New Patch: Experiments in alternative progression

[kildorn]

I'm happy it's going away. I fear change and how exactly you obtain the new account boosts. So far the "salvage greens and blues for them" seems fine as long as it's not some 0.00001% chance thing.

[Sjofn]

I have confidence it's some horrible grind that will result in me not bothering. 

[Kageru]

I salvage blues and greens just to keep my inventory under control, so if it's a side effect of that then fine. If it means I never need to feel any temptation to carry and armor-find set around then fantastic.

That said I think A-net are realising that their market (the non raid progression players) actually quite like having some sort of grind to keep them busy. I'm pretty sure crafting to 500 will be part of that. Also the growth of "daily" resources like the current event reward.

[Fordel]

I am pretty much the worst about gathering, crafting and salvaging.

If it doesn't immediately get dumped into my crafting vault with that command from the inventory screen, it gets vendored. 

[Threash]

ATM it makes a lot more sense to vendor blues and greens than to salvage them so you are doing the right thing.

[EWSpider]

ATM it makes a lot more sense to vendor blues and greens than to salvage them so you are doing the right thing.

I don't often take the time to do this myself, but you can auction a lot of greens for increased profit as well.

[Sjofn]

Yeah I glance at the AH to see if the greens'll sell. Otherwise I crush pretty much everything, because I like crafting, because I am weird.

Speaking of the AH, though, I still can't fucking believe I can't sort my armor searches by type. 

[EWSpider]

Yeah I glance at the AH to see if the greens'll sell. Otherwise I crush pretty much everything, because I like crafting, because I am weird.

Speaking of the AH, though, I still can't fucking believe I can't sort my armor searches by type. 

This boggles my mind as well.  If I'm looking for Medium Armor I don't even want to see fucking Light or Heavy armor.

[Zetor]

Yeah, salvaging can be annoying. It's not unlike GW1 in a few ways (only in GW1 you had to identify every level 20+ junk-quality item drop before vendoring them to maximize profit, which was kind of stupid).

My rules of thumb are basically
- salvage item, white item: salvage with the cheapest kit
- blue/green item: vendor
- yellow level 68+ item: if it's a weapon, check the AH price; if above ~20-25s, AH it, otherwise salvage with the master kit (the yellow one)
- yellow level 80 staff: store in my bank to eventually toss in the mystic toilet for a chance at a precursor  
- orange level 68-79 item: check the sigil/rune; if it's worth more than 1g, salvage with black lion kit, otherwise salvage with master kit
- orange level 80 item: if no alts need it, check if it's worth 2g+ on the AH and/or if the sigil/rune in it is worth just as much; sell on AH or salvage with BL/master kit as appropriate

[Sjofn]

This boggles my mind as well.  If I'm looking for Medium Armor I don't even want to see fucking Light or Heavy armor.

Exactly! How shitty is your AH UI if I find myself pining for SWTOR's shitty GTN?!

[Kageru]

It feels a bit like Arena-net are pretty oblivious and slow on the uptake. No LFG, the AH and the idea of one off world events all should have been blatantly obvious as flaws the moment they were put down on a design spec.

[Fordel]

Well Anet's always been in their own world with GuildWars and it's success. I am not terribly surprised at some of their missteps.

[Yegolev]

I went to the airship but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing.  I know I haven't played in several months but I don't have any of these currencies.

[Tmon]

Aussie latancy + a hatred of jumping puzzles - for the first time in 3 months I played for 40 min and logged out totally dissatisfied with the game.

Why the hell did they gate the area behind a jumping puzzle ffs.

I can't figure out the love of jumping puzzles in this game.  I suspect it's a plot to ensure that I personally will never finish any of the content they have created since even map completion has a few of the damn things.

[Setanta]

Aussie latancy + a hatred of jumping puzzles - for the first time in 3 months I played for 40 min and logged out totally dissatisfied with the game.

Why the hell did they gate the area behind a jumping puzzle ffs.

I can't figure out the love of jumping puzzles in this game.  I suspect it's a plot to ensure that I personally will never finish any of the content they have created since even map completion has a few of the damn things.

