Zok.4956
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Posts posted by Zok.4956
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@Laurencius.9258 said:@"Zok.4956" You say it wasn't locked prior to 5/18/2020 - source please - I don't remember it being open then.
The source is the data from Anets official API. I use gw2gh.com that reads and collects the API-data, others use gw2mists etc. for this.
Gandara is not over-stacked and it is not over-populated.
If a server is "full" then it is over-populated.
Whenever you go into WVW there are maybe 5 Gandara players vs 50 players on both the other servers. How does 5 people constitute a overpopulated? Please explain Zok, since you have all the answers.
I think it is called cognitive bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias
I stand corrected and I stand proven correct. Gandara suposedly is full with 291 players
Anet does not show the exact numbers. Anet only gives "full", "very high", "high"...
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@"Laurencius.9258" said:Gandara has been locked for years. Not kidding - years.
That is an exaggeration and you are wrong. Gandara is full since 2020-05-18. That is not even one year.
And before that Gandara oscillated between "full" and "very high". Whenever the server population dropped to "very high" only a few days later it was "full" again.
So, it looks to me that Gandara is overstacked and overpopulated and that is the reason why it is full.
My guess is: As long as players do not play less on Gandara, or move to other servers, Gandara will continue to stay full.
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@maddoctor.2738 said:
@"Zok.4956" said:In reality is is much cheaper to "unlock" all stat combinations, because you do not need to craft all those items. You can just stat swap ascended weapons/armor in the mystic forge, which is a lot cheaper.That wouldn't work with the rules presented in the first post of the thread, once you put an item in the system you lose the ability to stat swap anymore. I tried to use the rules presented by the thread starter when calculating the costIt was also written: "Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked."
So, you make the stat-changes in the mystic forge to "unlock" the stats before you put the item in the proposed storage system.
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@maddoctor.2738 said:
@"Lonami.2987" said:Legendary gear has all existing stats, present and future, that functionality remains intact. In fact, if you're using multiple stats, getting legendary gear instead of ascended would be far more convenient (and in some cases, possibly cheaper as well).Given how cheap (especially when running a lot of "endgame" content) Ascended gear is, how do you suppose Legendary gear will become cheaper than using this system?Let's make an example, Chuka and Champawat costs 2239 gold to make (using gw2efficiency data, which calculates if it's better to craft or buy from TP automatically, I assume the cheapest possible path)- Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked.
Let's see how much gold you'd need to unlock every possible stat combination that is available with crafting (prices rounded up):Zojja: 48gKeeper: 48gStonecleaver: 47gChorben: 45gSteelstar: 48gCoalforge: 46gSoros: 48gBeigarth: 47gAngchu: 46gVentari: 49gLeftpaw: 46gTonn: 49gZingtl: 46gZehtuka 47gTixx: 48gVerata: 48gOccam: 49gGrizzlemouth: 46gMathilde: 46gGiftbringer: 47gTizlak: 49gSvaard: 48gLaranthir: 48gOssa: 48gRuka: 49gThe Twins: 45gYassith: 48gNadijeh: 47gPahua: 54gMaklain: 51gNerashi: 45gTheodosus: 47gHronk: 46gEbonmane: 49gWupwup: 49gAs you can see, all different Ascended Shortbow types, except Maklain, cost under 50g. Even if we take every stat at 50g, we have 35 stat combinations, giving us a cost of 1750g to have a Heirloom Short Bow that has all the stats, and convinience of the Legendary Short Bow.In reality is is much cheaper to "unlock" all stat combinations, because you do not need to craft all those items. You can just stat swap ascended weapons/armor in the mystic forge, which is a lot cheaper.
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Because the F-keys and the ALT+num are already assigned to other things, I use CTRL+num and SHIFT+CTRL+num to switch.
And I have assigned the same numbers to corresponding build and equiqment template slots:
CTRL+1 Build Template Slot 1 "Support"SHIFT+CTRL+1 Equipment Template Slot 1 "Support"
CTRL+2 Build Template Slot 2 "DPS"SHIFT+CTRL+1 Equipment Template Slot 2 "DPS"
etc.
