Zephire.8049

Mine's still there and works as well. Though I have noticed I sometimes need to reload the page for it to register and that if the TP prices haven't loaded, the API won't work.

Part of it is that you can join all strikes via the portal in Eye of the North and not have to go through LFG at all. If you haven't tried that yet, that may be worth a shot just to see what happens. There's also the issue that Whisper is known to be buggy and one of the worst strikes for finding a competent group (the worst being Boneskinner) which cuts down on the number who are interested in it or willing to PUG someone when there's a guildmate or someone trusted knows someone else who can fill that role in 5 minutes. LFG does need an overhaul, though, with more attention brought to it since a lot of people don't know it's there.

You can really tell that mounts were designed to be more than just a speedboost from the start. Not only are the animations great but each one changes how your character moves and is controlled. Sometimes I just run around in circles (especially while waiting for an event) because using a mount is enjoyable and intuitive. Of course the raptor will have a bigger turn radius. Of course the skimmer will slide down certain inclines. Or course the griffon and skyscale will open their wings a bit during a fall. Sure technically they do fit the speedboost role but there's a lot more there than animating a run cycle and calling it a day. There's a reason why so many people who are indifferent to (or even dislike) GW2 talk about the mounts fondly.

> @"Oxstar.7643" said: > Build demand with limited access, I assume. Pretty standard marketing strategy. To expand on this for the OP, it: * Creates a sense of scarcity so people drop more money more often to get something before it rotates out because of FOMO. * Can make people check the cash shop weekly which in turn makes it more likely someone will buy something in the meantime. It also trains people to check out the store periodically even if they don't have something specific in mind. * Items like vouchers and bundles that contain vouchers are more desirable because there is no advanced notice on rotation. If all items were available all the time, that would be great for players but video game marketers are convinced that would mean a drop in revenue. Think of it as the video game version of stores changing their layout periodically (forcing you to spend more time looking at more products), putting things like milk at the back of the store (making you walk through aisle(s) to reach it), and having highly marked-up small items at the till to tempt you. There's an easy way to make it more convenient for the customer but marketing says inconveniencing the customer will make more money so that's what the company does instead.

> @"Touchme.1097" said: > > @"Zephire.8049" said: > > > @"Touchme.1097" said: > > > > @"Zephire.8049" said: > > > > That would make power leveling in GW2 easy which in turn would create a bigger market for it which in turn would reduce the need/desire for people to buy level 80 character boosts. In other words, that's not going to happen. > > > > > > > > If you want to play with friends, now is the time to learn how to do that (or accept you don't like leveling with friends and stop). Make a new character if you have to so you have another character to focus on when you start out-leveling your friends, but you are fully in control of yourself. Adding in an EXP share system would take time, resources, and make illegal services easier, more enticing, and cheaper which would then increase support's workload. So what's easier: one person adjusting how they play or a company sidelining work to make something that would benefit more power leveling services than individual players? > > > > > > The logic of your post is totally out of order! XD So you are probably one of those who think that the introduction of the Alliance feature would be wrong because people wouldn't pay for a server transfer in order to play with friends. Every MMO is basically building a business around people inviting friends to play the game, thank GOD you don't run this kind of business... > > How is it out of order and/or illogical? > > > > Also I'm all for alliances though I don't see how that has anything to do with wanting an EXP share system added into a game when players can just alter their behaviour to not drastically out-level friends, especially when 2 (soon to be 3) expansions and 4 Living World seasons take place post-80. > > You are all for alliances but you are against my suggestion in improving the leveling experience for all those people who play with friends...Of course your logic is inconsistent. It doesn't make sense that you would agree on one thing and disagree on the other thing because Anet would sell less services in your opinion. Why would you care to maximize Anet profits? I think it's wrong for someone who belong to the community of players to blindly think about maximize the company's profits, if you really care about it why don't you start from yourself buying everything in the gem store? If you can't see the logical flaw of your argument then I cannot help you. Because Alliances would help an entire gamemode, not just in population but in balance between servers hopefully. What you're asking for would benefit fewer people than the entire raiding population (raids being sidelined because that population is so small and it requires so many resources) and is easily solved by you simply not using a mount and running ahead of your friends. You're also putting words into my mouth. I did say that the cost of features needs to be taken into consideration but that's because Anet is a business with hundreds of salaries to pay each month alone (that's not taking into account rent, utilities, sever costs, benefits, etc.). Alliances has at worst a net-neutral ratio between resources and benefit to the company. Gemstore, Living World, and expansions are net-positive. What you suggest is a net-loss unless they're already going back and changing the code and an EXP share can be tacked on, otherwise they won't do it because that would require multiple devs, testing, and iterations to make sure it's balanced and works and nothing else broke. Or you could just... not use a mount when playing with friends. Also when someone asks you to clarify why you think they're wrong, you typically go "You're mistaken with [examples] because of [reasons]" not "You are wrong but I won't tell you why." The former shows you've thought things through on multiple levels and are acting in good faith, the latter immaturity and bad faith.

