Guild Wars 2

Anet should listen to exactly four people up here, and I am not one of them (but chances are neither are you!).

No really folks – most of the vocal player base cannot see three steps into the future, the constant concerns about “today” and the lack of interest in responses from other players and Anet regarding why things are not implemented, or can’t/ought not be – just tunnelled and shortsighted grinding an axe with their pet hate written on it.

Don’t buy it? Read this sub-forum, the suggestions sub-forum, and any of the class sub-forums for an hour or two – evidenced.

Khal Drogo.9631:

thisolderhead.5127:

A simple dungeon finder, which has links into the guesting, which ties into server side lag (perhaps), etc, – simple idea which are “so obviously simple it should have been done” can have some pretty big relationships to other subsystems.

Hence my sarcasm – should be easy to implement my idea, they had days to do it and are developers, couldn’t take too many resources surely… not as much as fixing the legandary skins particle effect problems… :P

Apparently its within other companies’ capabilities since 2000.

Would be interesting if devs could tie in game currency into PHP.

Wouldn’t be hard – ODBC + PHP = Simple old school solutions lining up in my mind.

Other games have entirely different back end engines, network, databases, kitten – and I agree it is a big tool to be missing (and hate 3rd party scams, erm sites being used as an excuse) but…

If we had two games based on the newest UR engine and they had entirely different features implemented by entirely different teams (with different end-goals) your argument about being able to cross-code that feature in might still hold true, for all we know Anet might have had it all good to go until they realised what other issues guesting had and have shelved it until they fix lag issues and the like.

Khal Drogo.9631:

thisolderhead.5127:

My particular gripe (not charging Karma to post here on the forums) was not addressed. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least twice and as noone responded I can only assume 100% support from the community for that initiative.

Why you no implement this week rarrr?

Nice suggestion but I don’t think Anet has the resources to do this, otherwise a “simple” dungeon finder would have been up ages ago.

A simple dungeon finder, which has links into the guesting, which ties into server side lag (perhaps), etc, – simple idea which are “so obviously simple it should have been done” can have some pretty big relationships to other subsystems.

Hence my sarcasm – should be easy to implement my idea, they had days to do it and are developers, couldn’t take too many resources surely… not as much as fixing the legandary skins particle effect problems… :P

My particular gripe (not charging Karma to post here on the forums) was not addressed. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least twice and as noone responded I can only assume 100% support from the community for that initiative.

Why you no implement this week rarrr?

I farmed in with my wallet with my credit card, and then invest wisely in TP’ing the farmers’ gold away.

But quoting here:
“There would be an “endgame” that isn’t the monotony of collecting dungeon tokens, zerging easy world bosses, or praying you get an easy fractal.”

Tokens ought to be a consolation prize, not the goal true… but not my main point – “world bosses too easy, go do a fractal would” normally be a part of my answer since you seem to have no issues face rolling the other dungeons…

sinzer.4018:

Theoldman.6483:

Men and women are not created 100 % equal except in games.

When are we going to get gender based profession/race differences besides looks.

Gender’s the wrong term to use as gender is a social construct.

I’d agree if you also include that men and men are not created equal. If we’re to have major differences in game why not just take the plunge and create differences for even the same race and sex, some aspects random and others based on choices in character creation. Thus the strengths and weaknesses of player characters are more lifelike in that they’re based on both nature and nurture.

Let’s also not forget that for some races such as the asura there are no secondary sex characteristics.

Even further, it would be obvious that the Norn and Charr would easily overpower all the other races regardless of sex.

Size is the ONLY thing that matters.

Back to my hatch back.

Dante.1508:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Dante.1508:

its just a money milking machine that cares very little for their players,

How do you reconcile this belief with the fact that many of the changes to the game were made in response to requests by players?