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/

Good walk-throughs there

[Kageru]

I went to the airship but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing.  I know I haven't played in several months but I don't have any of these currencies.

They're getting better about sign-posting things, but a long way to go.

Dulfy.net seems to be popular and pretty detailed for seeing what is behind the facade.

They do need to make it visible when the event ends though so people can see if they're going to have time to finish the achievements. And while I hate it I can't deny the power of the timed event. The pressure that if I don't participate I won't get the.... thing, even though I know and hope the thing won't have dramatic gameplay consequences.

That said their world building is still spectacular. This event made me find some hidden jumping puzzles I'd missed entirely and they're lovingly crafted.

I can't figure out the love of jumping puzzles in this game.  I suspect it's a plot to ensure that I personally will never finish any of the content they have created since even map completion has a few of the damn things.

I liked the "overcompensating for no jumping in GW1" line. But in reality I think they're trying to work out how exploration content can still be challenging and this was one of their answers.

[Ingmar]

Enough crazy misguided people seem to like it that Wildstar is putting them in, too.

[Tmon]

Walk throughs of jumping puzzles are useless to me, I seem to lack the manual dexterity to complete them.  I suppose I could eventually learn to do them but if I had an desire to do that I probably wouldn't have ignored every platform game since the release of coin op Donkey Kong.

[Setanta]

Walk throughs of jumping puzzles are useless to me, I seem to lack the manual dexterity to complete them. 

I thought this too, when fractal running I'm always last when it comes to jumping parts - I'm either getting old or my habd-eye coordination is shot. Then I decided I want map completion on at least one character and started doing the red triangle vistas. That set me up for doing jumping puzzles and while I'm still really dysfunctional with jumping, I get a real kick out of achieving some thing I didn't think I could do. My explorer is a Norn, I did get a vanity pack and shrank her as small as I could to fix the camera angles a bit. If I were to do it again, human/sylvari would be my choice as the camera feels right for them.

What made it for me was having an army of alts - when I got tired of a jumping puzzle on my main I'd log and play an alt for a bit and then go back to the half-completed puzzle.

The effort that went into the maps is amazing

[Sjofn]

Walk throughs of jumping puzzles are useless to me, I seem to lack the manual dexterity to complete them.  I suppose I could eventually learn to do them but if I had an desire to do that I probably wouldn't have ignored every platform game since the release of coin op Donkey Kong.

Preach it!

[proudft]

That south Dredgehaunt Cliffs puzzle is like 10x harder than any of the others, I dunno what its problem is.  It should just lead to a fancychest instead of being part of the 100%.  I am normally ok at the jumping, but that one seriously took like an hour.  The one inside the mountain there looks harder than it really is, there are parts of it you can skip by jumping down to other paths and whatnot but that stupid scaffold is just nuts.

[Ingmar]

Yeah the scaffold was the hardest of the 100% ones I think, although there was a fairly annoying one in WvW too IIRC.

[Lantyssa]

Dredgehaunt took me a long time early in the game, but now I can run it in five minutes.  It's not that I've memorized it so much as I've learned what to look for when it comes to jumpable locations.

[Fordel]

Yeah the scaffold was the hardest of the 100% ones I think, although there was a fairly annoying one in WvW too IIRC.

The scaffold was hard because as a norn the camera just decides to reside inside your asshole 90% of the time while on the scaffolding.

[Zetor]

Yeah the scaffold was the hardest of the 100% ones I think, although there was a fairly annoying one in WvW too IIRC.

If you mean the one in EB (southwestern keep I think), then yeah. In general, precision jumps along thin beams can be frustrating... thankfully, since it's wvw, there's almost always a mesmer around porting people to the top. My personal #2 after that was the vizier's tower (I think?) in Orr, but that's just because whoever designed the vista was a huge asshole when it came to false leads and ledges that LOOK like they're part of the jumping puzzle, but are not 

[Yegolev]

This discussion is funny to me because jumping is a horrible gate to this group in the same way that working in groups to defeat bosses is a gate to me.

