’t get mine, and yet I am prepared to wait until they’ve sorted the problem out.
Chill the hell out. It’s a GAME.

Man I wish I didn’t have to set foot into meetings with clients who make outlandish demands. Oh wait I do because they put food on my table and petrol into my car.

Look around you, look at the way this game works. Nearly every update, nearly every addition to the game is somehow tied into it’s monetization. This is a business first and foremost, which is fine; but let’s not forget that.

If you treat your customers as clients and nothing more, then nurture their most basic instincts of greed and self gratification, expect them to come for blood when you don’t deliver.

Xia.3485:

nosleepdemon.1368:

When your game continuously incentivises players to reach for the next big thing; never really providing them with an “end” to content, when there is always someone better than you and the game very explicitly tells you that, then the kind of behaviour in this thread is precisely the result you should expect to see when the Next Big Thing is pulled out from beneath player’s feet.

Lets be honest here, you’re describing wow more than anything else. There are no effective leader-boards for individuals or guilds. The only real competition is for servers, which a simple realm transfer can grant you access. Lord knows there were lots of those before this season. There’s also no gear tiers like wow, no real treadmill that requires hours of grinding every day and no way to inspect other players. You can also post chat codes so pinging gear is useless too. Even the meta for season 2 was very easy to complete. And about those WvW titles.. do you even see them in zergs? No, not really. Personally I never cared what title or gear someone was wearing. Its red, its dead.

And lets also be honest about the rewards. We’re talking about a delay to ticket rewards, which is a small subset of the rewards we got for season 2. Don’t gloss over the karma, gold, random materials and ascended materials we got while playing the season. So our weapon skin is late.. for everyone. I don’t see how this is pulling the rug from under you.

No I’m sorry, but the amount of angst in this thread isn’t warranted. People are behaving like anet told them “no rewards for you”.. when in fact they’ve clearly stated they are actively working on fixing the issue.

But kids are impatient. “Are we there yet?”

=^_^=

I argue that the competition in Guild Wars 2 is far, far more deeply set than in any other MMO. Everything that you have said is true about this game lacking certain features for players to one up each other with. There are no real leader boards for players or guilds, WvW match ups are far from a deciding factor of player or even server skill, and players cannot even see each other’s stats or builds.

That leaves but one point of competition:

Vanity.

I challenge you to find a more deeply rooted issue, a more important or overriding factor in the average human being’s sense of self worth, than how they look.

dmbgodzilla.2745:

@nosleepdemon.1368

Well said and supported by a growing body of research.

One of the larger questions is that for younger people the expense can be far greater. The time spent dedicated to games designed to obtain dedication often comes at the expense of education, and that expense represents far great personal cost later in life. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), I don’t have to worry about that anymore :-|

For me I’m in a favourable position that my passion is my job, so I’m basically mandated to do something (usually!) aligned with what I’d consider self improvement for at least 8 hours a day 5 days a week. On the downside, a lot of my free time is definitely consumed by playing video games and I often find myself addicted to obtaining frivolous things, like WvW weapon skins. Initially when the delay hit I was quite annoyed, which made we wonder why exactly I should be aggravated by something that isn’t even real.

The answer is that it is real. We do care about our characters, the way they look and how we compare to our peers/rivals and this competition is something that MMO games can live or die on. No one wants to play a multiplayer game where you can’t be somehow heralded better than someone else. It’s just human nature. Heck, even single player game design has recognized this through the advent of achievements.

Xia.3485:

Deathabove.5730:

The fact is we had to earn achievements to earn the wvw tickets. They were not given away for nothing. If you went to work for 2 weeks and was told by your boss they dont know when the paycheck will be arriving and 9 days later it still hasn’t come, would you be singing the same tune?

Yes because the dagger skin is needed to pay my bills and feed my kids.

lol?

=^_^=

You make fun of the guy, but that is exactly the kind of behaviour an MMO encourages, even more so one that is funded by “micro” transactions instead of a monthly fee.