• Ascended gear: requested by people who wanted more to do, a way to progress
• Ascended available in a variety of ways: in response to outcry against FotM
• Dailies providing choices: requested by players
• AC changes: requested by dungeon players who thought the boss fights were boring
• Changes to meta boss chests I (guaranteed rare): requested by players
• Changes to meta boss chests II (1 day/account): an attempt, in part, to address the negatives brought up by players
• Guild Missions I: Players said there was no reason to be in a guild
• Guild Missions II: Response to small guilds which complained about Guild Missions I

Good kitten, man! If they care little about about what players want, why the frack are they listening to them? I recognize that not every change has pleased everyone, but sweeping, baseless generalities are over the top.

Everything you said circles around time gated grind and carrot on the stick to keep players in game and not leaving, the rares are there for exactly the same reasons to keep the populations playing, if you cannot see all those things you quoted are so the company can retain players to make money, i feel you’re a bit sheltered..

Has very little to do with caring about players and more to do with players buying gems..if they really cared about their customers over money the new and old weapons and items in black lion chests wouldn’t exist, heck the chests wouldn’t exist, we wouldn’t need 15 types of tokens, karma would actually get you stuff worth having, everything would be in game as drops etc..

Its not.

Yes, if they cared about their players they would do away with methods of their business generating income and instead increase farmability and encourage grind play on servers that they can no longer pay for.

Yes – if you track some of the most frustrating parts of the game back far enought they link directly to an initiative to encourage the player to chip a few bucks into the collection tray, I still don’t have a problem with paying to see this game evolve into something new and interesting – I don’t want to play GW1, WoW, DAoC or Aion (etc) again, if I did I’d go do that some more instead.

I do agree with some of your principal ideas, but think there is too much being forced together there…

RebelYell.7132:

I don’t understand the argument where people say, for example, that their skill allows their engineer to outperform a “bad” warrior. They could take their skill and play, with a warrior’s mechanical advantages in DPS, and be downed less often than the bad warrior, thus doing even more DPS. Engineers still need a buff, regardless of how skilled you are.

I haven’t seen anyone (including myself) suggest there are no balance issues to address.

Again – a highly skilled player or lower skilled player will be able to get better results earlier/easily from some profs, however to reach the pinnacle of capability for that prof may not be a big jump from there. Other profs may be horrendous until you get to a higher level of skill at which point they can easily match (or even completely outclass) the others.

I could also point out professions mesh well with play style – I have been a highly ranked player in a game on one type of character within the healing role which was generally considered a broken prof (equiv.) and could not get my “imbahealzor” super OP cookie cutter character to rank anywhere near as well. There was a balance issue however for me as a player it was in fact the “broken” class was just misunderstood and OP in a lot of situations but the cookie cutter kids couldn’t work it out and the theorycraft required dynamic thinking so it wasn’t popular.

Food for thought.

Khal Drogo.9631

I love it when others refer to 85% (I would say 95%) of the playerbase as the muppet masses which the balance team apparently disfavored in this patch.

And that is the balance focus I refer to, while those with the most capability to be able to evaluate and provide high value input fall into the minority it is unlikely that the most well reasoned and sensible approach will be the one that wins.

Highly skilled players are the betamax of gaming, and although it can be frustrating only a small proportion of the population – nerfing complex mechanics and difficulties to the lowest common denominator is the MMORPG way, and something we ought to accept.

Dante.1508:

I’ve been here since beta, i’ve seen the game degrade in my opinion too and many many others, its just a money milking machine that cares very little for their players, which sadly the original guildwars was amazing.

The only reason i’m still here is my friends i’ve met, if they left, i’m pretty sure i’d be gone too. Especially after this last patch..

Mate- your expectations from the first day I read one of your posts was not positive.

I expect the next four days to be a miserable experience in having to drag myself through conversation with the in-laws – as such I’m not going to enjoy it and will be increasingly unsatisfied with my experience the longer it goes on.

