Deimos.4263

> @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > @"Icemanfrost.5428" said:

> > > @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > > I am leader of a few guilds that run lotteries...

> > >

> > > I do in fact pocket the gold... Ill put up something like a precursor to win, then people gives me money, Ill pull a name out of a hat and send off the precursor to the winner and keep the gold I was sent to fund the next lottery

> > >

> > > The perks of being an event organizer I guess, spend 200g on a prize and keep the other 200g people send in for tickets to win said prize

> >

> > That is shameful

>

> Well it's not a charity, it has to fund itself.

It's hardly shameful. (And how nice of you if you're not breaking even.) Frankly I'm surprised you're not bleeding money doing this. I'm assuming the precursor in question isn't Dusk?

More hair dye channels.

I have all the kites and the tonic, so casino coins are kinda useless to me now. But I have also have a solution: offhand kites. And maybe a dual-kite mastery. Do it, Anet.

I want a separate mode for roller beetle jousting.

Gonna be the dissenting opinion on this one. I thought it was quite ugly and only got it to keep my collection up to date.

> @"Fremtid.3528" said:

> Wow I had no idea guilds ran lottos and kept some of the proceeds. I ran a lotto in one guild where we gave the entire pot to the winner. I mean a lotto run similarly to a real life lotto (where the organization keeps some of the money) seems like a scam to me.

It's not. Think of it more like any sort of charity fundraiser, where someone wins a large portion but not all of the proceeds; the rest goes to help support whatever cause. In this case, it's guild activities. In fact, without some benefit to the guild, why would a *guild* hold a lotto at all? Members can create their own pots at any time, you don't need a guild for that.

> I know you need money to run as a guild but people should donate to your guild because they genuinely enjoy your guild not because they hope of winning some big amount of money, gaining gold for decorations and building you hall that way just breeds bad blood imho. A guild shouldn't profit from activities it throws for its members. That's shady.

People *should* donate to their guild because they genuinely enjoy it. I truly wish that were the case, but it isn't. That's not the reality.

I've run several guilds large and small, and what happens is a very small core group tends to wind up funding everything. That's very limiting and unfair, but that's the reality.

So you either can't afford to do things, or you need to generate funds. The majority of guild members in a guild tend to not even realize funds are needed; it simply doesn't cross their minds. By providing this incentive and opportunity to win some gold, they end up helping their guild where otherwise they would not. It allows the guild to do more without directly soliciting donations, or trying to charge dues, which tends not to work anyway. We do our draws right after weekly guild missions, it encourages participation in them and gives the members something to look forward to as well.

As the previous poster stated, of course the terms of the lotto are laid out beforehand. The funds are typically kept separate from pre-existing guild funds until the draw takes place. It's transparent as humanly possible and the winners are known and recorded. Fresh recruits aren't allowed to participate so that nobody gets salty about a newbie winning and then leaving the guild. As for that small core group I mentioned? They tend to participate and *top up* these lottos, offering addition items as secondary prizes, and are usually the members that outright refuse the prize if they do win. This is about as far from shady as it gets.

I just want a harp with only black keys.

I gamble a lot in this game in various ways, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm of the opinion that dye kits are simply a bad deal. The numbers just aren't there. Stick to keys or ecto gambling.

Some guilds don't really need gold to operate, some do. It depends on what you're trying to do with the guild.

My guild does a *lot* of decorating, giveaways, and events that take a lot of gold and planning. It's extremely expensive. We have a guild lottery to attempt to generate funds, because it's rare that guild members will simply donate gold. If there's not something enticing them to do so, a small core group ends up fronting the whole cost.

Personally I'd prefer it if guild members simply contributed, but the lotto is very popular with the members so we keep doing it.

From what I've seen in other guilds, it's typical for a guild to keep about 25% of the pot, and give the rest to the lotto winner. I do think most guild lottos are legit. They should post a draw date/time if they're not doing it live in guild chat, and announce the winners for all to see for transparency.

> @"Bezerker.2379" said:

> I mean, honestly, this is how you appear in the world. You have a giant glowy shield on you at all times! :) Think about how awkward that must be. In the shower "Stupid shield!" in bed "Argh!" etc.

What? Aegis can be *extremely* useful in bed. I guess it depends on what you're into.

I have no problem with either downstate or rally. But remove revive from defeated and make everyone walk back when defeated. At least you could use map position and attrition to your advantage even when outnumbered.

My newest rock video. Also a mini-tribute to Steve the skeleton.

It's a nice gold farm but trick or treating in Tyria is just the opposite of the happy, easy, overindulgent celebration for all that is real world Halloween. I don't know what the drop rates are, but just imagine how horrible trick or treating would be in the real world if the drop rates matched those in game.

Now nevermind the candy corn, peach tarts, etc. That's a trick. Infusions are the treat here; they're the real candy. (And tattered bat wings, but they're a bit chewy.) The rest is cigarette butts, smacks to the face, broccoli and tofu. Thousands of neighborhood kids going block to block getting nothing good at all. There's a tofu vendor somewhere that will let you buy single gumdrops for maybe a thousand tofu chunks. And then one kid screams over a megaphone how they just won sweet sweet candy for life and literally starts glowing...

> @"misterman.1530" said:

> I hadn't really paid attention to Casino Coins. I rode around on various mounts picking them up if the event came up while I was in Amnoon. Was trying for The Cutting Edge, and noticed I had a pile of them in my bank. Thought I would check out what I could get with them... imagine my utter surprise when the answer to that was "Absolutely nothing of value".

