Danikat.8537

You showed in your first post you are aware of the rewards for achievements. Given that which of these two options seems more likely? 1) Other players like those things even if you do not and are doing the achievements to get them. 2) There is some other reward which everyone in the game except for you is aware of, which justifies players choosing to do achievements. You're not new to GW2 or stupid enough to miss something everyone else knows about, so the obvious answer is number 1.

It's hard to say without knowing which item you're referring to. But since the Wiki is maintained by players there's two main possibilities: 1) Someone from Anet mentioned somewhere that it's coming back. For example the articles announcing new things in the gem store often mentioned items which will be returning over the next week or two, especially around festivals and big sales. (But the most recent one of those only covered last week.) It could also be something mentioned on Twitter or Facebook or in a comment somewhere. 2) It's an educated guess. If an item is related to a particular festival or release, or associated with a time of year it's easy to predict roughly when it will come back. For example Lunar New Year items always return around now, and in April a bunch of Super Adventure Box related items will return.

> @"Randulf.7614" said: > I can kind of see the appeal of the skin being a random from your selection. In principle, it's a fair enough idea. However, one of the issues that would put people off using it might be the dye system. The dyes for one mount skin would appear on the next random one and look awful. If you could save dye loadouts for a given skin, then yeah cool. But without that, it's limited That's exactly what I was going to say. I like the idea of swapping mount skins automatically instead of having to change them manually (I actually use an addon to do this in Elder Scrolls Online, each time I mount up it's a surprise what I get) but the dye system messes it up. Even if I use the same general colour scheme on multiple skins the specific dyes are often different. Also the dye slots aren't used consistently; a dye channel used for a small detail on one skin can cover quite a large area on another, which makes it virtually impossible to get a dye scheme which works across all of them. Until there's a way to save the dyes for each mount skin this system would be useless to me. But I'd love it if they could create a way to save dyes individually for each skin (and even more if it could be extended to outfits) and if so I'd love to have this system as well. But I'd also like it to be something which can be enabled and disabled on a per-character basis (so one could use it and another could not) and for each character to have their own list of skins they use, because I think my charr thief might kill me if I put him on a sparkly space raptor.

I think generally meta-events are the most reliable way to make gold. Silverwastes and the HoT maps (they each have a meta event) seem to be popular, or the newer living world maps. But you need to know what to do with the loot. You don't make much gold from direct drops or from individual items, it's usually the result of opening champion bags, selling the contents or salvaging it and then selling the materials, but that often involves passing the bags to a level 40 or 50 character to open because mid-level crafting materials are worth more. Alternatively I think Fractal dailies are a good way to make gold, but I don't know any of the specifics. But I think 50g per day is already pretty good going (depending partially on how many hours a day you play). I certainly don't come close to that, but I only play about an hour or two a day and choose not to spend much of my time intentionally farming gold. I could get 50g in a day if I needed to, but it would be by selling materials and other stuff accumulated over a longer period of time, so I couldn't do it every day. > @"Tridentuk.1625" said: > Also reference gold per hour, or mention how many hours you've played to get 50 gold. If you say "can't get past 50 gold per day" that naturally sounds like you've literally stayed up 24 hours and you just can't manage to break 50 gold. That's a really good point. Gold per day isn't really a helpful way to measure it because if one person plays 1 hour a day and another plays 8 hours a day the second player is going to make far more gold even if they're doing exactly the same things. I used to have that problem a lot back when I played Ultima Online, people would tell me if you went to certain places it was possible to maximise a skill in a day, or make loads of gold in a day or whatever and I couldn't understand why I never seemed to get very far in the hour I was allowed to play on dial-up internet (this was the late 90s), then I found out when they said a day they meant literally a full day - 12+ hours of doing the same thing over and over.

