Rogue.8235

/threaten them to turn them into hermits! Yes, that actually is a thing in game 😁 Did not know about these two things. Do ambient creatures target players? That could explain a lot, if so. Thanks for the info.

Okay this clears everything up. The issue is that some players obtain achievements and items not because they want them, but because they use it as a means of scoring for competition against others. That's not a concept I can easily understand, but I think that's what you're referring to. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Other than AP, how is this different from you already knowing that you did it the hard way? Just curious, because I truly do not understand the mindset. Please alleviate my ignorance. I don't see a problem here. It doesn't matter how other people get things, or that they have them. I only care about getting things I like for myself. Making anything I have gotten in this game cheaper for others to get doesn't affect me. I'm pretty sure most of what I have unlocked is far easier to get for others now. I don't know for sure because it's a non-issue and not worth looking up. I'm not affected by others concerning things that I, personally, like and that I, personally, have done. No? It doesn't affect me so how would it be annoying? The achievements and shinies that I got are mine for me to enjoy. I have no idea how many others have those same things, nor what it took for them to get it if they did. It doesn't matter to me. Still not. I think there is a fundamental mindset that differs between you and I, which is why we're unable to understand each other's point of view.

That is not what he said. Correction: Edit: As for achievements becoming easier... I really don't see why it matters. Why is an achievement only valuable if no one else has it? You know you got it the hard way. Why is it important that other people must know that you got it the hard way? Seems vain.

In the announcements page. Link will send you straight to the section concerning raid accessibility. *shakes tiny fist at @Nakasz.5471. Beat me by milliseconds.

I thought the announcement stated that there are some achievements that cannot be obtained with emboldened mode. I haven't looked at all the raid achievements, so are all the raid wings covered with this? As in, there's achievements that are precluded from emboldened mode for every raid wing? If not, then agree with the above.

Ah, the Marine Corps drill instructor method. That brings back lovely memories. Now i really want a Campaign Hat skin for heavy armor for the full shouting experience. Aye, sir

I always took casual to mean players who don't dedicate much time to the game and don't play consistently every day, with periods of no gaming at all. This has nothing to do with skill level, just how much leisure time one has and how said leisure time is spent. By casual (and the design of the game reflects this), GW2 is meant to be accommodating of the player's time, where things can be achieved without having to worry about logging in for hours every day just to keep up. You can work on things at your own pace as sporadically as you want without having to worry about becoming obsolete. I, too, believe that GW2 was never meant to be a zero/low-skill level only game, but rather a game for players of all skill levels.

Why is it so important that other players don't have what you have (speaking to anyone that is advocating for positional goods). It shouldn't matter what other players do or don't have, because it doesn't affect you. That players can get legendary armor, at a much slower pace, with a bit of help from emboldened doesn't affect anyone that already has legendary armor. The only reason to want to bar emboldened players from getting legendary armor is purely because you vale what you have based on the number of people who don't have it. As for equity,I do not see how it is unfair to players who already have legendaries from raids that others can get their legendaries after the patch. What you have is yours, you've had it for a while, and no one can take it away from you. Also, other people having legendaries has absolutely zero effect on you having legendaries. For those who want to argue equity in the context of cost equivalencies, there isn't an argument there either. If a product becomes cheaper over time, it does not diminish what you already have. The one exception to this isa positional good. The value of positional goods is based on how many people don't have it. To this, I ask: why should legendary armor be a positional good? Why is it valued because others don't have it? In sum, the change with the embolden mechanic has zero effect on people who have all the shinies from raiding already.

