Illconceived Was Na.9781

Well done :)Which emphasizes the on-topic point: knowing the mechanics is more important than the team comp or anyone's build. There might be elitist LFGs, but people can ignore them and join/start groups that care more about other things. Either way of running the content is fine; the problems only start when someone insists on imposing their way on others.

I like this idea. It's a good proxy for finding the sort of people that you'll have fun with. Might not work for everyone, but that's okay: you just need something that works for you. During the heyday of dungeon elitism, a couple of people used to advertise with things like: List your favorite color when you join orWhat is 7x6? answer when you joinIn both cases, they didn't care about the answer; they were just looking for people who actually read the party request. Maybe the person was good, maybe not; but they knew that the person would read chat and communicate when confused. And for many folks (including myself), that's more than enough, at least for dungeons & fractals.

The OP has misunderstood the situation. Dungeons have always attracted players who don't care about how long it takes and those who want to speed clear. Some groups have identified optimized compositions for quick completion of fractal dailies, including Challenge Modes and some players use that effectively. That works perfectly fine as long as the two groups don't try to impose their preferences on each other: if you aren't interested in speed clearing, don't join groups that are and communicate your goals effectively in your own LFGs. If you want to clear quickly, say so (not just by asking for specific builds) and don't join groups that don't seem to care. Complicating the above are these additional points: People who confuse "optimized speed clearing compositions" with "the only way to run fractals"People who forget that PUGging for specific comps might slow down completion as much as having a less-than-optimal-compPeople who think that comp matters more than understanding the mechanics This situation isn't new: there were elitists in dungeons in 2012 (and complaints about it, too); this hasn't anything to do specifically with raids or raiding.

I have...the problem starts as soon as it hits the Amazon servers. Great, then share the data with ANet. That's what they need to troubleshoot.Other people still have to run their own data collection: mileage varies; each person's circumstances differ. They should also be aware that the servers are not configured to respond to pings so the last node(the server itself) is always going to show 100% packet loss. Which brings me to my other point. Send them the data not your interpretation. Good points, both. Use pingplotter (or its competitors), not "ping"Share actual data, not interpretations.Don't rely on other people's data to address your concerns. There will be overlap, of course, but we can't assume that any two cases have the same root cause, without the data.

You can assume that all the latest patches will be applied to these data centers.You cannot assume that data is safe. Just look at breeches at Yahoo, Equifax, and more. But there will be backups and backups. We'll be able to continue playing.Whatever else is going on, these particular patches aren't likely to impact GW2 as it exists today. They might affect whether ANet is able to increase the number of players in WvW maps, the size|scope|scale|NPC-count|decoration-count of future PvE maps, and so on.The chances are slim & none that ANet will let us know about any of the details, mostly because they are in the habit of releasing the barest minimum of information about their tech (for a variety of reasons).

I have...the problem starts as soon as it hits the Amazon servers. Great, then share the data with ANet. That's what they need to troubleshoot.Other people still have to run their own data collection: mileage varies; each person's circumstances differ.

Most people do not have it. Even when people were focusing on it, there were still plenty of maps in which folks did not use CC properly. You want to look for an organized group (through LFG usually), same as applies to any other meta with complex requirements for success.

Short story: there's a lot of internet between our machines and ANet's. Without running diagnostics (e.g. Pingplotter), it's impossible to say why you are having trouble. It will almost certainly be for different reasons than when I have trouble. Server time is generally UTC and it's used because its independent of location. It happens to be the same (most of the year) as London time. don't read much into that. Secondly, the actual distance of ANet servers is not the most important factor in determining ping. All things being equal, it would have the biggest impact, but all things aren't equal when it comes to ping. Other factors include: your home wiring, interference (usually only if using WiFi), your ISP (some ISPs throttle some connections), ANet's ISP, ANet's servers (whether properly responsive etc), etc. But the biggest factor is the Bermuda Triangle between ANet's ISP and yours. There can be multiple hops from backbone provider to backbone provider, some of which might lose data. One problem that we all had as ANet started migrating servers (and us) is that some of the systems were slow to get the message. That is, your computer might have been trying to connect to the old servers in Dallas, instead of the new ones hosted in the Cloud (via Amazon AWS). The only way to track down the source of your connection issues is to run something like Pingplotter and then to share the data (ideally with ANet regardless of results). If your ISP is dropping signal, you want to start a conversation with them. If the data is lost between you and ANet, then you want to let both ANet and your ISP know. (Someone suggested changing cable. This is a needless expense unless you discover that the signal is degrading at your end. This won't be true for most of us, although it will, of course be true for someone.) tl;dr there's a lot of internet between you & ANet's servers. The distance is often less important to game abnormalities than the hops along that distance. Run Pingplotter (or its like) and use the results to figure out what to do) Further ReadingStephen Clarke-Wilson, on his own ping from Seattle (spoiler alert: his route goes through Dallas (location of old datacenter) on the way to Virginia (location of Amazon AWS) )Same guy, on ping for ANet devsAlso same guy, explaining why the change to Amazon is temporarily affecting people's connection (ISP/backbone issues, not the servers themselves or their location)

One may, of course, rephrase it to suit a different purpose. However, plenty of smart people are bad at math and any of us can be deceived by the glamour of high-value/low-rate rewards to be momentarily bereft of the ability to calculate. Besides which, it's hard to measure "fun".