> @"Deity of Ragefire.4287" said: > If Achievements are a mechanic thats bonus/optional; then its totally fine; (the type of achievements you obtain in form of trophies like the playstation, xbox; their optional for the completionist/collectors, but dont effect your gaming experience. > > But i dislike the type of Achievements wich Gate/block your main progress/campaign. (you reaaaally need complete these achies or else game says nope) > And mmo games tend to have alot of those Achievements to increase spend time. Its quite normal really :D > > If you wanna experience gaming devoid of achievement requirements just play single player games only; and even then you can get the achievements at your own pace. or some multiplayer game wich has only a few superficial achievment types (cleared level 3 without getting hit / got highscore in level 40 etc) > > o/ Games without achievements usually do have the same sort of gating, they just don't call attention to it as directly. You still have to complete one part of the story to access the next part and new areas, or meet the level requirement or get the right items or whatever. You just don't get a pop-up on the screen to let you know that you've done it and some arbitrary points.

> @"Head Kracker.4790" said: > > @"Hesione.9412" said: > > > @"Tekoneiric.6817" said: > > > I would think that what those of us in the USA consider one stick of butter might not be what is standard on Tyria. It could be the equivalent of a 1/2 or even 1/4 stick the North American standard for butter sticks. Of course if a missing step in the game recipe is to turn X number of sticks of butter into clarified butter or ghee then that could account for the excess since the process removes the water that bulks it up. Making clarified butter is results in about a 1/4 loss in volume. > > > > I went with the USA definition of a stick of butter. Those of us in a number of other countries do not have sticks. I thought it was a colloquialism until I was told about a year ago that butter in the USA can come in actual sticks. > > Just out of curiosity what does it come out in other countries? Butter crock or just a small plastic bowl or something? Never actually shopped for groceries in another country actually. In Britain it's either sold in a block (wrapped in plastic or grease proof paper) or in a plastic tub. I suppose the blocks are similar to sticks, just wider and shorter (not quite a cube, but a short rectangle), but I think they must be bigger too because you'd have to be making a lot of something to use a whole block in a recipie. Most are 250g - 500g.

> @"Svarty.8019" said: > * Guilds are a fun way to make a small, cozy, community of like-minded people, > * Guilds are a great way to get things done. They focus the goals of several individuals with the exclusion of distractions, > * I find that guilds become ghettos where community members disappear to and barely participate in the non-guild activities, > * I think that Guilds take players AWAY from the community as a whole, obviously becoming a smaller entity that doesn't communicate with others, > * It seems that Guilds turn inwards, becoming self-reinforcing cults, justifying their own beliefs and activities with the approval of one another and a lack of detracting voices. > > What do you think? Am I wrong or not? Let's see your comments. > > I accept that the responses will be opinions, and that ultimately we won't come to a conclusive answer. The discussion is worth having, however, because it could help Arenanet decide whether or not to put effort into Guild-oriented content/mechanics. It's pretty obvious that having guilds doesn't cause everyone to focus only on guild activities and ignore the wider community, because you can see people all over the game who you can tell are part of guilds (because you can see the tag) but who are doing activities with people from other guilds, and people who aren't in guilds at all. There might be some people in some guilds who have chosen to play only with their guild members, but if it does happen I think it's safe to say it's not affecting the majority of players. It sounds like you've had a bad experience with a guild recently and you're concerned that your experience is representative of the entire game. If that's the case my advice is to pick any meta-event, or WvW map or Fractal or whatever it is you like to do, go there without your guild and look at the players around you. See how many different guild tags you can see. If your assumption is accurate then any given group will be made up mostly or entirely of people from the same guild - since they're focusing on their insular little communities and not mixing outside of that. But I can tell you now that's very rarely the case (outside of guild missions of course, which are a very minor part of the game).

Thanks @"Fire Attunement.9835" and Linsey Murdock for answering! That's really informative. I had a love-hate relationship with levelling cooking because it always made me hungry and often made me wish I was having some of the stuff I was making in the game instead of what I actually had. Also thanks for making me aware of Terrible Trio Creation. I'd seen Pixelated Provisions before, but not that one. I'll have to try some of their recipies at some point. (It's not GW2 but I might try their klah recipie too. I've been meaning to make some more for a while and I like the idea of including cayenne pepper.)

It's very unlikely Anet will reply to this thread, even if they like the idea and intend to do it. The first you'll know about them agreeing to it is when it happens. There is a small chance they might reply if it's impossible for some reason, so players know to stop expecting it to happen, but there's no guarentee.