But back at the plot – I am balancing my play time to ensure that I don’t get frustrated out of the game before they finish the beta (we are playing it still), and didn’t have any expectations (gw1 cough) coming in, but I can see where they are steering the product and like it.

BadHabitZz.1856:

thisolderhead.5127:

BadHabitZz.1856:

thisolderhead.5127:

thieves and warriors are the kids brand of play.

Please explain me how exactly is thief brand for kids in PvE? I dont play PvP and very little of WvW, but i feel like playing melee thief in places like FoTM lvl 40 without beeing downed isnt as easy as some players imagining you dont loose aggor anymore by going stealth you have 4 sec between hides, blind is close to useless in dungeons and you get downed by almost any hit or aoe/condition damage…

PvE is not difficult, and given I play melee primarily I can actually empathise with some of your issues, but its not an issue that can’t be overcome – its a challenge that makes it interesting, your examples are the few interestingly tricky parts of those encounters.

Are you missing the consumables now they are out of the picture too?

Not really, healing seed and cluster was nice but otherwise not. Iam not saying thieves need some complex thinking but i know alots of players which just doesnt know how to evade and if you dont know how to evade you are bad thief imo Ive seen soooo many bad thieves which just had to stick to SB whole dungeon beacuse otherwise there were downed 50% of time.
I love my thief hes killer in 1v1 fight iam not saying hes not but guardians or mesmers are still giving me hard times because if you blow your CnD on illusion or aegis you have hard time in zergs i dont thinks thiefs are something special, same goes for pve so i just dont like when ppl dissing them… :’(

Thieves are a prof that plays well enough under a bad player, and brilliantly for a good player, same with warriors – there are others which are “fail” professions that are completely underrated as you need to be a good player to play them well enough, but an amazing player is just something else entirely.

I think this is the issue – do they balance the classes for the masses of muppets or for the top 15% of PvP’ers. PvE is a different kettle, but again its about mob/boss mechanics being fixed so balance in PvE can be closer to PvE requirements… hard stuff with a broken stub of an AI (which is what we got at release).

Should clear that up – sorry – not kitten on anyone’s profession, just some are more “entry friendly”, some are just really amazing but only if you have skills, the right mindset, a good knowlege of GW2 mechanics and twelve cans of red bull – that is fun for some.

Jski.6180:

@ thisolderhead.5127
I am looking though the patch notes and i am not seeing it i have a feeling it was always caped at 5 but no one realty noted it until Anet pointed it out. I could of missed it but unless they did not put it in the notes at all i do not think i am missing it.

I can’t recall the exact patch – maybe november or the one prior… been a long year lol.

At launch there was no cap – I was running an AoE force multiplier guard and at a party of five it was fun, at a zerg of 25+ it was just completely ridiculous, plus take a couple of trees with healing seeds and you could tick away heals at the entire chunk of zerg… it was interesting but completely blobby (which kills games more often than not).

That is a lot of weight on some very narrow choke points in the back on the intertubes, plus would assist with explaining the geographic clustering that seems to be at play.

Guess Anet broke the internet and not server after all.

BadHabitZz.1856:

thisolderhead.5127:

thieves and warriors are the kids brand of play.

Please explain me how exactly is thief brand for kids in PvE? I dont play PvP and very little of WvW, but i feel like playing melee thief in places like FoTM lvl 40 without beeing downed isnt as easy as some players imagining you dont loose aggor anymore by going stealth you have 4 sec between hides, blind is close to useless in dungeons and you get downed by almost any hit or aoe/condition damage…

PvE is not difficult, and given I play melee primarily I can actually empathise with some of your issues, but its not an issue that can’t be overcome – its a challenge that makes it interesting, your examples are the few interestingly tricky parts of those encounters.

Are you missing the consumables now they are out of the picture too?

Khal Drogo.9631:

thisolderhead.5127:

Lafiel.9372:

Yeah, I really don’t understand the warrior buff and rangers and engineer nerfs. Those are the two most classes people dislike partying with most since they think they don’t really bring “anything to the party”. Nerfing them will just make people go… “do you have another class?”

