Guild Wars 2

Edit: Missed this (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Rata-Sum-Idea-Incubation-Lab/first#post2397676) thread, sorry, this one can be merged or deleted.

Not sure this is a bug, but I can’t seem to find any information about this. When I enter the “Idea Incubation Lab” Portal on the 3rd floor of rata sum, I get teleported into a cell on the bottom floor by the lower research stacks. Is there an NPC I need to talk to to get access? What’s going on?

Let me make an analogy, so it is clearer. Lets say there was a meta achievement that required you to do six semi difficult things in wvw, and the 7 th was at the end of arah path 4. Doesn’t it seem like that last one should not be included? Not because it would be some impossible, onerous task, but because it is out iof place. For the people working towards the meta achievement, it world be a chore, not a challenge. Most people going for that meta would be wvw players, so why not cater to wvw players? Why “force them” into pve? They can do it, but is there a good reason to?

This is the point we are trying to make. Not that it’s too challenging, per say, but that it is a chore for pve players. There is a difference there. I’m all for more wvw achievements – I believe they are sorely lacking. But this way of doing it – throwing a random wvw achievement in – is not the way to go about it.

And again, I hear people saying to just suck it up and deal with, it’s a few points. Again I ask, what is so wrong with having a discussion when you encounter something that many people have found to be frustrating? I’m not demanding that it change, I’m trying to explain why I believe it could be done better, in a way that gives more opportunities for pvp and pve players.

I’m not sure it’s a matter of difficulty – there are things you can do to make it easier as have been suggested above, but much of it is luck. The time of day, what server your on, what guild your in, etc. Not everyone can play at 3 am, and not everyone has a big guild to back them up.

An ideal solution for me would be to have a similar, separate meta achievement for wvw which rewards the same number of points. Maybe even more, if everyone agreed that it is, as you describe, more difficult. But for this patch, I doubt that’s possible.

For you, it’s fun. For many people, it is not. There would still be equal reason to go there – for you, since you enjoy wvw, you would use it for your 6/7, and you would have to suffer one less “boring” pve kite. For me, since I don’t find pvp fun (and ive given it every chance), I would choose the pve ones. I don’t think that would be taking anything away – it would just let people play more of the playstyle they enjoy.

I didn’t say I need to get the achievement, I said you need to get all 7 for the meta.

I get and appreciate the argument that 15 achievement points is not that much. But to me changing the meta achievement to 6/7 would only be a good thing, and would prevent a lot of needless frustration. It wouldn’t take anything away from wvw players, because they could still get the achievement, and have to do one less pve JP. Unless there is a very strong argument against it, I don’t see what would be wrong with that solution. Yes, I’ll live. But why shouldn’t I suggest something that could be better, which benefits everyone? I’m not whining, I’m providing feedback with a positive suggestion. I’m not sure that “just deal with it” really adds to the conversation.

MinorDetail.9204:

rfdarko.4639:

MinorDetail.9204:

rfdarko.4639:

MinorDetail.9204:

rfdarko.4639:

I don’t get this supposed counter argument that pvp is excluded from loving story. That’s not the complaint. No one is asking to take the wvw achiement out – they just want it out of the meta achievement of which 6/7 is pve. I would be all for a wvw exclusive meta achievement – have caches all over wvw for people to collect. That would be awesome. The complaint is the mix of pve and wvw under a single meta.

If iirc it isn’t even in the meta achievement.

It is – spotting all the kites gets you a meta achievement, very similar to the aether blade caches (Learn to Kite).

Every single kite is an achievement by itself, and learn to kite is if you have found them all. So if you have i.e 7 kites to find you have 7 achievements + learn to kite = 8.

EDIT: used the right numbers from the dulfy achievement overview guide.

Exactly..so you agree with me, the individual kite achievements add into a meta achievement. …?

No it’s not, if you need 16 achievements to get the meta and there are 24, means you can miss 8 of them, not getting the WvW kite means you will lose one, and not able to complete Learn to Kite, so that leaves you with 22 achievements left to do.

22/16 is more than you need in the first place so you don’t NEED to do the WvW kite in order to get the meta achievement!

No, but you need it to get Learn to Kite. Thus why I said 6/7, not x/ 16.