The preview window could definitely be far better than it is. The normal one letting you preview weapons and armour stowed, wielded or the weapon on it's own is marginally more helpful, but it's still not great. I think the priority should be to add the ability to zoom in and out and rotate in 3 dimensions instead of just spinning around (this is actually possible for mounts, which is good because otherwise it would be impossible to preview skimmers in any meaningful way). But ideally they could also add things like a lighting toggle, the ability to see how things look while you're walking/running, using different attacks etc. and make sure all the animations and effects will show in the window. The ability to apply dyes to individual slots and from the dye menu instead of having to search for them on the trading post would also be a vast improvement.

I like the art style and I think the graphics look fine. It's not the most realistic graphics can possibly be, but I'm actually glad of that because those are the ones which tend to look dated extremely quickly. I remember when everyone was going on about how great N64 games looked, now even with re-makes you have to accept that the graphics are a product of the time it was made and will look absurdly blocky by modern standards. But there's pixel art games from the early 90's which still look as good today as when they were released. > @"Joote.4081" said: > Oh wait. It's only 38% downloaded. Maybe that has something to do with it. I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if that affects it. The game prioritises the stuff you absolutely need to play and downloads that first, so it might be downloading the low-end versions first and leaving the optional extras until later.

If there is one I'm not aware of it, and I've been looking. It's possible it will be a gem store purchase like the mini ram and the lantern puppy and will come out in the 3rd week of the festival. It's also possible they won't do one, they haven't been consistent with adding zodiac animals in previous years and they've been releasing fewer new minis recently. I don't think there were any new ones for Wintersday or Halloween and I don't think the Champions releases have included any. The focus for festival rewards seems to have shifted to weapon sets. I'm not sure why, maybe they've decided that 767 minis is a bit much right now (that is an average of 7.6 per month since the game released), or someone who gets to decide these things considers weapon skins to be better rewards, or maybe they noticed not as many players were going for minis.

> @"Tazer.2157" said: > > @"Hesione.9412" said: > > The wiki contains lore, although perhaps not as much as some people would like. Have you looked at the wiki to get the history? > > That breaks the immersion doesn’t it? I don’t details in game, a little would be nice to have tho. Other than having to open a separate window is it any more immersion breaking to read it on the Wiki than in a pop-up, as if your character suddenly just knows the history of a place they've never been to before? That's why my preference is to get the information from people, or maybe books, plaques on monuments and things, in the area. It explains not just what this place is but how you or your character knows about it. Admittedly it makes the information harder to find, but I don't mind that, it gives me another reason to explore.

It was fixed on the 3rd: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2021-02-03 Apparently the huge packs of enemies were unintended. Which surprised me a bit, I'd been hit by one of them (and died) and didn't think much of it, except that it's maybe supposed to discourage spreading out to capture all the points at once because there's no way someone could do that one solo. But if it was just the one point being affected that would be pretty unfair for anyone who happened to pick that one.

Sometimes you can get the lore or background from NPCs in the area. For example the [Cauldron of Searing](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Cauldron_of_Searing) POI won't tell you anything about what it is or why it's there, but the charr and the human arguing about it will. Others are explained through events or because they tie into the story. It would be nice if they could do something like that for all the ones that have a backstory. Not necessarily an NPC standing right there specifically answering your questions about it, but someone or something nearby who can give you the information.

I don't try to do all the achievements, and the reason I do them varies. But here's my main 3 reasons: 1) It just happened. The achievement is something like 'finish a story step' or 'kill 50 of these enemies' and sooner or later I've completed it just by playing. Sometimes I didn't even know it was an achievement until it pops up. 2) The description makes it sound interesting or fun, so I want to try doing it. These are often collections or the ones which are basically side quests, but it can also be silly things like the one for finding a golden chicken in Tarir. Most recently it was [The Hunger](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Hunger), in Bjora Marches. I found the kodan, was curious about what was going on with him, happened to find where to get the first item and then decided to finish the collection to see how it turns out. 3) I want something from it. Some achievements are required to get mini pets (either directly or it unlocks the ability to buy it) and I collect minis so I want to do those. Sometimes I like the skin or title it gives you, or I need another mastery point, or it's part of a meta-achievement I want to complete or whatever. About the only reason I don't do them is to get achievement points because while I like some of the zenith skins (and I like the look of the pinnacle skins, but I'm quite a way off getting them) they're not worth the hassle to go out of my way to collect. I get achievement points gradually anyway (see point 1 on the list) and I don't care about competing with other people to have the most, so it doesn't seem worth going out of my way to get them.