Potential, look around and find the VERY good rangers and engi videos out there.

Those videos are pre-nerf. Logic fail. Actually I was pretty happy with class balance until this patch and class balance was the final straw that broke the camel’s back as there is no real new content for PVE players like myself after shinylust has been sated.

Apparently the only dungeon the PVPers ever play is COF P1, otherwise I fail to see how TW/Quickness pre patch allows u stomp on bosses.

Pre-nerf, post-nerf, mid-nerf, whatever – we’ve both been here long enough to know it is a one track complaint from those (in particular) professions, as balance changes players adapt or sook on forums.

The issue with PvE content is a real one, but at this stage (fractals fallout) I would be reluctant to push any content out to players (regardless of their vocal nature on the topic) without pushing it through a lot more QA.

I could go through and address single points along here, but would be all day and end up splitting straws…

The player base I don’t think is exclusively short sighted, even veterans of UO, Diablo, and everything since bring with them their perspective – and most gamers are impatient to a fault. The hearts of around half of them are in the right place – trying to push or pull to get something they desperately feel the game would benefit from.

The other half are usually selling their own agenda or truly just dopey, neither makes sense and strangely both will fight tooth and nail to prove their idea is acceptable – do you think that every single person who raged for the guesting to be implemented missed their cross-server buddies? Nope – most of them just wanted to even hop and convinced the GW2 world that it was entirely unjust that the feature they wanted to exploit was not ready yet.

For the most part I just assume that if something looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, its probably just someone who is trying to forward their own agenda – the earnest guys will be more reaonable in their response.

The cap was introduced in a late 2012 patch, if addled memory serves me.

The fact is that zerg tactics are about the best/most common that have been developed (even now, think outside the box folks gah), the idea of skirmish mini-zegs smashing into each other with uncapped AoE (offensive, defensive support, direct support etc) is amazing and would have balanced reasonably well – class bugs aside.

Unfortunately that vision of gangs hunting each other out ended up being a rehash of the wonderfully well considered “WoW AV” method of just blobbing up and switching off high level thought (for most of the players zerging) which make the overlapping impacts of all of the AoE fields… messy and less interesting.

And far as PvE AoE farming caps go – basically no effect, if you were AoE farming more than the cap at a time it might have had a SLIGHTLY negative effect on time-to-kills ratio, but generally speaking the AoE farming just adapted slightly instead of forum-raging over it.

I was discussing this over in WvW yesterday, apparently “Server lag” is the acceptable answer – there was a bit more to it at the time.

What I’m wondering is if skills are presenting in the correct order of initial keying after the lag – eg press 5-5-3-1 do you see the animations/effects come out 5-5-3-1, you’d need to refrain from mashing to see the correct queing.

Lafiel.9372:

Yeah, I really don’t understand the warrior buff and rangers and engineer nerfs. Those are the two most classes people dislike partying with most since they think they don’t really bring “anything to the party”. Nerfing them will just make people go… “do you have another class?”

Potential, look around and find the VERY good rangers and engi videos out there.

They are challenging professions that can bring EVERYTHING to the table, but they are complex to play well (and bugs make them even more challenging again).

Warriors are heavy armour and faceroll tactics, but f’kall depth and a myriad of counters to their limited bag of tricks – thieves and warriors are the kids brand of play. I’d say go chat with the really serious theory crafters, but even the best of them are keeping quiet about pretty much everything that isn’t seriously broken in the profs.

A well played engi will completely stomp multiple opponents played at an average level IF they are a depth orientated player and the bugs are forgiving.

Doggie.3184:

RNG actually has the potential to literally never give you what you want. Some can get it on first try, others can actually fail as many as a million attempts at it. The RNG god is a powerful god. If it doesn’t like you then there isn’t much you can do about it. No amount of tries will help you.

