Manasa Devi.7958

Easiest fix would be to just drop this event from the dailies and replace it with daily bazaar activity (Sanctum Sprint or Aspect Arena). The treasure hunt needs no encouragement anyway, while the activities could use some. The 3 times I tried those this year I was the only player in the instance.

This message has a 90% chance of appearing for me 10 seconds after I change zone/instance, going on for weeks now. Weirdly, I hardly ever actually fail to log in to the game.

I have 30-ish favors of the festival and nothing to spend them on except Drooburt's trash bags. We all have our personal issues with this festival it seems.

There's this saying about gift horses... Let's just say this horse won't be seeing the outside of my stable.

Well, you see, even though it was perfectly clear to me because I read the announcement, I prefer in-game content you can take at face value, without referring to announcements that disappear off the main page eventually. It looks shoddy the way they do this. Just like the Daily Completionist achievement that keeps telling me I just scored 10 AP, years after I stopped getting those points.

So the achievements are there just to confuse people? Makes sense.

> @"Ronan.9518" said:

> Not sure what about

>

> _Taking down world bosses will progress the overall community goal. You’ll receive rewards for each tier you participate in. **Community goal rewards will be distributed at 10:01 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) on August 25 and will be available to collect until 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time on September 8**._

>

> is not clear.

>

> https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-boss-rush-returns-august-18/

Achievement progress in the Bonus Events category isn't mentioned as part of the community goals. I'm not sure what's not clear about that.

The Memories of Otter and Crystallized Blood have been added to the end chest of the repeatable Icebrood Saga reward track. That one has been updated with new stuff with every Icebrood Saga chapter release. Because of that, I'm sure the disappearance of the repeatable Drizzlewood Coast reward track is intended. I'm not too happy with how they handled it though. I was nearly finished with the now missing track, I held off the last reward because the forums informed me that the end chest was a dud. I basically wasted my time doing 39 steps of a 40 step track.

The only thing I don't like about these infusions is how the visuals are tied to the specific enrichment bonus. Maybe they can add "enrichment changing" MF recipes just like there are stat changing recipes for the normal infusions.

The fan aimed at the hamster wheel died I guess. Poor hamsters.

> @"Mewcifer.5198" said:

> > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> You are right that as a season/saga goes on the number of spare points increase. I just don't remember the last living stories feeling like this. It seems like with the increase in the ratio they are also increasing how grindy the achievements that give the masteries feel.

Season 3 and season 4 both build upon the masteries of the previous expansion. Speaking for myself, I had plenty of mastery points left over from the expansions when I started the seasons that came after. Can't speak for anyone else, but this might contribute to mastery points feeling tight for the Icebrood Saga, starting at 0 mastery points.

> @"Strider.7849" said:

> > @"Jilora.9524" said:

> > Did they lower ticket cost? I bet a 500 doesn't have enough tickets anyway but gets to work on a piece earlier. I have no problem with them lowering it as I have it and neither should you

>

> I'm just over 600 and I've played since launch. Spent most of my years dueling/roaming - not so much of an objective hunter - more a people hunter. To answer your question though, yeah you get enough tickets at 500. Another thing is even if I decided to grind out WvW to gain ranks, the amount of time you have to spend in WvW just isn't possible when you have a full time job, bills to pay, girlfriend/wife, or just a life in general.

Earned tickets per rank ratio is hugely dependent on play style. To compare the 2 extremes, full on zerging will give you a lot less tickets per rank than just spending the minimum effort to keep participation up.

So, people already at or near rank 500 can comfortably do the "capture-afk" routine to build their tickets.

> @"Eramonster.2718" said:

> 2nd Tier (Triumphant Hero) : With tickets through NPC in WvW. This armor has 2 version, exotic and ascended (only the Asc version 500 rank, can be upgraded into Legendary). But players only need to obtain either one; exotic or ascended version of the piece to unlock Mistforged.

