Faux Play.6104

TLDR:Can't really kite itCan't 'just dodge'Can't even get the warr to use it and then run away (via thief) because by the time someone gets over there to take advantage of the used cooldown, it'll be back up againYour PoV on this is terribly limited and flawed. Google irony, maybe. how can you not kite it..it's so useless in plat 2, i mainly use it to run away or just secure stomp cuz stabI figured people in plat 2 had enough awareness to corrupt stab.

I would but I blew them on those two consecutive arc dividers that do 30k damage each. Or head butt, or ..... So warrior has 2 elite slots now?If you dodged headbutt, you can be sure that there wont be coming a rampage from that warrior. Just wanted to get that out, especially because some ppl agree with you... Urgs. I meant bulls charge. Warrior can easily 100-0 someone if they make a single mistake, and they have many more deadly skills than you have dodges.

I would but I blew them on those two consecutive arc dividers that do 30k damage each. Or head butt, or .....

IMO the biggest thing eroding the playerbase at the top is the top players. They want short queue times, and they make alts with tanked ratings so they can queue snipe other top players. In NA it has gotten so bad that if you are gold 3 you will consistently be in matches with people with relentless legend or higher titles. That is a very big skill gap and is not fun to play against. Hence more people either tank so they don't have to put up with them, or stop playing all together.

