Guild Wars 2

Vol.7601:

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Rising Dusk.2408:

BillFreist.1527:

The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

As for the Charrzooka, I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that change was. That wasn’t part of the change to summons, or at least that I’m aware of.

The bringer of bad news,
-Bill

This is one of the most inappropriate, accusatory, and unfortunate posts I have ever read from an ArenaNet employee, and I hope dearly that you get actioned for daring to post that to your customers. We are not the problem here, communication like this is.

Please enlighten to me how he offended you. I obviously don’t have the apathy or capability to understand where all this outrage is coming from.

The first line of your post is where you set the tone for the reader. The first line of Bill’s post was extremely condescending and unprofessional, making the rest of his post seem condescending and unprofessional.

Well let’s read over the semantics here.

“The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug”

While I personally believe he mispoke and said something different than what he was trying to come across, let us assume for our sake that he did believe that Fire Elementals were not an item that were supposed to be in the game, but a bug (seriously, read over that, it’s absurd and clear that he mispoke)

Can you please expand on what exactly is condescending? Is he insulting your intelligence? Is he ignoring your existence or concerns?

As far as I can see, he is laying the groundwork for why this change happened. That’s a neutral response. The only reason why you and many others are taking it as an offense is because you disagree with the change and reading his response with anger due to this change.

And so you end up reading his remark in a biased mindsight

Using words such as blatantly or period to emphasize your point makes you sound condescending. Perhaps he wasn’t trying to sound condescending, but that’s the feeling I got when I read his post.

I don’t get the association of ‘blatantly’ with anything negative. ‘Period’ I already discussed above – it’s meant to explain that this change was from and only from the performance perspective – nothing else.

Telling someone that something is blatant or obvious tends to offend the person if they don’t see it the same way. You might not have been offended by what Bill wrote in his post, but that doesn’t make it any less unprofessional.

DarcShriek.5829:

Is there a prize to whoever is the most offended by the dev’s statement?

I can’t say I’m offended by his statement at all, though I do think he should reconsider the way he uses his official account. That message was better suited for a personal account that didn’t have the Arenanet logo plastered all over it. There’s a lot to say about PR…

Mostly I’m terribly confused by the blatant bug comment. How does an entire line of items and graphics end up in a game when it wasn’t intended? =D As if someone could just like forget to carry a zero in the pvp ranking code and the end result be that a bunch of erroneous summoning items poof into the game out of nowhere. =D

Vol.7601:

And what if you sent a completely neutral response explaining the reason why systems were changed, but your customer responded with unjustified insult?

You would go to your manager and explain that you were misinterpreted or your comments were not properly explained and came out wrong.

But your client would continue to complain and ask you to be fired, while you are left wondering how in the world this customer came up to this conclusion that you were offending him.

That customer is pretty much you and everyone else right now that interprets Bill’s remark as insulting.

You’re missing the part where the only thing I’ve done is express my discontent with the post. I’m not “continuing to complain and ask he be fired”. Au contraire, I’m sure he does fine work, but he just should not be allowed to communicate directly with the customers without going through the community team. At my job, we do the exact same thing. If I want to talk to a customer, I have to get my communication with them approved and QA’d by the customer interfacing team designed for communicating with customers before I can send it along. Furthermore, I wouldn’t be left wondering how this customer came up with the conclusion because if I said that, I’d fully understand the issue with my wording. In addition, I’m not offended and have never used the word to describe my reaction to the post. People using the word ‘offended’ are simply lacking in the ability to communicate why exactly the post bothered them, which is ultimately because the inclusion of words “blatantly” and “period” used in that context is rude and unprofessional. Anyone in a field where they must communicate directly with customers in a professional manner will understand.

Anyway, if you’d like to continue this conversation, please PM me your response. I will not be continuing it here.

I’m not offended by the statement, for the record. I feel the dev was annoyed when he replied, but he did so with enough tact. I do feel as if I’ve been addressed by a customer service representative who has no power to do anything about the change, though, which is why I’m not concerning myself with it.

And if embers were affecting the loot table, then nerf THAT. It’s an exploit. Using embers to do more DPS is just working as intended, as they exist for the sole purpose of doing DPS and are therefore not an exploit in that regard.