>

> 3rd Tier (Mistforged skin, 500 rank now) : tickets through NPC in WvW. Asc and can be upgraded to Legendary as well.

>

> Players were able to obtain Asc/Legendary with rank 500 even before the recent change. The only difference was the skin (without the glowing light tentacles/wings). Hence why OP was right, it only devalued the skin/item.

The second tier has no rank prerequisite. A full set of the the ascended version requires 20 Grandmaster Marks though. If you want to earn the marks playing WvW it will take a minimum of 67 weeks, but they can also be crafted.

This is why the change was so weird. They made the tier 3 version much easier to acquire, but they leave the tier 2 version at a minimum of 67 weeks.

For the same weekly effort (completing the gold skirmish track), It takes only 30 weeks now to unlock tier 1, tier 2 (exotic version) and tier 3. If you complete all skirmish tracks every week, it will only take 11 weeks, provided you can reach rank 500 in that time frame.

In all calculations, the actual time you need to spend every of the quoted weeks, depends on play style, existing rank and server circumstances. But the numbers are plainly a bit counter-intuitive now: 67 weeks for tier 2 ascended, 11 weeks for tier 3.

These are my final thoughts on this.

Hitting an occasional milestone in a long haul game, or game mode in this case, enhances the enjoyment. To be clear, no one in his right mind plays WvW for thousands of ranks without finding pleasure in it. The milestones just give it something extra. Taking milestones away reduces the potential enjoyment. Setting unrealistic ones also does that. I thought ANet had learned that when they reduced the requirements for the WvW achievements drastically, years ago. Well, that team has been gone for a while. Let's hope the current crew can relearn the lesson.

There's not a single milestone between rank 1,226 and rank 10,000 at the moment. The single one that was there has been buried and I guess it will be forever, because this kind of thing can't be reversed without upsetting the people who already took advantage of the change. So, maybe some new ones?

Finally, the stated purpose of this change seems quite weird. It would've been so much easier to do something with the grandmaster mark shards so it doesn't take a minimum of 67 weeks to earn a tier 1 ascended armor.

> @"Jilora.9524" said:

> > @"Manasa Devi.7958" said:

> > > @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> > > They really diminished the value of the time those people invested. Yes, they still ended up with the same value at the end of the day, but they _worked_ towards that goal and achieved it, now that's been taken away from them.

> > And then there's people like me who were a few weeks short of hitting 2,000. This evaporated my motivation to play. Don't get me wrong, I love to play WvW, but there are days I love it a bit less than other things I could be doing. On those days, I used to think, "Oh, let's play a bit anyway and get a few levels in. Keep the momentum going!" Now, that consideration will never fall in favor of WvW again.

>

> I really don't get this. You close to 2000 so there was a good chance hitting 2000 would of evaporated your motivation to play too. I mean goals are good but if you have enough tickets make the set if not then the motivation would be to get enough.

I will now probably play a lot less for a long time than I would if I could have ended this undertaking with a feel good moment. This soured me on the whole thing, I'm yet to even bother to go buy the armor. Like I said, I love to play WvW, but I love the idea of playing it a whole lot less right now. If there wasn't a lot to do in PvE at the moment, I would probably go on a break and not play this game at all for months.

> @"kratan.4619" said:

> > @"Eekasqueak.7850" said:

> > I'm fine with infusions being hard to get because they're obnoxious to look at for the most part. Bad enough we have those who stack them and sit in a high traffic spot to burn out people's eyes.

>

> Honest question, is the eye burning glow a result of poor computer quality? Or is it some combination of infusions that shine like that regardless? Personally, I have never seen a single player glow like the dun, I do see a lot of infusions on their characters but I can tell they are different infusions and not one big mass of infusion effects.

Some combinations of effects are terrible with all graphic settings set to max. Post processing in particular can make things bad. Last week I've seen several characters that just look like a ball of bright white light with arms and legs barely sticking out. No idea how to achieve that, probably something recently added to the game that makes it possible, because I've never seen it before.