That would make power leveling in GW2 easy which in turn would create a bigger market for it which in turn would reduce the need/desire for people to buy level 80 character boosts. In other words, that's not going to happen. If you want to play with friends, now is the time to learn how to do that (or accept you don't like leveling with friends and stop). Make a new character if you have to so you have another character to focus on when you start out-leveling your friends, but you are fully in control of yourself. Adding in an EXP share system would take time, resources, and make illegal services easier, more enticing, and cheaper which would then increase support's workload. So what's easier: one person adjusting how they play or a company sidelining work to make something that would benefit more power leveling services than individual players?

You claim it won't take much work because maps could be reused but you're ignoring all the work that would be required to. * Remove all old NPCs * Add any new NPCs * Write dialogue for those new NPCS * Code the entire mode * Balance damage and add scaling to mobs and bosses That's a heck of a lot of work even if models and maps can be reused. They also don't have a handy list of NPCs where they can go Select All > Delete so they would have to manually go through each map and find NPCs to remove them—it's a big reason why objects in core Tyria being changed to take condition damage has been put off as it's so much work to find everything on every map. And objects taking condition damage would be a huge QoL improvement for all PvE players instead of spending the same amount of time on something that's super niche. Not to mention the increase of resources because instead of one map instance for, say, 75 people, that would be 15 instances for the same amount of people if each party was maxed at five players. Also the vast majority of people aren't keen on locking themselves out of playing a game for days (or weeks) in an MMO. For such a mode, people would need to be able to stop at any time and get back to regular Tyria. GW2's demographic largely leans towards 25+ and parents given how it doesn't punish people for not being able to play hours a day every day so any new mode needs to respect players' time. Locking people into something until they finish it is not going to appeal to the vast majority of players. Speaking of the majority of players, the majority of players don't raid either between time commitment, the difficulties in finding a group, or both. The interest is there but it's no feasible with the current lack of options in-game. Your suggestion makes both easy in comparison. And do you have a plan on how to deal with someone who is toxic and going out of their way to prevent others from moving forward if you also want to lock people into the mode? If you get kicked or choose to leave a raid or fractal for not wanting to deal with that, that's generally 2 hours max that you lost out on, but you want people to spend days on this. A great way to turn people off of your game is to tell them they have to just deal with people who derive joy from antagonizing others and preventing others from progressing.

I suspect what happened was that because EoD was decided/announced while IBS wasn't halfway through yet, DRMs mark the point devs were pulled from what was planned with IBS to work on EoD with a small team finishing up IBS (and having the narrative team re-write the second half of IBS...). Since DRMs are so simple and there's no new maps, only dialogue, and there hasn't been any cinematics or custom animation, it's really easy for a small team to make and push out. That said, it is really boring and grindy and I can't see myself doing DRMs in the future. I think it should have maxed out at 3 for the number of times you have to repeat each one since while that would have been annoying, putting it at 5 means burning out on them. Especially since outside of Snowden, none of them are particularly hard so it really is just grind, not challenge. Hopefully if my suspicion is correct, that means EoD _should_ be far better. That's what I'm banking on anyway (and I don't blame a small dev team resorting to grind because management hasn't given them the time/resources to put enough content in that doesn't need grind to pad it out) but I've talked to more than a few people who refuse to play GW2 again until EoD because they've heard of how grindy the current story is.