In my opinion it's one of the more relaxing and fun events in the game. The rewards are a nice bonus.

> @"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

> Having it applied to aegis is a huge blunder. Staff mesmers and conversion Holosmiths doesn't need any more added sustain. I like having it tied to f3.

That may be so. I didn't consider that other classes have access to aegis application directly. We're trying to buff guardian's sustain, not everyone's. (Unless that application is provided to those other classes by a guardian, in which case it's a feature.)

> @"otto.5684" said:

> And I suggested this before. I think VoC should do more than 1 aegis. This is quite useless. It should also add 1k toughness for 5 sec. And this is not much by any means. Warrior gets 4 secs of 1k toughness with EVERY CC BREAK.

I think you're really onto something here.

Improving the effectiveness of toughness itself across the board as I had suggested would have too many far-reaching consequences, but applying some amount of toughness for several seconds in addition to aegis makes a lot of sense to me. We're trying to improve guardian sustain, not toughness for all.

But maybe instead of adding toughness to VoC specifically, it should be a feature of *any* application of aegis? (Stack on duration in the event of multiple applications.) The original issue sephiroth mentioned is that aegis alone just isn't doing enough, so buffing aegis itself this makes sense to me. Maybe protection works better here? I don't know.

The moment you add this, people will be spamming duel requests. Even if you setup an auto-decline feature, they'll be flooding say/map chat with it. It's the opposite of cooperation.

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> ahh those guys. To be honest, I can't remember any of their names but I see who you're referring to at least.

Psst Anet. I understand there's an opening in the Six. Tybalt, God of Apples. Do it.

I get very excited for Halloween every year, and then it wears off. Extremely subjectively, I would say 2017 was more fun for me. Though we did get some nice new guild hall decorations.

Although there are more rare things to be had, I've found none of them. I don't know if the drop rates are worse, but they're not great. There are a few nice minis I need to catch up on, so you can expect a sharp jump in the cob price about the 1st (you're welcome) when I get paid. I'm also going to pick up the new mounts, they look great.

I hate all things Mad King with a white-hot passion, because he's...well...a jerk. I do like kicking his butt in Ascent to Madness exactly once a year, though I'm constantly confused as to why it isn't "Descent to Madness". You move downward, not upward.

I made a conscious decision to not let the Clock Tower upset me this time around, and I'm grateful it's no longer required to complete the festival meta-achievement.

The labyrinth is still a nice little gold sink, but my cutoff for wanting to do it endlessly seems to coincide with the sale price dropping below about six silver per bag. So I'm done with that.

In short, my mini-review of Halloween 2018: "I put up with that kitten Mad King and his horrible jokes and all I got was this weird candle."

Just to be different I'm gonna throw "core guardian" out there. Stay with me.

* high mobility - probably a weak point but there are couple of blinks available with Judge's Intervention and Sword 2

* strong versatility - yep

* viability in every game mode - yep

* good looks - yep we're beautiful

* Vampiric mechanics - Litany of Wrath has got your back

* fast paced combat - sure

> @"aswedishtiger.7320" said:

> The point of this post is simply it's true

>

> Until someone comes on this thread and says "this is 100% false" I have made my point

>

> or "nope you can't do that it's impossible"

Well the issue is premise you make in step 7. If you think having a level 80 character in full exotics means you've "completed the game", then yes, you can claim you've completed the game.

But that assertion seems somewhat odd, doesn't it? I mean you can do that without completing a single map, or hero point, or heart. You can do all that without completing very many achievements at all (you will get "Golden" for having a bunch of gold in your wallet, go you). Your wardrobe will be kinda spotty and frankly boring. You won't have practiced any fighting skills at all. You'll have met nobody, joined no guilds, tried nothing and done nothing in game at all. Is that really "complete"? I personally don't think so. But that's for you to decide.

+1 dolphin. Mind you I also spent twenty minutes running away from my own shark the other day, because I don't know how to ranger.

If they build it, yeah I'll try it. I'll probably turn off map chat though, because I can't see how this won't be a toxic-fest in very short order.

> @"Edge.8724" said:

> Guardian's sustain is a bit weak imo. Especially if you play Dragonhunter. A lot of skills and traits are just unused by everyone. Also, too many times I died with Shield of Courage active. Also, with all those unblockable attacks beeing added in the game, I abandonned the shield on my warrior in pvp because of this. Not much use now. Guess I have to addapt.

That's what I was trying to say above re: toughness, but it's really about sustain. When I started playing in 2015, pre-HoT, guardian sustain was pretty darn good. People often played defensive tank/bunker guards with Power/Vitality/Toughness because it worked. Now, it just doesn't. Running a PVT build you'll give up significant amounts of crits just as before, but you won't sustain/survive like you used to. You do see the odd Celestial build, but other than that, toughness/sustain as an option is dead. You have to try to burst them down before they burst you down. Add in the unblockables and it's even worse.

I'm not really sure what the OP is trying to say. What does "completed" mean? Do you think having maxed out gear or a mount means you're finished? Well, "play how you want" is sort of a cornerstone of this game, so congratulations but I think you're really missing out. There's a lot to do and I'm quite sure you haven't done it all.

There are ways to skip things if you want, and some people will. That's human nature. But there's zero requirement to do so. Go play a new character from level 1, and it still works just fine. I for one am very far from having completed the game by any reasonable standard, and I've put in over 8000 hours.