BlueJin.4127

As an altoholic who plays casually, **account-bound level-scaling** gears (preferably, trinkets) that aren’t too expensive or time comsuming to get would be amazing.

Maybe green quality gears that require 30 Provisioner Tokens or something? 250 tokens is just way too hardcore for me. They’re even more effort than ascended weapons.

I would love to see unique icons for all nodes, not just LWS currency nodes. GW2 is very lacking in simple QoL features that games released 10 years ago have.

Maybe add to this thread?

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/65937/anybody-else-annoyed-by-loot-chests-trolling-lately

> @"gateless gate.8406" said:

> Use the LFG, use mapchat, ask your guilds... and then wait. Yes, it may take 15 minutes to get your first helper for one of these events. Those seeking instant gratification and instant rewards may have to stick to the raptor. It is a fine mount for any level of player.

This is another problem, I think. Being an MMO, some things will require groups. Getting a group can sometimes take time. Sure, we all have moments when we want things NOW! But we can’t expect everything to be insta-solo-able in an MMO. The few group things in mount collections are very modest and shouldn’t take more than days to get a group for, if you take the time to learn how. And none of the group stuff are so hard that casual players are locked out from doing. While I’m not an MMO veteran, I think the mount collections and specialization collections in this game are very modest and casual friendly compared to what I’ve done in other games.

For me, Anet doesn't even have to increase rewards for PoF. All they have to do is reduce PoF enemy aggro range from 900 to 600 like the rest of the game.

As much as I love HoT zones, they're terrible for playing solo when I want to. PoF would be perfect, except the aggro range single handedly turns the maps into absolute garbage. I stay away from PoF maps except when I absolutely have to. And when I have to do PoF stuff, I just quickly do what I need to do then get out ASAP. It's very disruptive having enemies so far away (that I can't even see on my screen) aggro, then when I kill them, more enemies aggro just before I can mount. I then kill those and before I can mount, yet MORE enemies aggro. SO FREAKING ANNOYING! I'm an open world player who would LOVE to explore PoF maps, but it is just not worth the constant annoyance.

Wow, I'm very surprised so many players play with postprocessing off most of the time. The reason I made this poll was because I was reading reddit and there was a post about PP where the majority of the replies said they played with PP off. The 2 biggest reasons for players turning PP off were the game being too bright, and the green outline that is weirdly tied to PP.

For those players who play GW2 mostly with PP off, do you play other games with PP off as well? Or is it just GW2 because of the mentioned issues? I always figured that the vast majority would play with PP on unless they had a really old computer, or are playing competitive games.

> @"Ashen.2907" said:

> I would not be surprised if the OP is on to something. Everything from how rewards are presented to the eye catching nature of in game effecfs is implemented in a manner to influence player engagement. I think that it would be naive to think that this is not a design intention.

Having beautiful and impressive visual effects certainly do have an effect in player engagement. However, GW2's effects are just bright camera flashes. They're not creative, artistic, beautiful, or create an immersive connection to the game. I used to be an artist and this kind of flashing is something only amateurs do, and is generally frowned upon by accomplished artists. There are tons of ways to make visually appealing effects and spamming camera flashes at players is not one of them.

Not only that, the amount of camera flashes and overall visual clutter in this game actually has a negative effect in gameplay. Any large events are a boring mindless snooze-fest. The players should be reacting to what the enemies are doing to create an engaging gameplay. Yet, all we are doing is mindlessly spamming our rotations since we cannot see the enemies' attacks. It's like fighting against a training dummy, except that you might just drop dead for no reason. Heck, after dozens of runs, I don't even know what some of the enemies even look like. :tongue:

On a side note, I wish mods didn't merge Balsa's post with the original discussion. On the outside, these seem like they should be merged. Upon reading, though, the comments are very off-topic from the ongoing discussion. Anybody who jumps into this thread now is going to be confused starting with Balsa's replies. I know the mod merged 2 different posts and even I'm confused. :disappointed:

I got my griffon and beetle mounts in the past few months and they’re not hard to get at all. There are still tons of players that are still working on them, and even more players doing the required group activities or willing to help. Currently, the issue isn’t that **late comers** do not have enough players to do these group events with; it’s simply that **first timers** will not know how to easily get groups for these and spend days or even weeks stuck. I don't know how many times I encountered players stuck on some collections for weeks (one even claimed to be stuck for months), when it took me or some other players minutes to help set up a group.