Now I can have my pet out for, what, the 5 minutes it’s allowed to exist? Then I have to wait 25 minutes before I do anything RP related?

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Quarktastic.1027:

Vol.7601:

Rising Dusk.2408:

BillFreist.1527:

The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

As for the Charrzooka, I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that change was. That wasn’t part of the change to summons, or at least that I’m aware of.

The bringer of bad news,
-Bill

This is one of the most inappropriate, accusatory, and unfortunate posts I have ever read from an ArenaNet employee, and I hope dearly that you get actioned for daring to post that to your customers. We are not the problem here, communication like this is.

Please enlighten to me how he offended you. I obviously don’t have the apathy or capability to understand where all this outrage is coming from.

The first line of your post is where you set the tone for the reader. The first line of Bill’s post was extremely condescending and unprofessional, making the rest of his post seem condescending and unprofessional.

Well let’s read over the semantics here.

“The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug”

While I personally believe he mispoke and said something different than what he was trying to come across, let us assume for our sake that he did believe that Fire Elementals were not an item that were supposed to be in the game, but a bug (seriously, read over that, it’s absurd and clear that he mispoke)

Can you please expand on what exactly is condescending? Is he insulting your intelligence? Is he ignoring your existence or concerns?

As far as I can see, he is laying the groundwork for why this change happened. That’s a neutral response. The only reason why you and many others are taking it as an offense is because you disagree with the change and reading his response with anger due to this change.

And so you end up reading his remark in a biased mindsight

Using words such as blatantly or period to emphasize your point makes you sound condescending. Perhaps he wasn’t trying to sound condescending, but that’s the feeling I got when I read his post.

I don’t get the association of ‘blatantly’ with anything negative. ‘Period’ I already discussed above – it’s meant to explain that this change was from and only from the performance perspective – nothing else.

Telling someone that something is blatant or obvious tends to offend the person if they don’t see it the same way. You might not have been offended by what Bill wrote in his post, but that doesn’t make it any less unprofessional.

You only get offended if the person receiving the remark refuses to accept it.

If someone tells me Eternity is a hideous weapon and I’m someone who is 100% deadset that Eternity is a beautiful weapon, then yes, I’m offended. But a normal, average person would accept that people have opinions and that we can all disagree.

People who are getting offended by Bill seem to be deadset that there was nothing wrong with Fire Elementals .

Maybe if people came into this thread with the mindset that maybe, just maybe the devs have a different opinion on the item, they wouldn’t be so offended.

Again, this is all about semantics, and is all just a huge misunderstanding.

Maybe the cooldown should only go into effect if the pet is used in combat? Not sure how to fix the situation if it is really causing issues at big events like teq. The teq I did yesterday, however, went over just fine even with this cd implemented.

Tolmos.8395:

DarcShriek.5829:

Is there a prize to whoever is the most offended by the dev’s statement?

Mostly I’m terribly confused by the blatant bug comment. How does an entire line of items and graphics end up in a game when it wasn’t intended? =D As if someone could just like forget to carry a zero in the pvp ranking code and the end result be that a bunch of erroneous summoning items poof into the game out of nowhere. =D

You’re not the only one confused. And this is exactly why it points that he mispoke when he said that. He more than likely was trying to say that the fact that you can spam these items was clearly a bug.

ChaosKirin.1328:

I’m not offended by the statement, for the record. I feel the dev was annoyed when he replied, but he did so with enough tact. I do feel as if I’ve been addressed by a customer service representative who has no power to do anything about the change, though, which is why I’m not concerning myself with it.

And if embers were affecting the loot table, then nerf THAT. It’s an exploit. Using embers to do more DPS is just working as intended, as they exist for the sole purpose of doing DPS and are therefore not an exploit in that regard.

Now I can have my pet out for, what, the 5 minutes it’s allowed to exist? Then I have to wait 25 minutes before I do anything RP related?

Unfortunately, I don’t think it was a matter of just loot tables or dps. It’s a matter of the engine and screen rendering being optimized to have x number of people/npcs on the screen, and the addition of the 1 extra NPC per player was killing fps for a lot of players.

