Guild Wars 2

There is a veteran centaur shaman in a cave in the lvl 20ish plus human zone… Not sure the zone name but the second zones for humans.. Anyways its a skill point.

The mobs in that cave spawn a little too quickly while trying to solo the point, and there isn’t much room

projectcedric.6951:

Agree.
I believe (and I’ve seen in it other games) that it is possible to introduce a controlled element of randomness where mobs will respawn (within a stipulated area) but not where they died, previously spawned or near a player currently present in the area.

I like this one too.

Also, I feel it is weird when something pops out of nothing when it did not raise from ground or land from flying. And making mobs not to respawn nearby players would not only fix this but also the lack of progression we are talking about here.

Happened to me again in Dredgehaunt Cliffs in Kolkorensburg. I cleared out a few of the spiders to make it easier to kill the veteran guarding the rich iron ore, but they respawned before I got a chance to kill the veteran. Barely even hurt it.

Hydrophidian.4319:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Again, I really need specifics. I’ve never into this issue on the live server, or while testing, so I’d need to look at the exact spawn to see if anything odd is going on.

Hi, Jeffrey.

Thanks for actually checking in on this.

A place that seemed very broken to me was the camp in Brisban Wildlands, Hidden Lake region, just west of the Seraph Observers waypoint. The spawn rate there just didn’t seem right at all. Every time I went through there, all the NPCs—merchants and such—would be dead due to the bandits constantly overrunning the area.

Trying to keep up with them, and keep the NPCs alive, was impossible alone, and even a party of 5 (in the zone’s level range) was hard pressed.

This was not due to an event. This was normal spawn that I dealt with many times over the course of several weeks. Haven’t been there lately, but last time I was there it was still crazy, and way out of line with the rest of the zone.

FYI. Thanks for looking into it.

I can confirm this one. I ran into the exact thing yesterday when I was playing. You’d think it was some sort of event due to the sheer overwhelming amounts of never-ending bandits that run into the camp…but it’s not. It’s just a constant barrage.

Yep, seen that place as well. Only time i have not seen it like that was during the opening weeks when people were swarming about the area leveling their first characters.

this is how I see it:

I loved the feeling of progression I had in the instanced GW1-Missions. I killed mobs in a certain location and now felt safe in that area. I could retreat to those areas if it got a bit too difficult and it felt like I made a difference.

Respawning of mobs feels very artificial for me in general. Jeffrey, you want people to move on to another area if they killed a mob, respawning mobs are not the way to do this in my opinion. Farmers just stay in the same area and farm those respawning mobs, this is how botters survive too.

In GW1 you had some empty areas too when you played in a zone, that wasn’t a big problem for me. I definitely see it as a problem in GW2 when the area isn’t cleared by yourself but other players. I really would suggest a different way though.

example:
The world is dynamic already because of dynamic events. You could make the dynamic events the source of new mobs. Everytime an event starts those waves come from nowhere and occupy an area. What you could do: make some of the mobs split from the wave and return to the places where mobs are missing. But until there is no event in that area, there is no “mob-respawn”. This would feel more natural in my opinion.

example2:
introduce “breakout events” for mobs, where a big group of enemies patrols an area and some stay behind those areas where mobs are missing. There is this one event ( I think it was in Blazeridge Steppes) where a mobgroup of 10+ mobs with a champion-leader strolls around and it’s not a too easy task to defeat those. Love it.

I think even if the 95-120 second thing is ‘working as intended,’ you may want to take a look at the mechanics considering that many people still believe it’s much too fast.

In other words, if you go through and confirm respawn times are right where you want them, that still doesn’t solve the problem. Maybe the mobs are too close together, or maybe 120 seconds isn’t enough in certain situations.

This is actually the only game I have this particular problem with, and I don’t know why. In other games, I don’t feel as if the more reasonable respawn rates hinder me in any way. I’ve posted about this before, and I even mentioned it the other day while playing in a group. We ran in to get a skill point, and by the time we ran back out again, everything we’d just killed was back. It couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds later, because it was one of those ‘meditate at this place of power’ skill points.

I know you’re trying to make sure that everyone has ample things to slay, but I’m asking you to please consider that your working-as-intended system may be what’s broken in the first place.