There are a lot of things you can do in this game that are fun and that do give rewards. It's a simple choice: will I do something fun that gives a reward, or will I do something fun that doesn't give a reward? Then there's the fact that it's quite debatable where this thing falls on the scale of "fun" things to do. The very real chance to end up with unbalanced teams shifts it to the lower end of the scale for me.

> @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> They really diminished the value of the time those people invested. Yes, they still ended up with the same value at the end of the day, but they _worked_ towards that goal and achieved it, now that's been taken away from them.

And then there's people like me who were a few weeks short of hitting 2,000. This evaporated my motivation to play. Don't get me wrong, I love to play WvW, but there are days I love it a bit less than other things I could be doing. On those days, I used to think, "Oh, let's play a bit anyway and get a few levels in. Keep the momentum going!" Now, that consideration will never fall in favor of WvW again.

Now that tickets have become the bottleneck, I'm sure we'll be getting "double ticket week" one day soon when the lowering of rank turns out to have little effect.

Take the reasonably achieved "prestige reward" away, replace it with a no-lifer "prestige reward". I don't see how this benefits the format. It's not that I begrudge the 10k rankers the title, but there's nothing else now for their "lessers".

Some more uses for favors of the festival would be nice, especially something that makes sense to buy repeatedly. Giving them to Drooburt is a terrible option.

> @"Penniegrim.9123" said:

> I just got gold rank and I'm a bit disappointed about this change. I saw it as something to strive for while collecting the needed Items to make it legendary. now I feel, surprisingly, a bit robbed.

Being within touching distance of 2,000 myself, it does feel rather anticlimactic. The new goal ahead isn't exactly a realistic replacement. (10.000)

Edit: I have been a bit bored with WvW for a while now, but I hung in there to hit 2,000. So yes, this certainly takes away the motivation to play.

More edit: And now I feel all those marks I've been saving have suddenly become pointless. The sublime armor doesn't require them.

I had some keys saved up from weekly key runs and used them just now. The guaranteed drop festival chest has to be the worst thing ever. The vast majority of things I got from them were SINGLE festival tokens and SINGLE quartz crystals. SINGLE festival tokens, yes, SINGLE... That's just a very bad joke, you get those by the dozens for everything you do in the cliffs. Also, I could mine a few quartz nodes and have just as much quartz.

Really, I'm so happy I didn't pay for this.

> @"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:

> Perhaps, ArenaNet might allow them as trade-ins for Statuettes at, um, something like 25 or 50 to 1? Maybe 60 would be the magic number.

> I don't see it happening for less.

How about defining a set of these "useless" consumables and make a mystic fountain recipe where any 4 items from this set will result in a random item from the set? (Or 4 stacks of x, where x isn't too high a number.) Perhaps with a tiny chance to get a better type of BLC item. That way people can dispose of the "junk" without having to save up the rather large amounts you're suggesting. A "junk" reroll could be nice for a lot of people because not every "junk" item is junk for everyone.

> @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > @"Manasa Devi.7958" said:

> > > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > > Wanting the Warclaw better in PvE is just that: a desire and no necessity.

> > This is a useless argument. I could name thousands of things that have been added to the game that weren't necessary. The game itself isn't a necessity. The whole point of adding things to the game is to make the game more enjoyable to a significant subset of players. If they can make that work for the Warclaw, go for it.

> >

>

> and I have given 2 very reasonable points as to why changing this is might be detrimental to the game or cause future complaints. As such, the way I see it, it is not in the games favor to buff the Warclaw for PvE.

>

> That is without even getting into any arguments about mount identity and not copy pasting similar abilities across mounts.

You'll have noticed I put a strong disclaimer in my previous post ("If they can make it work"). If the devs listened to the people who can't think of how things could work for the game, we wouldn't have mounts at all.

The only available in WvW issue is a non-starter for me. Stuff being restricted to specific modes has been a thing since launch. Why stop now? And indeed they haven't yet.