Killerassel.2197

I agree, DRMs are a really great concept. I was very happy when I read that instead of a strike mission there will be new repeatable instanced content that can be soloed. So yes, please, Anet, make more DRMs. In IBS, EoD and beyond. Well, possibly under a new name, for missions not about immediate dragon minion attacks, but with the same tech and concept. And before someone jumps on me: CAN be soloed does not mean must be soloed. Existing groups, e.g. guilds or fractal statics, can do them together. And with the optional CMs you can even tune the difficulty level a bit to your liking.

On paper strike missions sound nice too. But just look at one of the existing threads about strikes, LFG and LI requirements. No need to reiterate all that here, but I, personally, think they have failed their goal and are not content I can enjoy or even participate in on a regular basis. And I know I am not alone. For DRMs I don't need to deal with that.

I still think some story steps belong into classic, old-style story instances. But for story steps where it fits DRMs are great. Unlike story instances they are easily accessible without restarting the episode and they give some reward for replaying them.

Could the reward be better? Sure. Is the reward terrible? I don't think so. In addition to the episode currency and prismaticite I get the drops from the mobs and the end chest. Probably not as much as I could get from farming e.g. RIBA, but also less boring that c

I think some of the existing DRMs need to be tuned a bit better and some fixes here and there. But this is independent of DRMs as a concept.

I agree with the general sentiment of OP's post, but I disagree in some details.

Yes, the allies are mostly useless. With the CM for normal mobs I have seen them dead before the escort event even started, too. Even if not, they die one-hit at the first trash mob. For non-CM the Seraph Watchknights are quite strong and can hold positions on their own, especially in Gendarran Fields and Lake Doric. During escort events they push mobs out of my attacks, though, which is highly annoying.

I think it is a bug, that Kasmeer doesn't help. In Metrica I need to pull the boss a few steps into Braham and Taimi's range, but that is not a big problem. In Gendarran I just ignore the NPCs, run ahead and leave them with their mobs. And in the other instances the story NPCs at the very least tank some trash mobs for me.

The scaling for the first three instances has been fixed with the chapter two patch. Before I could activate the timer and the stronger boss and get my 2/3 gold chest solo. Harder trash mobs were near impossible to kill and dealt way to much damage. Post patch I can quickly kill them before they are a problem. For the four new instances I have a similar experience. Scaling would be OK. But I don't see how I should be able to do them within their time limit, though.

I think it is ok, that CMs are not available in public instances. If they could be activated I can imagine players disagreeing whether they should be enabled and/or use them for grieving. They still could in private groups, but that's what block lists are for. ;)

About the achievement list: Top Dragon Responder: Metrica, Gandarran Fields and Brisban: no longer impossible solo. I know, because I did. Without a fancy super special DRM build. The other four: I don't see how they are possible, but I have not given up yet. Shooting Star and Killer Waves were easy, I did them in my first CM try. For No More Sacrifices I needed to adapt to have more CC, but still easy on second try. (The EMP from Drizzlewood is a common tip, I just changed one skill and used other weapons.) I wouldn't call the weapon collections "impossible", but I agree that throwing hundreds if not thousands of gold at them is not an option.

According to your screenshots you play as engineer. I don't play one, so I cannot give you tips for that specifically. I play DRMs with my thief on an open world build with berserker's gear. The trait Invigorating Precision (crits heal me) is great for this type of content. I play the pre-events with Daredevil and staff. Staff 5 is great AoE damage against the many small destroyers. It also works well for the Metrica boss. For the Brisban boss I switch from Daredevil to Deadeye and use a rifle. The side where the destroyer comes from is higher, so when I stand, or rather: kneel, there the shock waves pass below me through the terrain. I can completely ignore them. Rifle 2 pierces and takes care of the adds and CC. The boss hardly ever runs to me, and even if it quickly jumps back to the bridge. For the rifts phase I switch to melee weapons and then back to rifle when the boss reappears. This fight is almost boring even with CM. Similar with Gendarran Fields. I stay out of range of the tornados, the damage from the fire balls is easily healed by the trait. In the phases when the boss disappears I use mounts to go on higher ground, starting with the tent next to the arena. You only need to kill the rifts, not the mobs around them. The mobs can't reach you up there, so they don't attack back.