[Ingmar]

Yeah the scaffold was the hardest of the 100% ones I think, although there was a fairly annoying one in WvW too IIRC.

If you mean the one in EB (southwestern keep I think), then yeah. In general, precision jumps along thin beams can be frustrating... thankfully, since it's wvw, there's almost always a mesmer around porting people to the top. My personal #2 after that was the vizier's tower (I think?) in Orr, but that's just because whoever designed the vista was a huge asshole when it came to false leads and ledges that LOOK like they're part of the jumping puzzle, but are not  

Yeah, southwest keep in EB, that's the one. I did it maybe a month after release? Definitely no mesmers around at the time. In fact to this point in game I've never seen a mesmer portal (but I don't play very often anymore.)

This discussion is funny to me because jumping is a horrible gate to this group in the same way that working in groups to defeat bosses is a gate to me.

That's a gate to me in this game as well, but really only because group PVE is so awful in this game. 

[kildorn]

Stop whining and come RVR with us. :P

edit: down side for me right now is that while I'm really into RVR again.. my computer is not, and keeps locking up or rebooting randomly. Stupid thing.

[Fordel]

Mesmer portals are always a surprise! Free loot bags or instant death, you never know till you jump in! 

[kildorn]

I've kind of fallen in love with defensive use of portal entre. Even if I don't have a target to portal bomb, it lasts 60 seconds, and the entire duration counts as a Glamour field for purposes of blind and confuse spam.

I had a lot of fun on the keep walls with that. But beyond glamour spam and portals.. kind of meh on my mesmer's ability to directly engage in combat. Great at fucking with clumps of people who stay in one spot, but less so at engaging in any form of mobile fight.

[Nija]

Man, how long have you been RVRing? I went back out the other day and it was the same exact shit it was the first month.

I played the first 6 week and have about 24,000 WvW kills and it hasn't changed a bit! Also I noticed some shit about reaching realm rank 2? They didn't look at existing history and bump people up to the correct level?!

Shameful. That's something SOE would do. They really need to get with it.

They made a huge mistake by concentrating on the SPVP bullshit instead of WvW.

[Threash]

Man, how long have you been RVRing? I went back out the other day and it was the same exact shit it was the first month.

I played the first 6 week and have about 24,000 WvW kills and it hasn't changed a bit! Also I noticed some shit about reaching realm rank 2? They didn't look at existing history and bump people up to the correct level?!

Shameful. That's something SOE would do. They really need to get with it.

They made a huge mistake by concentrating on the SPVP bullshit instead of WvW.

They made the mistake of thinking world pvp meant "neverending AV".  They completely missed the point of what world pvp people want, there really is no fixing it now.

[Ingmar]

Man, how long have you been RVRing? I went back out the other day and it was the same exact shit it was the first month.

I played the first 6 week and have about 24,000 WvW kills and it hasn't changed a bit! Also I noticed some shit about reaching realm rank 2? They didn't look at existing history and bump people up to the correct level?!

Shameful. That's something SOE would do. They really need to get with it.

They made a huge mistake by concentrating on the SPVP bullshit instead of WvW.

They made the mistake of thinking world pvp meant "neverending AV".  They completely missed the point of what world pvp people want, there really is no fixing it now.

They didn't make that mistake - at least not in the way you think. They made DAOC RVR, and it's enjoyable in the same way that DAOC RVR was. It isn't world PVP, and people who wanted world PVP wouldn't be happy with it, but I don't think they set out to make world PVP in the first place.

[Threash]

I wasn't a big fan of DaoC but i think realm pvp was the point of the game, not something that thrown in that had no impact at all on the rest of the game just so they could check "world pvp" of a list.

[Ingmar]

I wasn't a big fan of DaoC but i think realm pvp was the point of the game, not something that thrown in that had no impact at all on the rest of the game just so they could check "world pvp" of a list.

I really don't think WvW is just something being checked off a list. The zones are well-designed for the most part, lots of people are participating, at least on the servers in the top half of the list, and it's generating the exact same kind of forum drama and lulz that DAOC RVR did. For me I'd *much* rather have this than any other style of world PVP.