Guild Wars 2

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Our targets have been in the past to shoot for a 30-45 minute explorable dungeon path for the desired skill group.

Emphasis mine. Not sure if anyone else noticed this. Wondering if it implies that the desired skill group may be different for different dungeons. So some dungeons are intentionally tuned easier and casual players can hope to finish in 30-45 minutes, while others are tuned more difficult and hardcore/skilled players can hope for that timing…

This might be a dev-only tool for monitoring and playtesting…

Some quick thoughts:

(1) Buff the range at which Dynamic Events show up on the map. Ideally, every player should have at least one DE (i.e. the nearest one) showing up on their map at any given point. This would improve the ‘open world’ aspect of GW2 — it’d provide a natural gathering point for players, make it easier to find other people to run DEs with, and generally make the world feel more populated and alive.

(2) Increase the DE rewards in proportion to the time that it goes unfinished (possibly as +Karma, +Gold and/or +MF). This would encourage people to go to less populated areas to find DEs, and not zerg the same ones again and again. For example, instead of nerfing the Plinx event chain, make it more rewarding for people to search out a variety of different DEs and finish them. Encouraging this kind of variety would also make the game feel like less of a repetitive grind.

gadenp.7586:

1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?
2. When did you start playing less?
3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?

I started hitting the forums more than playing the game after the precursor giveaway during the Ancient Karka event. Posted about my reaction to it here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/lostshores/Lost-Shores-Creating-Winners-vs-Losers/first

I’ve tried leveling an alt, but stopped around L40. I found the process too tedious. It didn’t help that I already did 100% map exploration on my main, so I’ve seen all the areas and done all the hearts. It might have been better if doing story quests alone were enough to get to L80.

FotM was fun at first, but the most challenging aspect nowadays is getting a group for the same level. Worse still, the fractals themselves are getting a bit repetitive, and it takes way too long to find a group for any other dungeon.

I made some half-hearted attempts to go for a legendary weapon and craft an ascended backpiece, but ecto and T6 fine material prices are just spiraling out of control. And I didn’t get anything from the Ancient Karka event either (disconnected and couldn’t get back).

Sooooo… I just bought Torchlight II off Steam, and will check back in a week or two to see if there’s anything new in GW2 that might make me consider playing again. Otherwise, well, it was fun while it lasted.

Chris Whiteside’s latest post mentioned that one upcoming initiative was “Revamping all of our existing dungeons (Story and Explorable versions) through rebalance and overhauled encounters.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/chris-whiteside-on-the-lost-shores-and-beyond/

Personally, I’m happiest when dungeon runs take about 30 minutes or less. 45 minute dungeon runs feel like things are dragged out, and anything above 1 hour is just not fun.

So I was wondering: What do other people think is a good length for a dungeon?

This is good news. Confirmation of the before & after stat distribution would be really great, though.

Loosifah.4739:

I call BS. Nobody and I mean NOBODY has ascended gear yet. There’s no way someone made 1300 tokens in the period of a weekend unless they played in shifts with friends so someone was on the character 24/7 and in a fractal the whole time.

Check out Dulfy’s site. Looks like every Ascended item there was confirmed by at least one person who crafted it already.

http://dulfy.net/2012/11/17/gw2-ascended-gear-and-infusion-recipes/

dralou.7239:

The new map: is gorgeous

So true. The landscape was inspired by Pamukkale (Turkey), which I visited a few years ago. It was a beautiful touch, and a nice trip down memory lane for me.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Pamukkale

Grevender.9235:

Southsun Cove scenario is too beautiful (somehow I understand the people sunbathing on the beach there… regardless of Karka)

If you search for Pamukkale on Google Images, you’ll find people sunbathing there.