I agree, respawn is just too quick. I often find myself having to abandon doing something because I can not keep up with spawn rates. Heaven forbid I need to kill a veteran mob, because the 3 mobs standing a few feet away that I need to clear before I can engage it WILL respawn and join in. There are several skill point challenges designed this way as well. Why not just rename those to Zerg Point Challenges? I honestly don’t think any mobs should respawn short of 2 minutes anywhere, unless there are a lot of people in the area. Also I have witnessed mobs near instantly respawn right where I killed them, it happens just about everywhere, no need for specifics.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Again, I really need specifics. I’ve never into this issue on the live server, or while testing, so I’d need to look at the exact spawn to see if anything odd is going on.

Wish i had recorded where now i know there is a min time i will keep track of where and when but there are times, there is a sort of double spawn.
mob dies, bing same mob type same spot in 0.0001 seconds
Ok im a guardian things take a while to kill some times, does the respawn timer start from when the mob dies or from when its killed? Though even with a 30sec respawn mob it seems more like some thing is triggered on the death of the mob

Honestly, specifics are hard, as the mob type and location seems nearly everything and everywhere.

One place I have never noticed it is in the WvW maps.

But I have been working my way into a cave, and fighting everything along the way, and have had a mob respawn exactly where I killed one within 2 seconds multiple times. So often, in fact, that easily the best way to get deep into a cave is to just run in until you think you’ve hit a relatively safe zone, and wait and see what’s still chasing you, and then kill those mobs.

Like when you see a rich node in a cave. It’s not a deep cave or anything, and guarded by a vet and a couple regular mobs (in aggro range of the node). The path to the node will have 5-7 or so mobs spaced along the way. If you take those 5-7 mobs out gradually as you go into the cave, by the time you kill the vet and his lackeys and mine the node, those 5-7 will have to be refought when you come out.

Assuming you don’t just run past them (easily the best way to deal with them).

I don’t know the exact time on the respawns, but the entire scenario replays all over the world, with all types of mobs. It honestly feels not remotely interesting (as most mobs drop basically nothing worthwhile the vast majority of time – even with full MF gear and food).

It’s the “what? I just killed these things and they’re back?” feeling that makes lots of stuff feel totally not worthwhile doing.

Happens a lot when you’re trying to find your way to a vista or over a mountain or something, and you go up one path, killing stuff along the way, and once you realize it’s the wrong way, going back means you have to kill everything again.

For every path you choose until you get there.

I’m not saying it’s in any way hard in the “I may die here” aspect. It’s just frustrating in the “why do I have to kill all these worthless mobs again for no gain” time sink aspect.

It really makes exploring the world incredibly frustrating, as generally these spots are not near where people are commonly found.

in some areas the bots are too prolific and the spawn rate suits them and other farmers for materials else you would be standing around waiting for spawn to get the materials u need ie. lvl 400 mats I feel that there needs to be more mobs that spawn the materials u need not a niche area on the massive map that has 30 mobs that drop a certain material item you need. as for heart quests Ive not found any that i couldnt solo with my eyes closed I think it is gear related that u cant solo heart quests.

The skill point in Taminns Foothills, Queensdale.

I was on a lv7x alt cruising through low level content (read: face palming everything in my way), approaching from the north side, but could not even got close to the hilly area (with veterans guarding the skill point) because centaurs in groups of three kept respawning on me. On the same spot.

I cleaned 3 groups (at least 9+ centaurs!!) before I had enough of that nonsense, took a detour, clone dodged through from the south side, popped up a sky kit and ninja-ed the kitten thing.

Granted, this does not happen every time, everywhere. But it does happen, sometimes, somewhere.

The oozes guarding the chest at the end of the Demongrub Pits jumping puzzle respawn way too fast, making the chest really difficult to loot. I only managed to do it on my warrior, and even she needed to kill most of them (including the two veterans) twice over to get enough breathing room.

The veteran Marsh Drake guarding that skill point in the swamp also typically respawns within maybe a minute of killing it.

BrokenSymmetry.2593:

Yes, for me this is the number one reason why I don’t enjoy the game. In GW1 it was so satisfying to clear a complete zone, and then just run around it, looking at all the sights. In GW2 you never have a moment’s rest to look at the beautiful art.

Hell, in most places you cant stop to look at your map without having to fight half a dozen mobs. And you’re trying to figure out how to get to that Vista Point but hordes of mobs keep attacking you while you’re trying to figure it out.

I agree that the respawns need to be drasticly slowed down and in some places, like Orr, the density of aggressive mobs needs to be reduced. I’ve pretty much given up on finishing exploring the Orr zones because with the insane mob density, fast resapwn time, and their longer than anywhere else aggro range, I cant do it.

