Guild Wars 2: Post-Release Discussion

[Guitarman]

I did the smart thing this time around and am just kind of sitting back for now waiting a few weeks to get into the game heavily. Let them iron out all the major issues and whatnot. I'm in no real rush to do anything. Saves myself alot of frustration.

[arus2001]

No point holding back, really. The times I have had the AH working for me, pretty much every piece of equipment was selling for NPC value, if not a bit higher. While this may change some as the game ages and the populations better spread out, the only thing you really "lose out" on is easily upping crafting levels. And with auto-capping, it's not uncommon to buy, say, a level 25 set of gear and have it last you into the mid-40s because you'd literally not been in a zone with level 40+ mobs. But if you're really OCD about updating, just check every five levels, keep an eye on shouts, ask a crafter to convert some mats you've farmed, or whatever.

Aside from a couple glitchy events, the AH is the only major "bug" I've experienced in my now-63 levels while basically being up to date on my personal quest line. I cleared all primary and secondary zones for each race, have been working on tertiary, and did Bloodtide Coast just because. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm level 80 before I step into a level 70 zone. I know it's only been a week, but I've been putting in 8-14 hour play times, so do the math on how much that could string you along if you follow a similar play style.

But far as my crafting goes, I'm stalled out because the zones I have been doing don't drop T4 materials and the AH hasn't been up for me the past couple days. Actually being able to make darksteel pieces would also give me level appropriate gear for a change, since the few I have done via salvaging drops put them in the level 60 range. And doing the set with Power/Precision/Magic Find would be gravy.

Though, I am unhappy with what I mentioned before in what seems like an anti-bot measure nerfing drops on mobs you kill repeatedly. It's not hard to miss, as "fresh" stuff will drop mats, equipment, and even vendor trash at a decent pace. But then even the vendor trash stops dropping and it's not uncommon to go 10+ kills without seeing such. Since the AH is down, I'd been trying to farm vials of blood to make an orange/karma armor set for skill/selling, but I need 90 bloods for the whole set and what maybe starts off at 1 drop per minute quickly veers toward 1 drop every 5. I've been trying to experiment a bit to see how this resets, if at all. Killing an alternate mob (type) alone doesn't do it. I'd tried just AFKing for a half hour to come back to no change. And tonight I'd farmed up 30 with doing nearby events maybe every 10 or so blood and it kinda seemed to reset for a few kills, but then it was back to slow. I'm just wondering if anyone else has actually experienced this or if I'm just imagining things to make myself feel better over bad luck.

[Rhyis.]

The amount of fine materials needed to craft is absolutely absurd and I hope they tone it down some.

[Kuya]

Have not started playing yet, but the pictures i've seen of boss monsters has me delighted. No more fighting oversized rabbits for me!

[Rhyis.]

There are however invincible angry chickens.

[Kuya]

Zelda throwback?

[Rhyis.]

That's what I took it as yeah. New invincible chickens even spawn to help his comrade and attack you.

[Lucavi]

To be honest, this has probably been one of the worst MMO launches in recent history - which is a damn shame since the game itself is so good. I guess a relatively small company could only do so much to prepare for the massive influx of people.

Not even close. TERA's was worse, Star Wars was worse, Rift's was worse. Those are the most "modern" moderm launches worth anything, and GW2 beats them all.

Overflow servers, multiple patches a day, swift action against hackers, scammers, cheaters, botters, ect. I couldn't ask for much more from a company dealing with not only 1 million players, but a shit-ton of hype drawn up for the game, which, in turn, attracts hackers like flies on cow shit baking in the sun.

[Prothescar]

not sure what you're on about. RIFT and TERA launched relatively flawlessly.

That aside, my only issue with this launch is that I haven't been capable of using the AH for more than 20 minutes.

[Gokulo]

TERA because there was no rush since basically everyone could play the game for ages before the release and lots got bored fast ;P

[bluefan]

TERA because there was no rush since basically everyone could play the game for ages before the release and lots got bored fast ;P

^

Like XIs launch, TERAs was well prepared.