MinorDetail.9204:

rfdarko.4639:

MinorDetail.9204:

rfdarko.4639:

I don’t get this supposed counter argument that pvp is excluded from loving story. That’s not the complaint. No one is asking to take the wvw achiement out – they just want it out of the meta achievement of which 6/7 is pve. I would be all for a wvw exclusive meta achievement – have caches all over wvw for people to collect. That would be awesome. The complaint is the mix of pve and wvw under a single meta.

If iirc it isn’t even in the meta achievement.

It is – spotting all the kites gets you a meta achievement, very similar to the aether blade caches (Learn to Kite).

Every single kite is an achievement by itself, and learn to kite is if you have found them all. So if you have i.e 7 kites to find you have 7 achievements + learn to kite = 8.

EDIT: used the right numbers from the dulfy achievement overview guide.

Exactly..so you agree with me, the individual kite achievements add into a meta achievement. …? That is, a meta achievement, not the meta achievement. Again, exactly like Caching Out.

MinorDetail.9204:

rfdarko.4639:

I don’t get this supposed counter argument that pvp is excluded from loving story. That’s not the complaint. No one is asking to take the wvw achiement out – they just want it out of the meta achievement of which 6/7 is pve. I would be all for a wvw exclusive meta achievement – have caches all over wvw for people to collect. That would be awesome. The complaint is the mix of pve and wvw under a single meta.

If iirc it isn’t even in the meta achievement.

It is – spotting all the kites gets you a meta achievement, very similar to the aether blade caches (Learn to Kite).

I don’t get this supposed counter argument that pvp is excluded from living story. That’s not the complaint. No one is asking to take the wvw achiement out – they just want it out of the meta achievement of which 6/7 is pve. I would be all for a wvw exclusive meta achievement – have caches all over wvw for people to collect. That would be awesome. The complaint is the mix of pve and wvw under a single meta.

Nothing in the open world was added to replace Orr, except south sun. If you hated Orr, I can’t imagine you’d like southsun much better – the mobs are worse, the DEs are harder, and it is quite literally empty 90% of the time. There is currently no open world lvl 80 zone that people frequent regularly – “end game” consists of loading up dragon timer and porting around to the world bosses to hit 1 and afk. Then do dailies, then farm COF. Rinse and repeat for 6 months till you get your legendary.

If you check on the wiki, there are only 11 different orientations for the tears, so you can just bang it out if its being glitchy. Takes a while, but that’s how I’ve had to do it. I’ve never seen it work properly.

It may be optional, but what good is coming from it?

It gives wvw players a way to participate? fine, but then reduce the meta achieve requirement by one. They did this with the south sun scavenger hunt, (so you didnt have to do the jp to get the flower backpiece) would make sense here.

It encourages people to try wvw? What pve care bear would want to go back in to wvw after that experience. It is possibly the worst introduction to wvw you could have.

It’s optional, but that doesn’t mean it’s not bad. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss a fix for it, especially when the fix is so easy and would prevent so much frustration.

Narcemus.1348:

Yeah, I’m a necro and I have 1 skill that gives 1 second of stability, idk how that is supposed to help anything. All I know from doing this dungeon is that I was playing with two people who have beaten it (and obviously two others who hadn’t), I played for 6 hours, I used 4 instant repair canisters (on fully damaged/1 broken armor), and I didn’t beat it because people had to leave (including myself). I just think the story should be much simpler than this, the dungeon is a piece of cake except for the cheap trick mechanics in the boss fights. It kitten es me off because I want to be the character that brings the bad guy in, but that will never happen for this storyline, or any other storyline that they do crappy junk like this on.

Plague elite will give you 20 seconds of stability.

The dungeon mechanics are a good challenge – so long as you have a guardian, and so long as you have at least one person who has run the dungeon before explaining it as you go. That’s not the kind of challenge that should be in a 2 week dungeon. I’m all for that type of challenge, but I honestly think temp dungeons need to be more friendly to pugs. Maybe even if it was a month long dungeon it would be fine, but 2 weeks seems a bit short.

Even if they do nothing to change this (seeing as the event is ending this weekend), I’d really like to know what anet has taken away from this thread – if they agree that at least the way that these wvw and pve achievements were merged did not work out.