> @"Hesione.9412" said: > > @"Khisanth.2948" said: > > > @"Danikat.8537" said: > > > I'm not a dev but I do cook a lot and I can tell you a lot of them are real foods, but the recipies have been tweaked to fit game mechanics. > > > > > > For example [hummus](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Hummus) really is made from chickpeas, sesame seeds, lemon and garlic, although it usually includes oil as well. But the GW2 version is made with 1 chickpea, 1 sesame seed, a whole lemon and a whole head of garlic, which in real life would make....gritty, lemony garlic paste. (I really wouldn't want to taste test that.) > > > > > > Even going by the pictures (6 chickpeas, about 20 sesame seeds, 1 lemon and 1 head of garlic) isn't much of an improvement. A realistic recipe would use something like 40 chickpeas, 40 seame seeds (both would actually be measured by weight or volume), 1/2 a lemon and about 1/8 of a head of garlic (1-2 cloves), plus vegetable oil, but that's impossible in-game becaue you can't use less than 1 of an ingredient and it would make it much more expensive to craft. > > > > I think one of the soup recipes use something like 10 sticks of butter ... > > > > Can you even fit 10 sticks of melted butter into a typical soup bowl? > > > > > > If you're Paula Deen? Or at a state fair (I saw a picture - I'm not in the USA - of deep fried butter, which is like a heart attack on a stick). I've also heard of deep fried coca-cola at state fairs! But I think that's kind of like the Glasgow chip shops which sell deep fried haggis and Mars bars (seperately) and promise to deep fry any food you bring them. It's more having fun with the idea and playing up to stereotypes to entertain tourists than trying to make something anyone would want to eat. But yeah, soup with 80 tbsp of butter does not sound good. Although most of the soup recipes make 2 bowls, so I guess it's "only" 40 tbsp in each. Not that it's much better that way.

I'm not a dev but I do cook a lot and I can tell you a lot of them are real foods, but the recipies have been tweaked to fit game mechanics. For example [hummus](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Hummus) really is made from chickpeas, sesame seeds, lemon and garlic, although it usually includes oil as well. But the GW2 version is made with 1 chickpea, 1 sesame seed, a whole lemon and a whole head of garlic, which in real life would make....gritty, lemony garlic paste. (I really wouldn't want to taste test that.) Even going by the pictures (6 chickpeas, about 20 sesame seeds, 1 lemon and 1 head of garlic) isn't much of an improvement. A realistic recipe would use something like 40 chickpeas, 40 seame seeds (both would actually be measured by weight or volume), 1/2 a lemon and about 1/8 of a head of garlic (1-2 cloves), plus vegetable oil, but that's impossible in-game becaue you can't use less than 1 of an ingredient and it would make it much more expensive to craft. The way recipies link up to crafting levels is pretty amusing sometimes too. A level 75 chef can make a cheese pizza from scratch - making and shaping their own dough and making the tomato sauce, but they have to be level 125 to put toppings on it, which is the easiest part of the whole process. But it would be pretty annoying if you had to start off buying cheese pizza and adding toppings and only gained the ability to make it yourself later on. Given all of that I think it would be pretty interesting to hear how they decide which foods to include, how they adapt the recipies to fit the crafting system and how they decide to balance realism with game mechanics.