“No amount of tries will help you” is not quite accurate, the fact that each try has exactly the same low chance of a positive outcome does not preclude multiple attemps increasing the likelyhood of a positive outcome.

I see so much RNG rage but I don’t see anyone suggesting an alternative that would meet the requirements of human psyc. for satisfaction and reward being offered (just more exploitable bad ideas).

Zeivu.3615:

“Hell” can also be an induced state of mind, caused by yourself or other people. It can be something else. I wonder if someone would be banned for calling a toon a “Blue Footed Booby”.

thisolderhead.5127:

Jigga.2607:

i dont bring religion into the game. its just a name and i have seen many players with “hell” in their names.

“Hell” is religious mate.

The others probably didn’t get reported directly – you either annoyed someone, or got a devout person on a bad day, etc.

It can, and reporting based on it is weak, but again it comes down to what annoyed someone with the Report Button ready to go on the day.

I would guess it was more motivated by interaction than name based (like most reports) but we don’t hear that part.

Direngrey.8376:

IMPORTANT READ THIS: I am in no way in any shape or form promoting illegal off site gold buying, it is against ArenaNets terms of service and you WILL be caught and banned.

This thread is mainly for curiosity reasons. Which I will write.

Has anyone ever received in-game mail by random people who send you site links and offer vast amounts of gold for real currency? I have been getting them at least once a week.

On top of that, 2 days ago someone from Shanghai China attempted to log me in.
I am starting to think that the mail they send you in game, is some type of malware or phising program.

Lions Arch, there was someone who said he bought twilight for 400$ USD off of some website that gave him gold. Obviously I reported him because he broke ArenaNets rules.

I want to know how do these people get their gold, do they hack others and sell the stuff to people? This thread is to rise awareness and to prevent such attacks ever happening to the community.

Google mate – currency selling in MMOs is old as MMOs and is well documented, better than you will get from most people here.

Jigga.2607:

Jigga is not a bad in any way shape or form. if u look it up it is another way to say Swag. (a person, place,thing that is jiggy, fly, fresh)

Jay-z calls himself jigga for a reason.

There is a non-english use of the same letters in the same order is actually quite different, and amusingly so in the context of naming one’s self that.

See – offense is in the eye of the beholder mate, I think you got screwed – but again you will spend more than 65hrs trying to fight it and possibly end up in a worse situation, dat swag?

Jabberwock.9014:

thisolderhead.5127:

I play the wrong classes and builds, there is basically no time I would have a problem with any random boon being dropped on me… or has my change of medication overnight led to me missing a key point?

Apparently you play in a vacuum because nearly all class boons apply to teammates as well. Additionally as an ele one of our standard traits gives us boons whenever we switch attunements, which is hardly optional. The only “option” is whether or not to run the trait, and with how limited ele builds are already it just pigeonholes us even more.

Additionally with how many combo fields eles have, boons get thrown around willy nilly with little choice in the matter, since simply using a move with a blast finisher in a field will give one.

Nope – just couldn’t work out what was being said as, with my knowledge of the above being quite solid, it seemed to me that something different was being said, but thanks for jumping in and clearing up those fundamentals bro!

TexZero.7910:

I think the OP is a little misinformed.

The whole concept of a “Boon-Hate” build is to counter those classes that naturally Boon Juggle / Stack. It’s a good way of dealing with several classes/builds who are heavily reliant on boons and is actually a good strategic way of playing the game.

OK this makes sense – its a build type that sounds alright, thanks – gotcha, the rest of it was just odd and off.

I was frantically trying to find a situation where application of a boon (as I oft play my guardian) could potentially kitten a friendly someone nearby and was cringing at the idea!

Lighto.2805:

thisolderhead.5127:

Lighto.2805:

Wryscher.1432:

I had to set all my graphics settings to low or lowest. And well none on shadows. That killed most the lag for me.

changing graphic settings cant fix lag .
Low fps in not lag .