I'd rather they just update the current ones instead of throwing in an expensive paid item for your base character's look to take advantaged of players who don't want default options or want something with more polys and better textures. Some people have makeover kits and hairstyle kits sitting in their bank, yes, but it's been years since either were updated so updating them would still result in a surge of people buying them. Especially people with a lot of alts who don't like reusing the same face/hair/fur for multiple alts. Also updating battle tonics so you can mount while using them would make them more appealing to players in general. I just don't see the need of adding a whole new item (for $25USD!) that would prevent people from buying it due to the price when what we have can be updated to have more options while being far more affordable (therefore accessible) and making more people happy in the process.

I prefer HoT-levels of map difficulty (perhaps a bit more) with PoF-like HPs. My issue with PoF was that there were so many mobs with large aggro ranges that could forcefully engage you via immobalization, stun, or pulling you to it that it was a nightmare to explore even with mounts. I don't mind difficult enemies, I just don't like not being able to move 50 feet without aggroing another group of them. Especially when they still bug out and go invuln while leaving you in combat. Also the hearts on PoF maps are terribly scaled so those should either be core/LW3 (minus Doric)/LW4 or not exist. I love map completion but I refuse to touch PoF more than I have because between the mobs and hearts, it's not fun and takes longer than most core maps for lesser rewards.

> @"mercury ranique.2170" said: > Another challenge for programming such feature could be racial skills and racial armor. It is easy to remove something from the game for everyone or change it for everyone. But I doubt they currently have a mechanic to re-lock unlocked skins and skills on specific accounts. It's literally impossible from what devs have said and why if you accidentally bind a legendary you were going to sell, you're out of luck because they can't re-lock the skin. They also can't let you have the skin and gold from selling it so you get the weapon. The only exception to this seems to be the HoM skins and titles when the GW1 and GW2 servers can't communicate. You also raise a good point by bringing up racial armour. Either they'd have a 1:1 conversion of skins when a race change happens or they wouldn't and you'd have to re-buy racial skins to replace the ones you "lost". Either way, people will complain about Anet's decision and bother support over it. Race changes can't be enabled just flipping a switch since so much is tied to them that it would be a huge undertaking to add into the game. Even account name changes are possible (even though it can cause database issues) so it should tell people just how difficult-to-impossible race changes are when you can't even message support and have them do it if you agree to the potential risks that would happen.

As the others have said, race changes are one of the things Anet has said won't happen (as opposed to not a focus or otherwise leaving it open ended). Which makes sense given how the personal story's code has been implied to be extremely unstable and would be easy to break, which is one of the reasons why bugs in it have existed for years as the risk to breaking something else isn't deemed worth the risk to fix something that doesn't prevent progress. For all the time, effort, and risk associated with implementing a race change, they could update or add a system that benefits far more people. Especially as, while it sucks making a new character, you _can_ make a new character with the same or similar name and only lose out on soulbound gear.

1) Dragons talked in GW1 so of course they can talk in GW2. 2) Foreshadowing is a perfectly fine narrative device and writers opting for shock with no foreshadowing in recent years is objectively bad and has trained people to think knowing the route a story will go (even if you don't know the details) because of foreshadowing means it's bad writing instead of a choice the writer made to use a tool that's been around for centuries. 3) The story is already set and odds are voice lines are nearly fully recorded or fully recorded with a decent chunk of cutscenes having been roughly or fully animated. 4) Cantha was Generic Asian™ with a mashup of multiple cultures, something that was a huge issue in GW1 and EoD will hopefully have had more effort to research things put into it. 5) Dragons are a fantasy staple and been around in Guild Wars since GW1 so expecting there to be no dragons (in an expansion titled _End of **Dragons**_ based on a GW1 expansion that heavily featured a dragon where the teaser trailer featured a dragon) is setting yourself up to be disappointed. 6) Fewer buttcapes would be nice but that's been asked for for the past 5 years so getting invested in the idea that suddenly they'll stop is also setting yourself up for disappointment.