For griffon’s legendary Facet, there are usually bounty trains in LFG (check all PoF maps). There are usually several bounty runs a day. Simply join the group and ask for help. If the player doesn’t want to wait a couple of hours for a bounty train listing to appear, he can always start his own group requesting help to get griffon, put it in LFG, and announce in map chat. A group of 10 random players should be able to beat the Facet with ease, unless they get hit with a bad combination of unstable magic abilities.

For Deadhouse, just look at the map for a commander icon. Like bounty trains, there are usually several runs a day.

For beetle collection’s alpha beetle, join a populated Silverwastes map. Players may have to join a RIBA map and wait until Vinewrath is dead so players are not busy. Ask in map for help with beetle collection. To get the alpha beetle to spawn, first, you need to beat the event in the Far Silverwastes area if it’s up. If the event is not up, go to the north/west corner of the Far Silverwastes. You’ll see a bunch of green beetles surrounding a single attackable beetle. Kill the lone attackable beetle (you may have to kill this beetle several times) and the alpha beetle will spawn on that spot. The alpha beetle can be soloed if you learn its attacks. For players who are not willing to take the time to learn to solo it, it can be easily killed with 2 or 3 players.

For the Ley-Line Anomaly, check “event timers” on wiki and use the LFG tool. It helps to get on during prime time and get into map a few minutes in advance.

I mostly play with postprocessing on, mainly because the game looks too dark in some areas and the textures look very flat with PP off. Also, I love how the Exalted Sky Sentry looks at night in Bitterfrost Frontier with PP on.

Unfortunately, there are too many bright camera flashes from my skills, other players’ skills, enemy skills, gathering Volatile Magic, using gathering tools, extreme high contrast in PoF maps, extreme flashing effects in some PoF story missions, etc. that I still have to regularly turn them off for many activities.

Just like Anet went way overboard by spamming unnecessary bright camera flashes from skills, gathering tools, gathering VM, etc., Anet went way overboard with contrast in PoF. Turning off postprocessing removes the blinding contrast from PoF maps. Anet makes a lot of shallow and poor decisions like this and I find them very detrimental to the game's enjoyment.

Posting just a couple of screenshots for now.



Engineer Elite Mortar Kit

1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click, 1, click...

Please turn 1 into a regular auto attack. This gets really tiring.

EDIT: Even with insta cast, you have to spam.

What thehipone said. When you kill enemies during Istan farm, the killed enemies do not drop 30 gold in an hour. Gold is not generated from Istan farm.

Despite what some players want to believe, the nerf to Istan farm isn’t so that Anet can sell more gems. Sure, player A, who did lots of Istan farm and sold his items to player B, may have less reason to buy gems. But player B, who gave his gold to player A, now has less gold and has more incentive to buy gems.

The game does not revolve around serving just players who want to farm Istan, without giving a care about the game as a whole. If Anet’s data shows that (the old) Istan farm has a negative impact on the majority of the player base, they have to nerf it for the overall health of the game. This is not greed on Anet’s part. In fact, the farmers who believe that Anet should cater to just them and not the game as a whole are the ones being greedy.

I just bought LWS4 E1 about a week ago and started Istan farming once a day. It needs a nerf. The amount of gold you can get from this is too high compared to other similar activities and is unhealthy for the game. While I personally like that I, who only run it once a day, may benefit from this upcoming change, maybe a hard cap of 30 chests a day is not the right approach. Diminishing return after 30 chests so that they’re not so profitable may be a better idea. This would allow players who want to farm it multiple times a day to still do that.