So I can switch both very fast with this. Example for switching both to slot 2:
- press and hold down CTRL-SHIFT
- press 2
- release SHIFT
- press 2
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I think it would be a good idea to add "show/hide visual effect" checkboxes for each trinket, like it is with head and should armor and the backpiece. So, if a player does not want the cumulative effect, he/she can enable the visual effect only for one trinket.
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@Infusion.7149 said:
@Zok.4956 said:No, things dying in one hit is not the definition of grind.There is nothing wrong with repetition. It becomes only a grind if players repeat (over and over again) content they do not like just for the rewards (currency, items, etc.) and it becomes more work than fun. If repeating the content is fun for a player, its not a grind (for that player).I agree with @"Solvar.7953": Making the content better, so more players have fun playing it (and have fun repeating it) would be a better solution than increasing the rewards.In most Asian MMO grind-fests , killing things over and over that die in one hit at their spawn because you are geared such that they are trivial is the grind.The grind (for players that do not like this type of gameplay) is not that it is easy to kill things. The grind is doing the killing over and over without liking it.And I am glad that gw2 is not "most Asian MMO".
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@Infusion.7149 said:
@Solvar.7953 said:I see lots of comments of 'make rewards better', and while that would certain draw some players to it, I don't really think that is a good fix or necessarily a good direction to the game.Effectively what Anet is doing in that case is paying players to play poor content. This sounds like most jobs, where the employer is paying the employee to do something that they otherwise wouldn't do.Basing a game on that seems like a poor idea - mostly because at some point the players will realize that they could instead play game X, in which the content is actually enjoyable to play.Then you have an issue with the whole genre of MMOs which generally havesomerepetition but it boils down to whether it is optional to be on an even footing or not. At least things usually don't die in one hit here (the definition of grind basically) and it's optional content as far as repeats (even the CM achievements are optional).No, things dying in one hit is not the definition of grind.
There is nothing wrong with repetition. It becomes only a grind if players repeat (over and over again) content they do not like just for the rewards (currency, items, etc.) and it becomes more work than fun. If repeating the content is fun for a player, its not a grind (for that player).
I agree with @Solvar.7953: Making the content better, so more players have fun playing it (and have fun repeating it) would be a better solution than increasing the rewards.
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@"The Greyhawk.9107" said:I don't think he's really hated all that much in actuality
Yes, it became better after the end of the "Heart of Thorns: Act 4" story. ;)
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@Fueki.4753 said:
@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:The way this is released, it doesn't make sense for the Ebon Vanguard to be here without the story and dragon response to be available.There is a number things in this episode that don't make sense.The new Destroyers being able to take damage from Burning.I hoped to kill them with water fields. ^^
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@Minos.5168 said:
@"Zok.4956" said:I am very happy that GW2 did not follow the norm with this and intentionally did not implement that kind of gear-treadmill.That was one of the reasons I switched to GW2 from other MMORPGs years ago.And that's why I'm most worried about by the recently added treadmills.Originally, masteries were intended to provide new mechanics similar to Metroidvania games (like gliding, mushrooms, thermal tubes, mounts, etc.)I'm still excited to see maps like Dragonfall reuse old mechanics like mushrooms or thermal tubes.Bjora, however, introduced 4 different mastery lines seemingly just for the sake of adding new masteries to grind.1 mastery line is solely applicable to Bjora and the other 3 are just copy-paste duplicates of each other.Drizzlewood thankfully brought a great new game-changing mastery line, but DRMs brought back the "essence" mastery in a new line (which, yes, might have more functionality as you continue to grind).Yes, the masteries were based on the Metroidvania idea. When masteries were introduced with HoT, the basic idea still was that the HoT masteries only work in HoT maps. And the masteries of the next expac only work (and help) in maps of the next expac. etc. etc.
But the huge success of gliding resulted in a lot of players that requested gliding also in other maps (core maps). Anet even added gliding to WvW. And that was some kind of violation of the Metroidvania-idea. Because with this, masteries became globally useful and were not tied anymore only to their own content/maps.