> @"Randulf.7614" said: > I don't believe any such scale exists. The closest we have had is in Ghosts of Ascalon where a trip from Ebonhawke - Ascalon City on foot took several days. > > I've seen calculations that work the entire (core) map to be just over 12 miles wide which seems utterly ludicrous to me In lore the world would be much bigger than it actually is in the game, otherwise there is a severe shortage of things like farmland - the few farms we see couldn't feed everyone in the area, let alone nearby cities. So it depends on whether someone is trying to estimate the real size of the map in the game or what it would be if it was real, based on the lore. The second is also a lot more subjective. One method I've seen to calculate actual distances in games (not the lore size, the actual map size) is to make a medium height human, set them to walk and count paces to estimate distance. There's calculations available to convert 'average' paces to standard measures of distance, it's not completely accurate of course because pace sizes are different between people, but that's why you use a medium height human - to get as near to average as possible. Ideally you don't need to walk across the whole map in a straight line, you use that to find the size of areas in the game and then use them to measure. (For example measure the distance between two points, take a screenshot of the map showing both points and overlay that section onto screenshots of the rest of the map at the same resolution.) It's easier in games where the map is divided into squares, because then you just need to measure 1 square and multiply it. I don't know if anyone has done that (or an equivalent method) in GW2 but it wouldn't surprise me if it came out as something like 12 miles. In-game it's possible to walk from Ebonhawke to Rata Sum in less than 12 real-world hours, and that's not going in a straight line. (Someone might know exactly how long it takes, I think the Pride parade does it annually.)

> @"crepuscular.9047" said: > > @"Galmac.4680" said: > > Why not in both cities? (Same instances, vendors, events...) > > Divinity's Reach have the most festivals, Lunar New Year, Festival of 4 Winds, Wintersday, it's as if other races does not have their own culture festivals to celebrate It's because a lot of the festivals are carried over from GW1 where humans were the only playable race (asura and norn were only introduced in the last expansion, and sylvari were only hinted at). So everything in that game was human focused, including the festivals. Personally I think when they were developing GW2 they should have planned to have at least 1 festival for each city/race, spaced out through the year. But it's a bit late for that now.

The challenge thing which happens in the middle of DR involves team work. It doesn't need a lot of coordination but the objectives and progress are shared. (That's why they updated it so you have to participate - people were leeching by joining the activity and just standing in a corner waiting for everyone else to finish it for them.) I think Dragonball puts you into teams as well, but I haven't touched Dragonball in years so I may be remembering it wrong. But Lunar New Year has always been pretty minimal overall, so it's not surprising it has less community/group activities. It's gotten better, I seem to remember at first it was literally just buying bags, boosting your magic find and opening them to get luck and items to sell, but it's still pretty lacking in everything compared to other festivals. (And yet still better than my other MMO, where festivals are just "this sub-set of the normal daily quests give an extra reward" and if you're lucky there's an XP boost to use while you're doing them.)

Aren't the achievement point titles basically this? Titles in GW1 were achievements, they just weren't called that because the game released when the idea of achievements was relatively new and the gaming world hadn't settled on a standard name for them. I think it was the Xbox 360 which popularised the concept and established the name achievements, by having them for all games and a way to track your total achievements across all games. But that came out in 2005, the same year GW1 released. Playstation did the same thing with trophies of course, but that was a year later. So GW1 called them titles and let you pick one to display in-game, but functionally they're the same as achievements, which makes the GWAMM title the same as the achievement point ones.

Oh, you mean mini pets? Some of them (mainly gem store minis I think) are deliberately hidden from the wardrobe until you've got them. I think it's so completionists don't feel pressured to pay for all the gem store ones in addition to collecting the ones which are obtained in-game just to fill up empty spaces in the list. But even if it was in the wardrobe that wouldn't tell you anything about how to get it, all it does is let you see what it looks like and help track whether you've already got it. If you want to know how to get one you need to check the Wiki or ask in-game. In this case it's a gem store mini and specifically tied to Lunar New Year so there's a very good chance it will be back in the store this month. It's not mentioned in the [gem store update](https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/happy-lunar-new-year-from-the-black-lion-trading-company/) on the news page, so unless they forgot it that means it's not going to come back this week or next week, but Lunar New Year runs until 23rd February, so it could be one of the things they're saving for that 3rd week.

I suppose Anet don't want to make the bags too desirable, so players will still prioritise increasing magic find and the various crafting recipies and things luck can be used for. But it's nice to know there's a way to convert them into gold if you have more than you know what to do with. (I'm a long way off that point myself, I still haven't even maxed magic find and I doubt it will happen any time soon. But it seems like sooner or later everyone will run out of uses for luck, so an infinite use is still welcome.)

Oh they do glow. I thought they were just plain gloves, then realised later I'd stupidly previewed them on a character with a few different glowy effects already applied so I may have missed it. I'll have to try them on one of my plainer characters, or just wait until I unlock them (probably at the weekend).