Guild Wars 2

hmm, ok mistake. I assumed a certain build was allowing them to stealth indefinitely until it was time to drop a portal.

Yes. At the moment there are entire guilds that transfer to what they consider to be the winning server in WvW. Making it cost to transfer will slow this practice down and give those servers who became the victim of this practice a much better fighting chance.

bartem.2731:

can anet at least tell us if switching characters would change loot chances? I just hate trying to cycle through characters at the hope of catching a moment of nice loot, it’s been weeks so i guess not?

If DR is the problem then no, otherwise it is just a guess as others including myself have experienced loot issues across the account.

So, I;ve been keeping all the tonics I get from the BL chests over the past few months, and occasionally when I open one I get a mystery tonic. Now if I recall there are 3 types of mystery tonics, but looking at the 92 mystery tonics I have, they are all the same, smell like singed fur and feathers. Is this meant to be like this?

The sad part about this bug is I’m about to get another character to 80, and they’ll just sit waiting till I have the 75 ecto’s needed to fully upgrade them into lvl 80 exotic equipment/jewels/weapons

I am but a few days away from starting to level my mesmer and I had a question or so about something I hear about mesmers doing in WvW.

How do they stay hidden in keeps/towers without detection, only to launch a portal to bring in allies without taking out the outer defences?

Some liken seeing the ANet tag in game to seeing a yeti, we’ve all heard the stories, but without the photographic negatives, thats all they are I am how ever surprised they let you off so lightly, I’ve heard of an infamous cell in Rata Sum that brings the toughest of Charr to their knees.

Mentalhead.5721:

Your loot is instanced as well as node around the world, right? Since that’s true, why can’t all enemies drop materials for your current crafting level?

This was brought up as part of a response about loot scaling in an interview I saw just recently. The issue is, what if you want lower level crafting materials? If crafting materials dropped based on your level, just as equipment sort of does, you would have to create low level characters to farm low level materials.

There have been several occasions where I’m out roaming the wilderness with my warrior, come across a boss battle and decide to give a hand. Then only a few moments later I spend the rest of the battle kyting the boss while everyone else stand back, laughs and enjoys the easy kill.

Seriously, every time I hit that vista, I have a peek over the edge and debate jumping into the volcano, even just to see if I can make the lava and survive the initial impact before burning up.

This is a perfect spot for diving goggles, even if we do not survive, all the tricks we could do on the way down …

For my 1st character, I used google to look up viking names, but for the rest of my characters I just created a name that said something about their profession.

Another thing which can help improve the “lethargy” in movement, or more accurately the lag time between you pressing the key and your character doing something is lower the screen resolution to reduce the cpu load, and set graphic options to best performance.

For kill variety, I’ll do them in one of the low level areas because they tend to have more variety. For events, shelter/pent/jofast events, which also covers kills.

The gathering I’ll just gather where ever on my rounds and it is usually covered by the time I finish the others.

While exploring iron marches (on yaks bend) I encountered an invisible wall in Invictus Castrum. I tried high quality graphics option but nothing still showed.

I am going to try to find another way into the area but the screenshot shows me looking at the invisible wall.

Reading the OP I felt that some key points which were recently publicised were missed.

1. GW2 sales has exceeded expectations with over 3 million copies sold
2. Active accounts continue to increase in population
3. Gem store is more than paying for the live team currently in place, which is more than 10 times the size of the GW1 live team.
4. GW1 servers are still active after 7 years (I think) and will remain active for years to come, which shows commitment to the guild wars franchise going forward.
5. Lessons have been learned from Lost Shores and major events like it will not occur until issues that were exposed are resolved.
6. While there are some long standing issues still to be resolved, if you read the patch notes you can see issues are being addressed, and the next major update will be addressing even more issues.
7. Starting with the January patch due later this month and continuing in Feb and March, ANet are adding new content to existing areas to draw people back into the world of Tyria. This includes new reward systems, and later on optional dailies that will take you to different parts of Tyria.
8. As for angry players, some “anger” is to do with the effort vs reward and that the effort that some content requires is not worth the reward. Others are upset that some events they would like to do are broken, or are blocked by broken events. And others are concerned about game balancing issues. All of these issues are being looked into and some will be addressed in the next 3 months.
9. Guild Wars 2 offers variety, but unfortunately some players (including myself) get stuck in the “ok I made it to the 80 zone, now what? There’s not much here” mentality. Just because you are max level does not mean you have to stick to the max zones. The level scaling in GW2 allows you to experience all of Tyria and not feel too “overpowered”. And with the much anticipated additional content all over Tyria being rolled out over the next couple of months, returning to “lower level” areas will be even more rewarding.