This continued with PoF and mounts and the usefulness of mounts in all maps made it much worse.
A new player is going to need to get to level 80 (or pay for a booster), then grind gliding and mounts, then map-specific masteries
Because gliding and mounts are so useful in all maps, a new player that wants to play with his friends (that already have this masteries/mounts) does have to grind a lot. Example: It is nearly impossible for a new player (without HoT/PoF masteries) to stay on commander-tag during the full Drizzlewood-map-meta.
This is a bad consequence of the violation of the Metroidvania idea and because of this violation the useful masteries are global in the game and therefore became a kind of vertical progression also (they were intended as a way of horizontal progression).
and a long uphill grind for Fractals (which is probably difficult to do just starting out from scratch).
There is no uphill grind in fractals. A player that likes playing fractals starts in lower levels and gets AR infusions during playing. And the more experienced a player becomes the more infusions he collected and the higher level fractals he can play. And infusions can be bought if a players wants to jump into higher level fractals faster.
One quick fix might just be to mark anything from Core to PoF as the new "Core" (with a shared pool of Mastery points) with the latest Mastery set (currently Icebrood) staying separate. That way you could work on leveling mounts or gliding in any map.
That would not shorten the grind for all important masteries in total.
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@Slyde.3961 said:
@Zok.4956 said:@kharmin.7683 said:@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:@BadHealer.3608 said:@"Healix.5819" said:Is this for real or some sick joke? There are no new DRMs and no patch today (unless it is late ... maybe?!) and no new "community event" for this week?Yes, it seems that we failed to reach tier 5 and the story wont progress. Well, maybe they lock later into it or maybe they are to busy with something else.It would have only been a week early if reaching T5 was going to affect it. Next week is the usual release cycle.They did promise WEEKLY new content. Since it didn't come Tuesday and we are close as Thanksgiving, I assume that they fail to deliver.We can discussed if weekly new content is good (remember LS1 with two weekly new content), but it just seems that they did screw up already with new content coming only when we reach tier 5, but making it unable to reach tier 5 now. (I assume that this is happening right now.)Personally I would find it okay if they slowly increase the release. Maybe one more story, one mastery and two DRM (yes, I know that many got tired of them already), maybe a few more achievements and most would be okay with it.I don't believe the Devs 'promised' weekly updates.This does not mean 'weekly':In the weeks between releases, each chapter will continue to evolve with new content and ways to play.'Weeks' means any time between releases, i.e. sometime in the weeks between the release in November and the release in January.We've rarely, if ever, received any kind of update less than two weeks apart.Things like this is, IMO, one of the reasons why they don't engage with us on the forums.Things like this, IMO, only happen because they don't really engage with us on the forums.No, things like this happen because the in game communication sucks.Yes, the in-game communication was very bad.
Not everyone comes on the forums.
Agreed. But this part of the discussion, was about "engaging with us on the forums" ;-)
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@kharmin.7683 said:
@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:@BadHealer.3608 said:@"Healix.5819" said:Is this for real or some sick joke? There are no new DRMs and no patch today (unless it is late ... maybe?!) and no new "community event" for this week?Yes, it seems that we failed to reach tier 5 and the story wont progress. Well, maybe they lock later into it or maybe they are to busy with something else.It would have only been a week early if reaching T5 was going to affect it. Next week is the usual release cycle.They did promise WEEKLY new content. Since it didn't come Tuesday and we are close as Thanksgiving, I assume that they fail to deliver.We can discussed if weekly new content is good (remember LS1 with two weekly new content), but it just seems that they did screw up already with new content coming only when we reach tier 5, but making it unable to reach tier 5 now. (I assume that this is happening right now.)Personally I would find it okay if they slowly increase the release. Maybe one more story, one mastery and two DRM (yes, I know that many got tired of them already), maybe a few more achievements and most would be okay with it.I don't believe the Devs 'promised' weekly updates.This does not mean 'weekly':In the weeks between releases, each chapter will continue to evolve with new content and ways to play.'Weeks' means any time between releases, i.e. sometime in the weeks between the release in November and the release in January.We've rarely, if ever, received any kind of update less than two weeks apart.Things like this is, IMO, one of the reasons why they don't engage with us on the forums.Things like this, IMO, only happen because they don't really engage with us on the forums.