Most of the gem store skins are ugly. As soon as my friends tell me that they're glowy/shiny, I'm out. My favorite armors are all in-game, such as spearmarshal, commando/buccaneer, stalwart, cultural armors, luminous (birthday armor), etc. I, personally, prefer this as it means that there is a universal obtainability of what you want without having to engage in particular areas of the game you dislike. I especially do not want items to be locked behind purely RNG means, such as random drops from certain enemies. This makes for an incredibly frustrating situation. Note: I'm referring to account-bound drops, as unbound drops can be traded on the TP which makes it obtainable by other means. As a good player, I don't need any indicators to let me know what is or is not on cooldown. I also do not need cast bars to know what skill is being used and can interrupt enemies, including other players, with ease. The game is meant to be played without staring at a UI. However, this goes back to your point about visual clutter, which is problematic. By the way, I've been blind since 2014, so I have not needed the UI for a very long time now. However, I will add that audio feedback shouldn't be culled out, as the culling makes me miss certain information. Overall, your point about visual clutter is emphasized here, and I agree that players should be able to see the actual animations with ease. The rest of your stuff I don't really have much to comment on. I do remember that screen clutter and FX have been long-standing issues. I do remember the lack of UI customization was the first thing I noticed in the betas (coming from GW1). For some reason people aren't able to affiliate regularly obtainable living world seasons as a continuous revenue stream on par with subscriptions and the like. Perhaps if it was renamed Living Subscription: Season #. The cursor fix was a small project that can be finished while waiting to execute their phase of the project. This means that their activity was on the critical path and required the completion of a previous step before work can begin. In that short time frame, a redesign of all in-game visuals would not have been possible. That is far too large a project. I mostly agree with this. However, it seems to be a behavior that consistently appears with MMORPG's specifically. Raiders tend to identify the quickest way to complete activities through mathematical analysis. This involves optimizations on many different things, including character placement. To change this, there would have to be a massive redesign in how allied support is executed. If everything is converted to preclude range limitations and, instead, focus on party/squad members, this would have an effect on open world. How would such a system work where there are no party or squad members? While I would love a redesign of core game mechanics to break up the stacking playstyle that's emerged, it would be a massive undertaking. I'm not expecting it, but agree that it would be nice. Even so, how long until players optimize the new combat system so as to return right back at where we started? That's the thing about optimization, there is a single right answer. One reason for getting something in-game is because you like it, not because of what others think of you because you have it. I'm not a fan of positional goods (items that only have value because others don't have it). What you are describing, and what other players refer to as "prestige", is nothing more than the idea of positional goods. You value items simply because of the number of players that don't have it, which I don't really care for. Next, the reason to play content is for the enjoyment of it, not the rewards. The game should not revolve around hits of dopamine because you got something shiny on the screen, but rather enjoyment of the gameplay itself. However, that's just my opinion. We all like different things. Anyways, it seems that ArenaNet designed the game such that you can obtain what you want without resorting to playing specific parts of the game. There are exceptions to this, such as legendary items, but it seems to align with their "play how you want" design philosophy. If things were to change such that the majority of items are awarded exclusively in a narrow portion of the game, how would this affect the larger player population? Would this make the majority of the player-base happy? Or would people feel like they have to do things they don't enjoy because they want a specific item? As for the overall drop/loot system, realize that the more times valuable stuff drops, the less valuable it becomes. Rare items were rare in the beginning of the game's life. Now, players tend to brush it off as junk. This will hold true for anything pertaining to "valuable" loot. More frequent "valuable" loot won't be valuable, they'll just be frequent drops, exactly like how rare items are now. The more gold that everybody gets, the less valuable gold becomes.

Pssst... should we tell him about the millions of violations of the second law of thermodynamics? Maybe he hasn't noticed that magic users aren't combusting into massive fiery balls of death. 😛

The announcement specifically stated that these were small things completed by debs who were awaiting their step in the project management cycle. Essentially, they couldn't start their work yet for the primary project they're working on. Instead of sitting around doing nothing, they engaged in tiny tasks that can be completed in time for when the big project step is ready for them. If you want to know more about how this works, look up critical path analysis. So, no, this isn't what they consider substantial content. There is definitely argument for what QoL projects they could have done instead. There is a massive list of requests pinned to this forum. Personally, I think it's fine. It's not anywhere approaching any kind of deal to me, much much less a big deal. I will say that updates to character selection screen would have been preferable.

It would be nice if warriors can use anvils as improvised weapons to crush NPC's that repeat their lines way too much. "I'm rich, you kn-" **ANVIL SMASH*

One of the biggest reasons for volatility after new releases. There's slightly more to it, but this is the start of the cascade of events. So, with far less demand for the Gen 3 legendaries (due to cheaper material cost), there is the beginnings of an excess in the supply side of things. A lot of players held on to their mystic coins and realized they didn't need as much as they did. The prices begin to fall as demand/supply surpluses begin to actualize into a new equilibrium and you now have the speculation part of the market reacting. Once the speculators realize that they're holdings are decreasing in value, you have a "Sell Sell Sell!" mentality, which increases the velocity of the downward pricing trend. Add to this you have returning players coming back to the game, many of which want quick gold injections to get new shiny things in the new expansion. Although many players on the forums talk about their legendaries, there is still a majority of players that don't pursue legendaries (if someone can find that ArenaNet post talking about statistics concerning legendary items). An easy way to get gold now is to sell materials hoarding up space, so: You got it on the nose. Crashing prices are a mixture of too much stuff (supply) or nobody wants it (demand) mixed with a delta in market activity and an extreme delta in speculation activities. As with almost every economic change in macroeconomic environments, a multitude of factors came together to create the changes we witnessed. The prices will stabilize soon and stay put until there is a new shock to the system. Next up, the 2008 financial crisis. Learn why EVERYONE and EVERYTHING is at fault to some degree, with idiocy all around.

