Gulbasaur.1865

No, I want an actual land horse with attachable flippers. We have a rabbit the size of a cow, a jackal made of sand and a beetle we levitate near in order to drag race. Next week we'll have a bison cat that destroys castles. I want - no, demand! - an underwater horse with flippers and an aquabreather. It will be called a Sploshhoof and it will cause PvP players to have a panic attack on the forum because the only way to unlock it will be to play mirage. (I am being silly. Do not be offended by this, internet).

As an ex-CoH player, I really hope not. I do think that was under old management, though, and it's not really representative of how the company works now. They kept Wildstar on for a reasonably long time past its (mishandled) prime and GW2 is still getting new content, although not at a rate some people would like. I've read that City of Heroes was a bit of sacrificial lamb to show how the management wanted to shake things up and I like to think it wouldn't do it again in a hurry. Anyway, people have reported some modest performance increases. I don't think this is going to revolutionise the game engine, but I think it'll help it limp along a little further for some people. Some people saw "200% increase" and exploded with joy, not realising that this meant going from 5 to10fps when things got overloaded as it was at the bottom end. The average seems to be an extra 5-10fps. Even with the dev-reported 20% it would be from going to 30 to 36fps for some people.

It would mean maintaining another system, though, which may not be worthwhile. I agree it would be cool, though. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that Arenanet devs probably haven't just sat in their offices blowing bubbles while some lone developer saves the day. He's used a novel solution that, at the moment, crashes semi-randomly and has visual artefacts. Asking why the devs didn't come up with it is overlooking how development actually functions: sometimes an idea just needs to click into place and then have 80 hours of work put into it before it's even worth talking about. How many hours a week can Anet devote to paying people to follow hunches? Hobbyist/amateur developers work on different principles as they can afford to experiment because they are literally doing it in their free time. I mean, it's possible Anet have tried something similar but couldn't get past the "it crashes semi-randomly" thing and went for stability over getting an extra 5fps. It's too early to really know at this stage to know if this is a viable addon or one that will always cause crashes due to something the device couldn't predict. I'm sure this has caught the devs' attention and at some point there will be a comment about it, much like there was with ArcDPS (e.g. that they don't have a problem with it but also will not provide any support if it has any negative effects), but given that the source code was released today, I think we should at least wait until they get to work on Monday before we expect any kind of response.

Short version: people were quite wary because it was closed source and the Reddit community didn't trust a new creator, leading to a bit of a PR disaster. Now it's open source and has been peer reviewed and seems to be a genuine FPS boost for some people. It is, however, very early in development and can crash unpredictably so it's not ready for mainstream consumption. There are lots of reasons why Anet would not want to support similar technology in-house, for example that it's Windows 10 64-bit only and they don't want to lock out users on earlier systems and that the cost-benefit balance wouldn't be worthwhile.

During Thunderhead Peaks' opening few days, I started counting at a normal speed and got to 20 between pressing X and my springer appearing. So, worst-case scenario 10-15 seconds but about 3 seconds is standard. Dismounting from a mount than didn't spawn is sometimes possible (I imagine it's just that the mount spawned and I dismounted before I saw it) but this occasionally drops you through the floor (luckily the sea in Istan extends under the island, but I've also been trapped inside scenery as I spawn below what I was on, but above the ground).

I was thinking something like that this would be cool with shouts as the new skill line. "You're burning!" working like Sun Spirit with extra vulnerability or "You feel no pain!" casting barrier or something. "They all hate you!" having a Confuse mechanic would be cool, setting enemies against each other. I'd like to see some traditional RPG crowd control in game but spawns are so small that that may not be worthwhile. I'd really like to see an alternative to the shatter mechanic... Something like clone shatters doing no damage but charging up something like Celestial Avatar but each skill is a phantasm so you could phantasm-nuke when you need to.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Tanetris/So_You_Want_To_Gear_a_Character has stuff about gear. It's a little bit old but will get you started.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Gulbasaur/Things_I_Wish_Someone_Told_Me_-_A_new_player_guide#At_level_80 is a guide I wrote with a bit about what to do at 80. For gold, if you have LW S4 E1 with the Istan map (you need Path of Fire to get there), there's a consistent gold-farming community. The meta events drop lots of unidentified gear, which you then stick on the trading post. Rich people then buy the unidentified gear and use magic find boosters to try to get rare stuff from it, basically. I think you need over 600 magic find before it breaks even, so most people just sell it. Istan is chilled out, quite easy and actually relaxing if you know what you're doing, but be aware you'll need a mount from Path of Fire or you'll get left behind. You also get unidentified magic which you use to buy shipments at the docks, which give you crafting a materials to sell for gold. Prices fluctuate but the leather and trophy ones are usually the most profitable. If you don't, the Silverwastes is the next most profitable farm, but I know less about that one. Fractals provide a slow but steady amount of gold in Tier 1. Fractal encryptions drop literal junk, but it's really valuable junk to sell at a vendor and you'll get a couple of gold a pop. As you progress up the tiers, they get harder but you get more gold out of it. At T4, they're very profitable but you need to be skilled enough to do it and that ain't easy. The expansion (HoT & PoF) all have hero point worth ten 'normal' ones and are at level 80. The Living World story content is all pretty good too. They're both pretty good if you haven't explored them already.

Scenery pop-in seems worse in new zone. Mount not loading for 5 or so seconds after mounting up. If I mount near the steps entering the keep, I fall through the steps because of the load delay (happened four times so far - bug report submitted with screenshot) and have to use waypoint to get out. I've also fallen through the steps round to the right (towards the catacombs). Please sort out the "mounts not loading" issue - it is such a massive pain in the bum having to wait five seconds to mount up and then fall through the floor when you try to dismount from a mount that never even loaded. It seems to be in high-population zones - I've fallen through the ground in Istan and ended up in scenery Auric Basin during metas, almost always when mounting up. I've turned textures and character model count down in the settings, but it still seems very present. This is with game stored on SSD.

Killing the veteran skelk four or five times in the teleporter plates sequence after the meta didn't drop the next one. I used the plate I found to enter, so wasn't sequence breaking. Someone on reddit mentioned doing it for 15 minutes before it dropped. Is the drop rate very, very low, did I hit a bug or was I doing something wrong? Edit: reports say that it is only dropped for the person who triggers the spawn, which isn't group-friendly and it's mainly accessible after a meta so you're unlikely to be alone. Is it possible to add a flag on pickup of the last plate or something so it recognises you're part of the 'quest' and not just someone camping it? Otherwise, it becomes a grind as people mash F to be the first to spawn the skelk.