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@"LSD.4673" said:Always find it funny people claiming GW2 is special because of the "horizontal progression" instead of the "grind" of other MMOs.Yet they seem to keep implementing grindy, progression-less junk like this. Is it just to try and devour a fraction of a fraction of the rampant gold in the economy? Or is this what they think players want? Evidently it's not the latter.
GW2 is special because of the "horizontal progression". Players can be sure that the max level never will be increased and that your "old" gear will never be useless/invalidated.
In a "vertical progression" system, an expansion etc. usually increases the max level and you have to grind for new gear with the higher level stats to be able to success in the new content with the higher max level.
However, every "progression" in an MMO does also mean some kind of "grind" or "challenge" else it would not feel as "progression".
GW2 has a lot of grind, just not for gear with BiS (best in slot) stats.
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@blp.3489 said:If what we have got so far is all we were getting I would be a little disappointed, but that's not my expectation. I'll wait for a few weeks to see the rest of the content in this chapter before coming to a conclusion.
That's what probably a lot of players think since Episode 1 (the first after the Prolog) of this Saga.
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@Randulf.7614 said:
@coso.9173 said:I wonder though. if this is an episode split into 4 chapters, what are these weekly updates?so we have a story (living world) divided into seasons (season 5 icebrood saga) divided into episodes (episode 5: champions) divided into chapters (truce) and divided into what now? paragraphs? XDJust wait til we get Season 5. episode 5, Chapter 2, Paragraph 3, Sub section 4Sub section 4 is only available after you have unlocked it with item 27B/6.
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@Delita Silverburg.8632 said:The truth is, Anet starts working on some great content, then at the first sign of dislike from the player base, they give up and do something completely different.
Yes, this is a common pattern that can be seen over the years with a lot of things in GW2.
We didn't ask them to abandon Strikes completely, but rather to double down on them and add more mechanics to make them more raid like.
Strikes were introduced as a stepping-stone to raids, to get more new players into raiding. I think that failed. And I also think it was/is a failure how Anet tried to push/force players, that do not like this kind of content, into Strikes.
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@Aaralyna.3104 said:Honestly I did not expect much from this episode based on the trailer but I didn't realise it would be this bad.
I think that sums it up perfectly.
I am really curious about what others think of this release.... For me it was the worst one we ever had so far.
Yeh, Season 5 has already set the bar low, but this episode was the worst.
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@Zahld.4956 said:Instead of having to try to ask others to leave the instance to make room for players who are trying to complete the event, players could just move their squads to another instance instead.
Look at how the triple-trouble-community (gw2community.de if I remember correctly) gets all their squad-players into a fresh new map before the event. It is already possible.
The squad meets in a different map and then, at exactly the same time, they jump all to the target map. This usually results in at least one new fresh map instance that is created. And then the scouts in the squad check the map instances with /ip and after selecting the best map instance all players in squad were told to join that map instance (join friend in the group/squad menu).
The last times I did the tripe-trouble event, this worked quite well.
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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:I can go in game right now and count how many people are in each starter area's town to give you a clue as to how low this density of people are, and i can then tell you if these people are even interacting within a 10-15 minute timeframeVillage of Shaemor = 9 People - 1 Interaction (conversation)Soren Draa = 1 Person - 0 InteractionVillage of Smokestead = 4 Perople - 0 InteractionGate of Horncall = 2 People - 0 InteractionVillage of Astorea = 8 People - 1 Interaction (Party)
@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@"Seera.5916" said:You can't have it both ways. You can't use unfalsifiable data to prove your hypothesis is correct if you're saying we can't use it to say that it's wrong.Counting the actual number of interactions you can actually measure is not unfalsifiable. It's empirical... because you can actually measure it. This is scientific method 101...Sure you can do that. And then you can write down how many "interactions" you have counted per hour-of-day, day-of-week, during a festival and when there is no festival, at patch day, during a pandemic, etc. etc. But first, of course, you have to define what you actually count as an "interaction".