Video processing can (in some cases) produce a latency… just saying.

yeh sure… MS`s . I think we are talking about 10sec+ skill delays :/

I stated that it is not the same issue as the OP raised of long 10+sec lag spikes.

And 10ms latency is “normal” video latency… but yeah I’m not entering into this moot conversation now.

It is discriminatory – it is so that if someone sooks (like OP found) ANet can be seen as to creating a non-discriminatory and friendly game…

It is all about who you offend and how much they cry (forums are about the same) – not about a good set of consistent “whitelist/blacklist” rules.

But long story short – it is HARD to get in trouble in GW2, very very hard believe me, keep that in mind when reading these “unfair treatment” posts.

Lighto.2805:

Wryscher.1432:

I had to set all my graphics settings to low or lowest. And well none on shadows. That killed most the lag for me.

changing graphic settings cant fix lag .
Low fps in not lag .

Video processing can (in some cases) produce a latency… just saying.

Wryscher.1432:

I had to set all my graphics settings to low or lowest. And well none on shadows. That killed most the lag for me.

And actually it wasn’t even a case of the best autoattack wins, because people werent where they were suppose to be and even autoattack wouldnt go off with my target standing on top of me.

Ah in your case you are getting direct client lag too, possibly from video processing or network latency (wifi, crap ISP, VPNs, etc) – slightly different symptoms with BIG flags about where the issue is.

Infernia.9847:

So does this mean that in big zergs it’s going to be those with the best auto-attack = win?
Not trying to diminish seriousness. I have been in this situation before. No skills firing and everyone running around confused. Charr’s being able to use their claws or teeth would be funny at that point. Norn’s using a body slam option…

Well at least they can move on to optimizing their handling of data (server side)now that culling has been passed on to the client side.

Autoattack would still be queued – makes no difference, movement is different or you’d also be rubber banding all over the shop (client apparently handles a lot of movement code, food for exploiters’ thoughts).

And yes its “Server lag” – glad the post a couple up there shed some additional thoughts about why the server side is lagging there or even some anecdote that might support/deny the possible reasons.

Jigga.2607:

how come i got no warning or even a chance to change my name? just auto suspend.

Looking at your account name I could wager a guess… or I could say that there is going to be a past warning against your account that we’re not hearing about…

But more likely you will find less warning and more insta-banning is going on to deal with smart little people who have been flaunting rules, you are officially a deterent – grats.

Effectively you can get one guaranteed rare per boss per day would be more accurate wouldn’t it?

Assuming the normal chest RNG doesn’t come out in your favour and reward you well correct?

I admit I could be off my game today a little and missing something.

I play the wrong classes and builds, there is basically no time I would have a problem with any random boon being dropped on me… or has my change of medication overnight led to me missing a key point?

IMO they balanced it after they let it compensate the prior situation a little, but of course I wasn’t bugged out and have been getting acceptable drops since day 1.

Jigga.2607:

i dont bring religion into the game. its just a name and i have seen many players with “hell” in their names.

“Hell” is religious mate.

The others probably didn’t get reported directly – you either annoyed someone, or got a devout person on a bad day, etc.

Reloading.3260:

MikeRocks.9243:

Hermes.7014:

MikeRocks.9243:

You realize that this is probably more of a giant gold sink than a cash grab?

I’m sure a ton of people are spending a lot of real money to get those keys, but I’m sure there are a lot more that are using the gold to gem exchange to buy the keys instead.

Either way, it’s good for ANET. Either they make some quick cash from the gem store, or they get rid of a ton of gold from the game.

Perhaps it is a good gold sink for farmers, but it hurts casual and slightly less casual players who do not want to spend real money on lottery tickets on a game they can play only on the perhaps short free time they have.

True, but I don’t think ANET is aiming for the casual crowd with this. The less super rich people they have in their game, the better it is for them. Plus, the casual gamers that are poor are more likely to buy the gems with cash, which also helps ANET.

