Guild Wars 2

(Let me preface that my core content in GW2 is world completition, story completition and some collections – basically, stuff that i can work on in my free time as that is fairly limited and I must be ready to drop game at any moment unless previously aranged for.)

(Also, this is not rant about difficulty. Those things are trivial to do. Or about being OCD completitionist – i have full map completition only on two characters. I am taking it chill. New hearts are not about taking it chill.)

So how are new hearts implemented: at reset time, you loose all progress. Well, how is that bad?

Original hearts basically served two purporses: They unlocked a vendor a they kept player at one place for couple of minutes so that map exploration is not about zipping around with speed boosts and evades and so that people get to experience soe events in area.

Now, that had major problem of being boring (and some annoying) to complete unless there was some event in area.

Good was that just like any world completition item, it gave some small goal on map.

Well, now we have new ones.

Problem with them is the way they reset: at reset time every day, regardless of anything. That sucks a lot.

1st) You get to loose unlocked vendor. I guess that might bother people who are collecting pertified wood as it adds couple of minutes to visiting vendor.

2nd) If you are exploring map at your own pace, you will never get map compleitition in it. If you do the “heart a day”, you will get nowhere. If you did half a heart, you have nothing to show for it tomorrow.

It forces unnatual way of completing the map: get all pois, vistas and waypoints first and leave hearts for time you will be able to get em in. And I do not really enjoy being pushed to stay online when i am presonally done with gaving for the day at punishment of loosing progress and having to restart.

3rd) It is kind of frustrating passing Dwarven Artifact and not bothering picking it up because I am not really sure i will be able to complete all hearts tonight.

4th) I dont really like treating open world map like instance (= having to restart it after i had to drop game in middle of storyline mission.). That is frustraing enough with those long-ish instances.

Well, what are benefits of new hearts? I dunno … some 600 karma per heart each day. Access to vendor you has yesterday? Busywork? I have hard time finding something I would enjoy about them.

I thought that repeatable hearts would work quite differently – i.e. that player will trigger repeat by talking to heart vendor, or that completition of all hearts in map would reset them. Not work as another set of daily achievements in disguise.

One thing I hate is “log off now to loose all the progress.”.

So, will future GW2 maps actually use this system? Will those maps have more such hearts? Becuase 5 of them are troubling me already. Something in range of 10-15 like in core maps would make me basically give up.

Also, what was exactly developper goal with them? Are they just busywork untill Episode 3 drops?

Also, for all others: What did you think that repeatable hearts would be like and what would be the reason for them?

Something similar is going for itemId 39140 and Book of Rabid Deeds – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Book_of_Rabid_Deeds#item2

And: https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items/35243 – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invaders_Warhorn

And: https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items/8702 – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Elemental_Powder

API returns error for item “Skale Venom” – https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items/8696

But this item is definitelly in game: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skale_Venom_

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/tokeninfo does work, but that is it.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

AFAIK, not currently. I should dig up that flag and add it to /v2/items.

Thank you!

Metalknuxx.1082:

unlock a NPC that sells Tomes of Knowledge on your home instance, for 2g each Tome.

If you want to level up with gold, you can just level by crafting, no?

I would like to know whether item is stackable (usually crafting material, booster, consumable, upgrade, loot box…) or not (usually weapon or armor piece, some gizmos) or if it is special case (item has charges like salvage kits or gathering tools, but cann not be stacked or split).

Is this possible from API? Inventory/Bank api always shows stack number of at least 1, Item api does not show anything like that.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Because the bulk of SPs will come from levels, the importance of skill challenges has been downplayed, so alt characters won’t need to do something crazy like 100% world completion to get the full legacy set. This softens the problem, and might have been the best solution they have found.

However, it does not solve the problem.

Right now:

• You are basically penalized for spending skillpoints on skills because you would loose skills and not receive whatever they will give for unspent skills/skill scrolls – that is huge no-no, veterans should not be advising newbies to abstain from unlocking skills and to hoard scrolls and skillpoints.