EDIT - A lot of farmers who are upset about the nerf are saying this will destroy their community. Thinking about it, I can see their point. GW2 is an MMO, and like any MMO, it is at its most fun when you're playing the same content with other players. With so many different maps, so many different activities, and every player doing their own thing, it's not easy even for many guildies to play together on a regular basis. As long as the rewards are properly adjusted, I see no reason to destroy what other players enjoy doing.

Female Norn grunting sound when she gets knocked down... Ugh... Sounds like somebody crying, constipating, barfing, and dealing with severe back pain all at the same time.

Just finished LWS4 E4 story.

All I’ll say is that I’m happy that this episode wasn’t a spam of flashing unhealthy lights like previous LWS4 eipsode. First story of

LWS4 E1 gave me severe motion sickness and I had to suffer through a headache the rest of the day. Half the story missions in LWS4 E2 took place in dark environments with constant bright flashing lights. I had to use eye drops repeatedly due to eye pain this caused. LWS4 E3 was fine, except for the last story mission where you have to spam a signet that creates yet another unhealthy flash that covers the whole screen. LWS4 E4 stories had no flashing (other than collecting Volatile Magic). Thank goodness.

Yes, it appears to be bugged. 2 of my characters were able to catch the kegs without problems. For the other 10+ characters, it was impossible to catch a single keg. When it works, you don’t even have to time the catches, you can just spam the key to catch and it works.

Rather than buying them yourself, it may be best for the average player to join others offering invites to their home nodes. I often see players announcing in guild chat and map/town chat.

Yep. I definitely want options to adjust various settings myself. It is Anet who doesn’t want to (or can’t in some situations). That is why I’m saying to remove flashing effects that have no purpose in the game. I’m not making an unreasonable request that Anet should change the game just for me.

By comparison, I have a disability that causes pain and prevents me from playing for long periods without adjusting and stretching. As such, long story missions can be very painful for me. This also means that I can’t take part in raids. However, long sessions can create an atmosphere and flow that will be ruined by dissecting them into parts. Combined with the fact that the general public has no issues with long sessions, it would be unreasonable for me to ask others to make sacrifices and make everything short, just for me.

The flashing effects are a different story. They have no benefts, they’re bad for everybody’s health (nobody has eyes that are immune to fatigue, wear and tear, and damages), and impede gameplay with visual clutter for everybody who does large open world contents. It would be better for the game if the ridiculous camera flashes are gone altogether.

> @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> Also, for everyone that has posted in this and identical threads in the past. This is not intended to disrespect those with the above problems, but in all honesty the first question anyone should ask themselves when presented with these problems is: do I have any of these symptoms outside of gaming? If the answer is yes, then you should probably seek medical attention as it's not the game causing the issue.

Well, there’s no such thing as a symptom exclusive to games, of course. :smile: All medical issues are general and can happen with any activity, or any person. 10 years ago, I could look at bright lights and not be bothered at all. Unfortunately, like many people in the digital age where people spend so much time looking at screens, combined with age, my eyes aren’t as healthy as they used to be.

But in terms of games causing me eye pain, in 30+ years of gaming, GW2 is the only game I have ever played where I have to deal with eye pain. The bright flashing effects are the problem. I have to turn my monitor’s brightness way down just for this game.

Though if I look back into when my eyes started experiencing these, it goes back to the game I used to work on. I worked for a game company for years and my last project was a musical game where, understandably, there was a lot of flashing colors. Shortly after finishing that project was when I started to notice my eyes became a lot more sensitive. This is one of the reasons I push so strongly for this to get fixed. It’s not until somebody gets hurt or injured that people learn they need to take better care of their health. I don’t want to see people make the mistakes I made and suffer.