The tricky part starts after you are finished with counting, when you try to analyze the numbers and when you try to find correlations and when you try to draw conclusions based on these numbers. Because: Correlation does not imply causation.
It's like saying that because we can't see the bearded man in the clouds, means that god exists we just can't observe it therefor everything we know about science is wrong. The correct conclusion is that because you can't measure it, you have to exclude it, and if you wanted to be generous, assume what it would be if you could measure it if it were there (they don't even do this in scientific method either...it's just being generous to such a position)
No one can actually prove that god exists and no one can actually prove that god not exists. So, the statements "god exists" and "god does not exist" are both not scientifically proven. The correct statement would be "we do not know." and as long as there is no need for the existence of god in a scientific model of reality, the (non-)existence of god can be ignored in those scientific models of reality.
In the scientific method, things you can't measure in theory or practice is considered unfalsifiable and essentially useless.
Just because you personally can not measure things, does not mean they do not exist or are not important.This is a little bit more advanced than your "scientific method 101" level: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
You could (in theory, if Anet and Discord would give you access to their servers) count how many players are in every area of the game at any time, how many player-interactions in-game in chat and in Discord happen, what players are actually doing in the game during these interactions and at which locations these players are when the most interactions/chats happen).
Ignoring those interactions, or making very biased assumptions about them, just because you personally can not measure them, but you still want to push your results/theory into a specific direction (so it seems), is bad science.
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@"LilSpark.4567" said:Hello guys, i have a questions, i am new in the game, i play this game from 10 days and i play this game with the dlcs and my friends and other ppl tell me i waste time to play gw2 bcs is a dead game. Is that true?
No, it is not true. The game is not dead. But it is a game that is 8 years old, so there are a lot of veterans, that are "over" with this game, or that are more focussing on the parts of the game they still like and I guess there are at the moment not a lot of new players coming to the game (this will probably change when the game will be released to steam in the future).
Next week Tuesday will be released a new DLC (for the next episode of the season 5, Ice Brood Saga, which is free if you log in at least once in the weeks of the episode) and there is also the next expansion in the works (End of Dragons) that is scheduled for next year.
P.S. I also criticized Season 5 and the game company, but I have to admit that the game is not dead.
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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@"Seera.5916" said:As for the starter map population, unlike in many games, players are free to go to whatever starter map they want to. They aren't forced to stay in their starter area for several levels. With the only exception being literal new players who haven't unlocked Lion's Arch and would have to traverse more dangerous maps to get there (not that it's not possible to do so).This part of your post is confusing because the starter zones are designed no different than WoW. You really can't go much further than your starter zone if you are at a low level....so you are forced to stay in this starter zone until you level up enough to wear the gear and defeat the enemies that are higher levels than you.I do not know (and I do not care about) the starter zones in WoW. In GW2 you can waypoint as a low level character to all starter areas.
And even without that you can go much further than the starter areas as a low level character. In the past, before I was 80 with my first character, I had a lot of fun exploring high-level maps as a low-level character trying not to get one-shotted from random mobs. GW2 differs to other games and gives players much more freedom in the game to do the things they have fun with, without a fixed, mandatory guide/path.
In addition If what you said were actually true, than other starter areas would have a similarly large number of players...again this is not the case. The human starter area on average is the most populated starter area by a "significant margin", and the human starter area itself doesn't have much people to begin with.
I can go in game right now and count how many people are in each starter area's town to give you a clue as to how low this density of people are
Your statement is just plain wrong. You can not count how many players are in each starter area's town because the maps are too big to check and to count every corner of the map at nearly the same time and there are also multiple instances of each map and you can not see how many map instances exist and how many players are in each instance. And it also happens that a map instance is actually "full" (you can not join a friend on that map instance) but it still seems empty.