• Many people leveled alts by playing however they wanted to (using books, in dungeons, in wvw, by crafting, by staying in whatever area they liked…) and left out world completition as secondary – they spent skill scrolls/levelup skill points to have UAS characters and now they will not. Adding any gameplay element as necessary to character development is not good idea in my opinion.

• Reward track way of unlocking skills look stupid in this regard – it is not backwards compatible as it is not possible to unlock single item on its own and my own issue of having to go all the way through it for that one trait/skill even thou you do not want anything else from it.

fellyn.5083:

I’m pretty sure they actually expected people to play the game to get karma instead of relying on their daily and monthly jugs and karma boosters to more than double the amount of karma you could get from them.

Doing daily and monthly counts as playing the game. And its a lot more of playing the game than farming event chain of choice nonstop which people did before them.

And boosters were useless before, introduction of jugs “fixed” them to something people might actually buy to use and not something that gathes dust in inventory.

I thought about it and would rather implement such questions and multiple yes/no questions.

I would, however, think a bit about it.

Here is it: http://gw.zweistein.cz/gw2polls/index.php?questions=41,40,39,42,43,27,11,15,47,48

Of course, if you want aditional questions or answers, speak out.

I want to be long-term polling – what interests me is how answers correlate and relate together.

tolunart.2095:

They also increased the amount of karma you get from the jugs, bottles, flasks etc. by 50%. So when consuming them, they gave you a free, permanent karma booster.

And they also reduced daily and monthly rewards to 600 and 6000 respectivelly from pre “buff” 4500 and 45000.

86% less karma from what it used to be main source is not much of an increase. (91% percent less if you consider buffed jugs to add insult to injury)

Hi And Bye :-)

Nexun.6932:

Looking forward to the upcoming changes! Especially OAuth2!

As am I. It would really help a lot of applications to be able to verify their user as a GW2 player with account in good standing.

First, where:

http://gw.zweistein.cz/gw2polls/

or, as example of more focused poll:

http://gw.zweistein.cz/gw2polls/index.php?questions=35,36,37

Seccond, what: site dedicated to polls for gw2 players about gw2. It is currently in heavy beta, but presentable. I shall repost when it is “production ready”.

Third, why:

• People usually make single poll at some website like survey monkey. It usually only allows few questions, limits amount of people who can answer it and does not prevent redoing it (well, mine does not now either – waiting for api from anet to verify indentity of players)
• There are some projects that provide better data like gw2 census, but it can not be linked to other stuff. It always interested me how it can all related together.

Fourth, what to do:

• I kindly ask you to try it out, fill out any questions you care about answering.
• Post here if you think some question should be added, there is good additional answer of that wording of something is not good.
• Maybe report bugs.
  Thanks and Cheers!

Kain Francois.4328:

6s every 3 mins? I feel bad for you.

I don’t even see a reason to nerf this because it’s so slow.

That’s only 1.2g an hour. Compare with Barracudas, which are 10g an hour, and Cursed Shore which is 6g an hour.

Yet people are all over the place, farming champion bags because champion loot is worth it.

a pielord.3127:

This can net you a champion bag every 2-3 mins which can quickly add up and made me start to wonder if this would then become classed as an exploit because of the amount of gold and loot you can gain so quickly.

…

(Didn’t say where the farm was just in case it is classed as an exploit as I don’t want to go advertising them!)

Well, I will go ahead and advertise because people are taking advantage of it right now based on reactions when it is mentioned as well as running into mission repeatably

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ossuary_of_Unquiet_Dead missions starts with player fighting Incomplete Abomination – you can easily get kill within one minute 30 seconds since entering mission.

This abomination is not only easily accessible on demand, it is also noticeably weaker than other abominations.

Then player can waypoint near mission entrance and repeat. Whole run taking about two minutes and easily soloable.

Exploit is too hard, but it is definitelly oversight and bug – that abomination has stats of veteran and should be classed as such.

