Zaxares.5419

I agree that the Jade Bot modules need more slots. I don't know if we should allow ALL of them at once because that would really widen the gulf in player capability between veterans and newbies, but we definitely need more than just 2. I like the proposal above of having more slots related to the module's function. I think my system would be: 1. 1 slot for Scavenger modules. (Might or Magic) 2. 1 slot for Recycler modules (You can also put Treasure Hunter in this slot if you don't wish to give up your junk drops for Jade slivers. Furthermore, I think there should be Minor/Major/Superior Recyclers that let you fine-tune exactly which junk items get recycled. Minor recycles anything below 1s. Major recycles anything up to 10s (so it recycles Spoons, for WvW/fractal players who get these often), and Superior recycles up to 25s, same as the current Recycler.) 3. 1 Siege Turtle upgrade slot. (Only unlocked at the higher tiers of Jade Bot Power Core. Might also be nice if there was a way we can combine the two siege turtle upgrades into one. I don't think this would really affect overall balance too much because the places in which one actually NEEDS Siege Turtles is quite limited.) 3. 2-4 more utility slots for the player to fill out with whatever they desire. Lower level power cores have fewer slots. In addition, we could possibly look at increasing the total number of tiers for the Power Core, each utilizing some of the more unusual metallic ingots (like Eitrite, Kralkatite and Prismaticite) found in the game. There is also the potential for creating a Legendary Jade Bot Power Core.

I have to shake my head at the latest WvW changes too. It feels like ANet's constantly buffing offensive/attacker stuff in WvW and nerfing defensive/boonstrips. Walls are only repaired now at 50%? I can guarantee you that this means that NOBODY will bother repairing walls anymore. Not only did ANet not bring back the participation/defense credit for wall repairs, but it's now downright impossible to solo patch a wall by yourself within a reasonable time. You would need to make like 8-10 trips (for a T3 wall) to a supply hut to repair it that high, and you'll likely get run over by enemy reinforcements pouring in all the time while most of the defenders are busy trying to fight off the attackers. The increased time you would now need to patch the wall would be far better spent killing enemy players. They say they don't want to tilt the balance totally towards attackers, but honestly at this rate it's WAY more profitable (in the sense of building WXP and reward track progress)/time cost-effective to just run ktrains and backcap stuff.

Well, it's started and still no achieves. What's weirder is that the mini-season only lasts for 1 week (as opposed to the usual 2 or sometimes 3.) I wonder if something got lost in the shuffle or perhaps ANet's decided to stop the achieves for the mini-seasons.

So in the last patch, we got a 32-slot version of the Pillager's Pack (the WvW-exclusive bag). Curiously, however, no equivalent 32-slot version of the other WvW-exclusive bag, the Siegemaster's Satchel (which auto-sorts consumable items into it) was added. Would it be possible to get a 32-slot version of the latter as well? (And 32-slot versions for the Fractal bags too, while we're at it.) I love the added functionality of these special bags, and would love to get 32-slot versions of them too. P.S. Would also love a way to get additional copies of the 32-slot Trusty Hero's Backpack that we can acquire from the Return achieves too! Maybe put it in the Laurel Vendor for Laurels + Supreme Runes?

I think the issue is a bit more complicated than that. On the one hand, I believe that map-specific currency like Writs are important for keeping players coming back to older maps. That was what went wrong with PoF; because all of the four maps used the same currency, players naturally just gravitated to whichever meta was the quickest and easiest (aka Pinata) and completely ignored the others. At the same, ANet is also making a big mistake by not giving more valuable and varied sinks for these map-specific currencies. In a lot of cases, most map currencies can only be traded for account bound items (if at all. Some currencies like Airship Oil only have ONE purpose and are completely useless otherwise) and are thus utterly worthless once you've finished whatever skins or collections require them. In order to prevent this, map currencies need to have a minimum of 3 types of sinks: 1. Cosmetics - Assorted skins/minis/tonics/collections. This should include both short/cheap and long-term/expensive collections to cater to players of varying wealth levels and playstyles. For example, I think it's worth putting in the ability to buy account-bound versions of ultra-rare items like infusions and items like the Invisible Boots, along with special skins like the Sunless/Scion/Broken Voice skins, using a combination of map currency/tokens and gold. For a more recent example, I think that Skyscale Weapon Boxes ought to be purchasable for 1 Amalgamated Kryptis Essence + 15/30g (depending on whether it's 1H or 2H). This puts it on par with the price players pay for Ascended weapons from strikes/raids, and it also helps give more sinks for Kryptis Essence (since, if you're not going for Obsidian armor, there's really very little use for Essences at all.) 2. General use mats - Map currency should be tradable for general use items that players of all stripes would either find useful, or that are easily tradable. This is usually Fine/Rare mats, but there is the option of putting in weekly vendors for rarer items appropriate to their zone like Amalgamated Gemstones, Mystic Coins, or Jade Runestones. 3. Vendor trash - As a last resort, all of these map currencies and tokens should have a vendor value so that players can just merch them if there's absolutely nothing else to do with them. Compare the state of worthless items like Eyes of Kormir or Congealed Putrescence with stuff like Resonating Slivers. Although both mats are in the same position, nobody ever complains about Resonating Slivers because players just merch a stack of it to the vendor if their mat storage overflows and think no more of it.