Anyway, with it being roughly 2.75g at the moment for 100 gems, it costs 3 gold 43 silver per key if you buy them individually. I’d say every key bought with gold is a win for ANET when it comes to leveling off the uber rich in the economy.

Hate to break this to you but those gems people are buying with gold were sold by someone for gold. The uber rich are getting richer because they buy their gems low when there’s not as much demand and wait for these patches with must have gem store items (keys/vanity) to sell high.

So crack out the credit card and buy in to the market – we are not stopping you, the market entry barriers are basically nil (assuming you have a good IRL income).

Jigga.2607:

i was suspended for “Inappropriate Name” while my character name is “Torry Hellheal” seems like i am being discriminated against in the game and i would like someone from ANET to please fix this.. I have 65hrs on my suspension for being wrongfully reported. my character name does not break any Naming Policies or Rules.. please help me

You will spend more than 65hrs trying to address what is clearly a religious refernce (Hell) violation – obviously someone you annoyed reported you.

That is all.

Sounds like a few mixed points, none of which I’ve ever heard of before (and I feed on gripes posted up here)…

Specific example of being negatively impacted by recieving a boon would be a good start (something about the d/d builds?)…

Lysico.4906:

Lafiel.9372:

All high tier servers stay at very high 24/7.

So why would anyone really move off a high pop server to be honest.

They should give the med-low a free x-fer to whatever the lowest of the high (if you can make sense of that)..

Just merge then is what I am saying

The lower the population servers are advantageous (after a point of economic viability) to Anet, not least of all to spread the sources of that lag out.

Its not about stuffing the population together for the player experience – its about levelling out resources for the client/server design to be more stable.

Hermes.7014:

MikeRocks.9243:

You realize that this is probably more of a giant gold sink than a cash grab?

I’m sure a ton of people are spending a lot of real money to get those keys, but I’m sure there are a lot more that are using the gold to gem exchange to buy the keys instead.

Either way, it’s good for ANET. Either they make some quick cash from the gem store, or they get rid of a ton of gold from the game.

Perhaps it is a good gold sink for farmers, but it hurts casual and slightly less casual players who do not want to spend real money on lottery tickets on a game they can play only on the perhaps short free time they have.

And these are targetted at a slightly different player group, hence why they don’t quite mesh with (but are still completely available to you despite) your game play style, desires, and commitments.

Yep – my point was that the Culling fix was never intended to address the skill lag.

I suspect that the skill lag is that there is caps on concurrent TPS on the backend databases and this gets blown out in some circumstances, leading to queued transactions… if they use FIFO queues this will result in one type of lag, if they use FILO queues (and assume some key spamming) it will create another – this sounds like the latter.

They’ve probably limited the concurrent transactions due to the platform needing better resources available (more RAM or processor prower) or due to a limitation on the backend database engine only being capable of concurrently processing X or N transactions… I suspect the latter which would be a VERY worrying and expensive/difficult issue to address depending on how they’ve “plugged into it”.

So are these the servers they pulled “offline”?

Is this the same skill lag that they stated would not be addressed with the culling fix?

Hey – lets imagine up the way they calculate the population, just like we did yesterday with all the gold seller hacking servers to create money and legendary items conversation.

I think that the obvious was that Anet must calculate population would be to count keystrokes echoed to a server per minute, divide that by the number of players logged in during that minute, apply that to a weighting derrived from the average ration of logged in time per account on that server, multiply that by 1.125 (for overhead) and set its population each 24 hours or weekly based on the sum of those minute by minute calculations against an arbitary lookup table with defined population bands.

Or they could just look at average server load from a technical POV and accordingly apply a population based on how thrashed it gets… but that seems to easy and accurate to be viable…

Hermes.7014:

Imho, adding this kind of stuff to the BLCs is a terribad idea.
Arenanet should add the tickets as guaranteed single purchases from the Gem Shop for like 400 gems each instead. Many people do not like to gamble and will just not buy keys for something that has a near non-existant chance to drop.