How about keep it where it is. It's prefectly fine. U hear sic em. U dodge. It's easy and as simple as that.sic em literally translate to dodge now so he can't burst you. Just brain dead not to dodge it, when it's telegraphed and litterally shouts at you. N if u are going to say what if it's a +1 n u r out of dodges... Well that's part of the game. No different a rev porting on you and bursting or a chorno bursting you. I am not even a ranger main. This is just a healthy discussion and thought, you can put the nails away because there's no need for it here. No one is saying this or that as you implied, its not even an arguement so I wont even bother with the "butwhataboutism".. Please keep it friendly and civil, theres no need for the name calling. When did I name call? I anticipated what you might say and provided an explanation of my thoughts. I did not write any harsh language. I simple wrote how about keep it where it is. I am sorry you find some one who disagrees with you offensive? Lol Youre referring to everyone or anyone who thinks the skill might need a tuneup as "noob". This ruins any chance of a healthy discussion about the skill. You anticipated because your frame of mind is in the wrong place, this is just a healthy discussion, theres no arguement here. I am not offended, I would prefer the thread to stay civilised rather than cop a closure. Some maturity would be appreciated. Maybe you are right. I am just tired of reading everything has to be nerfed when I feel that it's pretty balanced right now. I apologise for the quick aggro. No I understand, this is why I made the thread though. I feel after all the complaints Anet will nerf this skill into oblivion soon so I am trying to give an open window for a healthy discussion about the skill hence why my OP is sort of a nerf but also a buff. I also feel like I spent alot of time learning this game to get to plat. Had to play the majority of classes to understand the timing and animations. I would hate that skills get nerfed because people who don't bother to learn anything get mad that they die and complain over and over till a spec is basically useless. This is basically thief. The whole class has basically been deleted because of people complaining. Even now. When it's auto attack is 2k and a thief can die in 1-2 hits by almost every other class. People complain. It's incredible how this generation people want instant gratification. That they should be legendary in 1 season and if they are not. The gw2 match system is broke or profession skills are unbalanced. That's because people in this forum have an incredibly difficult time distinguishing between what is "annoying" and what is actually "overpowered". A great example of this was Deadeye before the nerfs, back when DJ was unblockable, Scope was still 3s of stealth on roll, and the Rifle 4 bug was allowing Lead Attack stacking while out of combat. Deadeye before the nerf had only 2 players in NA who were even capable of playing it past a plat 2 level. It was the least represented class/spec in ranked past top plat 1, even lower than Dragonhunter, and on par with people messing around on Renegade. It had literally "Zero representation in monthly ATs" none, nothing, zilch, nada. Everything in the game countered Deadeye if it cared to go off node and chase it, so long as the player was wise enough to utilize LOS positions and not make himself a sitting duck. Things that hard countered & shut down DE were Core Guards, Dragonhunters, Heralds, All Mesmers, Other Thieves, Any Ranger with Sic Em, Holosmith Reveal, Spellbreaker Reveal. It is because virtually everything in the game countered DE directly, that only 2 people were maverick enough to play it past a plat 2 level. But see people are fickle, they are ignorant, and they are apathetic when things are explained to them. So rather than l2p vs. the DE, the large majority of the player base which hovers in the gold divisions, would develop this self chosen tunnel vision. They would only go to nodes, often rally botting to the mid node, never leave those nodes, and let the DEs free cast against them without ever sending anyone to neutralize it. And then come into the forums whining about how overpowered the DE is. The truth is that these people refused to alter their gameplay. They were fresh off an old HoT meta where there were no high powered ranged classes. LB/GS Power Rangers had been long dead, and LB Druids were light damage, utilizing the LB mostly for the extra stealth and knockback for decaps, not damage. They were years deep into a mentality of going to a node, standing on that node, and not worrying about high powered ranged. So when high powered ranged showed up in PoF with the DE and Sic Em Soulbeasts, the large majority of the player base "the gold divisions" pointed, screamed OP, started a bandwagon, and got a great class which was bringing new dynamic to our old game, nerfed completely out of any possible competitive viability, when in truth it was already weak to begin with and this is reflected in the ridiculously low representation it had in competitive environments. Now the same thing will happen to Rangers. The exact same demographic of players who cried wolf at the DE, are now crying wolf at Sic Em, with all of the wrong suggestions that will eviscerate all Ranger DPS options. I'd like to think that I've been a fairly unbiased forum user over the years in terms of balance discussions. Concerning this discussion, I can say that I have proposed nerfs & changes to Soulbeast DPS, including Sic Em, but these suggestions need to be thrown into the right places or Ranger is going to be pigeonholed as a Bunker. I'm warning everyone right now, that if Sic Em is improperly nerfed, It's going to lose its kill power that allows Ranger DPS viability in plat+ divisions. The ironic thing is that, even if we removed Sic Em from the game entirely, the very same players who complain about Soulbeast DPS now, would still be complaining about Soulbeast DPS because they are the players who don't chase ranged attackers, who refuse to LOS, who scream OP in the forums instead of considering what they are doing wrong and what they could be doing better. ALL of those players, would still die to a Ranger with a LB and they would still be in here complaining about how overpowered it is. Where does it end? Where is the true balance from their subjective opinion? Does the desired balance lie within ranged options dealing virtually no threatening damage? Maybe they feel that Longbows & Rifles should be removed from play entirely? One thing is certain from my point of view. Arenanet needs to be careful when listening to players who are unable to discern between when something is an annoying l2p issue, and when something is actually overpowered and overrepresented in the top 100 and good AT teams. Here is a realistic nerf to Sic Em:The 2000 range needs to be more like 800 range or maybe even 600 but no lower. That 2000 range was designed for pet use when it runs across a map at someone. It was not intended for THE RANGER WITH THE LONGBOW to nuclear strike you from 1500+ range. If the range were lowered to 800ish, this would make the Ranger have to get significantly closer to the target before being able to land the burst. This provides much more counter play in terms of the Ranger having to enter a dangerous position, allowing opponents to be able to quickly get into range with gap closers or other mid range teleport options to be able to catch it and neutralize Sic Em bursting.Sic Em as it stands requires no LOS. I can be behind a wall and reveal a Thief who is on a node, before walking around the wall to engage him. This is actually broken because the Thief has no ability to counter play the reveal before I walk around the wall and LB 4 > LB 2 it to death. And that's just one example of what makes Sic Em strong with no LOS requirement. Sic Em should require LOS to be able to activate, and should only be usable when you are within the range threshold. So if the range were nerfed to 800, the Ranger would need to get close with LOS to even use Sic Em. Again, this encourages the counter player for others that the Ranger has to have LOS and it has to be within a reasonable range for the opponent to be able to counter play the Sic Em, without having to travel through 1500 range of 6.5k LB 1 spams to even engage the Ranger.^ Those two changes will eliminate easy intermediate gold tier casual freecasting, which I imagine is what is pissing most people off. Those Rangers who aren't even good, but they're 20k nuking you from 1500+ range. My proposed changes will make a cut between good Rangers and bad Rangers. Good Rangers will still be able to utilize Sic Em, even though it will become more dangerous to do. Bad Rangers, will just die when they try to get within 800 range of a decent player. But it is important to note that Sic Em doesn't need a damage nerf. The problem was never the damage, it's the range on Sic Em nuking. Soulbeast damage is on par with things like Herald or Power Mes or Reaper or now Berserker or sometimes good Holos or even Guard Bursts or hell, even DPS Eles & DEs who play well. "Point being everything has big damage now." Here's something to think about: If a Holo could go into forge and somehow stand 1500+ range from you and smack you with every hit, it would feel like being hit with Sic Em. If a Reaper could do the same thing from 1500+ range and spin to win on your head with Reaper 4 or hit you with Reaper 5, it would feel like Sic Em Rapid Fire. If a Soulbeast had to engage you in melee to short mid range with Sic Em, it would feel like engaging a Holo or Reaper or Herald. The problem is not Sic Em DPS, it's the range and utility that it offers. You are pretending that only gOLd SCruBs wanted deadeye nerfed when even the best of the best such as sindrener wanted it. Stop lying.He probably wanted it neelrfed because he knew something was going to pay for the all the qq, and core thief can't afford to lose much.