I am levelling my 5th character by completing maps of certain levels before going to the next level area. In my travels I have had some great encounters, but every now and then, a POI or vista will lead me to an area that seems, well, under-utilised. In these areas if feels like there should be more, for instance in iron marches there is a poi in an under water cave. While the cave “art” is stunning I was left wondering what was the point of having a POI there if the only benefit is to enjoy the artwork.

Yes I understand some POI’s and vistas are tied to lore, but again there are some that a just “great view but I feel like I’m missing something.”

Medazolam.3058:

Do you also see this rate in dungeons and WvW?

I’ve never gotten a rare in WvW, and I don’t dungeon enough to make a comparison.

Medazolam.3058:

You get one rare for every 15 hours played? Wow, that is terrible.

Some of us can only wish for this rare drop rate … I was lucky and got 2 rares (below lvl 70) yesterday, but I usually only see a rare every couple of days

Jayne.9251:

You should indicate which server you’re on, in case it’s only happening on yours.

I did in the 1st line, but its yaks bend

There is a heart in Hellion Forrest (Iron Marches) that is bugged on yaks bend. “Fight life stealing minions in Hellion Forrest” has a number of issues which makes the heart take a lot longer to do than it probably normally should.

1. only 1 logger is alive.
2. displaced spirits (apart from not looking like spirits) don’t go back to their bodies like their dialogue suggests they will.
3. 2 displaced spirits are up a tree and out of range to interact
4. dead loggers have no way to raise them (since their spirits are not returning to them).
5. Only 1 shadow fiend appears (at the only alive logger) occasionally
6. Only 1 displaced spirit appears (after a shadow fiend defeats the only logger) to do what they are meant to do and trigger 2 ghostly spiders.

To make progress you either just have to camp the only shadow fiend spawn and keep killing it (slow progress), or let the shadow fiend kill the only logger and then interact with its spirit to kill the ghostly spiders + shadow fiend x2.

Please fix

While DR seems to be a pain in the kitten, from my understanding it was implemented as a fail safe to stop people exploiting an unexpectedly profitable event/dungeon/area. Yes people see it as a failed anti-bot measure, but it was put in place because there was lots of money to be had by speed running dungeons, doing certain events repeatedly, and farming certain areas.

I do believe DR should be removed from loot, just keep it for event and dungeon rewards, and let the economy sort itself out.

last time I checked you could jump with the griffin tonic, dont remember jumping with the quaggin one though

well, just went to check Zho’Qafa Catacombs on my server and there is an event stuck at the entrance to the Catacombs

So yes, if there are blocking stuck events then yes the final boss is rare

from memory it was on character birthdays, so keep at least 1 character ageing

ok, one reason I don’t like going to character select screen is it heats up my computer more than in game … according to the apple activity monitor, GW2 cpu usage @ character select screen is 131.2 … map loading it goes as high as 189.3 (maybe higher but thats the highest I just saw it go) in game it is at 104.2.

I have 2 factor auth so logging out completely just for short AFK’s would become annoying.

I will try the mysts option since its going to a map it shouldn’t heat up my computer as much as character select screen.

Karizee.8076:

I have no idea how you came up with 230 per zone.

ok, mucked up my math a bit, but …

3 million copies, 52 servers = 57692 per server
57692 per server, 31 maps (inc cities) = 1861 per map
1861 per map, only on 2 hours at a time = 155 online per map

This does not include WvW or PVP.

155 online per map is an average based on people playing 2 hours per day. Except for LA, I would be lucky to see 50 people on a map and some maps I would probably guess maybe as low as 20 people since I rarely run into other players on some of them.

Why would you exclude cities, especially when Lion’s Arch is in overflow for 18 hours a day? Multiple overflows, how do you account for that?

Only excluded cities in what I see, because they have a lot more people in them (at least LA does) and culling issue makes it difficult to see numbers, and in overflow Euro/US players on same overflow can’t see each other again making it harder to see the true population.

What is at Zhaitan’s Rest POI in Arah … every arah group I went with so far doesn’t go any where near that POI (if its the one I am thinking of). Is there an event that happens there?

I know its a long shot but has anyone considered the Arah story mode chest? Large boss + large chest … or some other story mode large chest?

Why is everyone assuming something bad, yes maybe I need more thought into it but basically something that says I’m AFK, my character state is frozen , cant be attacked and can’t do anything including heal/res/attack/etc … exclude WvW and make it PVE only.