I actually tried this again after patch and it is in worse state than – I can no longer find skritt representative on Gendaran Fields and star markers for other reps are missing too.

It is slipping away… still uncompletable and bugged

Any news on fix? IT is still bugged for me…

Updated for recent map api.

Yamagawa.5941:

Balth may be an exception, and its one that players will want the hp for.

If he’s over 90% hp, you have time to WP over and run out to join. If he’s at 50%, you might have time. 20% – don’t bother.

Other meta- event bosses will be like that, and its the meta events that most players will care about.

There are also many multistage events – for example, Mordnirr chieftain which has event with three phases.

My experience of bring-me-items events is that they usually sit unattended, which makes them very reliable for completing various event dailies/monthlies, if there is any progress, it is from player who tags event with one item and then works on collecting rest of items, people seem to very rarely get into collecting without ensuring that they have tagged it. Also, some gathering events make players bring bundles, which results in smooth progress bar.

Also: I would like it if events had group event flag.

And, if possible, information how many players are affecting scaling.

Rachael Augg.2379:

Hello everyone, I am attempting to reproduce the issue and would like to get some more information if you can/applicable to your experience.

1. Did you have fast ground targeting box checked under options? (F11)
This makes any AoE spells land directly at your feet/location instead of giving the radial that can place the spell at another location within range. If you have that option checked, you would need to be almost directly atop the NPC you wanted to use it on.

2. Did you receive a tassi box and the event UI (upper right corner) updated?
Upon receipt of the box, the event UI would display text to use the kit on the specified NPCs.

3. When you have the tassi box equipped, are you using the #1 skill to bring up the radial for targeting the NPC’s that will prompt the conversation to progress the story? If you use just the [F] Key, that will only bring up a generic conversation and not progress the event.

4. If the event UI updated after receiving the Tassi box, when you scanned the characters did the event UI update again to cross their names off the list?

5. Before you left, was the event UI updated and had you speak with Kiel to end/complete and you received rewards?

6. If you left earlier before the event completed and were able to get back in, did you destroy the tassi box from your inventory to receive a new one that would progress the event and allow the scanned representatives to relay their conversations about the events that happened?

Hello,

1) yes. However, it should also land aoes on your mourse cursos, no? NPCs activated corretly anyway

2) Yes

3) Yes

4) I think so

5) No. After scanning last person (healer), there was no story step reward or event completition and speaking to NPCs did nothing, so I left. After leaving instance, there was no mail

6) I tried destroying box, but it did not allow me reneter instance.

I also tried this on alt account which worked just fine.

I did everything during investication exactly same way – but it got completed, got story reward and after leaving instance, i got mail and suspects/witnesses NPCs could be interacted with.

DarkSpirit.7046:

zwei.9073:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If it is too much work to provide that, perhaps the community can help out by scavenging for such information and consolidating them to share with everyone.

I have many ideas, just don’t have the time to code them all.

Information gathered by community is great help, but events are too dynamic for it – for example, simple escort event would be headache because it is hard to guess where event actually is – community could gather path info to show that instead, but multiphase events would be too hard.

And I would love to use api to gather this kind of info with API not instead.

Even if the API provides the locations, you would only get a snapshot of such an event and it is probably a bad idea for everyone to spam the server just to get updated locations every so often.

I don’t think we need up-to-the-minute accurate locations of the events. We only need approximate averaged-out locations for our purpose. The community can work that out if ArenaNet can’t provide this info.

From the player’s perspective, it is good enough to know that the event is on, somewhere at a location, so he can move towards that location. When he is close enough, the game would provide more updated information on where the event actually is then.

Snapshot is better than nothing – event with boss health at 90% and 10% is very different from player perspective.

Some events – mostly escort ones can happen through half a length of zone.

I am also interested in analysis. For example, “event density” statistics, natural flows of zone. How objectives are completed. How long do competition events stay active before player start doing them, such stuff.