I think they need to get into the mindset that wvw is a form of pvp rather than pve – because it is. There are some mobs to kill sure, but its background noise. There are a number of problem which crop up when anet tries to treat it as pve with some pvp elements – it’s the other way around.

The title of this post is misleading I think- the OP is really talking about balance specifically. And it’s true that balance is focused almost exclusively on pvp, to the severe detriment of pve.

They need to separate the skills. And they need to stop using that god awful excuse that it would be “too confusing” for players if skills are too separate. They already require you to look at the wiki to get full descriptions on traits, you have to check the forums to figure out things like dragon ball not counting towards the meta achievement – people would figure it out. You must go through a full tutorial the first time you enter HOTM, that could be one of the things they explain.

This has happened to me in the past month or so. I can’t reliably reproduce it, but it has occurred twice a few minutes after completing shatterer for me as well. The other times it seems completely random. The times it occurred from shatterer the effect lingered until I exited the map- the other times it lasted until I triggered another animation (attack, jump).

Open world farming has been nerfed hard, which is why people have flocked to the easiest dungeon (cof). There are a few low level events that people were farming when the coffers were going for more on the tp ( since dr doesn’t seem to effect coffer drop rates), but DR as implemented as well as the changes to Orr you mentioned has made farming events not nearly as profitable.

There’s a very simple solution which a few people have already mentioned – require 6 out of 7 caches for the caching out meta achievement. Still a plenty hard achievement without the wvw JP, or whatever one JP it is you just can’t get through.

My vampire (lifesteal) necro – the tall collar of the noble chest-piece really suits the look, i think

If you don’t like attunment swapping, don’t play ele- that’s all you’ll be doing. Thief and ele are both squishy so that will be an issue whichever you choose. Ele daggers are not true melee (just close range) so it sounds like thief is the way to go for you.

The fact that in effect loot can now be bound to a separate key is the big deal for me. I can’t count the number of times I’ve started rezzing Npcs while trying to loot, or talked to one only to have a huge chat box obstructing my view. Very, very good change. +1 anet, now give us the ability to buy in bulk at vendors.

Thanks again, looks really good. I’ve been almost exclusively running around open world and very rarely need to use a staff, so ill make those my last 10 points (I’m currently still 75) As you said, with dagger/ warhorn it’s important to be up in their face, especially in a big group of mobs, to get the most out of life stealing. Then again, with the larger size marks it makes it much easier to hit five targets and proc life steal that way. I think I’ll also go with the suggestion to mix in some knights gear to make sure I don’t get instantly flattened in melee range. It’s maybe not the most optimal build in the world, but its much, much better than just the silly experiment I thought it would be.

Thanks for the detailed response, that’s exactly what I was looking for! It was all what I thought was true, but wanted confirmation. I’m also more convinced than I was before that the 300 healing power from 30 in blood + death to life is all I’ll need, and my stat points will be better spent elsewhere. Running zerkers currently – the lifesteal plus extra health pool from ds seems to be more than enough to keep me going, but we’ll see how it fairs in dungeons. The warhorn is a great idea, I’ll probably use that as my main and d/d as my swap with a staff on standby.

I’m wondering if you have any advice for trait distribution, I’ve been debating between 20/20/0/30/0 and 30/10/0/30/0. I’m a big fan of chilling darkness, but since the ground targeted marks are an adept trait now it might be worth it to go for more straight dps (either Spite grandmaster trait could give me that). Correct me if I’m wrong, but lifestealing isn’t going to benefit me in ds, so it seems like I shouldn’t be traiting into soul reaping, and I didn’t see anything in the death magic line that really caught my eye.

I’ll apologize in advance if there is an easy place I can find this information – hopefully you’ll point me in the right direction if that’s the case.

I’ve been leveling my necro towards maximizing lifesteal in a well/power d/d build, mostly for fun & flavor but it seems to be pretty viable. However I’m having troubling figuring out how much I’m benefiting from healing power, and how the different lifesteal effects actually stack. I was unable to get clear answers from the wiki, and the combat log doesn’t appear to list heals. Here are my main questions -

1) What does healing power actually scale with? I think it was in one of the But of Corpse podcasts I heard that vampiric precision is a flat rate, and from the wiki it would seem all trait line lifesteal effects are unaffected. The wiki states that sigil of blood is effected, but doesn’t state whether runes of vampirism are or not. As I understand it, dagger 2 does scale with healing.