Everything about this game is designed to be simultaneously time consuming and incredibly addictive, this includes:

• offering an “easy” way out through converting gems to gold instead of farming
• a disconnect between real money and items purchased with it (gems)
• achievements and ranks that are visible to other players to create a sense of competition
• a direct correlation between the impressiveness of an item and the amount of time required to obtain it
• an economy tied directly to the real currency

When your game continuously incentivises players to reach for the next big thing; never really providing them with an “end” to content, when there is always someone better than you and the game very explicitly tells you that, then the kind of behaviour in this thread is precisely the result you should expect to see when the Next Big Thing is pulled out from beneath player’s feet.

People say that gamers are “entitled” or even “caustic” or “toxic”, and games companies frequently wonder why their forums are full of hatred and vitriol, and hire community managers to curb rage threads and deleted unwanted or inflammatory posts.

I argue that although forums will always attract a vocal minority, the anger displayed in this thread is more so a reaction of players feeling cheated by a system that is by design, deeply unkind.

So make fun of the guy all you like, but this sort of behaviour should come as no surprise to anyone.

=^_^;=

roshambeaux.2457:

Direct your rage at those truly to blame, the Battle Historians

Someone needs to trollface those guys with Draven right now! … I’d do it but I have to work through my lunch since my own studio’s game is behind schedule. The irony.

Xia.3485:

Slomo.1029:

Kinda ironic. On one hand I feel the same about your first part. Software is never free of bugs, and will never be.

But I think its really unfortunately that it’s not a game breaking bug. Because that would make the Devs sweat for the second time because of WvW related stuff. (first time was the OS arena because of the GvG incident)
It could mean Anet would allocate more manpower to WvW for a few weeks to deliver some actual content to play with before the next dreadful season. And I’d consider this as a small victory over the usual approach to WvW related updates.

A game breaking bug would get more attention internally and would potentially be fixed faster. Unfortunately we’d feel it a whole lot more than a vendor who’s wares are “temporarily disabled”.

I’m not saying its a good bug, but it could be worse. One thing is certain though, the quantity of whining and blatant speculation in this thread is unwarranted. In fact, if I may be so bold, I’ll even say I’m glad I don’t work in the gaming industry.. where a bug can get you mountains of hate mail (and possibly even death threats).

I’m sure glad the industry I work in is much more civil.. heck, bugs in my industry don’t waste kids precious time waiting for pixel rewards.. our bugs only waste tens of thousands of dollars a day and potentially cause lose of life for our clients. And we never get hate mail when things go badly. Pretty telling.

No you just get sued

Taisia.2813:

I’m pretty sure the “bug” has already been found yet (being a developer myself) the issue atm is most possibly that some data has not been recorded in the database.

ie. the people who didn’t get their tickets didn’t get them because their eligibility for these rewards has not been tracked properly. This is the reason for the delay. They need to find a way to retrieve players’ activities and if they deserve getting tickets and how many from a data they do not have.

This will require some creative problem solving and back log digging… I wish the team all the luck in the world if so is the case… It’s a whole mess to sort through, sometimes even manually…

One of the most entertaining meetings I’ve ever been in was between a web design company, their client, and a marketing firm the client had hired. The client was required to provide a report to their government detailing proof that they had attracted visitors to the site both through workshops and search results via Google. At no point during the design process had the web design company thought to add even rudimentary Google Analytics tracking to the site, and at no point during the design process had the client thought to explain the government’s requirements to the web developers. The golden moment came when the client explained that this report was due in two weeks, and then asked the marketing firm:

“So if <web design company> add Google Analytics tracking now, we will be able to track past visitors right?”

The reply was:

“Google Analytics isn’t a time machine.”