Apparently, Anet has the same outlook as Trion. (RIFT) they seem to think that having to endlessly fight makes a MMO exciting. WRONG! It gets old real fast.

Nothing takes you out a game quite like watching the three guys you just beat up respawn while you’re in the middle of fighting their two remaining friends and rejoining the fight. Especially obnoxious in caves and extremely un-fun, leading to battles being drawn far longer than they needed to be until you can finally down all enemies before the first in the pack respawns.

95-120 seconds does not feel correct at all with the rate things can respawn, especially in caves, it’s closer to 30-60 seconds.

Orr is especially bad for this and actually stopping to fight roaming enemies who aggro you (and the mob density in Orr is so great that you will be causing aggro constantly) can get you quite badly infinity-holed by respawning enemies. It’s nearly always better to run in Orr. Compared to other zones, where I’d stop and dispatch attackers, exploration and running around in Orr was playing a stupid game of Captain Cannon-fodder between points while zombies tried to climb inside me. Not. Fun.

2 words: Martyr’s Tomb
(harathi), ghost-spawn is beyond ridiculous. nothing better than mobs respawning while you’re fighting the champ.

tbh there are so many areas with a spawn timer problem, why even bother getting frustrated…

…and to think I was about to open a thread asking for either reducing the respawn timer of mobs or largely increase their numbers * facepalm *

Rhysati.4932:

Hydrophidian.4319:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Again, I really need specifics. I’ve never into this issue on the live server, or while testing, so I’d need to look at the exact spawn to see if anything odd is going on.

Hi, Jeffrey.

Thanks for actually checking in on this.

A place that seemed very broken to me was the camp in Brisban Wildlands, Hidden Lake region, just west of the Seraph Observers waypoint. The spawn rate there just didn’t seem right at all. Every time I went through there, all the NPCs—merchants and such—would be dead due to the bandits constantly overrunning the area.

Trying to keep up with them, and keep the NPCs alive, was impossible alone, and even a party of 5 (in the zone’s level range) was hard pressed.

This was not due to an event. This was normal spawn that I dealt with many times over the course of several weeks. Haven’t been there lately, but last time I was there it was still crazy, and way out of line with the rest of the zone.

FYI. Thanks for looking into it.

I can confirm this one. I ran into the exact thing yesterday when I was playing. You’d think it was some sort of event due to the sheer overwhelming amounts of never-ending bandits that run into the camp…but it’s not. It’s just a constant barrage.

I’m there now in fact, on a level 80 ranger, and was able to observe the pattern for a while (while coming to the aid of players valiantly trying to save those poor NPCs). What seems to happen is that a few bandits will hang in the camp, so a player who’s not familiar with the area is presented with a scene of a slew of dead NPCs, including a merchant, and perhaps 4 or 5 bandits standing around. But as soon as a player either engages the bandits or begins trying to revive NPCs, waves of bandits start to come from the southeast, southwest, and northwest. The waves themselves are not large, but they often contain a Bandit Assassin who throws the “Knock You Back into Last Week” firebombs. The real issue though, is that as far as I can tell, they don’t stop as long as there is a PC present within the radius of the camp.

If I did the attachments right, you’ll see the pattern below. We start with 4 bandits and a bunch of dead NPCs (except for 1 who seems impervious to harm). As soon as I engage, we get a couple who came in from SE on the map (though I’m turned around in the screenshots), then a couple from SW, then one from the NW. In the last shot, all the bandits in the camp are dead, but two more are incoming from the SW. And as I said, as far as I know, it never stops as long as there is a player present (although I, of course, can’t say that for sure without camping the spot for longer than I care to).

I’m starting to wonder about the reporting system they are using to collect data because we have a huge list of bugs in engineering that they can’t seem to detect, we have loads of forum posts about loot drop issues that we the customers have to “prove” in order to get answered and when we do, we are told it’s our imagination, and now this.

Tonight while in frostgorge I was farming dredge. Before the turret events even loaded some of the dredge I was killing were repopping. Now it wasn’t a bad thing since this wasn’t a densely populated location but I can see how this would be a problem for lower ends and for the classes that have recently been weakened for the sake of pvp balance.

I’m not trying to start a war over this but we’ve even seen malfunctions with the very software you are using for the forums site where whole posts have completely disappeared instead of being merged like the messages we receive from you claim.

Could there be a chance that the data collection software is malfunctioning? Because as my friend who works on a very large corporate network database says everyday “No software is perfect”.