2) What lifesteal effects stack? Right now I have vampiric, vampiric precision, vampiric rituals, sigil of blood, runes of vampirism, and lifesteal food. Lets take a basic auto attack that crits . We have on hit effect from traits, and 4 different on crit lifesteal effects. Firstly, does the on hit and on crit effect stack? And, do all of those lifesteal effects stack, assuming they all go off? Now lets consider a damaging well – does the grandmaster trait stack with the on hit effect? Can well damage crit, and trigger the on crit lifesteal?

This is probably an excessive amount of detail for what will probably only ever be a flavour build, but for me a lot of the joy of building is understanding exactly how everything works together. If there was an in-game way to test all this stuff myself I would, but all I see right now in combat is a big stack of green numbers which are too smooshed together to be read. Any advice, or any place I should look for more details on trait/stat/upgrade component effect stacking?

In southsun when they had you collecting plant specimens, they allowed you to get one less than the actual total to get the meta for it, presumably so people weren’t forced on to the JP. Perhaps they could do something similar here? Require 6 out of 7 for the meta, so if you are on a sever that is just getting thrashed for 2 weeks, you aren’t totally screwed. Im fine with having pvp achievements, but mixing pvp and pve achievements in one meta, where both are required is not something they have done before, (or at least recently) and I think that is really the problem people have with this.

That’s…awful. +1 please fix.

There seems to be a lot of focus on permanent swiftness, which yes, is good. But as I said above, it’s not a teleport, or a leap. A teleport to me is fundamentally different than just running faster. The ability to move instantaneously, without regard to cripple or chill or even immobility in some cases, is powerful, and its something thieves and mesmers have in abundance.

And in any case, I’m not try to argue that engis are slow. I’m arguing that thieves and mesmers are hyper mobile, and are the last two classes that I would give a mobility punishing condition to. With that in mind, I wondered, who would I give it to? Engis seem like the second best option after necromancers, since we are RELATIVELY less mobile, and we, like necromancers, were designed with conditions in mind.

Nope, I opened over 1000 before I got my first ticket. RNG isn’t intuitive when dealing with tiny percentages, that’s all that’s going on here.

DR is a mechanic specific to mob loot tables and dungeon rewards, it doesn’t effect package items or chests.

Considering (if the leaked patch notes are true) necros are getting burn, I don’t think the devs are taking lore much into consideration.

For me, teleport skills are what torment should be punishing, because teleports trump cc like cripples and even immobilizes. We can move fast, and it is good mobility, but theives and mesmers can do everything we can do and more. Giving us torment would be a way for us to deal with those hyper mobile classes.

That’s true – just a 10 point investment will get you perma-swiftness, which is nothing to scoff at. But for me, its more a case of : thieves and mesmer don’t need it, and more to the point, probably wont make good use of it. I don’t think giving engineers torment would make them ridiculously op (though it would depend on how it was implemented), and we would actually make good use of the condition. Thieves and mesmers don’t need more ways to catch their opponents – we could use a few. We aren’t in desperate need of it like necros are, but I think thieves especially are about the worst class you could pick, and we are one of the better ones.

I main mesmer, and my first thought seeing that we get the new condition was thakittens an added perk that I’d probably never notice. Thieves seem to be saying the same thing. It got me thinking about the intended use of the condition. To me, it sound like a condition that should be given to non-mobile classes to punish mobile ones..and yet they gave it to two of the most mobile classes. It also probably should have been given to classes that were designed with conditions in mind. Necromancer is perfect for this – they have some real mobility problems, and can make good use of condition damage. Engineers, I think are very similar in those respects.

I’d like to know what experience engineers think about this. Is there something I’m not considering? Because I think engineers once again got socks and sweaters for Christmas, while thieves and mesmers are just going to throw out that shiny new toy truck that engis would kill to have.

I’m surprised so many people went with the human areas- to me, they are very generic western rpg European country side - artfully done, but still pretty generic. What really impressed me was Metrica province. Huge diagonal structures with humming, transparent walls - I get a "crash landed, settled aliens" vibe from it. It works together very well, and you can tell there was a lot of care and creativity put into the design of it all.