> @"Proxima.9051" said: > > @"kharmin.7683" said: > > "Struggling" is a matter of perspective. I disagree. > > It really isn't (it especially isn't to all of those hit with the layoffs). The layoffs that happened nearly 2 years ago under different leadership? I can't remember who the current CEO is but the mass layoff happened under Mike O'Brian, who was then replaced by Mike Z, who was then replaced by whoever it is now. Anet's management has always been lacking (and still is given how half of IBS was scrapped with little warning to the devs), but the game did rebound after O'Brian left and the pipelines were cleared out. And NCSoft's quarterly reports are readily available and show GW2 as doing just fine with it being their most profitable title in the West and only behind Lineage and Lineage 2 in the PC market now and about tied with Blade & Soul, so financially Arenanet is doing fine, especially with the one title bringing in enough money that not one but two projects were being fully funded by it. And that's with next to no marketing of GW2, though that's a whole other topic.

Usually 24 hours to a couple weeks in my experience. It depends on the weapon (not just the look but also if it's meta or not) and what the current supply is at, though someone undercutting you by 1g is always a risk. The worst is when a chain of undercutting happens since legendary weapons don't move the fastest to begin with, so I usually have a look at a TP website (usually both GW2TP and GW2Spidy) to see what the activity has been like for a legendary I'm thinking of selling so I can list it at a time when it's most likely to sell fast so I'm not out the listing fee for an extended period of time. I'd rather wake up the next day to ~2k waiting for me than randomly while I'm in the middle of something a couple weeks later.

> @"Samnang.1879" said: > Agreed. > > We should also be told in advance if we need certain items for future things... so I don't delete them and realise I need them... example tomes of knowledge... I always delete them but then realised I need 100 to buy something -_- **/wiki [item name]** (or manually checking the wiki) will tell you whether you'll need an item for _current_ content. They can't tell you about _future_ uses an item has (minus chained unlocks such as the Boreal weapons since those were planned, if extremely poorly implemented with no warnings) because future recipes are still up in the air if they're being worked on at all. Not to mention future uses tend to be closely guarded after some instances of people using their insider knowledge to make bank. When in doubt, hang onto things unless you're prepared to work on getting more of them.

Blocking whole guilds probably wouldn't be an option just because you have to figure out and code it and also decide if it's constantly checking guild membership or if it takes a snapshot when you choose to block. There's also the very real possibility that people will troll guilds by joining and then spamming map chat so everyone in the guild gets blocked rather than just the one person. The block system does need an overhaul and AgentMoore points out some good changes, but blocking a whole guild isn't likely to happen because of all the logistical problems with making such a system even without ways to mitigate trolling. If on-going harassment is an issue, you can always submit a ticket via the support website detailing what's going on. Action may or may not be taken, but it leaves a paper trail and support may realize that a guild is particularly toxic. But in the meantime your best bet is to keep a document of the guild(s) name and tag and manually block people on the map with said tag. Not because "you should have a thicker skin" or anything like that but because the odds of a mass-blocking system being added any time soon—if at all—are slim to none and at least manually blocking people lets you do something here and now instead of doing nothing.

> @"Hallow.7368" said: > Besides that the fact that the majority of characters made in this game are female **despite the audience more than likely being overwhelmingly male** throws being "relateable" completely out the window. Gotta cite your source for this because that goes against every breakdown of video game demographics over the past decade, and anecdotal evidence doesn't count.

There being a toggle for auto-grab or not wouldn't be terrible, but changing it at this point would mess a lot of people up and possibly introduce new issues. I definitely had that issue at first but using (and sometimes just tapping) the descend button all but eliminated it since you can't latch while descending. As someone else said, older content seems to be the worst since there are so many things where you assume there's collision when there isn't and other times that tiny leaf that shouldn't have a hitbox does. LW3 and onward tends to be way better about consistency with those things, though.

It's simply a personal preference. Human males don't bother me but some of the others (such as male norn) come across as too hammy for my tastes, and the noises added to male charr bother me. Having seen and played things with genuinely bad voice acting, there's a huge difference in how it _feels_ to not like something because you don't like it while it's still objectively good and not liking something because it's bad. Also I laugh at the idea that video game VAs are expensive and I wish that was the case. Some of the bigger names definitely command a higher price but there's a reason why VAs either work as much as possible or work a day job unless they're one of the industry darlings. If you want overpaid VAs that give mediocre performances, just look at any big-name animated movie over the past two decades and how few of them cast people trained in voice acting.