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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@"Seera.5916" said:You haven't proved that the waypoints are the reason.I just said that my Post is not "proof" it is a hypothesis.Yet others have come up with other reasons and given proof.And no, there has been no "proof" given. there have been others that disagree with the hypothesis, but an opinion or differing view on the subject is not "proof"I get it, it seems you are in love with your theory and your statistical/mathematical/societal "toy" (and you want to find a use case for it, so you apply it to GW2).
Your theory/hypothesis is based on your research and knowledge of GW2. Several other have stated (and gave examples/arguments) that your research/knowledge of GW2 is wrong/incomplete and not sufficient enough to base a solid theory/hypothesis about GW2 on this research/knowledge.
And yet you did not really respond to this arguments and give any "proof" or "evidence" or "arguments", why you believe that your research/knowledge/view of GW2 is correct and that of others in this discussion is not correct.
My post is about macroscopic societal behaviors. The entire society is not introvert like you...they aren't extroverts either. There are a plethora of different kinds of people...the study is about how these interactions in totality work together to make macroscopic behaviors.
And again you make biased assumptions (here: about the "society" in GW2) and you base your theory/arguments on this biased assumptions. How do you know how the ratio between introverted and extroverted players in this game is and that it doesn't matter for this topic? There are a lot of reasons why GW2 attracts some players more than other players (as does every other game) and why different games attract different players and player types.
Bias in research (and to make sure to avoid it) is an important issue because it can render any results/theories based on that research useless and false.
If you want your theory/hypothesis taken seriously, you should show some evidence/proof/signs that you are not biased too much and that you know what you talk about (which is: GW2).
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@ancientoak.4258 said:Now some practical info from someone who has been playing since 2012 (and gw 1 since 2006). People were much more talkative in the premount age, when waypoints where the only fast travel. So this theoretical study is debunked. People just dont talk as much in chat compared to the past. It has been a thing that i noticed especially since 2017 (when mounts were released).
People were also much more talkaktive in the pre-Megaserver age when there still were servers/worlds in the OpenWorld.
Before the Megaservers all OpenWorld-Maps belonged to a Server/World and all players on a map where on the same server/world. I do remember how strangers from the same server in the OpenWorld became friends over time. And I do remember players asking and recruting in map chat to help our server in WvW. This and several other things resulted in the forming of server-communities, server-identities and a lot of social interaction before the Megaservers.
This server-communities were mostly destroyed when the Megaservers were created in 2014 and the servers/worlds were removed from PvE. And together with the language barrier (non-english speaking players were thrown together with english-speaking) it lead to a big decrease in community/chat/social interactivity in OpenWorld maps.
With the Megaservers the only place were a server/world still existed was WvW.
And then this server-communities in WvW were further destroyed when Anet introduced the linking-system in WvW in 2016. Two or more WvW-servers/worlds were thrown together for 2 months under the name of the bigger server and then ripped apart and thrown together with other servers for the next 2 months. etc. etc. Over the time this destroyed most server-communities/identities a lot. The vanishing server-communities/identities were replaced more and more over the years by guild-communities/identities and this results now in the fact, that the transfer of one or two bigger WvW-guilds between servers can make or break a server and there is nothing the remaining free (not guild bound) players on that server can do anything about this guild-domination.
P.S. And, of course, a lot of WvW-players already left WvW (and GW2) and several WvW-communities faded, after Anet introduced the Desert Borderlands in WvW with HoT in 2015.
Gandara server perma-locked
in World vs. World
Posted
Actually, you proved the point that the server is not empty and has lots of players and a lot player activity.
It is not different on the other servers.
Anet does not count how much players are on a server or what they do, but how much player activity (simplified: the sum of play time in WvW of all players that play WvW during the counted time period) and from this they group servers into "full", "very high", "high" etc. With one exception: Baruch Bay will never become "full" because it is the only server for the spanish language.
If player activity on Gandara would drop substantial, the server population would go from "full" to "very high" to "high" to "medium" .... but as long as player activity does not drop a lot, the server will stay in "full" or "very high".