Sadly, this wasn’t always necessary, but players convinced Anet to remove the one thing that kept it in check: culling. With culling disabled, EVERYTHING is on the screen now. So now, they have to start keeping better tabs on how many objects are on the screen at once, and this is the result.

I don’t fault the developer’s tone, and did not find him rude or condescending. However, as I posted earlier, I do fault him for a disingenuous explanation and not being fully forthcoming.

BillFreist.1527:

The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

As for the Charrzooka, I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that change was. That wasn’t part of the change to summons, or at least that I’m aware of.

The bringer of bad news,
-Bill

If any of this guy’s bosses are watching, you should probably disable his forum access. He is clearly not a person you should be allowing to communicate with players.

And for the record, I agree with the actual nerf 100%.

xarallei.4279:

Maybe the cooldown should only go into effect if the pet is used in combat? Not sure how to fix the situation if it is really causing issues at big events like teq. The teq I did yesterday, however, went over just fine even with this cd implemented.

All other alternatives are too expensive,time-consuming, or difficult to implement.

There were two changes they could have done:
-increase cooldown timer
-increase ember price from vendor to make it more costly to spam

Considering that there are plenty of people with stacks of embers in their inventory, I think they felt that the 1st choice was better

Vol.7601:

xarallei.4279:

Maybe the cooldown should only go into effect if the pet is used in combat? Not sure how to fix the situation if it is really causing issues at big events like teq. The teq I did yesterday, however, went over just fine even with this cd implemented.

All other alternatives are too expensive,time-consuming, or difficult to implement.

There were two changes they could have done:
-increase cooldown timer
-increase ember price from vendor to make it more costly to spam

Considering that there are plenty of people with stacks of embers in their inventory, I think they felt that the 1st choice was better

A long term solution for this and other things, something to work on over time, could be an optional and more prioritized culling.

Enemies always visible
Players in party always visible
Guildmates and friends more likely to be visible than others
Everyone else less likely to be visible

Go to escape → settings → graphics → Enable culling. What is and isn’t visible is determined by FPS- it optimized to put you at 20-30 fps, or an fps you choose. Removes players and non-aggressive NPCs as necessary

That would pretty much render this issue moot, as players can turn it on and no longer worry about lag from too many objects on the screen.

Bugged Content?

I Await My Refund.

Tolmos.8395:

Vol.7601:

xarallei.4279:

Maybe the cooldown should only go into effect if the pet is used in combat? Not sure how to fix the situation if it is really causing issues at big events like teq. The teq I did yesterday, however, went over just fine even with this cd implemented.

All other alternatives are too expensive,time-consuming, or difficult to implement.

There were two changes they could have done:
-increase cooldown timer
-increase ember price from vendor to make it more costly to spam

Considering that there are plenty of people with stacks of embers in their inventory, I think they felt that the 1st choice was better

A long term solution for this and other things, something to work on over time, could be an optional and more prioritized culling.

Enemies always visible
Players in party always visible
Guildmates and friends more likely to be visible than others
Everyone else less likely to be visible

Go to escape -> settings -> graphics -> Enable culling. What is and isn’t visible is determined by FPS- it optimized to put you at 20-30 fps, or an fps you choose. Removes players and non-aggressive NPCs as necessary

That would pretty much render this issue moot, as players can turn it on and no longer worry about lag from too many objects on the screen.

I agree – long-term they should make culling a bit more customizable so that you can separate pets/minions/npcs/partymembers/mobs/players.

Vol.7601:

Tolmos.8395:

Vol.7601:

xarallei.4279:

Maybe the cooldown should only go into effect if the pet is used in combat? Not sure how to fix the situation if it is really causing issues at big events like teq. The teq I did yesterday, however, went over just fine even with this cd implemented.

All other alternatives are too expensive,time-consuming, or difficult to implement.

There were two changes they could have done:
-increase cooldown timer
-increase ember price from vendor to make it more costly to spam

Considering that there are plenty of people with stacks of embers in their inventory, I think they felt that the 1st choice was better

A long term solution for this and other things, something to work on over time, could be an optional and more prioritized culling.