> @"Swagger.1459" said:

> I have never had motion sickness symptoms until PoF mounts. The flashy effects I've dealt with, but we are getting to a point of being hit with all these triggers more consistently as we go along...

Yes, it’s definitely getting worse. I recently purchased LWS4 e1 AND e2. The very first story of e1 gave me motion sickness due to the purple wavy effects. I had to deal with a headache for the whole day. Then, I went through e2 stories where half the stories involved constant flashing lights that were painful and uncomfortable for my eyes. I haven’t played the other episodes yet, but I read about the various complaints about the remaining episodes.

There was a post from Gaile saying they’d fix the issue soon (replying to e1). This reply was from a year ago...

Seriously, my interest in this game has gone down the drain and I’d just quit this game if Anet would be willing to give me a full refund. I knew I shouldn’t have spent $300 in the first 3 months of this game and I’m upset at myself for doing something I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE. I’m also kitten pissed at Anet for completely and utterly disrespecting their customers like this.

> @"Shivvies.3921" said:

> You are saying there are no strobes because you are not sensitive to them and just not seeing them.

Not yet, anyways. I had no problems with flashing lights 10 years ago. Now, though... :disappointed:

I bought LWS4 ep2 yesterday and played through the first 3 story missions. There were so many blinding flashes and bright lights even with my monitor set to dark. I really don’t know what Anet’s visual effects team is even thinking. This game’s flashing effects are embarassingly awful and by far the worst I’ve seen in any game. It’s such a shame, really. The rest of the game is so amazing, but the visual effects just kittens on the game.

I started a few months ago and had mounts from the beginning. What I did was if getting to a Vista wasn’t obvious, I’d get off my mount and try to ge there without mounts.

I also started a character and planned to go the entirety of core to end of LWS3 without mounts on a single character. I didn’t last one whole map. I just can’t stand how slow the game is without mounts. To me, the game feels much more natural with mounts than without.

As for boosting to level 80, I already knew not to use that on my first few characters. ^^

First, I apologize about making a GW1 post here. I just don’t know where else to ask.

With so many recent posts about changes in rules, I was wondering if there’s any change in the GW1 dps meter mod, called toolbox, I think. I found it to be an excellent tool for helping me to improve my builds and my heroes’ builds. Currently existing in-game methods aren’t useful at all for testing builds and the toolbox proved to me that the in-game methods I was using to make **awesome** builds actually resulted in some spectacularly terrible builds.

I read that the toolbox accesses data it’s really not supposed to, and it also has a lot of other features I don’t know about. I don’t know if Anet stills condones the use of this mod.

If the answer is no, by any chance will there ever be a personal dps meter add-on in the store for GW1? I’d definitely pay money for such a feature in GW1. An official tool that let’s me see my dps and my heroes’ dps would be very helpful. Some of us still enjoy playing GW1. :)

Ah, OK. Thank you for the example. I was just concerned when Gaile said posting in advance doesn’t sound good. I guess I really was worrying about apples when people were talking about oranges.

> @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> You know, "Let's group up and take on the hardest raid in the game in four minutes" doesn't have a good ring to it.

I can't speak for raids, but for many open world contents, putting up LFG announcements ahead of time is crucial.

For many major meta events, if you don't show up at least 10 minutes in advance, the map will become full and you're out of luck. As such, it's crucial for commanders to put up LFG announcements early on so that players are able to get in the same map before it is too late.

And for HP trains in HoT, it can feel awful getting in late to an HP train and missing some of the HP's that are not easy to solo. Seeing that the HP train starts in about 30 minutes helps the player get to the train on time, so they don't miss anything. Sure, there are usually some other players doing HP's who are willing to help and dedicated players can solo HoT HP's. Still, it's very convenient to have commanders post in LFG in advance.

I think my examples are fundamentally different than adverts saying go to a web site to schedule raids, but I just wanted to post that posting several minutes in advance is, in itself, very helpful and I don’t see why this would be a problem.