[general obnoxious]

with my runs so far I would say there is definitelly a specific attack pattern he is repeating there.

[Convergences??]

5 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

After doing the main achievements I guess I will stay with the 3 convergences for the weekly

This part of the post have inspired me to actually go and check what is there in the convergences achievement tab, and indeed the general weekly achievement is only 3 convergences, but:

The achievements I saw regularly popping were not some one and done progression achievements I assumed they would be, but infinitelly repeatable achievements. Which means that this part of my previous post:
 

23 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

but also since I am starting from nothing, there is also a number of achievement payouts that are meddling with my experience, since once I get through all of them, the general payouts can and will probbably drop.

is incorrect, Those achievement rewards that I am seeing impacting it most will not drop off.

Ontop of that there are some joicy stuff along the way of the 100 completions achievement, and completing it unlocks repeatable version that at least on a glance seems to have same layout of rewards.

In similar vein to Luthan going forward I will be probably doing 3 weekly convergences or at least trying to mantain that - considering 3h timer (I am really not a fan of that part, tho to be fair the "schedule" of big things in GW2 has been somewhat paining me for a while now), and I may start not simply not opening the extractions and the other essence dropping containers, due to aforementioned overload of my storage capacity on those essences, at least until I sort out my never ending ecto problem 🙂

[Convergences??]

So I did today my 4th convergece (running them all in public, first two ere on the same day, first one failes, second succeeded, first 3 were all against Sorrow), and this was also first one that spawned Demon Knight, the difference in difficulty between those two encounters is staggering. Sorrow is flat out brutal (and annoying to fight with all the launching and forced movement) while Demon Knight is a walk in a park in comparision.

That being said, I still have no idea how the participation chest is being calculated, the payout on the failed run, was much higher than the tiny bits I am getting from successful (now 3 runs).
The overal payouts are mind boggling tho, after those 4 convergences, I have got 2 purified kryptis essences, and just 31 short of 1st tier essences to craft another 3 - if my ectoplasm stockpile was capable of keeping up with it. This is going much faster then what people were estimating with rifts when it comes to scale of progress towards obsydian armor. For reference that is nearly all essences needed for full set of one stage of armor unlocks.

There are additional factors to bear in mind that are impacting that situation that needs bearing in mind: 1. I did not finish the new mastery yet, so in theory there is buff to payouts that I do not have yet, but also since I am starting from nothing, there is also a number of achievement payouts that are meddling with my experience, since once I get through all of them, the general payouts can and will probbably drop.

[No reason to log in anymore. Daily log in rewards are gone.]

I am still unsure where people are coming of with that battlepass comparision. Wizards Vault is fairly generic token shop with tokens awarded for randomized daily/weekly tasks. There is not progress bar, rewards are not locked to some stages of said nonexistent progress bar, and there is no enforced order of obtaining those awards.

That aside, if daily login rewards are the only reason for someone to log into online game, I would say they should need to rethink why they are playing that particular game in the first place.

[Daily/lengedary mats are a bad decision]

The one takeaway from this thread for me is that apparently, there are still people out there, whom thinks that there is a prestige in owning a gen 1 legendary 🤔 and such people find the starter packs interfering ith that perceived "prestige".

[Convergences??]

51 minutes ago, Surelia.2651 said:

Do they though?  I am wondering if this is the case only when you have all the masteries for the convergences unlocked.  I do not yet, have one more to unlock.  I did one public convergence yesterday for the first time; we had 48 people in there.  My contribution panel came up over 250% contribution, but I came out of there with a measly amount of essences.  I have definitely received far higher amounts from just doing rifts with the respective essence motivation in place.  Not sure if it was bugged or if my contribution was too low, but the amount that showed up in my bag was pretty sad.

I have only got siege fireball on the end on my third convergence run. I have had my contribution listed as full bar 200% contribution, and the first attempt (failed) provided alot of essences from just that contribution window, and the two successful ones have provided less on the contribution window, but much more on the follow up bouncy chests (and after unpacking all of the containers)

I have done some rifts before, and didn't get enough essences to satisfy even one tier requirement for amalgamated essence, and after those three convergences in the span of two days, I have got enough of all essences for two amalgamated essences, falling narrowly short of to get third.