Enemies always visible
Players in party always visible
Guildmates and friends more likely to be visible than others
Everyone else less likely to be visible

Go to escape -> settings -> graphics -> Enable culling. What is and isn’t visible is determined by FPS- it optimized to put you at 20-30 fps, or an fps you choose. Removes players and non-aggressive NPCs as necessary

That would pretty much render this issue moot, as players can turn it on and no longer worry about lag from too many objects on the screen.

I agree – long-term they should make culling a bit more customizable so that you can separate pets/minions/npcs/partymembers/mobs/players.

Also agree, i proposed this on the first page.

Thank you Anthony for the professional response. Many people here are just confused by what Bill meant by the mere existence of the consumables being a “blatant bug,”, which didn’t make much sense to many (including me).

I’m curious, it didn’t seem like there was a severe performance issue when using embers in dungeons with a small group compared to large scale events like Tequatl. Is there actually a severe performance impact in both of these cases, or was this change targeted at reducing lag for the large scale events instead? I ask because the large scale events have relatively long timers in between spawns, so the nerf doesn’t really affect them as much as it does running consecutive dungeons, or so I would think.

—> Happier Thread with less “I hate Anet” remarks and a few ideas for improving the current system with consumables ::: ((https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Thoughts-on-PvE-only-Comsumables/3534157

(also, I’d rather not copy everything from those two posts over here)

…Also, Also, I like the idea of these consumables and enviromental weaponsand stuff. They should stay, but they need some serious work done on them to balance everything out just right.

Thank you for you detailed reply Anthony.

A few questions
-Do you think you still could have combatted this by reducing the timer to 5 minutes? That way it won’t be spammable as before and players who use it while solo’ing can still be effective rather than waiting 30 minutes.
-Do you think that a higher vendor price for elementals (let’s say 20s) would discourage spamming (since it would be costly)? I know people have already stockpiled them, but this could be the ‘best’ compromise.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• unfortunately, the creatures were not specifically designed to the constraints we have on pets in general. They are way more costly than your average ranger pet. In fact, they are exactly the same as the versions you fight in the open world which is what makes them so powerful.

Maybe you guys should take a pass at the elementalist fire elementals and add some fire fields to their rotations to mitigate some of the QQ?

;)

Thank you Anthony. Two questions:
- Can the cooldown be restricted to open world & PvP/WvW only? There seem to be context-dependent limitations already (PvP/WvW), and my 3-person team really needs every assist we can get in 5-person dungeons.
- Why not add a consumable pet limit of one per person and lower the cooldown?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

-snip-

Anthony,

will you be offering refunds to those of us who have enjoyed using these consumables to enhance roleplaying/soloing? This “fix” hits us the hardest and is most unwelcome. These items made the game tolerable.

I understand the need for the change, but if you’re going to put a 30 minute cool down on it, can you make the fire elementals a little more survivable since they melt in just a few hits?

Great. So everyone loses embers and ogre pets because of Tequatl and a couple new open world bosses. But not only that. These bosses will stand alone, by themselves, with practically no one even attempting to kill them within 2 weeks.

So basically the 30 minute nerf was just so that a few members of TTS can do a few bosses a few times a day.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• unfortunately, the creatures were not specifically designed to the constraints we have on pets in general. They are way more costly than your average ranger pet. In fact, they are exactly the same as the versions you fight in the open world which is what makes them so powerful.

So the solution would be to rework them so they are more along the lines of pets, not put a cooldown on them that renders them completely worthless.

You say you don’t want to completely destroy them but you have. The ember is powerful, but glass, it gets destroyed very easily. This is just a typical example of arenanet taking the easy way out of a problem and overshooting the mark. And you say you’ve had this in mind for months……….. well you had time to implement a proper solution then.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Great. So everyone loses embers and ogre pets because of Tequatl and a couple new open world bosses. But not only that. These bosses will stand alone, by themselves, with practically no one even attempting to kill them within 2 weeks.

So basically the 30 minute nerf was just so that a few members of TTS can do a few bosses a few times a day.