I'm pretty sure there are other classes and other builds that can beat these CMs solo, with a similar or different strategy.

For the four new CMs I haven't found a solution, yet. I can kill all the trash mobs and bosses with my thief, even with CMs, but not (yet?) within the time limit. If I don't find a way, I won't get this meta achievement either. But it wouldn't be the first. For me IBS means mostly unreachable meta achievements anyway. :(

Either this is not fixed in private instances with group size 1, i.e. solo, or the CMs need to clarify that they are intended for a larger group.

I did Metrica yesterday. I could only finish 2 of the pre events and had only the boss CM activated. The timer after beating the boss showed 52 minutes. This was with my thief with an open world build, esp. the heal on crit trait. Full zerker gear. Sure, with a pure DPS (raid?) build I should be able to lower that time somewhat. On the other hand I can solo Steel Forge (without CMs) in under 50 minutes with the same build. And that is not even supposed to be done solo! At least the DRMs are advertised as 1-5, the strike missions are not. Let me repeat: The whole 10 player Strike Mission is LESS of a sponge than that 1 player instance boss. And more interesting. The only real challenge of the DRM boss is to not fall asleep.

One release later and the button to mess my inventory up is still there. :( After there was a lot of discussion about this change I had hoped they would put an option in. I really hope we don't need to wait a few years again until a streamer clicks it in a live stream accidentally.

Still no official response. I just hope it doesn't again take years of waiting and a mishap in a live stream to get this fixed... :fearful:

> I consider this whole "controversy" nothing more than people showing the pettiest sort of thing they'll whine about.

Then you must be one of the players who use an inventory layout that is compatible with the compact function. Consider yourself lucky. For us players who use a different layout accidentally clicking this buttons costs a few minutes of restoring order in the inventory. Literally.

I picked a layout early on where bag 1 is my inbox, bag 2 is an invisible one for quick access and protection (think: buff food, unid gear) and below that generic stuff and less often used items that I hoard. Compacting this means, that I have to move almost every item in my inventory back to the place where I want it. Where I can FIND it when needed. At the very least the items that I use regularly.

Moving the compact option to the bottom of the menu was a very welcome change. This newest patch not only reverts it but makes it even easier to accidentally click.

> @"Pockethole.5031" said:

> **Invisible bags remove your fear of compacting your bag, use invisible bags people**

No, this is not a solution. It may help, but to completely prevent the button to mess up my inventory I'd need to replace all bags with invisible ones. But that would cause even more problems, because I then could no longer use salvage all, deposit all materials or quickly sell junk. Not even counting the costs for all the new bags.

And while I really hate the new mess-inventory-up button that is so dangerously close, on the other hand when it's gone I'm going to love the new deposit materials button. Sure, I'm going to open the menu for some time out of habit. But having it out in the open, quickly and easily accessible with just only one click _IS_ a huge QoL improvement for me. Especially in certain situations, but also, once gotten used to it, overall.

Until the second button is gone, though, I'm anxious to click anywhere near it. Yesterday I even started to deposit materials one by one...

What irony. A few years ago the two options to clean up inventory and to bring total chaos to inventory were separated further apart in the menu. I think that change came shortly after a streamer had misclicked in a live stream. And now you add this as buttons right next to each other, again super easy to hit the wrong option? What a great idea... not.

> Second he killed ( he didnt hit the last below i know ) General Soulkeeper

To me it makes all the difference, that he _refused_ to deal the killing blow. He jumped into the fight to defend his imperator. He didn't have much choice at that point. But when it came to it he did not follow Bangar's order to execute Almorra. And then he buried her with dignity. I can't blame him for her death. I agree, though, that while we players know these details, the general charr population will not and may think differently.