Better to use a port skill to get behind the person or something if they get the channel off. Same rules for all channels in the game.

This is the worst and the most common argument in relation to pvp complaints imo. Basically you are telling ppl to just leave ranked Q because there are not enough ppl in ranked Q which in return would cause even less ppl going into ranked Q. Shouldn't we do the opposite and promote going into ranked so it gets more populated and becomes actually enjoyable again instead? I mean your point with friends in unranked is viable because ranked only has duo Q but if I remember correctly there won't be a premade team Q because the playerbase is low.. it's just a vicious cycle. The easy solution would be to just leave ye but I mean we are all still here so shouldn't we start doing the opposite? I think it is just reality. The game is 5+ years old, it offers legendary armor as a reward, and it is pretty complicated to pick up. There is not going to be a large influx of people that are going to spend the effort to play at a plat 2/3 level.

The big problem is a large fraction of the top players manipulate the queuing system and matchmaker so they don't have to play against other top players. IMO they should run ATs every hour or two, and count this for ratings. Also, they should significantly limit the rating range for making teams. While the tryhards at the top of the rating system will have longer queue times, they can pick their own teams and just do ATs.

Firebrand scourge is just as bad for the game as no LOS burst.

Youre missing my point. Nerfed does not mean useless. Useless is literally useless. Pet dies? For the duration of it's death there's nothing you can do with your profession mechanic. Traits and shouts that depend on two will not get its full use, if any. A deadeye can still F1 no matter how weak, a mirage still has access to mirage cloak. Weak does not mean they're unusable. I cannot think of a single profession where an outside source can outright disable the profession mechanic. Except for the ranger pet. Moa a transformed Necro.

Next patch notes: Fixed full counter bug. It now procs whenever animation is present.