Agreed, but only if a single condition is met. Only medium armor professions can use the whip, with their leather armor. Don't think too much into it 😜

If you can't log in daily (like me), then you have more important things to worry about than video game rewards. Even so, merely logging in without any further input is all that is needed to get these rewards. It's less effort that home instance nodes, which require time to log into the home instance and gather. Literally, just log in to a character and immediately exit the game, and you'll have gotten the contract rewards. This is fascinating. You're stating that someone else has such a charmed life as to be able to log in every day, whereas you, contrarily, don't. However, this argument alone demonstrates that you have such a charmed life as to worry about you're login rewards. There must not be anything of importance going on if the current stress is video game rewards from logging in. This is a truly paradoxical statement.

Just wanted to throw this out there. Concerning US legislation of loot boxes, the legislation would also cover fantasy sports. That is a MASSIVE lobbyist, so expect changes (if any) to be extremely slow. Other than not buying keys (which you should do if advocating against loot boxes), pressure local representation as well. I noticed this overlap when skimming through the federal registry concerning gambling. Cross-referenced with some IBISWorld reports to see movement of market share and money "paying special attention to "operational" and "administrative" expenses).

Vote with your wallet, don't buy keys. Steady drops in key sales will indicate to the business side of ArenaNet that keys aren't a good revenue source. As for the rare drops. The amount of gems required to buy the keys could have easily been converted to gold and buy exactly what you need off the TP. Definitely do that next time.

So, people want to accumulate in-game stuff by not playing the game at all? Not even logging in? I'm not sure of any business model that incentivizes customers to avoid their product/service. Any business that does would quickly become bankrupt.

Nice ipse dixit fallacy there. Using the same evidentiary standard as this post, I can confirm that the trading post is actually controlled by gremlins who were fed and watered after midnight. The truth is right there, ignore the people trying to shove bot theories down your throat. It's gremlins. Wonderful fallacy of defective induction. Let me try. Not TP barons, but PvPers that intentionally try to PvP through the TP because matchmaking is bad. They waste their money just to mess with PvE players for no other reason than to play economy PvP. They've actually done twitch streams and interviews demonstrating that they can grief PvE players with just a few clicks, shows how little you know. Would you like to try any other fallacies?

This bug happens to me only when my computer has been running for a very long time and system memory is becoming an issue. I always thought it was on my end and is an indication that I need to shut off my poor desktop and let her rest. This bug pops up in GW2 simultaneously with other minor bugs in other programs, leading me to believe with more conviction that it's on my end. Would be curious to know if there's something else at work.

You watch too much TV. TV shows are not reflective of reality. Overall, this is the most hyperbolic, emotionally ranty thread I've ever seen. Anyways, EOD will be remembered for "Okay we get it, they like jade." /jk

Changes in corporate culture is a thing, and I have know way of knowing the depth of such an issue with ArenaNet. The way to counter it is to have things in writing that can be picked up by newcomers. Things such as turnover binders and lessons learned documentation. It's reasonable to assume ArenaNet has these things. The extent to which they day-to-day operations adhere to such things is an unknown. As for knowing the original core philosophies of game design, I know they know it. How mindful employees are of them as they conduct day-to-day operations is another matter. As well, mistakes happen. Small mistakes can result in massive consequences. Something as simple as forgetting to double check that a subsystem in the game, such as new events, are fully compliant with all mission statements can lead to a situation raised in this thread. A design team that simply forgot to check one thing one night doesn't mean the whole company is completely disconnected with the player base. Hyperbole isn't going to help foster discourse with the design team. Saying, hey you guys really need to make sure that there is adherence to the concept of every player likes seeing other players is adhered to. There should be some emphasis on diligently ensuring all new content is compliant with this. That is helpful feedback.

There are very few people that act like 6 year old children. If you truly think this is how things are, you really need to get out more and interact with adults. This is no where close to how the world works. Also, the complaints that I see are emotional whinging. It's rare that I see a rational argument backed by logic on these forums. Your post exemplifies this. So My post is more a translation of emotional ranting into something that adults can better grasp. It isn't that ArenaNet is "egotistical" but more that redesigns need to be done correctly and with as few incidents as possible, both predicted and unforeseen. Just like ArenaNet does not have "favorite classes." These are childish concepts that do not apply to a professional business environment. You're emotional ranting is going to be dismissed as just that, emotional ramblings that contribute nothing to constructive discussion. If you want your thoughts and opinions to actually be heard, try having constructive discourse.

This right here. Playing the map to get the map currency on multiple characters is all intended gameplay. This is why every account has multiple character slots. Also, you are able to farm sufficient quantities of ore for daily purposes just by playing the map. I suspect some in this thread believe that thousands of ore should be farmable by a single character in a single day so as to finish all relevant achievements in a single day. This is a completely unrealistic expectation.