That way if like now where I am in an outpost, and checking the forums, no harm shall come to me just because I got pre-occupied elsewhere.

I do not understand why you guys are assuming AFK macro when I’m asking something that would mean nothing could happen while AFK, including recovering.

Example: I’m at 10% health, I set AFK, I cant heal/move/attack, my health stays at 10%, until I set myself as back.

How does that turn into AFK macro, seriously

Olfinbedwere.5049:

That’s just it tho, why are you going afk so often? Normal players aren’t forced to afk in dangerous locations often enough or for long enough for this to be an issue. The only situation I can think of that would require you to leave yourself logged on in dangerous locations often enough for this to be an issue is if you were afk macroing. or botting.

Lets see, reasons why I (semi)AFK …
1. kids … if you are a parent with more than a couple of kids you know how hectic it can be at times.
2. forums … I’ll check forums for topics that interest me between doing stuff in game
3. Housework, sometimes I’ll part play part housework
4. youtube … someone will post me something to look at and I’ll get side tracked
5. social media … sometimes friends who aren’t playing will want to chat
6. quickly do something while I remember
7. combinations of the above

Assuming that I bot or macro just because I AFK a lot is just plain wrong, I have a busy life at home and GW2 fills in the gaps.

From what I understand is each foe/chest has a loot table that is accessed via RNG. Dungeons will guarantee tokens but for the most party it is RNG loot table (which includes getting nothing).

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Seriously are you a goldseller or what? This sounds like something that somebody that afk macros would ask for, and nobody else would ever need.

Um, did you read where I said your character is put into stasis, meaning nothing changes for them while in AFK mode, which would include not attacking. I’m just a player who sometimes has to go AFK and gets annoyed at coming back to a repair bill.

DandySlayer.7019:

Just Waypoint to an area full of friendlies or climb to somewhere that you can’t draw aggro at all. BOOM problem solved!

Problem with this is while nothing is attacking me, I am often in combat (makes vistas a pain) so can’t teleport at will unless I go kill something before hand, so I am left with logging out or quickly run to a quiet spot.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

That would be abused so badly, it’s not even funny.

In a dungeon on a boss fight? Invul-AFK till someone can draw the boss off you. Or the opposite. Get aggro then Invul-AFK the rest of the fight while everyone else does damage. It would be abused so much if they added that kind of feature.

Simple, make it so nothing can target you, friend or foe, and be invulnerable incase some sod pulls a foe to you that does aoe.

crunching the numbers a little, and making the assumption that the average player might play for 2 hours a day (pulled out of thin air) 3 million copies sold would equate to 230 people per zone at any one time … not what I’m seeing, I’m probably seeing 1/5 of that excluding cities.

Sometimes in this game I need to go AFK and I know certain areas well enough that I know where to “stand” and remain safe from random foes. But occasionally I’ll come back to a dead character, nothing around me, and on a few occasions 100% broken armour.

Initially I thought some foe must have wondered by and some helpful sole raised me, until I was AFK but watching the screen and saw someone pull foes to me, watch them kill me, then res’d me and repeated. It is disappointing to see this kind of griefing going on in game, unfortunately because I was busy I was unable to report them, but this is not the 1st time I’ve seen it happen and I doubt it will be the last.

Should ANet add an AFK made that puts you in stasis (so nothing changes for you at that point including health and cooldown timers) and makes you invulnerable?

Orr events for the most part are ignored because of the time vs reward factor. It is sometime more profitable to do event chains in certain areas than to run around doing events all over the place.

The up coming patch is meant to partially fix the issue of ignored content but there is also an underlying loot issue that is still being investigated and will not be fixed in time for the Jan patch.

You can always save up your hard earned coin and buy gems, also the guesting system will allow you to guest on 2 servers a day (if I understood it correctly) just not WvW.

If you want to stick to a particular server, I suggest you get to it now.

The harpy event @ Unbroken Expanse in BlazeRidge Steppes, at least for the eastern harpy “nest” if you kill the young harpies they respawn immediately. Killing the normal harpy makes the young ones go away.

10 levels, only 2 items upgraded and if I didn’t buy a full set if gear + weapons 10 levels ago I would still have some gear 25 levels lower than me

I would also like to point out that I’m not rushing my character up levels, but instead clearing maps of similar levels before going to the next map level up so there is ample opportunity for gear drops.

the problem I have is with my condition build for my thief I can only seem to get up to 9 or occasionally 10 stacks of bleeds before i have to wait for initiativeand by the time I have enough initiative 3 stacks are lost …

I like the condition build because they can still die if they run away, but I dislike it because of the low weapon damage and you are relying on condition to make up for it.

there is this post here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Policy-Third-Party-Programs/first#post354869

There is also a post somewhere about one key press one action but I cant find it at the moment.