Oh, I am interested, but I don't really see us having it. I elaborate:You claim, that you implemented the code, and that it agrees with reality observation. Yet, noone except you hasn't seen neither code, nor results.You claim, that my implementation is wrong, because I used a "history record of player's games against M opponets". And my M is >1.And your main argument against it is that M>1 decreases iterative steps in calculation. Which is handy, when you calculate the rating manually, with pen and paper.AND (this is the best part)Because NOW, WHEN WE HAVE COMPUTERS we can easiliy do as much as we want of those iteration steps, and, therefore, we better use M=1. - In my previous posts I asked you 3 questions:Can you provide the code of yours and results?While doing the calculation "on computer" we can have both M>1 and M=1. Yet, you choose latter over the former.Why?Your RD will be huge because of that. Why do you think, that having huge RD is a good thing?3.Most important question: why do you think someone would EVER do the "pen and paper" calculation for Glicko-2?!When do you think Glicko was invented? Three questions, dude. You ignored all of them.When you provide an answer to ALL THREE, then we have a discussion. I have already answered them all, and I'm trying very hard to be polite. I have linked results in this thread. If you use the search functions on this forum or the old forum archives I bet you could find more.m corresponds to the number of matches played in a "rating period". This was originally developed for competitive chess and the rating period was a month. m would likely be a different number for each player. If players didn't play during the rating period, there ratings deviation would be increased. Once the rating update was made for the month the historic information would be purged and a new period would start. If you want to update rating after every match vs. a set period of time m should be 1. This is a common practice on other games and chess sites that update scores after every match played and use glicko. Guild wars, like many other sites that use glicko, don't use "rating period" to increase people's rating deviation because people abuse it to snipe rating. I have already posted this explanation at least once in the thread.You are misinterpreting what I'm saying. You can't even do it in a spreadsheet efficiently because it requires you to iteratively repeat a calculation until it converges to a solution. You have to create a custom function to do it. Dynamic content on websites wasn't that common in the late 90s. You couldn't just load raw data to a website and have it spit out the scores. This is largely irrelevant to the point that was trying to be made, but you seem fixated on it for some reason. The main point I was trying to make is your plots don't seem to represent in game results. You rating deviation is settling after only 10-15 games. That means you would be getting gains and losses of around 10-13 points after 15 games played. That doesn't happen until 30+ games into the season. I also don't get wild swings in rating deviation once the rating deviation settles. If you look at your results, how many points does a win get you or a loss when two players at like skill level play each other? When I run the numbers it is around 11. Below is your plot with m = 1 vs. ones I have run using the constants from the guild wars 2 wiki. I included a couple of my plots since the results and matches are randomly generated and will look a lot different every time you run it. As you can see the rating deviation on my plots isn't settling out until 30-50 games into the season.

Dude, just.... I don't know at this point. Are you seriously not simply trolling me and this entire thread? If not, please, answer one simple question:WHEN DO YOU THINK GLICKO-2 WAS INVENTED? (Or, alternatively, when do you think a cumputer was invented?) I don't have to believe you. Because there's a paper, which I very doubt you have read, and which describes very clear how the algorithm works. Sorry, I can't provide a more detailed answer, because typing from a phone. Sounds like you aren't interested in discussing. I have read the paper, other guidance on the topic, and implemented it. Results I get agree with observed results from playing the game.

Dude. No.If you're referring to the Step 5 in the pdf:Which is LITERALLY the only place, where you could find the word "iteration". The iteration here is only needed for NUMERICAL SOLUTION OF THE EQUATION for new sigma. Here's the wiki page on the matter.Again.NUMERICAL SOLUTION OF THE EQUATION. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the fact, that Glicko itself uses an array of dimensionality (M,3)as ONE of the INPUT VARIABLES.It looks like this:[1200, 50, 0][1350, 30, 1][1100, 60, 1][1250, 80, 0][1400, 40, 1]Here M = 5 - is a number of opponents, which player fought the last 5 matches. Player rating, RD and volatility - is what he had BEFORE he played those 5 matches. Glicko-2 calculates what his rating will become AFTER he played those 5 matches.I.e., Glicko in fact doesn't calculate your rating relative to your PREVIOUS game (like ELO does, for example). It instead calculates it relative to the game, which was M matches before the current one. Accordingly, from 1) - 1200 is his opponent rating, 50 - RD, and 0 - outcome (0 - defeat, 1 - victory). When the player plays more than M games, this array starts acting exactly like fifo queue.I'm not sure how else should I explain it. Or why does it even needs explanation. P.S.Thanks to our dialogue I actually found a huge bug in the code, lol =) The rating period is not supposed to be a fifo queue. The way it appears you are describing it is if you picked m=5 a match would appear in the calculation for five different rating periods before it is discarded. The way I'm reading it, m is an arbitrary number based on how many matches someone had during a rating period. Once the period is over the results are tossed because they are captured in the rating and rating deviation terms. They could have played one for the month or they could have played thirty. The main thing a rating period was for was to increase a players rating deviation when the period was over if they didn't play. The disadvantage if using m=1 for all matches is, IF you get several abnormal results, your deviation won't be increased like it would if you had the stored history. However, since your rating and deviation are calculated more often, they will settle out faster too. If we were trying to incorporate a months worth of results like they do for chess tournaments, having a larger m term simplifies the calculation because you don't have to repeat the iterative portion of the calculation. You just sum up all the matches and do the iterative portion once. You can't update a rating/deviation for a player without doing that iterative portion of the calculation. However, with computers that is a pretty trivial process now. To have a system where the rating is updated every match that every player plays vs. wait some arbitrary time period, you can't follow glicko-2 exactly for a time based rating period. Using m = 1 is common for online games and even chess sites. Also, eliminating the inactivity portion is common as people tend to abuse it in online games. However, if you google it there are estimation methods for determining what a good period is if you are updating results after every player plays a match. If you still don't believe me, make two f2p accounts. win the first 3 matches with one and lose the first 3 with the other. Then finish the initial rating period with the same w/l ratio. The account that won the first 3 matches will have a much higher rating than the one that lost the first three. Even though both accounts started with the same rating to start the season. If it was implemented as a 10 match fifo queue, the order of the first 10 matches wouldn't matter. However, in the system it looks more like this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/How-placement-matches-work