I’m reposting this, since the Lost Shores forum has been closed and I have no idea whether the developers have seen this post or not.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/lostshores/Lost-Shores-Creating-Winners-vs-Losers/first

Some of GW2’s best features came from rethinking MMO conventions to promote inclusiveness and cooperative play. For example, automatically sharing credit for monster kills, individual loot drops and individual gathering nodes. These allow everyone to “win”, rather than create some winners and some losers.

This way of thinking was absent from the Ancient Karka event chain. First, it was implemented as a “one-time” event that lasted several hours. I mentioned this already in an earlier thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lostshores/No-One-Time-Events-We-re-Paying-Customers/first

Second, completing the event rewarded some players with legendary precursors, creating some huge winners. The level of rewards here were completely disproportionate to anything else in the game so far. Whether you finish a World Event chain or run a dungeon, you’d be extremely lucky to get even a single exotic.

Together, these two factors created a lot of losers. If you live in the wrong time zone, you lose. If you were busy that day, you lose. If you quit halfway due to lag and/or frustration, you lose. If you got disconnected and couldn’t get back to a shard with an active event chain, you lose. If you “only” got L78 exotic drops from the the Ancient Karka chest, you lose. That’s a lot of losers. And people don’t want to play GW2 to feel like losers. Everyone wants to feel like a winner.

Rolling back the servers isn’t an option, so what can be done so that more people “win”?

(1) Design future World Events to allow everyone to participate. Some ideas that have come up on the forums include running the events multiple times over a day or week, or implementing some kind of instancing or phasing. At the absolute minimum, one time events should not give out the most valuable items on the TP.

(2) Find other ways to give everyone a much better shot at legendary precursors and make other activities more rewarding. For example, buff the drops from other event chains, such as the Orrian temples, to match the Ancient Karka event. Buff the dungeon rewards further to give at least one rare or exotic per run, or perhaps a bag of Tier 6 crafting materials.

This is just my 2 cents. You can cater to the people who feel like winners only if others lose, or the people who don’t care if other people lose as long as they have a good time. But I’d much rather play a GW2 in which everyone can win.

Thank you.

After thinking about this a bit more, the most frustrating part for me was that it combined (1) a one time event and (2) legendary precursor rewards. I felt this was unfair.

But ANet isn’t going to rollback the rewards from this event. So the most productive thing we can do now is to focus their attention on how to make things better in the future.

I’ve written a bit more about it in another thread, and would love to get some responses and hear some better suggestions:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lostshores/Lost-Shores-Creating-Winners-vs-Losers

Matt Witter.6982:

We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.

The above quote was taken from the WvW forums regarding “Night Capping” by Matt Witter (Game Designer, ANet). Please apply the same logic to World Events, especially if you’re giving out drops like legendary precursors. Please stop the “one-time” events tied to a specific time of day. There are lots of suggestions on this forum about how to get around it. Implement phasing on a character/account basis, let it run repeatedly for a week or a month, etc. The rest of us might not be playing during peak concurrency hours, but we’re paying customers too.

Thank you.

I got hit by the d/c error in the final phase too. Just completed destroy the 2nd set of webbing in “Defeat the ancient karka”, when disconnected. This really blows.

Just wanted to say props to the dungeon team for FotM. Some of the detailed touches in there were awesome. Top stand out moments for me (so far) were the golem names in the Uncategorized Fractal, and hunting down chickens for the “Out of Cluck” achievement for Urban Battlefield Fractal.

Just wanted to say that this guide is pretty awesome and detailed already. I even learned some new things about the auto-attack skills!

Pridecry.5293:

Do you guys know which dungeon, AC or HoTW is faster and easier to earn tokens for PVT armor?

The PVT set requires 1200 AC tokens vs. 1380 HotW tokens. The shoulders, chest and pants are 50-70 tokens cheaper from AC.

Would love to see more Meta-Achievements similar to World Explorer, Master Crafter and Dungeon Master, Emissary of the Mad King.

Possibly for jump puzzles, monster kills, kills with weapons, etc.

The Mystic Forge doesn’t accept Killstreak Experience Boosters for me. This is for the new Halloween recipe.