I understand that some people don’t realise why the “gamble” is so important to satisfaction, so won’t address that again.

However you seem to be missing the other part of this equation – for every chest opened the chances of further keys and potentially valuable other items arises, and the value of the BLC contents has been underrated since launch with the same few people down-talking it as were crusading against EVERY form of RNG in the game (which is a complete failure of human psych applied to MMORPGs).

Good way of advertising a resource that is being under utilised, make a few bucks in the gem store, and offer a bit of something the GW1 bitter-vets (yes I stole the EvE term – its appropriate) have been crying out for.

eisberg.2379:

Still gambling, just not as bad as you thought it was. But still bad to have gambling imo.

“Gambling” is creating a less predictable set of circumstances as the vast majority of primates (and therefore gamers) get a much better dopamine and seratonin response for being rewarded intermittantly and inconsistently than in a predictable and regular fasion.

I’ll put that in another way for the folks who don’t like psych talk – you get more happy in your chappy when your win comes up and the chances were crappy.

Calae.1738

No other game that takes PVP seriously will implement this mechanic. The reasons should be quite obvious but, apparently for some people it isn’t.

We agree that there is quite obvious stuff being missed, but some concealed too. Skip ahead a little bit – to the time where the game has matured for PVP and bear with me…

Arena type PVP in particular has always has a flaw in that there is generally a lot of fiddles requried to prevent OP abilities to limit zerging heals/control/key mechanic characters, preventing cascading win/fails on a team, etc – the “serious PVP” guys know the list.

Downed state actually requires you “gain the advantage” (like tennis) and maintain it rather than face roll a team on the back-foot after you “zerg teir helz yeh”… it will provide depth.

Nappychappy.7046:

I quit months ago

This is why posting should cost Karma.

Nappychappy.7046:

due to DR’s, but I still lurk on the forums occasionally.. Looks like I haven’t missed a kitten thing. Same old DR’s, crap drops and broken events..

I really miss launch, the game was fun then.

Launch – when the events were broken and nothing dropped due to bugs?

Things have improved quite a bit, you won’t hear that here though – I suspect most sooking comes from folks who can hack the forums more than they could a fractal.

kiba.2768:

Red Falcon.8257:

Vol.5241:

There is nothing technically illegal about gold sellers/botters.

Not sure about murica, but in most EU nations it’s illegal to sell virtual items that belong to someone else.
Gold is classified as a virtual property and cannot be sold, even ideas are covered by intellectual property laws.
Legally, you own nothing in GW2, including your account and all items related to it.

the actual issue is not selling virtual property, because it is clear that is illegal. how they get around that is in the fine print: they are charging a premium for a service…basically a ‘transportation’ cost- the cost of shipping that item to you(in game mail).

this is nothing new as this existed back in the diablo 2 days(possibly even earlier?) when items were sold in a less sophisticated fashion on ebay and to avoid legal persecution by blizzard, sellers put up disclaimers in the form of ‘you are paying for the cost of shipment of this item to your account. the item remains the sole property of blizzard inc.’ or something along those lines.

That was to get around Ebay’s EULA, not to prevent law men kicking down their doors.

C’mon peeps – keep up.

SchuMidas.4782:

if Anet hire gold farmer to protect their server, maybe bots will have hard time do their stuff.

you know, fight fire with fire stuff.

Ah… yeah…. stand the gold farmer right in front of the server to protect it… since it will be about as useful.

Sorry to be entirely cruel and condescending here but have any of you actually read anything on the illicit RMT within MMORPGs?

I hope you all go out and read about internet security – Anet has teams of people (outsourced and in house) with relevant quals and experience protecting their assets, have you got an up to date OS, firewall/security suite, and browser?