Open World PvE Builds - December 2017 From the introduction by Lady Elyssa:

Yep there is a limit of things. At some point old stuff starts to despawn when new is built. Limit has always been there ever since the first wintersday. It was even more noticeable actually at first wintersday because the whole thing was harder and needed some tactics how to build. Sorry, my question was slightly different. Yes, there is definitely a limit. My question is: are you sure it depend on what is built ? I strongly suspect it's affected by what resources are made available. As I said, scraps & snow have disappeared from my character without being used, right as someone destroyed more decorations. (And without nearby siege or other resources disappearing.) Separately, I wonder if this is related to the decoration limit we see in the guild hall, i.e. if the limit is of similar number for similar reasons. It might be the case that current Wintersday programmers were unaware of this limit and perhaps they might be able to update it to a new number (or perhaps it uses the same limit as we have in the GH).

If it's easy to add, sure. It's not that big a deal to me, though, so I'm not sure it's worth that much effort on ANet's part. Are you sure the limit is on how many are built? I suspect it might be a hard limit on how much scrap/snow there is, as I've had the resource disappear out of my hand. My little group has tried reducing how often we smashy-smashy. That is, instead of smashing lots of stuff and collecting over time, we just smash as we need stuff. We still run into the limit (because each of us is building our own little minecraft demo) but it happens more slowly.

The problem, of course, with a light switch, is that the Americans would leave it on all the time, acting as if power was cheap and eventually ANet would run out of energy. More seriously: it's a fun idea. Be nice to see it as a cheap guild upgrade with various levels of control.

I've argued above that I think it's entirely okay that the Winter's Presence skin be expensive (it is, after all, a shiny with legendary-esque effects). So I can't agree that there's a "bad" design here, just design. However, I would say that it isn't all that much fun to use the TP or the Mystic Forge to acquire 50 of this or 50 of that to complete a festival-themed collection. Mind you, I don't think the old way was any better: opening lots of gifts or running pvp tracks wasn't more fun; it was just slightly more festival-oriented than the TP or the forge.

looks at how much he spent to make Kudzu... looks at how much he has to spend to make Shining Blade Yeah... I'll just say I disagree with you. A LOT. TP prices today: 2056 (buy offer) - 2600 (sell offer)June 2017 prices: 2600-3000December 2016: 2500-3200Other legendaries have dropped even more, primarily because precursor prices have been falling (not to mention T5-T6 basic mats and T5-6 fine mats). Are they cheap? Well, they are no longer close to the most expensive shinies in the game, but sure 2k is more than a lot of people manage to save up (and less than folks tend to earn). tl;dr Legendaries have become cheaper PS the prices of The Shining Blade and Kudzu aren't comparable for several reasons, especially the cost of the precursor. Underwater legendaries have always been cheaper than the rest. The price of TSB is also somewhat cheaper now, because the price of most of its constituent materials are also cheaper; it just takes a lot more math to compare.

Am I reading the SPDY graphs wrong? Mischiefs were listed as sell order for around 3.6g December 11th and lower, they shot up to 8.4g sell listing now. Snowfalls 1.2g to ~4g December 12th to now. I am only delaying my presence hoping they will be back lower around Feb+ but if they won't I"ll probably bite the bullet and just buy now. Sigils probably shot up after people figured out the recipe for the eggnog helmetBoth sigils and runes have consistently spiked for Wintersday since the introduction of Winter's Presence and the throttling of faucets for the superior variants. One interesting fact is that the number of Superior Runes of Snowfall available on the TP actually increased this year, even as the price went up. The price for both rune & sigil has consistently dropped after Wintersday, hitting its lowest point late summer. It might not drop down to as low as last year, but it will almost certainly drop far below the current prices. And, importantly, you can complete the sigil/rune requirements year-round. The only things that have to be done during Wintersday are the ones that require the Wintersday special instances, e.g. the JP. As a reminder, when the shoulder was first introduced, it cost well over 1k, because drinks alone cost 8-10s each. (That was even worse for a time last year, when the price was briefly closer to 11-13s/drink.)

Presumably you mean semi-monthly (2x/month). "Biweekly" is one of those ambiguous words in English that (today) means either "2x per week" or "every two weeks". Given the community's tendency to obsess over phrasing, perhaps it would be good to clarify that y'all mean the latter. Is this initiative planned to go for the entire year? We all (including Mike O'Brien) know that it's really difficult to maintain an aggressive schedule and twice a month is about 20 extra sessions per year compared to 2017, even if it's just 1-2 devs versus a cast of dozen(s). This seems like another opportunity to set expectations, e.g. "we plan to do this for at least 3 months at which point we'll review the level of engagement" versus "we plan to do at least 20 sessions in 2018" versus "we plan to stick to twice a month except during major holidays or emergencies" etc.