In case it hasn’t been mentioned yet, the bandits that take over Seraph Observers Waypoint in Brisban Wildlands are nigh-impossible for a single or double-team of the appropriate level to take back. Densely populated and they seem to come back much faster than what is stated here. I could probably take it with my downleveled guardian, but that says more about the downleveling system than this particular spot.

Edit: lol and now that I look just a few posts up I’m obviously not the only one to run into this problem.

In Orr what you speak of is glaringly apparent, not because of just their respawn times alone but because of how densely they are placed in certain areas. It’s common there that you fight 3+ mobs or packs seperated by only a few steps so that as you may be finishing off the third the first and second are already back. If you just had to take down the first and then could easily put some distance between yourself and that spot the issue wouldn’t exist.

I’m pretty sure I know exactly the Skritt cave you speak of and I recall not having to venture very far into to the tunnel at all either. I did so, but only to take out a Vet and get the chest not far inside. I also recall a POI I had a real hard time getting to solo in an Ogre stronghold as well. I just kind of assumed these types of areas where kind of an open world “gear check” test sort of. When I came upon them and couldn’t keep up I took it as a sign I needed to upgrade my gear. I did so and returned and overcame them from there.

I’m not saying this to sound like a jerk but I took it as a case that I needed to step up my game, not so much that the game needed to be toned down in any way. There are still some spots in Orr that can get messy even with B.I.S. gear though. Brute force just won’t carry some of em and you have to get mobile, dump some aggro, kite, hit and move, etc. Of course there’s never a shortage of people just running through collecting an aggro swarm in their wake that’ll eventually just dump em on some poor schmo picking berries or something.

KrakenAZ.9367:

In case it hasn’t been mentioned yet, the bandits that take over Seraph Observers Waypoint in Brisban Wildlands are nigh-impossible for a single or double-team of the appropriate level to take back. Densely populated and they seem to come back much faster than what is stated here. I could probably take it with my downleveled guardian, but that says more about the downleveling system than this particular spot.

Edit: lol and now that I look just a few posts up I’m obviously not the only one to run into this problem.

I have to agree there, it would be at the least an extremely challenging solo mission even if they extended the spawn timers. With times as they are now, considering how denesely the mobs are packed in there it’s nigh impossible solo. It seems that every time I’ve come across that area I’ve had to go in and “aggro” some mobs so some poor dude (usually right about at the camp fire) could get enough time to rez and haul kitten!

Fast respawn rates and high mob density have been two of my biggest issues with the game ever since I first played in a beta weekend, so it’s nice to see people at ArenaNet finally discussing it with players. I agree that it’s important for players to have plenty of things to fight when in areas where fighting enemies is a primary goal (hearts, DEs, etc) but fighting enemies doesn’t have to be a primary goal in every last square foot of Tyria. And if the scaling feature that was designed to increase mob count and difficulty depending on nearby player numbers was working correctly, it would be a non-issue.

As it is, though, unless an area is visually identifiable as a place where certain intelligent enemies would congregate, there’s really no reason to have a dozen creatures standing neatly 10-20 feet away from each other as if the entire world has an invisible grid over it and each square is required to have an enemy in it, or to have them respawn as quickly as described in the examples of this thread.

Just food for thought: in my years playing MMOs, I have NEVER been annoyed that there wasn’t enough for me to kill while traveling from Point A to Point B…occasional combat is good, but constant combat trivializes its excitement. It is only upon reaching Point B — and if I have a goal to kill things there — that having enough mobs to go around could potentially become an issue. There are times when traveling an MMO world when I may crest a tall hill and look down on a very cool environment, and I’ll stop for a minute to take it all in. If I can count 15 bears in that valley below me, all spread out 20 feet apart, that scene loses all of its impact.

KWman.3012:

Same reason I don’t goto Orr at all.

i have just begun to experience the fringes of orr and gads the respawn rate sucks. i already know i am not going to play orr and either work on alts or move on. When i kill things i want to be able to retreat in a reasonable amount of time if I decide the situation is untenable but that is not the case in this game. Your literally trapped if you move inland in Orr, within seconds.

Plus i am sick of the undead every freaking game has undead and I am tired of fighting them and I hate the insane CC they get just to make the mob difficult. You would think with the death of the lich king we could be done with Undead but no…oh wait thats a different game or I thought it was.