The amount of people that do teq is hardly just a “few.” The high pop servers all do teq and many of the overflows (even ones without TTS) also do teq.

morrolan.9608:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• unfortunately, the creatures were not specifically designed to the constraints we have on pets in general. They are way more costly than your average ranger pet. In fact, they are exactly the same as the versions you fight in the open world which is what makes them so powerful.

So the solution would be to rework them so they are more along the lines of pets, not put a cooldown on them that renders them completely worthless.

You say you don’t want to completely destroy them but you have. The ember is powerful, but glass, it gets destroyed very easily. This is just a typical example of arenanet taking the easy way out of a problem and overshooting the mark. And you say you’ve had this in mind for months……….. well you had time to implement a proper solution then.

An equally lazy solution would have been to have a cap on the number of embers per may — much like siege in WvW. But that solution would have been much better as it would only affect a few regions for a few minutes each day (Tequatl, new bosses) and the vast majority of players would experience the same gameplay as before.

First of all, I agree with the change. Then again, I’m a casual player. Only one of my characters carries a handfull of these items, used only in emergencies. I doubt I would have even noticed the change without reading the patch notes.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’d like to shed some additional light here since I actually made the change to the summoning items.

First of all, I’m sorry that you guys are disappointed with the change. Unfortunately, we knew this was going to happen and we tried to come up with a solution to mitigate the disappointment as much as possible.

• the need for the change was identified months ago. Many members of the team were adamantly against making the change because they knew it would destroy a popular strategy.

My question is this: Why didn’t you give some warning that this change was coming? Even just two weeks would have allowed people to stop buying new ones and get the most out of the ones they had, if they wished to. I don’t see how telling people of the incoming change (or just that some change was incoming) would have created any issues that weren’t there already.

I feel a 10-15mins cooldown would have been met with much less anger.

I guess the way it was worded in the patch notes also annoyed a lot of people. It’s understandable that these are being used to make hard bosses a lot easier to a point that the designers hadn’t anticipated, but the notes only addressed performance issues rather then the obvious fact that these were being kindof exploited (spamming to the point that teq could be done while half asleep). This was patched so further bosses could be designed without having to take into affect the extra dmg these did which is understandable seeing as 2 new world bosses also were released at the exact same time.

Death Snakes.8193:

I feel a 10-15mins cooldown would have been met with much less anger.

I guess the way it was worded in the patch notes also annoyed a lot of people. It’s understandable that these are being used to make hard bosses a lot easier to a point that the designers hadn’t anticipated, but the notes only addressed performance issues rather then the obvious fact that these were being kindof exploited (spamming to the point that teq could be done while half asleep). This was patched so further bosses could be designed without having to take into affect the extra dmg these did which is understandable seeing as 2 new world bosses also were released at the exact same time.

Well the two are related, but they don’t need to point that they nerfed it cause of the DPS.

Since players wanted more DPS, they kept spamming the fire ele, which caused intense graphical lag and possibly increased server resources. And at that point they said enough is enough.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On consumable design, in general:

• It’s not really my place to comment too widely on this aspect of the game. I do know for certain it would not be consistent with some of GW2’s fundamental design pillars to create an environment where everyone is expected to have on-hand some elaborate set of consumables needing to be laboriously maintained and activated. This is why, for example, you are allowed only one food buff at a time.

I understand what you’re saying, but the reality is because they exist the big fights that require great precision (Teq, Marionette, Giant Worms) etc. are going to be filled with people who want maximize damage in every way. Which is why before every Teq fight (at least on Dragonbrand) we’d do a run through the events to get mortars and fire eles. I’m not saying/asking for them to be removed, but if you’re going to have something that helps give an edge is a fight that is painful to complete, people are going to require everyone to have it to increase the odds of success. I understand why you made the changes you did, but sadly I think it will mean Teq will not be fought on Dragonbrand again since the fire eles were so core to defeating him.

Vol.7601:

Death Snakes.8193:

I feel a 10-15mins cooldown would have been met with much less anger.

I guess the way it was worded in the patch notes also annoyed a lot of people. It’s understandable that these are being used to make hard bosses a lot easier to a point that the designers hadn’t anticipated, but the notes only addressed performance issues rather then the obvious fact that these were being kindof exploited (spamming to the point that teq could be done while half asleep). This was patched so further bosses could be designed without having to take into affect the extra dmg these did which is understandable seeing as 2 new world bosses also were released at the exact same time.

