ThiaTheMuse

Abstract Programming Interface

or Application Program Interface

https://en.wikipedia...mming_interface

Basically, you've written software that does something, and you want people to be able to call your code and use it, so you provide a way for them to interface with it.  Largely, on the Internet, it's used for accessing someone else's data (like Twitter has an API that lets you access and manipulate tweets), but in other cases, it can be used if someone's written something that can do some complex calculations.

In that context, it keeps people from spending extra time re-writing things someone else has already done, saving on levels of effort.

With this API, I could, in theory, create a web page for my server that knows about all the events happening, where, and when.  I keep asking ArenaNet for the information and update the web-page automagically so anytime someone visits it, they know instantly what events are happening at that moment.

Must be said, I find the video to be fairly amusing given the highly visible contradiction between what the video shows and the supposed highly lauded PvE feature – both by players and Arenanet itself – of shared communal goals. Maybe it is just me, but it says something about the state of the game playerbase where deliberately pushing an event to completion – a natural state within the rule structure of GW2 – could be deemed as ‘harassing’ farmers leading to verbal abuse.

Feathermoore, on 10 May 2013 - 02:04 PM, said:

How can completing an event the way it was intended be considered as harrassment?

Whether he enjoyed ruining farmers who abuse players for trying to complete content is beside the point. He did nothing wrong. he did not "act for Anet", he played some content and completed it.

ThiaTheMuse, on 23 April 2013 - 02:54 AM, said:

Why would anyone want to watch anyone play any kind of game? I don't get it, but it's big business for the media industry.

If you want to make dungeons more popular then quit making the tokens acct bound.  Then people could do their favorite dungeon over and over knowing that besides the drops (which are kinda pitiful) they'd at least get tokens that they could sell on the TP for gold.  I mean after I got a few weapons I wanted from a dungeon I stopped doing it as there was very little profit in it.  If I could sell tokens then it would mean guaranteed income based on the going token price on the TP.  Anet has gone way over board in my opinion with all the soul and account bound stuff.

Bright Star Shine, on 24 April 2013 - 10:30 AM, said:

I was never really a hardcore farmer, largely because I found most farm-runs to be excessively grindy.  From what I recall, popular farms like Raptor farming were usually able to pull in about 15K gold per hour on average, and upwards of 50K per hour when festival drops were active.  I tried farming Raptors for all of about an hour before realizing it was just too mind-numbingly grindy for my taste.  For me, the advantage of dungeons was diversity.  I ran different ones, usually across multiple characters to coincide with daily quests I had banked up for extra z-coins.  That's something else I forgot to mention as a reason for doing these - you could sell z-coins for extra profit, and it was rather easy to amass a lot those by doing certain dungeons when they lined up with the daily quests.  I'm not sure what kind of farming gold rate you were used to, but for myself and many of my friends that played, getting 20K+ gold per hour, without doing something that was completely repetitive and mindless seemed like a pretty solid income rate.

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I agree that there is a loot issue with the GW2 dungeons.  However, I don't think having unique weapon skins is necessarily the right way to fix the issue.  I've never been fond of weapon skins in any game, and GW1 or GW2 are no exception to this.  I'd be happy holding a twig if it did max damage.

On the other hand, I do like cool armor skins.  Unfortunately, the currents sets of dungeon skins (and most skins in the game for that matter) do not appeal to me at all.  I do want to see ANet add a lot more cool-looking and amazing armor skins.  (I'll even just settle for one of each armor grade for now!)  However, I would hate for those to be random drops from dungeons and force me to have to repeat one over and over and over to have a random chance of getting it.  That would utterly suck.

So what would it take for me to find dungeons attractive?  Start with the chest rewards along the way.  Right now, too many of them seem to only give blues or greens, and even level-bound loot.  They need to be upgraded to at least offer what world boss chests currently offer.  For example - once per day guaranteed rare bonus chest, and a small but not insignificant chance for rares or better from the regular, repeatable chests.  Alternately, allow dungeon tokens from a single run (60'ish) to buy prize coffers that provide similar numbers and levels of rewards.  For example, if you could buy Gear boxes (which currently cost 5 laurels) with 60 dungeon tokens it might be about on par with what I'm looking for.