Now considering that the third run also gave me a coffer I was unable to open because it takes unstable motivation to do so, and the convergence freebie motivation is a weekly business, I am thinking that AN was intending us to run a mix of rifts and convergences for that obsydian armor (T2 and T3 rifts can drop more of those unstable motivations)

[Please revert the weaponmaster bug fix stopping pre level 80 using elite spec weapons.]

15 hours ago, Sylvyn.4750 said:

I talked to someone that only had HoT and SoTO, and they were able to unlock greatsword for Herald even though they didn't own EoD to unlock Vindicator.  I can't confirm this since I have all the expansions...

according to AN pre-release statements you are supposed to be able to access the weapons of specific especs, without owning respective expansion, the trait lines requiring the expacs to obtain and use.

[Convergences??]

15 hours ago, BlueJin.4127 said:

I get reminded that Anet thinks doing the same mindless rifts thousands of times for the 3 sets of legendary armors is acceptable game design.

Considering that convergences drop all tiers of essences, and in chunky quality regardless of wether or not the instance wins, but based on your personal contribution, I would say that it is quite likely that they didn't think that doing the same mindless rifts thousands of times for the 3 sets of legendary armors is acceptable game design, but instead were fine with shipping parts of the grand design separatelly, so that people can do "something" while they finish up other parts of design.

2 hours ago, TheNurgle.4825 said:

Wait. How you get Zolja killed? You keep few ppl at her all time and she never go below 75%HP even on last boss you just heal her and it is easy. Btw what is time for convergence clear? Few times I ran it we were always around 20 mins. I also so 10 man do it in 22 mins.

I am unsure about the other bosses, since both of my attemtps so far were the Sorrow fellow (the 3h timer on the public instance is doing me badly there), and Sorrow definitelly has the power to wreck Zoija. In first time she actually did kill her for us (in a stage where Sorrow was parked ontop of the skyscale launcher so trying to grab essences it dropped periodically was nuisance), and in the other it very nearly did murder Zoija (but the group did not panic, and managed to burst Sorrow to drop more essences since those spawn at specific hp tresholds, which allowed us to recover Zoija just in the nick of time)

Both runs spent long time on the islands section, so it felt like approx 30 minutes of gameplay both times. Gotta say that AN does deserve aknowledgement there of design imprivement over Dragon's End, as in even failed run provides a good chunk of rewards, so even "failed" run was not wasted.

[Nayos part of the main Tyria map? Nayos = Tyria?]

I'd go along with the explanation that nayos being placed as it is, is due to technical reasons.

It is an open world map like any other, and therefore is it expactable that people would want to be able to waypoint directly there. Not sure if that changes with finishing the storyline, but at the beginning acts of chapter 4, there is no gateway to the nayos map from the Wizard's Tower either.

And since GW2 did not implement other realms of the map, this is probably the only way they could do it in a timely manner.

Every instance so far takes place on the main map "somwehere" and the ones that got layered off to not be visible from the main view, in general have specific access point to enter (Mistlock with the item, raids with aerodrome, or raid specific entry portals in the world) where it is no problem with disabling just waypointing in from the outside. But they are still physically there, locking other maps from existing in this particular mapspace.

The way they placed Nayos I seriously doubt they'd ever need to actually have any other map in that area anyway.

[Are we really comfortable paying for unfinished expansions?]

17 hours ago, Tanuki.4603 said:

since we cannot even work further to progress our legendary armor like with the last patch

That is incorrect, Oneiros-spun armor set is part of precursor collections for Obsydian Armor, therefore even if we assume you did everything that was possible to do with base soto release prior of through the veil releasing, you do have new things to progress in that subject with new release.

12 hours ago, fatihso.7258 said:

Black Desert Online, another mmo which is b2p same as gw2. They don’t even charge for their expansions and they always deliver content and refine their game for past and future systems. 