I agree with most that it’s not a gamebreaking new ability, but it is frustrating that they give it to theives when to them it’s throw away. For me, torment sounds like an ability that NON mobile classes would benefit from – ie, necromancers. I would argue engineers would be a much better candidate for this new condition because 1) They also lack mobility and 2) they were designed with conditions in mind (see grenade kit). Giving it to thieves, who (I think someone said this above) can catch up to any class anyway, is kinda a slap in the face. In this huge balance patch, engineers have once again been given very little attention, while thieves and mesmers are getting the shiny new condition. Makes no sense to me.

Tru Reptile.6058:

TL;DR version: Warriors are powerful when using HB on mobs that don’t move.

This, and when conditions only stack to 25, and control has little effect on the toughest bosses. Nothing is rewarded in PVE except direct damage – not the fault of the warrior class, just bad mob design.

For the reasons stated above, I’m doubtful that we’ll get any sort of recourse. But perhaps we can at least petition strongly that there not be more achievements like this. What sort of achievements do I mean?

1) Tiny window. Not the 3-4 day window (although I personally find it to short, I think its debatable), I mean the 5 minutes itself, repeated on fairly long intervals. It created a host of problems. First, people would flood to lions arch at those times, meaning many people would be stuck in overflows which were on different clocks. Also, if anything happened during that small, 5 minute window (a crash or connection issue), the fireworks would be over by the time you got back in game. Well, just wait another two hours. Two hours? Who says I’ll be playing in two hours? Come back tomorrow? In the hopes that the small time on fathers day I have set aside to play corresponds to that tiny 5 minute window? And I better spend a good chunk of that time sitting in lions arch instead of actually playing, so I don’t get in an overflow? No, not good.

2) Vague objective. “Watch the fireworks”. It took me around 20 minutes of hunting online to figure out exactly what I needed to do, where I needed to stand, and how long I needed to stand there, and I still didn’t get it right the first time. This information should be provided clearly in game. If that cannot be done, the the achievement should be reconsidered.

Solutions?

1) Instanced event. This is the least preferable option for me, because it ruins the communal aspect of the fireworks. But it would allow people to do it on their own time, and if you are going to offer and exclusive item as an achievement reward people should be able to do it on their own time. Which leads me to my other solution

2) DO NOT give item rewards for this kind of achievement. A few achievement points? Sure, very few people are going to be bothered missing 5-10 of those. But any achievement that rewards items or titles should not be timed events with tiny, five minute windows over a holiday weekend. There is a place for these kind of casual social events, but they should not be associated with big rewards.

Asking for some sort of compensation is just going to get us ignored by anet, because there is nothing they can do that will not set a dangerous precedent. All we can do is explain exactly what was wrong, and offer solutions for future events.

I wish, with this next balance patch and trait reshuffling, the would take the time to address this. It might be tedious work, but its beyond frustrating to read trait descriptions that lack any numbers what so ever. It wouldn’t take up that much more space, and I think anet would be amazed at how many casual players actually have the capacity to judge numbers themselves.

There’s a scaling of difficulty in the really early levels that goes beyond numbers, and it has to do with mob mechanics. Before around level 10 or so, the mobs presented in the open world will not hard chain cc you, even at melee range, because they know players are still learning how to use dodge and combat in a more proactive way. The mobs in these living story events have numbers that dynamically scale, but their mechanics are based on +10 level difficulty (similar to ettins and trolls). If this is your first time playing, I would advise reaching level 15 or 20, and practicing on groups of ettins, kiting and dodging. Unless your starting the game right at the end of the event, you shouldn’t have any problems getting to 15 before the end.

I think the point was that they gave us too much information, not too little. They Npcs told us about content we could not yet access. That is not a matter of not taking hints. If you took the hints and read things carefully, in the order they were given to you, you would assume you could get those last 2 Npcs. If inspector Kiel gave less information, it would have been clearer. This is not a matter of needing more guidance, it’s about the narrative being in sync with the activities available, so you don’t have to look on the forums or the wiki (and possibly have the whole story spoiled.)

Seems to be fixed now.