DarkSpirit.7046:

If it is too much work to provide that, perhaps the community can help out by scavenging for such information and consolidating them to share with everyone.

I have many ideas, just don’t have the time to code them all.

Information gathered by community is great help, but events are too dynamic for it – for example, simple escort event would be headache because it is hard to guess where event actually is – community could gather path info to show that instead, but multiphase events would be too hard.

And I would love to use api to gather this kind of info with API not instead.

There should be map api returning locations/ids of all map completion items (waypoints, but also hearts, pois)…

And events should return more info (map markers and their locations).

Pairing up this information should be left as exercise by reader :-)

I think that theese enchancements to Event api would be … awesome:

• List of current event goals and their status (i.e. boss health, x/x mob waves defeated, area capture progress, countdown timer, percentage of items still needed for bring me items events, health of defended npcs, etc etc…)
  * List of map markers that event shows on map (position and icon type)
  * List of areas marked on map – the painterly circles and arrows in game (position, size, type)
  * Encompassing Meta event

I would love to make (or make someone else make) full browser of events with proper display on map.

I would also love to make “analysis” of coverage of map by events.

Updated for latest items changes.

ManCaptain.3154:

Like many reference implementations sun.misc Base64 encoder is extremely slow. Also have you tested the org.json parser speed vs other parsers?

I dont think that parser speed matter that much now. i use org.json.simple and it was hardy improvement over plain org.json.

What matters more is quality of output (i.e, some parsers would mix and match Double and Long values)

Anyhow, i have posted last update for recent color changes, even with sample app that makes chart of colors and made bigger app:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1fsqzq/api_wvw_notifier_for_pve_exloration_completers/

WvW Explorer aid

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1fsqzq/api_wvw_notifier_for_pve_exloration_completers/

by myself.

Emtiarbi.3281:

I created a json with this, hope this help

Yes, it helps, thank you very much!

Goddchen.4958:

precalculated RGB values: thanks you so much Cliff

I definitelly seccond this thanks!

Cliff Spradlin.3512:

I’d appreciate it if a Java developer here could post steps on how to do that so that others can work around this issue safely for now.

This class contains example of certificate initialization:

https://code.google.com/p/gw2api/source/browse/trunk/src/cz/zweistein/gw2/api/dao/OnlineJsonDao.java

Using file with certificate instead of byte array is matter of taste, but i am assuming that root certificate authority is not going to change anytime soon.

Killer Rhino.6794:

zwei.9073:

Thanks!

I used it to create simple color sheer, here is code:

https://code.google.com/p/gw2api/source/browse/trunk/src/cz/zweistein/gw2/app/color/ColorSheet.java

And here is result:

https://gw2api.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/colorsheet.html

(you might want to save it as html file on local drive and then open in broswer)

Zwei, in your color shift code, try changing:

hsl⁰ = (float) (hsl⁰ * 360 + color.getHue()) / 360;

to:

hsl⁰ = (float) (color.getHue() / 360);

I took a screenshot of your output and mine. Notice the “Celestial” and “Starry Night”, in particular. The colors on the right should be what to expect.

Fixed, thanks :-)

Thanks!

I used it to create simple color sheer, here is code:

https://code.google.com/p/gw2api/source/browse/trunk/src/cz/zweistein/gw2/app/color/ColorSheet.java

And here is result:

https://gw2api.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/colorsheet.html

(you might want to save it as html file on local drive and then open in broswer)

I posted it originally here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1fkoqz/the_big_cooking_shopping_list/

Cheers and thanks for API tha mde it possible!

I have added sample GUI application (Event Watcher) and started on OAuth2 implementation.

And updated api for new stuff (colors, guilds, build and misc updates)

sun packages should not be used at all thou – they are explicitly not guaranteed to work between versions, existing in different platforms is least of worries. Historically, quite few of them got repackaged to java.util or javax packages, breaking any older code. Beware.

For my API methods concerning item chat code, i have simply used achace codecs library.