> In Bangar's Dominion, there are no gladia

Good catch. I didn't see that line. This is why VO is so important... ^^'

> but I think that for Rytlock and Crecia it is better to know that their son is alive

Maybe. Most human parents, sure. But Charr are a bit different. I have even heard speculation that Rytlock himself will kill Ryland to stop him. And it would fit - in the Vigil personal story line Almorra sends you to kill Ajax, the renegade leader, even though he is her cub.

What Felipe has written reminds me about Darth Vader. ? Different universe, but there are a lot of similarities. Followed an evil imperator and committed many sins while doing so. I wouldn't wonder right now if Ryland was going to have a similar moment than the end of Star Wars VI. Last minute redemption, but then dies anyway.

I know I'm late to the party. I haven't read the whole thread, but the part I am interested in is how skins and dyes will be handled.

Do I have to use the same skin and dyes for all characters or can I assign them individually? Could I, e.g., dye my necromancer's armor green and my elementalist's red? Could my guardian wear the default legy skins and my warrior cultural armor? And if so, I assume this would only cost transmutation charges to set up initially, not per switch, right?

Bonus points if I can assign colors and skins per template tab. This would not only allow me to see at first glance if I'm wearing my heal/support or my damage gear but also allow more variety.

I used armor as example, because it has dyes and race limitations. But using different skins per char could be interesting for weapons, too.

I'm sure someone has already suggested this. But I'm hoping for one of the "updates [...] in the coming months" to address this and many other questions.

Ryland's Steel warband is killed during the map meta and story instances. That should make him a gladium, right? Or does his high rank somehow protect him and at least allows him to immediately recruit new members and rebuild the warband? Is there any canon material about such a situation?

So, assuming he is a gladium, how does his future look?

On the one side there's Bangar. He has already displayed with General Soulkeeper, that he is willing to ignore the gladium status if it suits him. He may do the same to Ryland - or treat him accordingly, maybe even just outright kill or ban him for "being such a failure".

But I'm more interested in the legions. With Smodur's kitten move, I think Ryland has nothing to return to. Even if he was willing to defect from the frost legion and even if the Charr were forgiving him for being in league with Bangar in the first place, he would still be an outcast. This can't look like an option to him.

Thus I think he can't be rescued any more and that he will not survive Ice Brood Saga.

Just to mention them: The Olmakhan let Rox, also a gladium, join. They could become a new home for him, too, but I don't think he would fit in well.

There are a few things bothering me lately. In no particular order:

Please add a sink for hatched chilis. And with that I mean a sink for the chilis, not a gold or karma sink that happens to take a few chilis with it. Something that only or at least mostly costs chilis. The result should either be actually usable or at least feel better than just throwing them away. LS3 and LS4 currencies were good, because they could be consumed to give their respective season's magic. Since IBS doesn't have a season currency like that maybe allow consuming its currencies for a bit of karma? Doesn't need to be much, especially not to make it worth farming. I'd just like to have a better option than to just delete them.

There should be in-game hints, no, an actual guide, that tells me where I can get which items. In both ways. If I see a rare item, especially in a collection, I'd like to know where I can get it from. The wiki usually has this information and fills this gap if the collection doesn't provide a hint itself. But more important is the opposite question, where the wiki sometimes doesn't have the answer either: why should I do certain content? There are a lot of events and other activities that have a chance of getting a super rare item, that I probably don't even know about. And if I put in some effort a few times and only get the proverbial 2 blues and a green I wonder why I should do this. Especially if it is difficult or takes a while. Well, because there is a 0.1% chance to get something worthwile. But how am I supposed to know that if I don't stumble upon it in the wiki or similar external source?

And the usual: big rework of the LFG tool. There is enough discussion of "don't ask for LI for easy content" vs. "my group, my rules" elsewhere. I don't have a good idea for a solution either. But most of the time when I open the LFG tool and see the entries, I quickly lose interest in doing content with random groups. The other big problem is full maps. I haven't even tested with the new map. My experience with pretty much all previous content was that 95+% of the advertised groups were on maps that I could not join. And relying on these commanders to voluntary remove their pointless listing is obviously not working.