Ouch. Made me glad to have nothing at all to do with web development or database management

Deathabove.5730:

Like any customer would do when faced with a situation where the company has either A)on purpose inadvertently inconvenienced the customer, we should demand further compensation for this delay. To simply just give us what was promised is insufficient and not right. I say we should all get access to a free costume on the gem store, or 800 gems.

I think we should all receive gifts of fortune for every character that did WvW.

>.>
<.<

What?

Deathabove.5730:

This is simply the short term resolution : for those who already have tickets, allow them to purchase on the historian vendor. There is no further need to restrict their access. Who benefits from making some of the people wait? Noone wins in this scenario. At least PART of the player base will be compensated after such a delay. Secondly, there must be a way to track who turns their tickets in at the vendor. Figure out which servers won, and which players got their achievement points for season 2. Then deduct who has turned them in. Maybe some players might get extra tickets in the end, but this is better than nothing.

You’d think that leaving the vendor enabled for players who got the right tickets to purchase their rewards would have been the logical course of action. Obviously someone at ArenaNet believes this not to be the case. It seems to me that they disabled the vendor because:

a) They didn’t (and perhaps still don’t) know the severity of the bug, and don’t want to allow players access to a system that might be far more broken than what players have experienced so far.

b) Given a), allowing players access to a broken system would compound the problem they now face, since there would be players stuck at all sorts of stages in the reward acquisition process.

I’m hoping that the fix won’t be tied to a patch; once live, it will just be executed for each player as they log in to the game. It’s presently 7am in Seattle. Wakey wakey WvW team, rise and shine!

I reckon it will be done by next Wednesday or never

Vladeemer.5076:

Hyperion.4638:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Hey everybody, the team has a lead they are working on. Please hang tight. We haven’t forgotten about you. We will post more information when things are more certain.

Wait what?? A “lead” ? I thought this issue is almost fixed….wow

Yelling at them for updating us = a) a good/constructive idea, b) a bad/not constructive idea, or c) a bag of potatoes.

I choose ( c ), but don’t worry ANet; I won’t mind if I get my potatoe tokens a few weeks before the vegetables themselves ;P

It’s about noon in Seattle at the moment, so we got a few hours yet before the developer’s spouses start demanding they come home for dinner. Gogogo!

Victory For Kittens.7806:

lordkrall.7241:

Victory For Kittens.7806:

Great, so no need to expect our rewards before next week, i dunno how you guys can do such bad work, rly you are disapointing, you found the “bug” 2 days ago but still nothing ? i’m really impressed by your wvw teams & your communication.

How many large scale MMO-project have you worked on and coded?

Such logic. So if you don’t like your bread’s baker, you must be a baker yourself to be allowed to judge it ? Such logic once more, please stop being fanboy, we “haterz” hate this game and spam the forum, that’s a well known fact while you “fanboys” should just play it and let haters hate :>

If you guys wanna answer me, just get “legit” argument, i know i’m not being kind with this game staff, but find descent arguments to answer me or just do not care about me thanks kkbye

Here’s some logic:

The developers need to be certain that their fix will not screw up rewards given to existing players, and that whatever caused the bug in the first place is taken care of. All of this takes time, hence the wait.

Telling the developers to “hurry up” or their jobs are gone is precisely the sort of “logic” that causes these very problems in the first place.

khani.4786:

Oh look next page bug…

My goodness how did I end up here? Well looks like it’s just me and you buddy! On topic, I wonder if they will manage to get this sorted for the weekend. I’m in dire need of a better axe skin and don’t fancy dropping 90g or whatever it is for a Jade Reaver skin. I find axes to be quite under-represented in coolness compared to other weapons in this game with the notable exception of the Aetherized skin.

atheria.2837:

Maoric.6132:

atheria.2837:

Undo the changes from the megaserver, admit it was a bad idea, rescind it, use beta testers far more and move on from an idea that kills WvW and destroys continuity of the storyline and ruins “server” affiliations across the board.