Yup, can confirm that there is a new bug where the event spawns with only 15s on the timer, as opposed to the usual 10 mins.

Yep, I'm 100% sure this is the reason why they're doing it. Unfortunately, I doubt it will work. 😕 Much of the player base already seems to have solidified their opinion on whether content is fun/not fun (in a similar vein, I know a lot of PvE players, includer endgame raiders and such, who say they will absolutely not touch PvP even during this bonus event), and barring some sort of drastic re-pivot (like enabling Emboldened for raids/strikes at all times, and allowing it to work in both normal and CM), I think it's too little, too late for raids and strikes.

Can confirm it's happening for me too.

At this point I'm all for ANet just changing it and going "If you beat 100 CM at least once, as tracked by your achieve, you can now purchase Last Rites." Honestly, it's not even really a prestige item considering it's also a possible drop from CM mode, so in theory you could have someone who just got carried through 1 kill and they were lucky enough to get the drop. Most other CM-locked skins are available as soon as you beat the mode, so I honestly don't see why this one has to be any different.

Yep, same here. I'm uncertain if this change was unintended or not, but if it was intended, please revert it. This is just a QoL downgrade for no real good reason at all. 😛

You can still get the fox chest on the northern side, but yeah, sometimes there is a Lesser Arcane chest spawn right on top of the dome and this one is impossible to get to; it's too far inside the "repulsion field".

Same here for me and my group as well. For data's sake, I had NOT yet completed the original 4 special tasks (A New Friend and Treachery were still unfinished.)

Same bug here.

Thanks for the changes. They mostly look quite good. A few points I would like to raise though: 1. I would urge you to revert the change that prevented Frightening Speed from being dodged/blocked. A large part of the challenge of Fractals is knowing how to avoid/mitigate damage (no-healer runs are fairly common among the upper echelons of players seeking to clear Fractals as quickly as possible, for example) through positioning, CC and similar foreknowledge. Currently Frightening Speed clearly serves as a kind of "health pressure" since it does a flat 50% of your health, but doing so also takes away the ability/satisfaction of players to counter it by dodging at the right time. 2. Kanaxai's health in NM could also stand to be reduced a bit, perhaps by 20%. His fight STRONGLY favours condi and ranged DPS, with the result that melee/burst builds are quite handicapped against him and result in the fight feeling longer than it ought to be. Shaving his health down a bit should help improve the feeling of progress during burn periods. 3. As a side-effect of 2, consider also reducing Kanaxai's breakbar (or his breakbar resistance) slightly. A lower health pool means less time for CC to recharge, and as it is a lot of groups in NM completely skip his CC mechanic anyway in favour of having more available burn time when he's not moving. We should be encouraging players to engage with the CC mechanic by making it slightly easier and improving the benefits of breaking his bar (perhaps by making Kanaxai deal less damage and increasing his cooldowns for each stack he has).

Yes, unfortunately that's been my experience too. Ever since the beta started my WvW ping (and ONLY my WvW ping) has been markedly worse. On average it's about 100ms worse, but what's really unusual/aggravating is when you approach the enemy zerg and your ping suddenly shoots up to 1k - 2k. It's not a performance/client-side thing where FPS suddenly goes down and things start becoming jerky; it's like the servers just literally stop sending info to you or the pipeline becomes overloaded. It used to happen very very rarely in WvW, but now it's like almost every single time I try to join zerg vs zerg fights. EDIT: I should add that this extreme ping has also made it extremely frustrating to try and get Daily Defender or Weekly Defense credit, since the only reliable way to get credit for those is to get enemy kills. Which is exceedingly hard to do when it takes you like 5+ seconds just to dismount, you can't target any enemies because your skills are flashing or non-responsive, and you can suddenly die at any time because the server thought you kept on running ahead into the enemy zerg when you stopped like 10s ago on your screen. I strongly urge ANet to return repair credit counting towards these defense events. Between the lag and population imbalances, most times players simply do not even bother trying to show up to defend; it's more straightforward to simply wait until the zerg moves on and then backcap later, which I think we can all agree is against the spirit of WvW.

I got placed in Phoenix Dawn. So far I would say that, while the Alliance beta DID improve population imbalances slightly, it's still far from perfect. There are still "dead hours" where it's one Alliance running roughshod over all the maps with very little opposition, only for the tables to flip several hours later and then it's another Alliance's turn to steamroll the maps with barely any resistance. Alliances definitely need some way taking into account the times at which players are on (ideally dynamically but that might be too difficult to account for), otherwise I suspect what will likely happen is that players will just gravitate to Mega-Alliance A (which runs during NA primetime) or Mega-Alliance B (which runs during SEA/OCX) and never do the two meet so it's back to square one as far as WvW is concerned.