Last but not least, especially with the EU server problems at the end of SAB in mind: the weekly festival vendor should stay after the end of the festival. While I'd personally like to be able to spend tokens year round, all I'm asking for here is that the vendor should be available for a few more days. I think GW1 did this already. A good and simple to understand rule would be until their next weekly reset. This would take the pressure to buy within the limited window between reset (monday morning?) and end of the festival (tuesday evening). Having to shut down the servers for most of that time should be an extremely rare event, sure, but it would give all players more freedom to chose when to visit the vendor in the last week.

I like the format so I'll add my thoughts here. :)

I need to write down what frustrates me about the current episode. I hope this helps both myself to calm down and get over it as well as Anet to return to producing great content.

**The Good**

I could buy the home instance node and harvest it from the first day. I cannot remember when that was last possible. I am aware that there are still bugs around it. But since I wasn't affected personally, I still count this as a "good". :)

I also like that the map currency is actually a currency, not a material. I can store unlimited amounts of it. Thus it will not share the fate of Grothmar's chilis where it actually upsets me every time I get a few and have to delete them.

**The Bad**

Very early on I got one impression of the episode: its main purpose is to sell bag slots and/or bank tabs. And not in a good way, where I feel I need to store my many good rewards. No, in a very bad way like F2P games that create problems and timegates just to sell the "solutions".

While there were earlier episodes that pressured my inventory space, this episode takes the cake. By far. Sure, it may be a personal problem that I keep on to everything and my bags are almost full by default. But I know I am not the only player like this. In addition to the usual junk the map threw a lot of semiuseful stuff like the siege weapons at me. Somewhat useful, so I cannot simply throw them away, but also not so useful that I would be happy to have them. And why do I have to click to open these map currency containers all the time? The hotfix that made extras of the special mission unlocks non-consumable and practically unsellable on the TP didn't help either in this regard.

The map also features the return of ingots dropping from chests from the previous map. I stopped opening chests in Bjora Marches for that reason alone. While some might find that nice, my storage space for ingots is full. I keep some space for ore, so I can mine anywhere, but not currently for ingots. Maybe I need to change that and adapt, but still...

Then there are two new weapon sets. I appreciate that we get more skins for playing the game. But while they are well made, they don't fit my (characters') style. Yet still, the meta achievement requires(!) me to craft them. And since one of the sets is upgradable - thanks for the warning this time - I would need to store them. Which brings me back to the "Buy! more! bank! slots!" feel all over the episode.

In Discord someone pointed out that players were complaining about lack of rewards and that I'm now complaining about getting too many rewards. Well, that's another point. Getting the permission to spend a ton of gold and/or farm unrelated content for materials, in the shape of a recipe, doesn't feel like a reward. At least the new recipes aren't as terrible in this respect as the Boreal weapons. But I still perceive them as a useless gold sink, not as a reward. Especially since they are part of the meta achievement, not craft-if-you-like-it.

Also Drizzlewood Coast brings back a "fun" mechanic from Bloodstone Fen: snipers outside of the rendering distance that shoot me mid-air. Unlike back then they don't insta-kill me, the griffon can take two or three hits and has a chance to dodge. But no, that's still no fun, engaging gameplay. Neither is it when I did something on the ground and cannot mount up because some stupid mob at the other end of the map keeps shooting at me.

And please don't just look at the statistics to evaluate the episode's success. Sure, there will be players who are the opposite of me, always have lots of empty inventory space and enjoy the ~~hectic~~ fast paced champ tours after the meta event. They will farm it - a lot - and love it. Others will stay for quite some time on the map just to **grind** the achievements. That they play the map and the strike mission for the next two months doesn't mean that they like the map or that it was particualary good. That just means that you have raised the bar for how grindy an episode can get. I'm not yet sure if I keep playing the map or give up on it and its achievements and "rewards" early. Right now I'm not even sure if I can ever reach the meta achievement. So why bother...