After the 24 Oct mini-update, I got ticks towards “Emissary of the Mad King” for:
- Halloween Huntin’ 150/150
- Trick or Treat bags opened. 100/100

But not for:
- Pumpkin Carving 150/150

Not sure if this is bugged?

I’ve been enjoying my Ele a lot more since using daphoenix’s D/D build at L80.

But I think one problem with the class is that it’s too easy to make an underpowered build and/or a build that needs a skilled player to do okay. It’s not a “friendly” class in that way.

@fanzil: I found the D/D bunker ele to be great at L80, but I’m not sure I can recommend it for lower levels. I don’t know if there are enough trait points available for it to work well.

@Euacha: You might want to consider this build. I used it from around L60 to L80, and saw a huge increase in survivability.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/

You could try out this build from from L40 onwards. It revolves around Conjure Lightning Hammer + Water Attunement. It massively improved my survivability for solo PVE and allowed me to take on several mobs at the same time. One downside is that it’s less interesting that learning the various Ele rotations and combos, because you lose the skill bar from your regular weapons.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/65884-the-ultimate-40-elementalist-levelingfarming-build-cantriphammer-build-highest-dps-innate-survivability/

Skill Point: Defeat the Ancient Sharks
Area: Sparkfly Fen
Server: Henge of Denravi

This skill point is currently bugged. Ancient Shark Pistrix + 3 mobs for the skill challenge do not turn hostile when approached, and the status is stuck at Brood Killed 2/3.

Can any devs tell us if this was intended? Not sure if it’s supposed to be a mystery achievement.

This is still a live problem. Two-Eye Ignatl does not spawn properly.

Server: Henge of Denravi

Had a really bad experience with this bug today on Sorrow’s Embrace. Took us almost 20 minutes to get a 5-man who could all get into the same instance. And about 10 minutes after we finally got rolling, the server hiccuped, one guy d/ced and couldn’t get back into the same instance.

Actually, my L62 Ninja is doing pretty well in PvE, after I switched her to a Lightning Hammer build.

I would love to have my Elemental / Lesser Elemental as a permanent “tank” pet. Nerf their damage if necessary for balance, but increase their HP and aggro.

This might work either as a complete overhaul of the Elemental / Lesser Elemental glyph, or as a Major Trait.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents.

I’m playing an Elementalist, and had no problems with all the story missions up to about L40. Then I suddenly ran into a brick wall with ‘Rat-Tastrophe’, ‘Set To Blow’ and ‘Forewarned is Forearmed’. I had a MUCH tougher time getting through than any of the other story missions so far. Died multiple times and respawned, which took a lot of the fun out of playing. My main issue was the sudden spike in difficulty — the inconsistent experience left me wondering if there wasn’t enough playtesting and/or tuning.

Some issues I had with these quests:
(1) Multiple mobs casting AOE in enclosed areas (‘Rat-Tastrophe’ & ‘Set To Blow’). I just couldn’t find anywhere to run and stay alive.
(2) Fighting mobs underwater seems about 2-3x harder than on land (‘Forewarned is Forearmed’). I don’t know if I haven’t figured out how to play the class properly, but my Elementalist feels seriously kittened when I fight underwater. And when one of the mobs calls for help, it usually ends badly.
(3) Mobs calling for help… who call more mobs for help (‘Forewarned is Forearmed’). I had one experience where 1v1 became 4v1 in about 10 seconds. Not sure if it was a bug, or if there were more mobs around the corner that I didn’t see.

Overall, I think having multiple near-death experiences when playing is fun. But dying multiple times and running back to die again is not fun.

Bugged for me, as of 10 minutes ago.

Server: Henge of Denravi.

Tried again an hour later – worked this time. Not sure why.

I just tried this today. Also bugged for me.

Restless Arboreal Spirit is around, but I cannot talk to him.

Server: Henge of Denravi