Post Patch Redposts

There are some post patch red posts that I wanted quickly take the time to catch everyone up on. Some of these posts clarify how the most recent patch effected the game and others talk of the future. I like to round up all the red posts here every once in a while so you guys can avoid the forums and still get the news.

Two Team PvP Tournaments Cost Reduced

Tyler Bearce posted the following to the forums regarding the cost of the new paid tournaments,

In response to your feedback, we will be reducing the ticket costs for this week’s Paid Tournament event from 3 tickets to 1! In addition to the other tournament rewards, winners will receive 1 tournament ticket back. Thanks for your input. Hope to see you in game!

If you are looking to give structured tournaments a try this week seems like the perfect time with the cost reduction.

Combo Killer Daily Disabled

Colin Johanson had the following to say,

The combo killer has been removed from the weekly rotation, clearly not working as intended.

A lot of people were saying they had a problem with this, however, as I said in my previous post I had no issues what-so-ever. Actually, I had a lot of fun with this one. When I first saw it, I quickly started thinking of ways that I would be able to get combos. I got my first couple by dropping my Elementalist's Fire Ring around enemies that I saw other people attacking. This got me one or two, so I decided to start up a group to get it done. I had to explain to some people how to combo off my fire field, but most of them got it after a couple tries and the whole party was done in 15 minutes. I thought this was a great way to bring people together especially if they are just going after the achievement. Hopefully, they fix it up and bring it back.

Star Icon a Bug

If you are one of the people wondering what that star icon under your dailies achievement tracker in the top right of the HUD is, Tyler Bearce has an answer.

A number of people have asked what the star icon, underneath the new Daily Achievement UI, in the upper right corner is. The star is related to the week long paid PvP tournament change, but wasn’t supposed to be displayed. It will be fixed in the next patch.

Good to know. I thought it was going to have something to do with the new living story events and was waiting for stuff to appear here. Guess not!

Town Clothes Headgear Disappeared!

Perhaps you noticed your missing Town Clothes headgear? It's another bug introduced by the latest patch.

It would appear that the Hide / Unhide option accidentally went away for town clothing headgear in the latest build, so the setting is currently stuck at whatever you had set it to prior to the build. We’re now tracking the issue.

Living Story Clarifications

Last night I could not find any of the new events in Diessa Plateau and I was wondering where they were. Seems like the Living Story will be released in stages slowly seeping out across Tyria. Bobby Stein took to the forums to explain the particulars of this system.

The Flame and Frost story content progresses over time. You will not see everything today, tomorrow, or even the next day. 

Expect subtle changes at first. Maybe you’ll encounter some familiar characters. Perhaps you’ll be introduced to some new ones. You might see a new structure where there wasn't one before.

The Living Story content is initially about the thrill of discovery. We’ll put some markers on your map, maybe send you a letter, or parcel out details through certain characters, but the rest is up to you.  

As the weeks progress, you’ll notice bigger changes in the world. New events may appear. Plots will advance and characters will develop.

This makes sense! This is kind of what I thought the dynamic events would be like at launch. This is interesting and I am looking forward to getting back in game and exploring this story now that I understand how it will work.

And indeed when I logged in today I received a mail message telling me that the Heralds have arrived.

Mini Patches Continue

There have been a couple more mini patches since the big patch dropped on the 28th. Here are some of the highlights,

Changed all non-copper karma gathering tools to have a level restriction.

I was wondering how people were harvesting the Rich Orichalcum node in Southsun without being level 80. Now I know. This has got me thinking about how this will effect the long term price of Orichalcum. I may have to invest some gold into this as I know a lot of people were harvesting the rich node using low level alts. Now the rich node is gone as is the ability to farm Orichalcum with low level characters. There has already been one large spike, maybe there will be more.

Magnetic Grasp: This ability now immobilizes the target that it strikes. It is now a large Projectile finisher, and damage is now split between this ability and Magnetic Leap.  

New skill – Magnetic Leap (Earth Skill 3): Activate this ability to leap to an enemy that’s been struck by Magnetic Grasp.

Not much changed here. The skill was simply split from one spell that you cast then channelled for the leap, to now where they can in individually cast.

Fixed a bug that did not remove the Lava condition from players who died in the pools of lava at the final boss in the Volcano Fractal.

What was happening was people would get killed by falling into the lava, or getting knocked into it. When you enter the lava it deals damage to you by putting a debuff on you. Apparently this debuff wasn't going away, even after the whole party would wipe and reset. I read some horror stories on the forums. Good to know they were on top of this.

 Adjusted Orr Undead loot drops

Sigh... vague comment is vague!

WvW Rating Reset

Habib Loew popped on to the forums to provide details about a planned rating reset for WvW. They have some good reasons for doing so and it sounds like it may increase a lot of people's excitement for WvW.  Now servers will have to fight for the places in the rankings again. Here is what Habib had to say,

In the run up to the end of free world transfers we saw large population changes as people settled in to their home servers. This means that the WvW teams being fielded by many of the worlds are now dramatically different. In recognition of this fact, and in light of the increased population stability that comes with paid transfers, we feel that this would be a good time to reset the ratings of all the servers. A reset at this point will allow the rating & ranking system to more quickly and correctly rate these (effectively) new WvW teams.

So, the idea behind this is to quickly correct all the server ratings now that server populations have settled down and people can not jump ship. He goes on to explain that this weeks matches will continue to play out and the rankings at the end of the week will determine the preliminary rankings for the new server spread. On Friday, February 1st when the new matches start up the rankings will be set back to 0 and everyone will be on equal footing.

But wait, there is more! They are also going to change some of the math behind the scenes. Mike Ferguson came out and game some more details.

Over the last couple of months we've seen that when worlds experience dramatic changes in their ability to field a consistent fighting force for whatever reason, it can take quite a while for them to work their way through the ratings until they end up in a match that suits them better. In a lot of cases, some worlds took multiple matches to work their way through a single tier even after a series of blowouts. We really don't like that, so one of the goals for updating the math behind the ratings is to try and reduce how often we experience the repeated blowouts that can come from that sort of situation and get those teams through the rankings quicker.

We are promised that details of the math will come in the future, but for now we get an idea of what there plans are. The idea is to allow servers to get into the match ups that suit them best, faster. I know my server, Gates of Madness, had to suffer through a couple weeks where we did not stand a chance due to large population shifts. The idea seems solid, but we will have to wait to see.

Both posts contain more minor details. If you are looking for those follow the links to the posts above.

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I hope you found some of this interesting. I will try to get my first review of the Flame and Frost content up later today. For now I have to get in game and get my daily Laurel.