Why would you want that, exactly? I’ve had nothing but positive experiences from the megaserver. I can actually find people in PvE maps to play with or chat with whenever I play now, as opposed to before the update where people on my server were only in specific maps and seemed to vanish entirely after 11:00pm.

Much better than trying to guest to a different server and hope that people would be active in the areas I was heading to.

Your positive PvE experience being “better” is far more important than anyone else in the game – according to you, all WvW’ers are totally irrelevant.

Gotcha.

The megaserver system will be saving them oodles of money, like, LOTS. Owning and operating server farms is a massive expense which they have managed to cut down on with a system that scales dynamically with the number of players present, and does a reasonable job (or at least has behaviour built in which can be tuned) at keeping players from the same server playing together.

It’s basically a win-win situation, why would they roll that back for:

a) One person’s opinion that it somehow hurts server communities
b) An issue that is entirely unrelated to it

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Xillllix.3485:

I think for this we deserve a new WvW map… Just saying…

(doesn’t have to be big, just some deathmatch field with 3 spawns and a crazy keep in the middle surrounded by a lake and 3 bridges)

Just imagine the bugs and game breaking issues that would arise from them making a map, when they can’t even get achievements from a SECOND season to actually work properly…

Clearly, hovering scorpions would be a good first step.

Xillllix.3485:

I think for this we deserve a new WvW map… Just saying…

(doesn’t have to be big, just some deathmatch field with 3 spawns and a crazy keep in the middle surrounded by a lake and 3 bridges)

I feel that at the very least, they need to make the Scorpions in EotM hovar.

Doggie.3184:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Hyperion.9704:

Oh well. It could be worse.

Yeah, you could be dead.

Point is, what’s a few more days to get your skin. It’s not like it’s keeping you out of WvW or whatever. Go play and do what you’ve always been doing.

Who said anything about “days?” :o Could be weeks, months or even years. Such beauty would go to waste for so long. The skins could even end up rusty after sitting in the Anet warehouse for so long, waiting to be shipped to NPC.

Well for 50 gems and a warehouse of Elonian wine, they can be made good as new!

Dude, as an FYI, if he’s talking about the RCMP he may well be referring to Canada. They don’t simply sell guns at corner stores up there…

[edit]

See here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/moncton-shooting-manhunt-on-for-killer-of-3-rcmp-officers-1.2665707

I’ve been refreshing this thread all day at work, here’s hoping they find a solution because I really, truly need a decent axe skin!

joe.9815:

I hope the fix isn’t hard

…
//forgot to set “do not screw up” flag to true
//WvWRewardManager.allocateRewards();

WvWRewardManager.allocateRewards(true);

NovaZephyr.1293:

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would probably be a little more understanding of the issue if they told us exactly what went wrong and what steps they’re taking to fix it. It’s a little disappointing, logging in every day and no chest or mail with the rewards that we worked hard for.

I think their biggest problem is that since they didn’t adequately test the reward system, they now have a situation where the process of awarding participation in the WvW tournament is both partially complete, and broken to an unknown degree. They have to figure out how to do a partial rollback without affecting players that were treated correctly which, if they don’t know what caused the error in the first place, is extremely tricky.

I’m going out on a limb here and suggesting that:

1. All the people whose fault it isn’t are working over time to fix the problem.
2. This will happen again.
3. C’est la vie.

Thread mini-necro to bump it up passed the existing season 2 problems, because the fact that this thread is still relevant is deeply amusing!

Yeah looking forward to the weapons specialist so I can turn in all these tickets for some cool kitten weapons!

Hey I didn’t mention any cheaters…

The issue isn’t about 2v1, which is an intentional side effect of 3 sides fighting each other. The issue lies with two servers cheating via win trading. I imagine Arena Net is keeping track of the cheaters, and will ban them en masse once the tournament is done. This would result in Black Gate becoming the dominant NA server again, though.