BrokenSymmetry.2593:

Yes, for me this is the number one reason why I don’t enjoy the game. In GW1 it was so satisfying to clear a complete zone, and then just run around it, looking at all the sights. In GW2 you never have a moment’s rest to look at the beautiful art.

I miss that about GW1 the zone is yours if you want it that way, what i dont miss is the movement limitations

On the hill near Guilty Tears in Timberline Falls—continuous respawn—-infact it happens so fast that the bots there barely have to move at all.

That being said, I agree with other posts respawns are too fast. (regardless of what ever formula is used.) If I take my time, drawing out enemies to kill as a move towards a chest, vet,vista,skill point or boss etc.—it’s a reasonable expectation that I should be able to reach and complete that goal without being aggo’d by quick respawns. I don’t care if they repopulate and I may have to fight my way out.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

The default respawn rate is 95-120 seconds, so if you’re seeing locations where they respawn much faster, please report it with specific info! Event creatures will often appear more quickly (so the event doesn’t look dead if players kill them immediately) and if players were killing things in the same area, they might respawn near you. (i.e. if a group ran through and cleared an area a minute ago, a lone player might be in the area when their respawn timer comes up.)

I have a question about this 95-120 second respawn rate. Is it based on when that particular enemy was killed, or is there a timer that runs and every 95-120 seconds checks to see if an enemy is there?

So, if I kill Enemy X, does a timer start then? Or is there a timer running and if he died at 94 seconds, the enemy respawns because the timer saw the enemy was not there at 95 seconds?

I have a feeling there is a timer that is not tied to the enemy death and that is why sometimes we see enemies respawn almost instantly and other times it does take awhile. It just depends on when the enemy was killed in the timer range.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Specific note on Orr: we do have some folks looking at those maps in particular, so I expect that a future update will contain some adjustments to the spawn density. Taking a quick look, right now it’s using the 95-120 timer, but I did notice that there are more creatures spawning than there are seperate spawn points, which can cause them to spawn multiple creatures on the same spot.

Is this the set-up for other areas as well? I can see this mechanic being easily confused for instant respawn.

Bloodtide Coast, Molehead Cave. If there is a spawn timer, and it’s supposed to be set for 95-120, it’s failing. Using a stopwatch app, I’m averaging 11 seconds from a Risen death to a new spawn in that spot. (from a sample of 20 minutes, with the longest respawn time being 27 seconds, and too many instants respawns to count.)

If it’s simply that there are far more baddies being spawned than there are spawn points, maybe get someone to fix it that a spawn point = 1 baddy.

The respawn is pretty high in certain places, look at the Maze Skill Challenge in Cursed Shore for instance, the veteran and risen respawn within 30 seconds, which is literally barely enough time to kill both, then start the skill challenge fight and quite often the mobs respawn before you even kill the SP mob.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The respawn is pretty high in certain places, look at the Maze Skill Challenge in Cursed Shore for instance, the veteran and risen respawn within 30 seconds, which is literally barely enough time to kill both, then start the skill challenge fight and quite often the mobs respawn before you even kill the SP mob.

Completely agree, took me 4 – 5 times to do this point. Even tried asking for help but nada. In the end i just suicide rushed it.

Grawl are definitely guilty of this, I know it’s a grawl cave as such just below where the claw of jormag spawns, but the respawn rate for the ones in the cave is virtually instantaneous. And I’m not confusing the spawns of the ones I killed with the patrol spawns which pop up in the same place, which I also think needs a revision. Those just outside the cave aren’t as bad. But inside you can’t simply run through, kill away and look behind you with nothing there, there’s always a respawn that’s just within range to create aggro.

KrakenAZ.9367:

In case it hasn’t been mentioned yet, the bandits that take over Seraph Observers Waypoint in Brisban Wildlands are nigh-impossible for a single or double-team of the appropriate level to take back. Densely populated and they seem to come back much faster than what is stated here. I could probably take it with my downleveled guardian, but that says more about the downleveling system than this particular spot.

Edit: lol and now that I look just a few posts up I’m obviously not the only one to run into this problem.

I’ve noticed this one as well. A solo player can clear the area IF the bandit with the bomb is taken out. Then if you can live through a handful of 4 bandit waves you have just a little more time than it takes to rev all the NPC’s before the NAPALM happens. That’s right. One of the bandits has some sort of napalm or firebomb that will take out 3/4 of the NPC’s and YOU (if your still in camp) just before 8 bandits swarm into the camp (the one with the bomb is one of them).