Basically, to be safe, if in doubt, don’t do it.

What you can do though, if the game recognises the buttons, is re-assign actions to the mouse buttons. For instance I have heal skill on my mouse 5 button.

If you are willing to try, (using a youtube vid as reference), apparently they are only visually gone and the area where they are is still meant to be solid. Have not tried it myself but have seen it mentioned elsewhere.

ok, I tried to read all of the OP’s post and from what I can decipher there are some key points he has overlooked.

1. GW2 is not just another MMO, GW2 is even different from GW1 in many many aspects right down to similar foes behaving differently between 1 & 2.

2. Skill synergy is still an art form in GW2, I’ve been playing since just after release and only recently found out about combo fields/finishers, and am still working them out. So there is plenty of opportunity to “milk spell data”. And did you know the synergy goes beyond just you, for instance if you have a bow, and an ele lays down some fire, shooting your arrows through the fire ignites them causing burning on impact

3. Builds, while some players have “preferred” builds for different classes, there is lots of room for experimentation and modification. While some builds are designed to be easy to master, others take practice to master. With enough coin and equipment it is not unheard of to have different setups for different situations.

4. The thrill of the hunt. While the most direct path to take in GW2 is to level up as fast as possible, there are many other side paths you can take. For instance did you know there is a drinking achievement? Yes, achievements offer a player something to aim for beyond just levelling and gear grinding. Going back to gear grinding there is also the hunt for precurses, and other exotic items, one of the most sort after ones has yet to still be found (final rest).

5. Variety through interaction, one of the things in GW2 that some people don’t seem to utilise enough is dynamic events. Sure there are events that people stick to and farm for what ever, but in every single map there are dynamic events, and event chains that you can follow that give you variety of game play. Some of these events just happen, while others require you in interact with npc’s to get the event happening (never trust the lady in white).

One of the biggest but less understood features of GW2 is exploration, not only of the world, but of the environment through interaction. Yes it is quite possible to go right through a map and never see a single dynamic event, but if you stop rushing and interact with NPC’s, and object, there is a whole other world out there.

I have yet to actually play around with my unbreakable bell, but my concern is that all these people abusing it will end up causing the bell not to be usable, then I’ll be left with an item of no value what so ever

Killed several champions today and many vets, also killed a boss or 2 that wasn’t labeled champ/vet … and only 1 of them dropped something

From what I understand, AoE is getting nerfed because it is being used in situations where single target skills should be used instead. While I do not see any complaints about AoE, but lots about thieves, I get the impression that the developers have a box that says “this is how this class should be played” and playing the class outside of that box is not how they intended it to be played and therefore will be nerfed.

Angry chickens drop no loot. Not only are they hard to kill but after killing several, not a single one dropped anything. Zero reward for time spent

Um, I only ever got presents in GW1 on character birthdays, not my own.

They already nerfed engineer AoE where it is less effective, and not they want to nerf AoE even more?

First of all, AoE is not as strong as single target skills as it is. For instance the AoE ele skills do no-where near as much damage as single target skills, but because AoE is a targeted skill (most times) ele’s use AoE to hit targets that they cannot normally target directly such as people up on walls …

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re continuing to look into this and have a team of folks sifting through insane amounts of data based on all of your reports. This is an incredibly time intensive and unfortunately mostly manual process while we work on building tools to streamline this in more automated ways so it’s going to take a while.

A couple of things sort of stand out here.

1st, they are manually going through the data … where is their much touted metrics in all this? Surely their metrics tracks loot drops, after all the OP said

So far nothing shows anything suspicious

or are we to assume that the original response was based on QA experience on a test server?

2nd, they are developing tools to help sort through the data … Since loot is a big part of this game and they would want to make sure that no-one is taking advantage of some loot bug, surely there are tools already in place that can tell them whats dropping, how frequently and so on, after all they did pick up on dye drops happening too frequently …

I just find it disheartening that after 2 months of players stating what is wrong that this issue has not been resolved. A simple comparison of the loot metrics pre and post Nov15 would show a difference. Plus the fact that champs are not guaranteed loot, like the Nov15 patch notes state, shows beyond doubt something is wrong.

There is no way for us players to tell how many people are online. Same with accounts, you cannot tell how many accounts are on a server, only that the server is full or has a high/med/low population.