I really want an option to disable title display. Make them show up if you target another player instead of splattering all that text across my screen, please.

I'd rather they increased the disconnect between stats/sets and had ascended armour work like the hom sets in reverse and be stats only. Then add in more skins throughout the game instead.

I'm also hoping they are at least planning ahead for the upgrades of these ascended items unlike the mess with back items. I dont want to transmute a skin to ascended item and find upgrades have to be done in the MF. We have this problem atm with the ascended back items if they are transmuted to say the engineers backpack.

blackthornarrow, on 25 April 2013 - 08:45 AM, said:

Lordkrall, on 25 April 2013 - 08:55 AM, said:

As with any non subscription based MMO the development of post release content is founded by the cash shop. And as with any cash shop the basic principle is that some pay more so that others pay less, or nothing at all. There is a reason almost every MMO in existence is going this free 2 play/buy 2 play route. It is because this tactic is more effective and brings in more money then a subscription.

Now, you may not personally have paid a dime for any of this content - but make no mistake. This content was founded by the players. And the very moment that founding disappears the content flow will stop. Because ArenaNet is a company, and company's are about making money. They will not spend time and resources on something that will not keep the money flowing, the very notion that they would is incredibly naive.

Now whether or not you have the right to complain when you didn't personally support the development of the content itself is an entirely different discussion. Personally, I feel absolutely nothing is beyond criticism and just because my friend picked up the tab when went to the restaurant doesn't mean I didn't have the right to complain to the chef when the meat tasted like the inside of a shoe.

Sandpit, on 23 April 2013 - 10:55 PM, said:

wow, designing dungeons that worked for 3-7 players?  Sounds like it would have to be doable for 3 and not faceroll for 7.  I'm no game designer but that sounds like the sort of challenge that I've never seen solved in an MMO.  I mean, that would be pretty great and all, I'd be for it.  I just don't think that's even remotely feasible to pull off from a technical standpoint.

This doesn't rub me the wrong way at all tbh.  But then again I've made about 12-13 friends since launch that I run dungeons/fractals regularly with so I'm not worried about finding groups.  As for it being a longer dungeon, I guess some of us want that.  Should we be denied a longer, more demanding, experience that we find rewarding since others don't have the time?  No offense, but should I not get my legendary because some people will never spend enough time to get theirs?  

There will always be plenty of things to do if you only have 30 mins to play.  You can't expect every bit of content in a game this large, that is intended to be played with others, to be doable solo in under 30 minutes.

Azure Skye, on 24 April 2013 - 09:42 AM, said:

I think the historically accurate terminus for these is "Bib"

There's a decently executed (wouldn't say decently written or conceived) story behind Flame and Frost, but it may not be worth playing through unless you're invested in the game's lore. Full of tropes and contrivances, but it can entertaining nonetheless. If you need a comparison, all I can say is that it's at the very least better than the Trahearne variety hour, aka latter half of the personal story.

AmyLynn, on 19 April 2013 - 12:47 PM, said:

Ah, well ya if you need to modify your game client, then ya you should get perma-banned lol.

A possible solution to exorbitant waypoint costs is simply a cost-over-time. Your first waypoint cost is free. Then immediately after that, the waypoint cost ramps to 3s and gets cheaper by 1s every X minutes. Waypoint costs for when you are dead should be capped to something no more than 1.5s. This way, players are encouraged to move around the world but aren't penalized for doing so but also prevents people just hopping around wildly and rapidly without incurring some sort of penalty for doing so.

Lordkrall, on 02 April 2013 - 10:18 PM, said:

10 points in the entire video. 10 problems well thought out and explained, discussed and presented. You choose to attack the word choice in the title.

Are you genuinely running out of ways to defend the game in a constructive manner?