Well, SAB is over for another year so time for feedback! 🙂 Like many others, I was very pleasantly surprised by the addition of W3Z1 this year. Hopefully we'll see more progress at a faster release cadence in years going forward! First Impressions: Overall I was very pleased by what I saw in Sparkling Pools. The overall feel and aesthetics match what we've come to expect from SAB, and the music still maintains that cute retro feel. I would have liked more to do in the actual level (like Bauble Collecting, Dig Chests, Secret Rooms etc.), but for now there's just enough to generate buzz about what's to come. (Like that collapsed passageway with the strange growls coming from behind it.) A note of caution regarding the disappearing pillars though: they currently have quite a generous timer for how long they stay up, but I caution ANet to resist the temptation to use them as a means of "increasing challenge", whether in Normal or Trib mode. The trouble with mechanics like these is that they disproportionately affect high-ping players like those of us in SEA/OCX because the server always thinks we're 1-2s behind where our screen is showing us to be. This resulted in some truly frustrating things back when W2 first came out like getting knocked down in mid air while we're jumping off a disappearing waterspout (which uses a similar mechanic). ANet corrected this for us by essentially making the waterspouts stay up permanently. So now that we have a similar mechanic again with the disappearing rocks, this is just a reminder not to repeat the mistakes of the past again! Stuff I Liked: The thing that pleased me the most about 3-1 is that it was like a return to SAB's roots when it first came out. The level is short, but broad, meaning that for those who just want to speed through it as fast as possible, they can do so. But players who want to take their time and explore and hunt for stuff have plenty of room to be able to do so as well. I'm glad that ANet is keeping the big lesson from the World 2 fiasco in mind; bigger, longer and harder isn't necessarily the best approach, if you plan on creating content that you want the majority of players to do. Things to Improve: I'm not sure what was the reasoning behind giving the mobs more health, but I would like to see this reversed. It really messes with my muscle memory that enemies that used to take 2 hits to dispatch now take twice as long (especially when there's no commensurate increase in bauble rewards). A friend speculated that it's possible that these enemies are actually just placeholders for tougher enemies that haven't been finished yet, but if that's the case, I still would prefer the enemies to have their old health back in the meantime. During my first run through the level I actually got lost a couple times. One of those pointing arrows showing the route to take (especially in the high jump down to the disappearing rock platform just before the 3rd checkpoint) to help guide players would not go amiss, I think. Whoever designed the 3rd Red Bauble Chest is a sadist. 😛 It's fine for a Trib Mode challenge, but for Normal... A checkpoint or two in-between all those DIAS jumps would have been appreciated. I don't think it's necessary to have the enemy oozes spawn during the fight against the boss, at least for Normal. Normal should be about learning and adapting to the boss cage's new attacks for each World (in this case, the super fast targeted attack). Adding in the oozes as an additional challenge for Trib Mode (maybe for all the Worlds?) can be considered though.

The bad lag is back again for me too. I couldn't even log in conventionally (kept on getting the "could not connect to login server" error); I had to try two different VPNs just to log in. The first was still unplayable with an average of 900+k ping, but the second is (barely) manageable with an average of 400-600 ping. Hopefully it gets solved soon though, it's raid reset day. 😞

An update that I have managed to log back in. Ping is still slightly worse than normal (about 30-50ms worse), but it's at least playable.

Same here as well. Now I'm unable to login at all, says "GW2 could not connect to the login server". Other internet services/games are working fine though. I think the regional login server that handles our region went kaput.

Also from Asia. There was a similar high ping/frequent disconnect issue last week also starting on Sunday, but it resolved itself somewhere around Wed/Thu. The problem came back again today. It's most likely some issues with AWS, yeah, as certain WvW servers/PvE maps will be fine but others have lag spikes of 1-3k+ as soon as you connect in (if you connect at all.)

I just led a successful Six Minutes private squad and got Six More Minutes, so yep, I can confirm that the bug is indeed fixed. 🙂 I think there are definitely people still interested (despite it being an achieve run, I had a bunch of people join who were basically new to Battle of LA, or who are still working on things like the Thoughtless/Selfless potions or other achieves), so don't give up! My group took like 40 mins to fill and organize, but we had a clean run with just over 2 mins left on the clock (finished at around 12:XX remaining)!

Thanks for the update, DT! As mythical said, the trouble is that since the fix wasn't mentioned in the patch notes, coupled with the Wintersday update, I don't think many people are attempting the Battle of LA content right now. I'll see about organizing a run myself sometime this week, but in the meantime if anybody has managed to get the achieve following the 13th Dec patch, do post here and let us know!

At this point it might simply be easier for ANet to just check to see which accounts have Six Minutes done, but not Six More Minutes, and just auto-award the achievement, yeah.

So it's still not working? That's disappointing. 😞 They did fix the Tower Purifier 2 bug, so I'm pretty sure ANet's aware this is also broken. Some acknowledgement would be nice though, I agree.