Parthis.2091:

Ruhrpottpatriot.7293:

updated the master list again.

Might be worth grouping them by language, you have a few PHP ones, a few Java, etc. I think most people browsing will already know what language they’re interested in.

i would ditto that.

Also, my fork is called simply “GW2API” and is now different enough to be considered completelly separate project.

Bigger heads-up:

Offline data lists are complete for everything that makes sense, added some utils (item chat code), fixed parsing of non-english texts and completed using proper Long values instead of String.

Cheers and thanks!

It is bit different format thou (JSON array, versus JSON object with id-keys) – could we agree of dump format? Either one is okay, but consistency is best.

Small heads-up:

I have added support to read offline datasets ( from this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/Data-dump-All-recipes-and-created-items/first#post2091313 ) , so far it is fairly ugly, but really usefull.

Cheers!

They are certainly usefull,

I have added them to my API library as a offline recipe option – full list of all items in this would be much appreciated.

Cheers!

I would like detailed infromation about character wolrd completition – list of all discovered pois, vistas and completed hearts/challenges.

zeeZ.5713:

@zwei Please do not use <code>com.guildwars2.api</code> as a package name. Java naming conventions suggest you should use a domain you own, making this one imply it’s an official thing (plus there’s a (tiny) chance an official package will conflict with yours should they ever release one). Personally I see this as a no-go, though I do tend to be a little strict on random things from time to time

I was considering using my own domain, but it felt wrong to do that considering that it was fork of Alex.1503s work and whatnot.

But you have a point – if anet ever decides to make offcial library, they would collide.

So it is repackaged. And I hate SVN a bit more.

Cliff Spradlin.3512:

Having errors map to more specific HTTP status code is a good idea, but the reality is that we have many more complex error codes than we can map to HTTP statuses, and the errors may originate from backend servers that have no knowledge of HTTP.

You can only have fairly generic mapper and still give full error report in body of document, just like you do with code 500

Cliff Spradlin.3512:

In other words, if you have a web server that talks to our API and returns results to a web browser, and you receive an error from us, try to send that error to the browser instead of swallowing it and generating your own error.

I think that “item not found” should not be considered error.

Or rather, it is error in use of API by third party rather than error in service and as such is not error message, but info message for them.

Of course, it is often difficult to determine which is which.

Small heads up:

I have finished mapping all data structures to java objects, my current to-do is:

• Decide what id and values have to remain strings and which can be parsed to integers
  * Possibly refactor Item class
  * Find out which flags, constants and types are missing – right now, exception will be raised when unknown is ecnountered.

Distribution is here: https://gw2api.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/dist/gw2api.jar

Home here: https://code.google.com/p/gw2api/

Cliff Spradlin.3512:

Maybe instead, I’ll remove the ‘null’ properties from being returned at all, and instead have a list of example items that use all the possible properties, per item type. Then developers can examine that list to figure out the properties they need to support.

How does that sound?

That would be incredibly helpfull and awesome

I think that some keyboards have small LCD display that can be used for such thing as well.

GW2 uses that to display area completition, but dragon timers would be much more usefull.

It seems that recipe are missing what crating disciplines they can be crafted with.

Or am i missing something?

Also, I would like information about recipe origin, whether it is automatically learned as poart of crafting discipline, discovery or learned from recipe sheet.

Cliff Spradlin.3512:

Hi,

Could you please update the wiki with the current license information and link to the API documentation thread as the official version of the license for now?

The wiki may well be the best home for the API documentation, but lets do that one step at a time.

Done and done.

I have decided not to wait and redo most critical issues (swallowing exceptions? recreating tons of stuff for each request? Raw json output? etc…)

https://code.google.com/p/gw2api/

Usage is now like this:

GW2API api = new GW2API();

List<Long> items = api.getItems();
for (Long id : items) {
api.getItemDetails(id, null).getName();
}

Currently, parsing items is in progress – there is ton on needed research to find out all flags, types and type-specific data.