It’s quite clearly obvious who the cheaters are posting in this thread. Yes, 2v1 IS cheating. If you don’t believe so you are just tricking yourself. ANet clearly stated that they wanted three servers fighting each other so the two WEAKER servers would even up the playing field against a stronger one, not that two STRONG servers would collude to keep anyone else from having a chance at reaching the top ranking. The fact that this system is still broken doesn’t mean it’s ok, it just means ANet hasn’t gotten around to (or aren’t able to find a better solution to) sorting out the jerks doing it.

And another thing, deliberately taking turns to throw matches is also cheating. Again, it doesn’t matter if ANet has taken action yet; It is clearly obvious that the people doing this know that it’s morally wrong, but do it anyway. A 5 year old would understand why throwing matches like that to manipulate your rating is unfair.

If anything, I’ve grown rather jaded with this whole match fixing thing, and I can’t believe that ANet would let such actions tarnish their reputation.

I’ve noticed old items occasionally make a reappearance on the gemstore, I humbly request that Arena Net consider bringing back the Grenth Hood [&AgESuwAA] to the store, it is in my opinion the best (and almost only good) looking head piece for heavy armour wearers. Pls ANet.

WvW seems beset by politics and dodgy ‘understandings’ between opponents. EotM is sort of the tip of the iceberg and exposes the mentality of tit for tat that exists among servers. I rather enjoy it when one team decides to defend and leave the other groups floundering and unable to react. I was in EotM today where one of the opposing teams decided to play the game, and the reaction from my team mates as they ran headlong into sustained arrow cart fire was priceless.

They might just end up making travel form tonics that give you 33% move speed boosts purchaseable from the gem store…

So after Arena Net introduced the mega server system – a feature designed purely to cut costs with the knock on effect of bringing noobs to Tequatl every evening, you now want that same company to introduce private PvE map instances.

Makes sense.

As with every other aspect in this game, you will find that many of the things you thought you could do can only be accomplished by spending money. I was similarly burned with the guild vault; thinking I could avoid the ridiculous cost for extra bag slots with a little bit of effort, I aimed to purchase the vault early on, only to find that by the time I built it, it was largely unfillable with my items as nearly everything in my inventory is account or soul bound. I have a single 20 slot bag simply filled with weapons since my warrior uses so many different sets, while another bag sits full of salvage kits, boosters and wvw items. One of the biggest problems is that certain items that aren’t marked as soulbound are anyway, e.g. my old wvw golems, and others cannot stack even though they are of the same type.

Thanks guys for the super helpful replies! I had forgotten that mystic clover farming can also generate T6 mats so I’m glad that was pointed out. It sounds like a good idea would be to jump into mists for a karma train once I get world completion, and then do CoE and AC runs to get materials and badges I need. Cheers again!

Hi everyone,

I’m almost at 100% world completion and have my precursor (zap), so I’m giving serious thought to this whole farming for a legendary business. I’ve taken a look at the requirements and my next priority will be the karma (got ~700k at the moment) and WvW rank 14 (rank 5 at the moment) and am wondering what the best route would be to get these two objectives done while also getting as many of the other materials farmed as possible at the same time. I’d also love to hear from my peers who have done the whole legendary farm thing regarding:

• pacing – how not to burn out and rage quit
• favourite farming spots or methods (even if it’sjust psychological)
• item farming rotation (e.g. karma for x hours, wvw for x hours, dungeons or fractals etc)
• how does the PvP reward track play into this (my assumption – not heavily)
• how the frack I’m going to level up Artificer to freaking 400 during all this since my Warrior is a weapon-smith, not a pansy!

I’m a fairly casual player, having time for maybe 17 hours a week at the absolute maximum (falling over summer naturally as the weather gets nicer and the wife begins demanding BBQs, however I’m not particularly daunted by the task ahead as I enjoy the game and getting Bolt would likely be the point where I’ve “completed” GW2.

Thanks!

PS Inb4 abandon ye all hope who enter here.