Im> @Tiah.3091 said: No, my code doesn't account for it. But this code and this entire thread is mostly dedicated to one problem: winstreaks and losestreaks.Which tend to happen at MUCH shorter intervals, than the player would learn his stuff.I mean, you have a lose streak of 5-10 games, then a winstreak 5-10 games.I really doubt the player can improve his skills any faster than 100-200 games. Therefore, the effect is absolutely insignificant. Well, this is just plain wrong. Did you really read the paper? "m opponents with ratings mu1, mu2, ... mum" or "scores against EACH opponent"Can you see capital greek Sigma letter? With "j=1" below and "m" above?Do you know what this means? I'm just asking, though. Probably I have misunderstood you.But RESULTS of the matches vs m previous opponents are DEFINITELY taken into account. The results of the matches - is that what I call "match history".Please tell me, if I'm still unclear. Oh.. of that I'm fairly certain as well. Perhaps with some lowering coefficient, but yeah, I've been in that situation, where I lose 15 and friend loses 8. What I was talking about, IS NOT the "win probability" from the Glicko, which is required for rating update:No.I meant the REAL win probability. Why is it not the same - because glicko takes your (and your opponents) current rating for the calculation. Which is likely not exactly your real rating. Especially, if the season has just began.I.e. the dude, who was 1900 last season plays the game with 9 scrubs, who were 800-1300 last season.However, on paper, EVERYONE'S rating might be 1200 (first game of the season for all 10 ppl).What Glicko will calculate in this situation is obvious - it'll just take all those 1200 ratings, do its magic, and BOOM - everyone's equal, the winrate is 50v50%. But is it true? No. So, what was the ACTUAL win probability for that game? There is nothing that says m needs to be greater than 1. That portion of the calculation is inside of an iterative loop where you need answers to converge. If you are calculating the iterative portion by hand it is more convenient to sum up several matches and do the iterative portion once. It doesn't say to treat the summation portion like a fifo queue where each match is evaluated m times.

Wait, I didn't get it: in your code you don't feed the history of player's previous matches to glicko?But that is just simply wrong!Even in the pdf the author does the example run for 3 matches. Logic is: the better algorithm knows the history, the more precise it is The history is built into the rating and deviation numbers. The history you are referring to is to minimize the number of times you have to do the iterative calculation if you are doing it by hand. Each match would sill be evaluated once. The term for increasing volatility due to inactivity is disabled, so the period isn't of much use.

After those 10 people around found, is when it arranges teams to ensure that each side is close in average skill rating and standard deviation from that skill rating. Additional note: We've experimented with making it so that everyone in a match had to have been waiting over 5 minutes before their ranges expanded. It didn't generally result in better matches and people at the higher end of skill rating ended up sometimes waiting in excess of 40 minutes for matches. Thanks for the info! Based on that I took a stab at definitions on the wiki for the following code:<Rating start="5m" end="10m" max="1200" min="25"/>https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm Filter/Rating/@MinThe maximum rating difference between rosters the filter starts at.Filter/Rating/@MaxThe maximum rating difference between rosters that can exist after padding is applied.