Well the two are related, but they don’t need to point that they nerfed it cause of the DPS.

Since players wanted more DPS, they kept spamming the fire ele, which caused intense graphical lag and possibly increased server resources. And at that point they said enough is enough.

I’m beginning to wonder whether this heavy requirement for DPS was built-in because devs expect everyone to have Ascended gear (especially weapons) at some point — meanwhile, embers are a substitute for that.

In this case, two words: Gear Treadmill.

I’d actually be happy to get an ember mini that does nothing in exchange for giving up all my powders.

I know this doesn’t solve everyone’s problems, but for those of us who RP, it would be a start.

I’d even buy it from the gem store.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Nothing ever gets removed because it’s fun. It just happens that fun things can sometimes get in the way other people having fun—like an item that cripples an entire server and causes everyone to have skill activation lag.

For now I’ll be happy to answer any additional questions you might have on this topic.

On the topic, can you answer stuff about animation locking? You know, back when you could infinitely spin around as a guardian with a sword, and things to that effect. As far as I know it was harmless – you couldn’t move and it doesn’t deal damage. It was just hilarious to look at. I think that’s another case of “Anet hates fun” that bothers players. Another might be blocking off uninstanced Salma, which really did nothing but hurt RPers. Could you shed some light on what harmful things these presented, and why they were therefore changed?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• it was not possible to clearly and cleanly message why the item would not be usable in large events or when there are too many nearby

Thank you for the responses you’ve posted thus far – they have been educational and appreciated. If possible I wanted to ask about the quote above though. “Not possible” is strong language, I was curious if it truly was not possible, or if you meant “difficult” or “costly” to implement.

I ask because in GW1, I recall something that seems similar where if you tried to activate a miniature when too many were already activated you’d see a message that too many minis were active. I can only assume this was also a mitigation technique to help with performance.

Couldn’t something similar be implemented if too many summons from consumables were attempted to be activated in an area or map or instance?

Darmikau.9413:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Nothing ever gets removed because it’s fun. It just happens that fun things can sometimes get in the way other people having fun—like an item that cripples an entire server and causes everyone to have skill activation lag.

For now I’ll be happy to answer any additional questions you might have on this topic.

On the topic, can you answer stuff about animation locking? You know, back when you could infinitely spin around as a guardian with a sword, and things to that effect. As far as I know it was harmless – you couldn’t move and it doesn’t deal damage. It was just hilarious to look at. I think that’s another case of “Anet hates fun” that bothers players. Another might be blocking off uninstanced Salma, which really did nothing but hurt RPers. Could you shed some light on what harmful things these presented, and why they were therefore changed?

RIP gear grind dance book bug

What about returning to the GW1 style of summoning?

You could summon a Flame Elemental, and it wouldn’t only be around for 5 min, it wouldn’t have a timer, however, you could only summon 1 per map. So, if you could keep it alive you would have it all the time, but if it died, that’s it. I guess if you were to WP or enter an instance that may reset it, but still, that would be better than, as you said, endlessly summoning them.

Also, maybe upping the price wouldn’t hurt too. 20s seems decent for something like that.

Hello Anthony,Thank you for shading some light on this.

My question is:

What you (anet) will adjust when you start pushing out more massive events like upcoming multiple new Dragons or Bosses at same magnitude or when the expansions comes out which include more and more massive events ?

I play since the release of this game and never knew or used those but you say they have made such a big impact to cripple whole servers and now you pushed a solution to this what you will you CUT OFF to make your future events playable and not cripple your servers ?

Does this limitation fixed the skill lag once forever and was it the root of the problem (which i think is way more complex) ?

Jester.6293:

What about returning to the GW1 style of summoning?

You could summon a Flame Elemental, and it wouldn’t only be around for 5 min, it wouldn’t have a timer, however, you could only summon 1 per map. So, if you could keep it alive you would have it all the time, but if it died, that’s it. I guess if you were to WP or enter an instance that may reset it, but still, that would be better than, as you said, endlessly summoning them.