Black Desert Online also:

- locks the visual customisation of your character behind a paywall,

- visual outfits have their own stat bonuses,

- heavilly encourage spending even more irl cash to progress your gear,

- features 3 additional subscriptions with big benefits over players without them,

- has much inferior network infrastructre, coupled with much more timining-sensitive action combat, which highlight all the issues (that they have done virtually nothing to improve on over last 5-6 years),

- have regular downtimes,

- grand most of paid stuff is tied to that one specific character you unpacked it on,

- has multiple systems designed specifically to induce FOMO in their playerbase,

- single outfit set in BDO costs approx 40 USD to obtain, vs most of GW2 costumes being under 10USD, with some outliers spiking to approx 15, just to outline to sheer scale of difference on premium store pricing between the two,

So be carefull what do you put as a role model, because GW2 has alot of room to degrade to try to finance what you are asking for.

[Can You Do This?]

On 9/13/2023 at 1:18 PM, willow.8209 said:

(It may still trigger "on swap" sigil)

It does 🙂 but it only works like that when there is differentiation weapon equipped on both swaps, so for example if you wanted to run, dual pistols on both swaps, and be able to trigger on swap sigils, you'd equip pistol mainhand on first swap, and pistol ofhand on second swap - this way with the automatic filling in of weapon from the other swap, with just two pistols you can have two swaps of dual pistol, and be able to proc on swap sigils, while only ever caring about dual pistol weapon skillset. It is a very nifty feature (that to my knowledge has been there since vanilla) that allows not having to create duplicate weapons if you want to use same weapon with same stats/sigils on both swaps. Unfortunatelly afaik it does not work with two-handed weaponry - if you have 2h on one swap, and nothing on other, it will treat second swap as completely unequipped and grey out swap icon. (Same if, going by dual pistols example, you equipped both pistols on single swap)

[Movement Speed rune set should have been a relic. - Not enough variety.]

11 minutes ago, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

Relics is for a utility. Runes are for stats. So by that logic movement speed should be a relic.

Relics are "for wildcard effects", Runes are for "just stats" according to all AN communication on the design from AN.

Wether movement speed is raw stat or wildcard effect is being subjected to a debate.

[Missing amenities in Wizard's Tower]

1 hour ago, Spook.5847 said:

Knowing Anet it is because they plan on selling you some kind of bastion pass in the futute - but you'd still be zoning back and forth anyway

could be also a case of them thinking to themselves that if tower had all it would invalidate arborstone mastery and decided that it won't invalidate it, if tower is missing some amenities, arborstone has 😉

[Not being able to solo open Tier 2 and above rifts is a huge mistake. Good job Anet]

14 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Which I did. I was just surprised by the lack of people in map chat calling out rifts, but then again I'm seeing that perhaps the new maps are the wrong place to do them.

And the premise of this thread is OP compleining that it is systematically locked out option, which would mean you would not be able to do it.

[Not being able to solo open Tier 2 and above rifts is a huge mistake. Good job Anet]

3 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

then again, if you have a t2 rift and you're the only one there... I think that's what the Op is talking about.

and in that particular case there is nothing stopping you from opening it solo...

[Movement Speed rune set should have been a relic. - Not enough variety.]

4 hours ago, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

Why not both? I don't see how this is so hard?

your previous post was lierally remove it from runes and put it on relics so not "both".

As for "why not both" - having same exact effect present on both relic and runeset would create confusion beteen role of relics and runes in a build. It would go directly against the whole point why relics got separated into their own slot.

[Can You Do This?]

7 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

or use it in both weapon swap 1 and 2 simultaneously.

That is not precisely correct - if you equip your single bolt on swap one (either mainhand or offhan) and not equip anything on that respective slot in other swap, bolt will be treated as equipped on both swaps. (So for example if you go bolt+shield on swap1, and equip only focus on swap2, your swap will be bolt+focus).

But you will not be able to physically have it equipped on both mainhand slots in case you wanted diff sigils or stats.

[Make a copy of Amnytas as a WvW map]

2 hours ago, Caitmonster.9036 said:

As funny as the suggestion is I couldn't see it working, as there aren't any land bridges between each of the bastions and WvW doesn't have updrafts. How precisely would you navigate? Flying Warclaws? 😆

new wvw skill to spent the points on - wvw skyscale, usable only on new edge of the mists amnytas map, edge of the mists now rotate, sometimes being amnytas sometimes being oldie edge of the mists 🙃

[End of Dragons, The Scenic Route - Secure Official Travel Papers]

I found the whole travel paper sequence funny.