It’s hard to argue that inspector keil telling you where the other two subjects are is not misleading. Especially if you did like I did, and went back to inspector keil after collecting the 3 suspects. Since the letter says Marjory is “investigations the whereabouts”, and now keil has that information, it communicates to the player that it is now time to hunt down the last two. Unless you check the forums, there’s no way to guess that the characters keil tells you are there are not, and when you find they are not there is no in game way of knowing when they will be there. I think there is some grey area about the other points, but the information about the last two suspects provided in game is misleading at best and self-conflicting at worst. They simply should not have enabled Kiel’s second dialogue box about the last two till tommorow.

tcat.6725:

rfdarko.4639:

Simple solution – /block should mute these cosmetic items.

I so hope this is true. I will give a try later when I login.

Doesn’t work currently – I was just suggesting it

Simple solution – /block should mute these cosmetic items.

Today’s instance was pretty awesome, really nice artwork. Also, the food! I’m use to buying my MF and lifesteal food for multiple silver, but now I can get it for a fraction of the cost.
The drop rate of the coffers is also really nice. Since they are still selling for around 2 silver, I can make some decent cash leveling my alts.
The wings are overused right now – but I can’t blame people, they are gorgeous! Animation on the shatterer version is a little wonky, but I actually got use to it and dont mind it so much.

If they need to keep in RNG boxes going forward, I hope it’s like this rather than southsun. Overall i feel it was a step forward. Even if the over all drop rate of the skins is the same, it feels much more rewarding. If they put in a little pseudo RNG to help out the guys who buy 5000 coffers and still get jack, I wouldn’t have a problem with them at all.

The problems with the event were relatively minor, simply compounded by bad communication. If anet is able to communicate more fully, quickly, and accurately when issues arise in future, i think the inevitable bugs will be much less of an issue.

Considering this RNG is controlled by a computer anyway, I wish they would include some pseudo RNG elements – that is, the more you open, the more your chance of getting a rare increases, and once you get a rare the probability resets. You could still have a very high threshold and never an absolute garuntee, but Ive seen people open 3000, even 6000 without getting a ticket, which to me is bs. They are getting screwed through no fault of there own, and those with skins are being rewarded for being lucky. I get that’s how gambling works, but pseudo RNG allows for people to be lucky while making it much more difficult to just be SOL no matter how many you buy. I’m talking like, 5000 boxes. Your pretty kitten unlucky still, but at least you had something to show at the end of it.

Just conformation of what we suspected. If you want your wings now, complete all 10 achievements available rather than waiting for the fix to 8.

For the longest time I though I was just not able to figure out how to get the “select quantity” feature to work, it seemed like such an obvious thing. Definitely needs to be added.

3 – 4 days is a pretty short amount of time, but I think what makes it unacceptable is the way it occurred every 2 hours, and was only 5 minutes long. If you had a connection issue, or a crash, or anything in that 5 minute stretch…guess you have to wait another 2 hours. Even if you just wanted to, you know, play the game while you were waiting, you risked getting kicked into an overflow when you tried to return which was on an entirely different clock. By the time you got back into LA, the event was over and you’d have to wait another two hours. They really should have made it an instanced even that you could do on your own time, and probably have extended the time to at least a week considering it was Fathers day weekend. It was not well implemented at all.

Considering both items are tradeable on the trading post, it really only takes a few more clicks to do just what you described (sell taffies, buy coffers with the money), and that way you don’t need to track down a vendor at some arbitrary spot in lion’s arch. It’s actually even easier at the TP because you can buy in bulk, where as the current taffy vendor requires a confirmation of each individual purchase.

RyuDragnier.9476:

LtTiger.4568:

Noone is forcing you to run around and burn those statues..

This hit the nail on the head.

Just because you aren’t forced to do it, doesn’t mean it’s immune from criticism. This forum is about feedback, and it’s fair to say that running around burning 50 effigies is tedious non-content. Should we never provide negative feedback on optional content, because we “don’t have to do it”? No. I think it’s fair to call these achievements what they are: an un-fun grind. There are ways to make them more fun, but there’s nothing inherently fun in them.

I think with the exception of the weekend fireworks, all the content will be available until the end of the event. They are just slowly releasing the content over the course of the week.