Also, maybe upping the price wouldn’t hurt too. 20s seems decent for something like that.

That works in an instanced world.

According to Anthony, it’s much different for an open-world. Even then, it sounds like instances as a whole run on their own server, so 150 ppl over 30 dungeons each using Infinite amounts of Embers would indeed cause server stress somewhere.

Personally, I want to see encounters overcome by build design and skill, moreso than consumable dependencies and/or bandaids

Thank you Anthony for your answer.
You have written something, where I think, that it is very important to mention it again.
On a more slow tone, so that you rethink on what it means, what kind of consequences will automatically follow out of that decision and thats exactly my point of question I want to ask you now about:

You said, that You – and with You I mean now naturally You as the whole Team that is responsible for this change and which has discussed surely also all of the Pros and Cons have decided together, that for the better of this game, it is needed to “destroy” one of the popular tactics of beating Tequatl, cause of server performance problems.

When you reread this out of the sight as a “player” (god I feel myself right now, like rethinking every single word I type twice, because I want to make my point as clear and consise as possible), why do you think has this tactics become very quickly at all so popular??

I want you to tell why this is so exactly and that you and your Team maybe think over those points to tell us what kind of “consequences” we may see perhaps in the future in regard of Tequatl. So here I go:

• Items like the Fire Elemental and the Thistle Summons are so extremely popular, because they feel like a huge requirement to be able to beat at all Tequatl within the Time Limit of 15 Minutes. In fact, we see wins against tequatl only, because of massive amounts of people using these summons to increase the DPS for everyone, otherwise the Front Legion simply lacks in Attack Power to brign down Tequatl fast enough.

• I absolutely know of no other strategy against Tequatl, that is effective and successful in beating Tequatl, all those summons are the only left massive DPS Boost that is needed to beat Tequatl, because the only other help that existed before people started to rely themself for massive Attack Power in short time, has been removed by You due to making Elementalist Environmental Weapons for sure disappear, once their duration runs out.
  Before you basically “fixed” that, people used them to prepare everybody for an important massive Damage Spike of hailing down tons of Ice Arrows that got created from everyone spamming the Ice Bows’s frosty Barrage Attack.
  That was the prior first successful strategy to beat Tequatl at all, which got destroyed by You, that leaded to the point, that everyone had to search up for something as an alternative to replace the Ice Bow as an initial massive Damage Spike Method that lasts, so that it is much easier to handle with it and especially to coordinate it with all the big amount of other players!

So after I read your post, I’m a little bit baffled now, because basically this change makes it only unneccessary more complicated and hard to beat Tequatl at all.

So will we see as a consequence of this change made to the Summon Items also some little tweaks and changes to the Tequatl Battle?

Because I’m honest, the interest in battling Tequatl wasn’t already before the change the very best in the game, the hype for this Boss disappeared extremely quickly, in many server as far I heard about it, this Boss is already “dead content”, because nobody is interested at all in beating him, because of the way too much required massive coordination that is needed to beat him at all for the ridiculous low/bad rewards you receive from that battle with drop rates, where you seem to think – are we playing here a Game with 0,0001% drop rates, or what?

But now after this change, people will surely be alot lesser interested in battlign against Tequatl at all.
The battle against him now is surely better than the first design that this boss had, but with the changes on the Summon Items, I think you literally killed now any possibility to beat Tequatl at all, because we simply lack now in the needed Attack Power to beat him in time.

I simply believe, that people won’t adapt now to this change up to the needed extent, that they begin to really stack the usage of those summons now.
The battle of Tequatl is too short, the 30 minutes too long to effectively stack the usage of them with having in mind, that mostly only maximum say 120 people participate in the battle and with each person using them, it will become for the next burn phase lesser helping summons and thus the Attack Power of everbody becomes from Phase to Phase lesser and lesser.

I hope I just fear too much of this change having bad effects on the Tequatl Battle, hadn’t time yet to see the result self, so I hope, that your answer(s) to that question will relief me from this fear

Malchior.5042:

Jester.6293:

What about returning to the GW1 style of summoning?