[Since DE is on the weekly list]

When I had a weekly to murder some 100 void enemies, I went to DE in hope to find some events there, stumbled upon meta before I found enough kills, com lighted up tag, we barely had enough support, then comm fumbled composition by leaving all 5 alac providers in same subgroup, ignored the issue when it was pointed out, and we still won. No voice chat, no nothing, all tails were ignored, we had a number of chained switch attacks.

An yall want to make me believe that "highly coordinated squad" somehow fails to clear it? And that there are guild commanders whom have lead numerous attempts and never got it succeed?

[test]

13 minutes ago, bluegoon.6918 said:

I'm a professional accredited creative director with multiple international awards, including Cannes, my comments are directed at the developers, not you.  Don't @ me, thank you. 

And as a professional accredited creative director with multiple international awards, you decided that best method you have to contact AN is official forums, and then decided that other forum users are not allowed to respond to you. On one end it sounds empty as there is no way average forum user is supposed to verify that information, and if you were what you claim you would have bettr means of contacting ArenaNet studios than official game forum, but on another hand, you attitude of complete detachment of reality does indeed fit the profile of someone who got couple of awards and allowed it to get to his head so I am unsure what to think about that whole... thing.

[New weapons without supporting traitline?]

10 hours ago, Stelawrat.6589 said:

I'm not sure if this answers your question or not, from the blog post - Combat in Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure 
Once you’ve unlocked Weaponmaster Training in Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure, you’ll be able to use elite specialization weapons without the corresponding trait line equipped. This will be the case even if you haven’t trained an elite specialization. That means that even if you don’t own the other expansions, you’ll be able to mix and match weapons from the elite specializations associated with them. (You’ll still need to own the appropriate expansion and fully unlock each elite specialization to make use of its trait line—not to mention getting the signature weapon and armor piece!)

So, none of this will effect those who don't own the SotO expansion. 

If you're new to GW2 & SotO is your first introduction to it, then in order to fully appreciate all of the weapons at your disposal, you will have to purchase one or more of the previous expansions, depending on which weapons you're interested in using. Otherwise the trait line associated with your weapon choice isn't activated. 

I could be completely wrong, but that is how I interpret what has been said to date. 

 

What this exerpt means that you need to own relevant expansion to get access to elite specialisation traitline, but you don't have to own anything outside soto to get access to the weapon itself.

[Motivations crafting costs are outrageous!]

On 9/8/2023 at 2:40 PM, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Apparently rifts can't open unless the player uses the HotO, so the question is really why we're doing it at all. No player action = no rift, no rift = no demon invasions, no demon invasions = no problem.

If you have run any rifts you would notice that there is alot of demons spawning from that rift before you tap it (which you need to murder to "open" the rift and lure out the big bad), so when left unchecked, demon invasion totally happens.

[Not being able to solo open Tier 2 and above rifts is a huge mistake. Good job Anet]

I have had no issue opening t2 rift solo, and Lord Hizen vids on solo ow builds showcase him using those builds against t3 rift bosses, and I would not expect him to grab people to open rifts for him then just buggering away....

So I have no idea which "inability to open solo" OP is refering to.

[Agony Resistance and the Removal of Daily Login Rewards]

3 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

An average is an aggregate number created from taking all instances measured, including instances of more or less, and then making a point of the middle, that's the average. If I have a sequence that is 1, 2, 3, 4 then the average would be 2,5 since that's the middle number between those four instances.

Everyone in here should be aware how averages work, thank you, this does not answer the question I asked.

You tried to rebuke my argument of how I approached things when I was new, with bringing up average playtime of modern player. This somehow implies that you are also claiming that example of my person does not fit that average, and therefore is irrelevant. That is, it would imply if we go under assumption you were trying to make a coherent and on topic argument against the post you quoted.

Therefore somehow, without me mentioning anything, on the subject of how much time I spend playing, You deduced that I play (or played when I was new player in 2013) significantly more than 8 hours a week. Which is very bold assumption to make, hence I inquired how did you come to that conclusion.

5 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

The game itself never informs you just how important crafting is for Fractals and making Legendaries yourself. 

For fractals it it not that important, for legendaries you are flat out informed in tooltips of specific gift recipies, that they require specific crafting discipline leveled to lvl 400.