**The Ugly**

I understand why this episode has no VO. And as much as I try not to count it against it, I think the usually great VO would have improved the overall impression of the release and put me in a better mood while playing it. The silence just is a bit depressing.

Like with Grothmar Valley, the WvW reward track for this episode feels more rewarding and more productive regarding PvE rewards than playing PvE. I play some WvW anyway, so I like getting a great reward track, but it still feels quite odd. With Grothmar it was abysmal drop rates for some of the items. With Drizzlewood I'm not sure if it is bad drop rates again or if I just haven't found out how to obtain some of the items in PvE yet.

I also haven't found a useful sink for the map currency. Since it doesn't clutter inventory space I don't really mind and hope/save for the next episode. But this still feels a bit strange.

I mostly used my home instance kitchen for preparing the ascended seeds. But as an asura main I'm definetely very happy to now have a vendor in my home instance. :)

I had noticed him earlier, but stumbled about activating the portal only today.

I have checked if his dialog in the Fields of Ruin had changed, but no. Also setting the stabilizer to IX VII still won't activate a destination.

But I noticed something else. Might be pure coincidence, but it might also be a hint.

Auris Weird**bringer**. In the episode we met Bangor Ruin**bringer**. I wonder if they are from the same warband. Also funny thing is, that Weirdbringer has been teleported into the Fields of **Ruin**... ;) That is either a happy coincidence, a writer having fun or some subtle foreshadowing.

I have an alternative idea, though not a concrete idea for a mob or location. Plague signet implies necromancer. Instead of pulling conditions from allies, you could also instead put a lot of crippled on a foe and throw dagger 4 into a reflect. Not as easy to pull off, because you need an enemy that reflects and that you can kill without killing yourself. But maybe it helps... :)

I disagree.

Sure, I'm definetely not *the* representative of the community. But the players already have the option to leave for greener fields, even if they are not on a [DE] server. Yet, DE servers are still mostly full or highly populated.

There are players and guilds who want to play at top tier and doing whatever they can to get there. I'm fine with that. But while top guilds are important they are not *the* representative of the community either.

But I'm not a competitive player. I'd rather win a T5 matchup then get smashed to pulp in T1. Hint: the amount of loot does not scale with the tier your server is in.

And again: population wise I do not see a problem. Top guilds may be missing, but I don't see a half full non-international server coming in the near future*. Fewer, probably. But they are going to be as big as international ones. Maybe not capable of raising to and playing in the top tier without those pro guilds. But not everyone wants to anyway. It takes a certain play style and discipline to play top tier. This is not everyone's cup of tea.

(*): with the possible exception of Spanish players. There is currently only one [sP] server and if that one loses players to international servers their community might suffer.

I'm not seeing everything I had completed either.

In an effort to check if this is my code's fault and if I maybe didn't fetch all required information, I tried to read the quests paginated. With 445 of them it is dangerously close to the 500 item page limit when fetching with ids=all. It turns out they are not paginated. (Which broke my code when I tried this, but that really was my fault.)

I suggest making quests?ids=all paginated, because otherwise in a few episodes problems might occur.

> @"Rasimir.6239" said:

> Additionally there's a poi in each WvW objective that you can link into chat via shift+leftclick that will display in each player's client language rather than the language of the poster, so linking objectives is an easy way to avoid confusion.

Sure. That'll help announce incoming attacks. But if someone posted "garri 10 inc" in chat I'd be searching the map until it is too late. ^^'

But yes, learning the new names will only take little time. I just disagreed with the notion that map chat shorthand would already be universally understandable. Especially shorthand.

> > Note: I'm not looking as this change as a temporary test. We'll survive that. But I am very afraid that this is a test run for world restructuring without language separation.

> It is, they said as much in their post, and watching the linking and performance of the different language servers on EU, I'm afraid it really is necessary to balance out the language groups. So far nobody knows what influence mixing will ultimately have on server/alliance performance, and personally I prefer them giving it an 8-week test run instead of just coming up with a theoretical "solution" that we'd be stuck with no matter if it practically worked out or not.

Well, the blog post said:

> This will help us create fairer links and **gather data on the impact of grouping together players who speak different languages**.