You could summon a Flame Elemental, and it wouldn’t only be around for 5 min, it wouldn’t have a timer, however, you could only summon 1 per map. So, if you could keep it alive you would have it all the time, but if it died, that’s it. I guess if you were to WP or enter an instance that may reset it, but still, that would be better than, as you said, endlessly summoning them.

Also, maybe upping the price wouldn’t hurt too. 20s seems decent for something like that.

That works in an instanced world.

According to Anthony, it’s much different for an open-world. Even then, it sounds like instances as a whole run on their own server, so 150 ppl over 30 dungeons each using Infinite amounts of Embers would indeed cause server stress somewhere.

Personally, I want to see encounters overcome by build design and skill, moreso than consumable dependencies and/or bandaids

Good point, everything in GW1 was instanced… would make that a lot easier to do than this. Oh well. I don’t rely on the embers or anything, but they ARE helpful :P

I’d like to know if you’re planning to make further changes to these items. Do you consider this adjustment to be a final solution to that particular problem, or might you consider reducing the cooldown if you decide that it might be reasonable to do so?

Less objectively, I think non-buff consumable items in general have been nerfed to the point of being pointless. I’m not talking about effectiveness, either; I’m talking about opportunity. I once filled an 18-slot bag with them because at one time I thought they might be fun; I still have an 18-slot bag full of them because when I say, “Hey, I should try using one of those items! It would be something new and exciting in this fractal I’ve done a bajillion times,” I’m inevitably disappointed to find that I’m not allowed to use them.

I echo what Jester says.
Never Forget Siege Turtles (I like turtles)

Death Snakes.8193:

I feel a 10-15mins cooldown would have been met with much less anger.

I guess the way it was worded in the patch notes also annoyed a lot of people. It’s understandable that these are being used to make hard bosses a lot easier to a point that the designers hadn’t anticipated,

But they aren’t easy even with embers. In fact all the feedback on Teq is that it should scale better so that smaller groups can complete them.

Vol.7601:

Since players wanted more DPS, they kept spamming the fire ele, which caused intense graphical lag

The lag wasn’t that bad, I’ve done Teq many many times with TTS and not once experienced bad lag and my computer is not top of the line by any means and I’m in Australia.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On dungeons/instance:

• Yes there is a cumulative cost of having tons of these in instances. Without getting into too many technical details, 150 people in 30 dungeons using this item is just as bad as 150 people in 1 public map. Even if you have not experienced skill lag personally, there are constraints and instances do hit them.
• It is therefore completely unfair to assign blame to players who enjoy the large open world events. The events represent drastic instances of the problem, but the change was made to address the entirety of the issues that are being caused across the game.

Maybe just invest in better/more servers then. You made a fortune with the gemshop already looking at the ncsoft finance reports.

Thank you for a detailed answer Anthony!

Maybe such a workaround could work: the cooldown starts on the pet’s death; if the pet was still alive by the end of his 5 minute timeout, he can be summoned again instantly. Even makes more sense from the logical point of view.

ChaosKirin.1328:

I’d actually be happy to get an ember mini that does nothing in exchange for giving up all my powders.

I know this doesn’t solve everyone’s problems, but for those of us who RP, it would be a start.

I’d even buy it from the gem store.

Maybe a Mystic Forge recipe then? Like, 500 elemental powder consumables, 100 bloodstone brick, 5 Philosopher’s Stones, 1 Mystic Forge Stone.

Why was the charzookas affected by this? Not one mention of this by Anthony. Oversight?

The duration of the Fire ele is 5 min but they rarely last that long in most cases.

I would trade the 30 min cooldown for 1 min duration and being able to use them every 5 minutes. It would be nice if they left everything the same on them except for those two attributes.

I never personally spammed mine but I guess I could see people doing this because of how fragile they are. What if you changed the actual skill effects and avatar to be something a bit less intense to help with issues? For me I could care less if a giant flapping fiery orange elemental was flying around me. Also get rid of the graphic that pools the lava field on the ground and have it be something extremely basic.

I need Mas DPS! When it boils down to it that’s all we mostly care about.

My question to the devs would be can we have some kind of trade off that we can get this missing DPS back without putting the hurt on the servers?