I'd love to see someone from the design team prepared to walk us through their process. Right now, it's a black box to us, and so people keep insisting that it's easy to convert outfits into armor pieces or that "clipping is already bad, so spend little time worrying about it and let us decide" or "armor shouldn't take 9 months". It seems to me that someone at ANet can do better explaining than "because it just does."

If there's an individual folder for each session, then one thread per question is probably going to work out well. People can easily see the question in the title and whether ANet has responded or not. However, it seems likely to me that some questions could use clarification and/or brainstorming, so "debate" is sometimes important, too.

People forget that the supply on the TP isn't all the supply there is. And that folks only need to complete this once. The supply for the runes has actually increased since last month (below 9k in October, 14k today). The primary reason for the spike in prices is the same as every year: enough people are impatient about getting their shiny now that they are willing to pay extra. The price has always dropped each year after the holidays. The situation is more complex with the mischief sigils since some supply drops from Wintersday gifts and the TP supply is relatively low by comparison. On the other hand, people open a ton of W-Gifts, which is why drinks are less than 20% compared to the first year (and less than 15% compared to peak).

And investors! Quite a few folks 'buy' gifts of exploration from other players (going rate: 400 gold, buyer pays for all the mats, including icy runes and stuff needed to make clover).

I have a "mule" that stores them. I might never need them, but I'd hate to delete them and then change my mind later.

You're glossing over the reason that different tiers of difficulty takes longer: designing niche content is quicker, because you can assume a minimum level of player skill. To create an "everyone mode" means worrying about lots of different levels of skill, plus figuring out what amounts to prestige-level rewards vs non-prestige. Adding a challenge mode increases the work of the devs, but not by nearly as much, because they can assume an even greater level of player skill. Again, you've glossed over the reasoning. It's worth it for ANet to design content that was originally intended to appeal to 10-15% (although there's evidence that more people do some raiding). Designing only for the 1% would be too little to make it worth their time. Given that the 10-15% content exists, it's some extra work to add 1%-content on top of that. Further, you've glossed over the fact that CM doesn't exist for raids generally; just for specific encounters. Raids are generally designed for the 10-15%; a small fraction of that also includes a CM option. Similarly, out of 100 fractals variations, CM only exists for 2 (or if you want to narrow the focus to maps, only 2 of the 18). In effect, the game already includes an "anyone can do it" raid encounter: escort just takes 10 people who can work together effectively. (And it's really anyone because we've seen it done with non-raid players running non-meta builds with non-optimized comps.) In summary: Niche content takes fewer resources to manage because it can make more assumptions about player abilities.Adding CM to a few of the encounters adds work, but nominally, especially compared to widening the niche (which removes the advantage of designing for the niche).There's already a wide variety of difficulty levels in the existing encounters, excluding CM.None of which is directly related to the OP's question of "do raids need an easy mode?" — that's been answered by ANet: it's moot. The point of raids is to be challenging content; easy mode makes them something other than 'raids'."

Sure, so this particular item won't be worth the trouble for everyone. And I think it's good that the game has a few items like that. PS historically, the prices for the sigil/rune goes down some time after Wintersday is over. Sellers are willing to accept less (particularly those who waited til later to open their Wintersday Gifts. The TP supply of the rune has increased to over 12k, whereas a month ago, it was 8.5k. The price spiked from ~0.7g to 6g and has fallen since to 4gFor the sigil, the November supply was ~6k and now it's 2.3k, with prices spiking from 2g to the current 8g.Last year Rune: November 2016 price was 18 silver, January 2017 it was 1g, and by August, prices dropped below 0.5gSigil: November 2016 price was 20 silver, January 2017 price was 8g, and then by August, prices had dropped to below 2gIn other words, if the current price is too high, wait.

It's not "my story" — it's a genral truism that there are other ways to look at the world than our own. Ok .. let me see if I have this right. I try to be understanding that changing raids would be a fiscal loss to those that sell them.. which would explain the outcry and adamant continual and in some cases downright irrational fighting on this subject matter by the raid community.. And you (and apparently others) turn around.. tell me I am wrong and that No, they are really just that petty, childish and greedy, that they can't have fun unless they have something that makes them feel better then other people. (hence being so against making raids accessible to a larger audience) Well.. I don't have a dog in that fight... so.. Ok then I guess. The very point of raids is that they are geared to a narrow audience. Making them accessible to a larger audience means denying their purpose (and also would mean taking resources away from other parts of the PvE game, since it would take more people to make that happen and maintain it, through other changes to the game). It's reasonable to disagree about whether GW2 should have exclusive content. Since there is exclusive content, I hope you can see that it's important that it also have exclusive rewards. That's not a matter of pettiness, greed, or childishness... unless you also think it's petty, greedy, or childish to want the same rewards without participating in that challenging content.