Iiridayn.6109

Indeed, and that is what I did. 30 minutes of disengaging, mind-numbing tedium.

These two responses amount to a frame challenge - that instead of proposing changes to the game, that I choose to not engage with the content and/or game which presents frustrations. This is a valid perspective, and one I outlined in my original post (paragraph 2 sentence 11). However, I suggest that replies that amount to "then don't play" may not lead to a healthier game. In general, exclusionary communities do not grow, and growth is valuable for a MMOG like GW2 which delivers value according to Metcalf's Law. While I appreciate the responses, I feel they do not add much value beyond the original post.

People in your group can use it, and people outside your group can also use it.

I've identified three other players who've dropped them at events I've been in, and I often drop them after metas I participate in. I'm sorry that you have not yet had the opportunity to find these in the open world - I can confirm that they are dropped, however. Also, "social gameplay" does not exclusively consist of "socializing". It is gameplay where players can benefit each other, where seeing another player is a good thing - not merely neutral, or negative. Socializing certainly requires other players and is one form of social gameplay, but it is far from the only form of it.

I agree, but decided there was less risk by making the issue public and presenting arguments to not make a change instead of having to overcome resistance to change something a second time. ANet employees play the game, so the public nature of the crafting stations was inevitably going to come to ANet's attention, if it had been overlooked.

- ArenaNet Every day I do the festival dailies. This earns me around 100 points towards the festival weekly. If I then want the unique skins locked behind the full festival weekly, I must grind 100 additional points worth of Halloween events each week. I don't skip days, I log in every single day and every single day I do the festival dailies. I do not appreciate GW2 "fall[ing] into the traps of traditional MMORPGs" and "suck[ing] my life away and forc[ing me] onto a grinding treadmill" to get those skins. The trap is the "engagement" KPI. Yes, I now "engage" more with the festival. However, KPIs are proxies for the underlying things that you really want to measure. Is the player having fun? Will they invite their friends? Most importantly, will they spend money, allowing us to continue making this game that we love? Increasing "engagement" by doubling the amount of events I have to participate in is not healthy for the game. I am not engaged in that content, I am grinding it out to complete a goal. It is not fun. It makes me less likely to recommend the game to friends, not more. The unpleasant grind makes me reconsider the value I place on completing skin collections - one of the major driving factors leading to my actual engagement in the game at present. If "engagement" leads me to disengage, perhaps this method of increasing "engagement" needs to be reconsidered. It is a trap many dead MMOs have fallen into.

Gw2Launcher has not been able to launch multiple accounts for me of late. Healix is great, but likely overwhelmed, so I built my own thing to run multiple GW2 accounts on a Linux box using Linux tools based on Healix's feedback. https://github.com/Iiridayn/gw2-linux-multibox-launcher - if you're a Linux user with multiple accounts (yes, all 3 of us) feel free to check it out. It works great for me, and I've been using it occasionally for the last month or so, but it's likely not 100% finalized yet and the documentation is probably imperfect, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you and why.

Wife has same issue on her account, also pre-ordered. I'm glad I saved the chest till after release to fill gaps.

I'm not suggesting ANet dedicate resources to this - rather the opposite. I'm requesting they spend no resources on changing the current behavior. Would you mind sharing why you might feel the current behavior is "just no"?

An open letter to ArenaNet. Earlier today I traded for a Permanent Mobile Crafting Station and have been experimenting with it, and have been updating the wiki to answer some of the questions I had before acquiring it. Testing revealed that players who are not in party are able to access it, like other current portable crafting stations. In my opinion this is a very good thing, and encourages and promotes social gameplay. I am motivated to drop this after open world metas so other players can access their bank; my understanding is that the current Permanent Bank Access Express is limited to just the owner. Because of this positive social feature, it is natural that this use of the Permanent Mobile Crafting Station would come to ArenaNet's attention (if nothing else, ArenaNet employees play the game too!), and I feel it is important to have an open discussion before a patch comes out to change this behavior. If I am wrong and the current behavior is not in the best interests of the players, the community, and ArenaNet, a public venue is the correct place to correct this notion. I recognize that as the owners and operators of the game, if ArenaNet judges it not in their best interests, as consumers of the game we have no recourse but to accept any level of convenience in the tools that we are permitted. ArenaNet: Please keep the current behavior of allowing other players bank and crafting access via the Permanent Mobile Crafting Station. Although this may run contrary to prior decisions such as to make the Permanent Bank Access Express personal, I feel this promotes and encourages social gameplay, and will ultimately increase (rather than decrease) demand for the item despite being an extremely rare gemstore chance-based drop, due to increased exposure. The player benefits from the item, the community benefits from the item instead of it being selfishly personal, and ArenaNet benefits by increased demand for Black Lion keys to acquire the item, due to increased visibility and the effect of altruism.

This is not a new issue with the new dailies system. My wife and I bought HoT + PoF when I started the game, and progressed through the story without spoilers or early unlocks. There were many days where we could not do the dailies in the old system due to requiring us to go places which would spoiler content. Eventually we got to HoT which helped a lot, and finally got to PoF which enabled us to do the rest of the dailies.

Turns out I can't find a "relic that has the special effect of [my] current rune set". So, perhaps I've lost more than "nothing". Though, perhaps you consider Scholar a "niche rune effect".

That worked for me. Thank you.

Yes. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:2/characters/:id/core

I really want a real healing spec for my warrior, something like Druid was for Rangers. Right now healing warrior is considered significantly underpowered, in part because to provide its critical boon (quickness) requires using utility slots, and to provide healing (shouts) uses... utility slots. It was almost effective w/the shoutsworn since you could recover shout ammo more often, but ANet (probably rightly) nerfed that, noting that they don't like instant heals. Fine, I don't need instant heals - I just want a useful healing build for my warrior. Re weapons, I think an ideal healing spec for warrior would provide scepter to pair w/warhorn. Put some heals on the mainhand weapon to take pressure off of the utilities for healing. Probably do some boon application like protection and resolution for the Burst skill. Seems simple and clean, and will probably alienate 90% of warrior mains in the game who just want more ways to "unga bunga DPS".