Gathering more information about more equally sized links: great. Temporary inconvenience by ignoring the server language for one or more linking periods: ok, if it helps. But the highlighted part worries me that this is supposed to be permanent. And that the part about world restructuring respecting the selected language might be dropped.

> **please-put-my-guild-on-the-loosing-server-cause-we-want-to-be-kitten** checkbox

I disagree. After world restructuring / alliance system all worlds will be nearly the same size. We are probably going to have fewer [DE] and [FR] worlds, but those worlds *will* have a comparable size to the international ones. I, personally, have chosen to play on a server of my mother tongue when I created my GW2 account and don't see why I should change that.

> "Blue Home: 5 reds @ WT, 1 cata" should be understandable by almost everyone

/me goes looking for a dictionary.

Blue home, reds and cata yes, sure. I need to guess what WT means. West tower, the tower west of spawn on the home lands? But I couldn't even announce an attack on MF (Mittelfeste, central keep? Earth on red borderlands...) because I don't know international server lingo for that. Sure I'll know them after a few days or at most weeks, but it is *not* immediately understandable by everyone.

> What, is it too hard to speak not native one or just shameful using any other language?

I can only speak for myself, but for me it is wearying (not sure if correct word) to use a foreign language. After a hard, annoying work day I'm not sure if I have the energy. Reading and studio quality audio (e.g. voice in story) are fine. Writing is ok. Listening to many people speaking English at the same time, probably with bad mic quality and accents - and that is what I expect for a public WvW TS (or Discord or whatever) - will be too much for me. The choice between headache and PvE is clear.

For guilds probably not much will change. They stick together in their own TS or channel anyway. But for publics this could become very annoying.

Oh, and not to forget: most players speak English as first or second language. But there are players who don't. They will be mostly locked out from WvW, if they are not in a guild.

Note: I'm not looking as this change as a temporary test. We'll survive that. But I am very afraid that this is a test run for world restructuring without language separation.

I wonder how this is helping to prepare the alliance system. When the alliance system was presented it was announced that the new worlds would honor the language preference of the alliance, guild or individual player (depending on whether you have an alliance or guild).

If this is now moot, you might as well drop non-english language support all together. If I cannot reliably talk German in PvE map chat nor WvW map chat, it makes it actually more difficult to always see German labels for PoIs, waypoints and now towers, keeps etc. When I get joined with an international or FR/ES server I'm probably finally going to switch my client to English.

PS: apparently there is supposed to be an official thread. There is a link in the blog post, but I get an permission error.

This bug not only affects the new raid. The platform for the Golem Mark II world boss fight has an invisible thing blocking AoE targeting as well. I've sent an in game report with a screen shot marking the position for that.

Not just items, achievement categories are broken as well:

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/achievements/categories/145?lang=en

>{

> "id": 145,

> "name": "Daily Ember Bay",

> "description": "",

> "order": 24,

> "icon": "https://render.guildwars2.com/file/FF6CE1381E924D445715A0A4D0085EE1A8F92F25/1494333.png",

> "achievements": []

>}

Retrieving the achievements that should be there is unreliable, some resolve some don't.

For the record: the API itself seems to be running fine. The rendering service, i.e. icons for items and skills, throws errors. And it didn't just start to do that today.

It would help if the other sites cached the icons locally and would not entirely depend on them to convey information.

I have the same problem since a few days. Some icons show, some don't.

Another example that doesn't work: https://render.guildwars2.com/file/FF6CE1381E924D445715AD0085EE1A8F92F25/1494333.png. I get the same response as Steelskin: HTTP 500, error:48.

I get consistently get errors in both my app and curl. I could for a while get the image in my browser. I'm sure it wasn't locally cached, but after shift-reloading I also only get the error.

Interestingly in my other browser profile I get a different error:

`{"error":10,"product":0,"module":2,"line":75,"text":"invalid signature"}`

I wanted to give an example of a working icon (achievement category 97 - dailies), but while trying to figure out its URL it broke, too.