[Meph]

you have to factor in the amount of players aswell. d3 had 3m peeps spamming the loginservers, gw2 1m, rift and tera maybe half of gw and ffxi even less.
its also unfair to compare gamelaunches 5-10 years ago since the numbers of gamers have multiplied since then

[Kiarax]

arus, bonus exp goes up the longer a mob has been alive (since spawn), I wouldn't be surprised if drop rate worked the same way.

There are however invincible angry chickens.

I killed one of those and got absolutely nothing for it, was a little disappointed. So I trained the rest around the town and MPK'd all the guards, chickens own.

As for the server launch issues, you have to keep in mind that Anet don't have the same kind of budget as shit like The Old Republic, and they got way more players than they ever imagined. Yeah, there's been a lot of issues, but all things considered they are handling things very well. None of the issues are game play hindering as is, so I'm pretty happy with what we've got.

[Kachiko]

Though, I am unhappy with what I mentioned before in what seems like an anti-bot measure nerfing drops on mobs you kill repeatedly. It's not hard to miss, as "fresh" stuff will drop mats, equipment, and even vendor trash at a decent pace. But then even the vendor trash stops dropping and it's not uncommon to go 10+ kills without seeing such. Since the AH is down, I'd been trying to farm vials of blood to make an orange/karma armor set for skill/selling, but I need 90 bloods for the whole set and what maybe starts off at 1 drop per minute quickly veers toward 1 drop every 5. I've been trying to experiment a bit to see how this resets, if at all. Killing an alternate mob (type) alone doesn't do it. I'd tried just AFKing for a half hour to come back to no change. And tonight I'd farmed up 30 with doing nearby events maybe every 10 or so blood and it kinda seemed to reset for a few kills, but then it was back to slow. I'm just wondering if anyone else has actually experienced this or if I'm just imagining things to make myself feel better over bad luck.

If it is there, it's recent. The second day, I went out and farmed Turquoise pebbles, nonstop, for a little while, which let me save my other pebbles to transmute up. I must have farmed 30 in about 1 hour; faster if the harpy event didn't de-spawn the elementals. Maybe doing an event does reset any drop algorithm.

[Katlan]

Since crafting is so important and requires so many mats, I would be really surprised if there was that sort of anti-botting measure by preventing ppl from getting drops after farming a certain type of mob. I know killing the same type of mob over and over again hurts xp... but I'd more toss it in to bad luck and RNG on drops

[Lucavi]

not sure what you're on about. RIFT and TERA launched relatively flawlessly.

That aside, my only issue with this launch is that I haven't been capable of using the AH for more than 20 minutes.

Rift had terrible, terrible queues when it launched. I don't view Hour+ long queues on some servers as a flawless launch, as much as I liked the game. I remember my guild leveling to around 40-ish, then deciding to roll to another server simply because we were sick of 75% of our members trying to log in after work and having to wait an hour and a half just to get in. God help you if you D/C, which was common during the initial launch.

I think you need to take another trip in your way-back machine.

TERA had no rush because of exactly what Gokulo had, but it doesn't mean the launch was smooth either.

On the topic of drops, I haven't noticed it since I spread my farming across multiple characters all on the same leveling spread. I suppose if I was using a single character and spending hours in the same area, I'd have the problem you're having. I suggest just leveling an alt on the side with a focus on farming instead of progression, unless you're farming for high level mats.

[niwaar]

That's not entirely true. Took my friends about 3 hours to get out of their respective tutorials because after they killed the boss it would reset the tutorial zone all over again because the real zone and all it's overflows were full. I was pretty lucky and got out fine, but it was a problem for a lot of people.

Neither of them were mad about it though since we've all played games at launch before, just pointing out there were in fact queues.

These were actually not queues and a bug in the party system. If you were grouped up, you wouldn't get credit for the final boss. Yes, I actually had the same issue with my elementalist. I fought that boss about 9 times until I listened to map chat and dropped group and immediately got out.

[Greedouw]

Been sitting in Magumma borderlands WvW queue for over an hour now... FUCK

[Rhyis.]

Maguuma players seem pretty huge into WvW. It's been a major pain in the ass to get in any of the maps for the past few days.

[Arximiro]

Does +healing add to the regen on healing signet or does it only apply to the actual cure?