The second step, that I took, and it by far is playing a much more important role:Glicko-2 takes 6 parameters for its calculation of player's new rating, RD and volatility. Those are: current rating, current RD and volatility - all 3 are scalars. And also 3 arrays, which provide info about his opponents from N previous games. Opponent's ratings, RDs and match results (either 0 or 1). Or, well, if you want, a 2-dimensional array (N,3).As we all know, when we are Unranked, the game asks us to play 10 matches for "seeding".Now, I initially took those 10 games as N, and kept it constant throughout whole ordeal. The results were looking something like this: As you can see: huge volatility, RD never drops below 40, and, obviously, HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE WIN STREAKS AND LOSE STREAKS. Then I assumed, like, man, devs can't be that shallow. They definitely have this N increasing, as the season progresses. I.e., the "game history array" should be increasing with time . It definitely should have more than 10 games recorded.That was my assumption.So, I introduced the "growing array" - after every new match, that our player played, the algorithm "remembered" all his previous games. Up until it reached 100 games. I had to stop at 100, because otherwise my laptop was just basically saying "there's no way I'm doing it in the next millennium".So, after it reached 100 games, the first game (historically) was removed from the array, 2nd game became 1th, 3th became 2nd and so on. Freeing the space for the last game. And that's what I got for doing that (the same picture is in OP post): Now, if I didn't introduce RD cap 30, it would drop to ~0 values quite soon. Volatility is almost non-existent, rating stabilises at ~1900 (which is a TRUE SKILL level for our test dude). Wiki doesn't have that info. And you see yourself how significantly it's affecting the results. Therefore, I'm asking @Ben Phongluangtham.1065: can you tell what exactly this constant is? Is it 10, or is it gradually increasing to certain level (like in my simulation it was 100)?The question is super-important. Cooking the books to force it to 0 deviation isn't realistic statistics. You never know something with 100% certainty :-) Something still looks off. I don't get wild swings of deviation like that or rating once it settles. Once you get about 20-30 matches in the +/- is about 12 points per game. I'm not summing matches and calculating a new rating, as this isn't done like a chess tournament. After every match I calculate a new rating and deviation for the players. It is an assumption, but maintaining a queue of match history for 10s-100s of thousands of players seems like a waste of computing resources. The main reason they did that was so you didn't have to repeat the iterative part of the calculation if you do it by hand. With a computer that is trivial.

Yeah, that's a good point, man.How it affects the actual rating approximation for every player - negatively or otherwise - that's a subject to research. I was thinking about that myself last night before sleep. Because I remembered the post in this thread, where dude cited A-net dev post, where he confirmed, that they use exactly that: they balance team average rating vs other team average rating. Did you run the code from the original post?Because I just remembered, that I forgot to upload the new version, after the update.Also, the code uses slightly different constants from those, that A-net uses. I'll fix it and upload the new version. (However, that point about team vs team - I'm not yet sure what to do with it) I made my own based off the guild wars wiki and the glicko paper. Most of the posts I made on the subject were in the old forum. I'll have to dig it up when I get home. For teams, I'd just do a sum of squares for the deviations and assume the player is at the midpoint. I thought the wiki said 30 was the low cap, but I could not reach it when I ran multiple matches. Starting at 0 it would slowly grow until it reached 60. Same if you started at 700. It would shrink to 60. Regardless, I think your deviation numbers are too low.

Couple points. Every season I've played I've had games with 10+ wins in a row, and streaks where wins are hard to come by. The match maker doesn't try to match you with teammates that are close to your rating. Instead it matches your team's average rating withe the other team's average rating. Teammates can have several hundred points between the best and the worst player. Glixko will give accurate results for missmatched opponents. Because of this... You are better off matching players that are of similar skill on the same team. The current method boosts the bad players and punishes the good. This tends to drive people towards the same rating vs. Separating them. When I have run the numbers with the constants anet uses, the deviation won't go below 60. That means the system is 95% confident you are 2 deviations from your current rating, -/+ 120.