They don't make them interchangeable because if they did that, they would have to check clipping issues/how each piece interacts with every single other piece of armour across all three weights across all 5 races, 2.5 of which (asura, charr, and male norn) are drastically different. Outfits mean they just have to make sure the whole thing works on each model. Sometimes individual pieces get pulled off to make their own skin (e.g. shrine guardian ears, Wolfblood shoulders) because they can be separated and clipping issues from them are a minor issue, but those are the minority and it's far easier to pull the helm of an outfit out and make it its own skin than pull the chest or legs out, and gloves and boots also have a lot of potential clipping issues. It would definitely be nice if we could transpose bits and pieces from outfits onto non-outfit skins, but there's a lot of technical issues in the way and to do so would require a shift in resources and focus. If it were to change, it would likely be like what happened with dyable backpacks and how there's zero intention to go back and change every backpack skin from before that update just because a lot of work would be required to essentially chop up and QA test every outfit currently in-game.

> @"Blocki.4931" said: > Nobody is asking for this to be turned brainless, but something is seriously off. Whether it is the NPCs being too slow or the timer being a little too short. The fight is harder than the rest, I don't see why the time should be this close when the rest clearly works. Especially when all the other DRMs with 3/3 CMs can be solo'd with time to spare. Snowden doesn't need to be easy but it shouldn't be impossible when literally every other DRM lets you solo them if you so wish. That's not how difficulty increases should work, especially since the things people had the most difficulty in the other DRMs were bugs, not features. Also requiring raid composition + swiftness boonbot for the escort for a _story_ mission that is less forgiving than the actual raid escort is bad and should never have made it to live. Especially without communicating that that's what they're doing. Adding 1-3 minutes to the timer, making sure Ryland is scaling properly (also reducing visual noise during that fight), and adjusting the speed of the escort NPC wouldn't make the encounter "too easy", it would just make it so people could enjoy the difficulty (and yes, risk of failure) without failure being completely out of their control. Especially as you'd need to go through the entire escort phase to see how much time is left for Ryland, so you can't even restart within 60 seconds. And again, this is a story mission, not raid or strike. Difficulty is fine but it shouldn't require as much or more time and planning to setting up a group than an actual raid.

"Learn to like" only works under the assumption people _haven't_ tried gamemodes and decided they dislike them. As soon as you introduce incentives/rewards to play certain gamemodes where it's required/near required, you end up with the issue of the GoB and GoE where players feel punished and forced to play modes they _**do not**_ like. Sure some people discover they actually like WvW/PvP/PvE but others refuse to do that content and when they're expected to do it, that just turns them off, possibly of GW2 as a whole. That GW2 has 3 distinct modes was always a risky decision, both for how much (or how little) they overlap and where to put development resources. The bonus XP/MF weeks are a good way to encourage players to try different modes if they're on the fence while not forcing the issue, imo (though they need to happen more often). Because a lot of players, myself included, know what we like and what we don't like so no amount of incentivizing things will make us suddenly like something we hate because some virtual gold or shiny is added to it. You may as well be asking people to eat something they dislike to outright hate for $5. Sure some people will take the money but a lot of people won't because it's not worth the discomfort (especially if it lingers afterward) for something like that. The issue isn't with rewards or incentives, it's that different people are different thus not everyone enjoys the same things.

It will happen in February and was included in their Q1 2021 roadmap. 

It can definitely be frustrating (flax farming on alts was one of my ways to passively make gold, and that took a hit) but in the end this is likely for the best. It makes a lot of stats/items more accessible and increasing infusion drop rates is something people have been asking for for years. One of the risks you take when playing an MMO is knowing that the economy can change without warning. Runes/sigils, exotic gear, silk and hardened leather, mystic coins, mystic clovers, and far more have had drastic increases and decreases in value over the years and birthday dye kits have had a huge impact on the exclusive dye market. Such changes are great when you benefit from it and suck when you don't (or lose theoretical gold), but it makes things accessible to newer players as they no longer cost as much and they don't need to grind as much to get items that were formally BoA. The market would have dropped for a lot of today's items at an announcement before the patch anyway (historically people sell off items when they're told ahead of time they'll lose value, and people also start buying up things when they expect the value to increase (though that's not always what happens—just ask the cabbage guy)) so unless absolutely nothing changed, what happened today would have happened regardless.