No. The average skill rating between teams is less than 50. The deviation is higher than that. Don't have the number off the top of my head though. We do our best to get the standard deviation as close as we can though. And no, I say it often, we don't rig matches to end loss or win streaks. But many people will never believe it. Notice he didn't say anything about starting the streaks or prolonging them. We have our evidence it is rigged!!

Walks into a wall. Keeps walking into wall 39 times. Nerf wall it is OP.

Over all I thought it was good. I have 4 suggestions: I'd try to get a picture of the night sky in the desert,. That really jumped out at me when I played it.I would put some more of the pretty scenery before you go to the more war torn scenery. Those areas are more enjoyable for me to explore, and you can build up to the more dramatic stuff.I'd try to get some shots groups of players. The different weapon and armor skins and cooperative play of the zones are a nice feature of the game.This is probably too much to get into in a single video, but these are all features that would interest people, maybe some in separate videos: regular living story updates, end game content (fractals, raids, WvW, sPvP), holiday events.

With all the aoe condition pressure they should make spellbreaker's resistance aoe too. :-)

https://www.nbcnews.com/technology/thousands-guild-wars-2-accounts-hacked-985019 From Sept 2012... “and collected through spyware” in other words, the user’s computer was infected with a virus that collected login information. That’s not about pictures on a forum. It’s about people reusing the same password over many sites, some of which are not secure. People reusing passwords on multiple sites is why all old passwords were blocked back then and everyone was required to make a new and unique password. @Just a flesh wound.3589 said: https://www.nbcnews.com/technology/thousands-guild-wars-2-accounts-hacked-985019 From Sept 2012... “and collected through spyware” in other words, the user’s computer was infected with a virus that collected login information. That’s not about pictures on a forum. It’s about people reusing the same password over many sites, some of which are not secure. People reusing passwords on multiple sites is why all old passwords were blocked back then and everyone was required to make a new and unique password. Regardless of what you may think, allowing people to post files to your webserver is a risk. I think it is smart for them to have that done on a site that specializes in it vs. accepting the files on their server. Not long ago Gaile Grey's account was hacked. Do you really think they make public announcements every time a normal player's account gets hacked? Gaile Gray’s GW1 account was hacked because someone in support gave out account information without properly verifying ownership. That has nothing to do with posting files on an web server, and thus is irrelevant to a discussion of whether or not files have login information attached. Social Engineering: (in the context of information security) the use of deception to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential or personal information that may be used for fraudulent purposes. You seem to be happily ignoring the article on how one can get information using images on sites. Someone thought it didn't make sense to restrict posting images and I gave a rational reason. The other posts were in response to them not believing that there aren't and haven't been a lot of hacked accounts. As for gaile grey's account, the only reason they couldn't get into her gw2 account too was she enabled 2 factor authentication on it. Her account being hacked has nothing to do with the situation being discussed, which is files and security. As it has nothing to do with the topic there was no reason for it to be brought up in this thread. As for this part No, they don’t. And they might not have announced hers except the hacker told everyone on Guild Wars 1 chat and was handing out her stuff. In addition, people were taking screenshots and there were several threads about it on at least 3 separate forums (gw1, gw2 official forum, and Reddit). So many people knew that the company had to say something and explain what happened. The previous hacked accounts had nothing to do with files either. They also had nothing to do with anet’s security and everything to do with players having computers with spyware and reusing login information from sites that are not secure. Since the discussion is about files and security, the number of hacked accounts from spyware and reusing login info from unsafe sites is also irrelevant as it tells us nothing about whether or not files are safe to use. That still doesn’t explain why they allow images now and for the last 5 years. Either it’s unsafe or it hasn’t been unsafe. The images they allow now are on a 3rd party site vs on their server. That limits what information someone can get at. If you aren't constantly keeping up with vulnerabilities it wont be safe to allow people to load files onto your webserver. Since the 3rd party sites specialize in hosting images files, they should have more resources to detect and eliminate bad files.