Back on topic: Many caves have 1-2 things to kill every dozen paces or so. My Ranger+Pet might take 1-1.5min to kill off a pair and move on. When we get in aggro range of the third set the 1st set is almost always respawning already.

There’s a town by a swamp where a bandit will spawn in the swamp and run to the docks to steal supplies. I stood there for over 1/2hr and killed them – one right after the other! 15sec after one is killed another is running over to steal supplies. (took about as long as my Firetrap reset for them to respawn) I finally got bored and left the spot. I recall one early viewpoint that I never was able to experience because by the time I’d killed all the enemies and jumped up to the boards leading to the viewpoint, the mob respawned and were knocking me off the board back to the ground. I gave up on that one.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The respawn is pretty high in certain places, look at the Maze Skill Challenge in Cursed Shore for instance, the veteran and risen respawn within 30 seconds, which is literally barely enough time to kill both, then start the skill challenge fight and quite often the mobs respawn before you even kill the SP mob.

I was going to mention this exact place. I died many times on my necro in rare gear trying to get that skill point. I simply couldn’t do it solo. I might be able to now, in half exotics, but before I simply couldn’t because of respawns. That said, if I ever die in the world it’s 99.99% positive that it was because of a respawn, regardless where. Champions are easier to deal with most times than the respawn rate throughout the world.

Nothing about this game makes me think ArenaNet have a QA team.

It actually makes me laugh, that on the surface, the game is so gorgeous to look at and listen to, so polished, but when you start playing it, you realise just how poor the actual development has been.

Respawn rates are ridiculous, given the boring amount of time it takes to kill mobs, you can actually find yourself stuck in a loop. Underwater it is even worse, as you can’t fully see the area around you, so getting adds is pretty much unavoidable.

I escorted a group of Crusaders into a cave full of Risen (a dynamic event), and ended up fighting 8 Risen by myself. I managed to kill some of them before dying. I ran back and died another 2 times, before managing to clear them. No sooner than I started reviving the crusaders, the mobs were back, again, 8 of them (how the kitten do your events scale anyway? 8 kittening mobs for a single player? really?) and naturally I wiped again.

At that point I just logged off. Despite the professional appearance of the game, under the surface it just hasn’t been fully tested at all, and now that the game is actually live, and the devs are working on new content, this isn’t likely to be changed. Same with the amount of bugs that were reported in beta and STILL haven’t been fixed. It boils down to resources, and they are pouring theirs into the next chapter.

Leveling as an Elementalist has been nothing less than a tedious chore, no matter how well I manage my attunement swapping, no matter how well I use my abilities, I just can’t overcome the raw damage caused to me by simple auto attacks. Against anything more than 3 mobs, I have little chance of surviving, I can’t kill fast enough, or survive the damage long enough. My gear is pretty much all karma gear I buy from the heart vendors the moment I complete the requirements.

There is a balance in MMOs, between mob difficulty, mob density, aggro radius, respawn rate and reset distance. If mobs are harder to kill, and there are lots of them, then the respawn rate needs to be very long to compensate. This game gets it so wrong, it is even worse than Rift was (Rift was bad in places, not many though). The only part of that balance ArenaNet have got right is the aggro radius, at least on land. Underwater it needs to be reduced to compensate for the reduced awareness caused by the camera.

Reset distance is just laughable as well, pull mobs away from roving patrols and you run the risk of them resetting. Not very funny when a Champion mob resets to 100% health because the guy he was focusing on tried to run away from the moronic damage he was taking.

WoW got the balance right, which is part of the reason new players stayed with it during leveling instead of quitting in frustration. It is unlikely I will stick with this game, I detest playing unfinished and untested games, especially when there is a high probability that nothing will be done about it.

I always think about this in any area with a ton of risen. seems you are screwed without a big group and even when your lucky enough to stumble upon a group out there it seems more of the risen spawn at an even faster rate even when you aren’t in an event. im not a fan of the short respawns and even more so of the huge packs of them when it comes to risen. they are hard to get around if all your trying to do is explore. its hard to just play the game when all ya want to do is walk around but cant since there are 20 risen in one small area. i think the mob sizes should decrease. i would like to explore more out in these areas but seems its not possible unless ya can get a group out there. and most groups are only doing events. i like that stuff respawns just not at an alarming rate and to the point when ya cant even move when ya kill one thing 10sec later ur over run again. decrease mob sizes in smaller populated areas and maybe hike up the rate in popular areas where people actually are to help clear or add some npc’s that aren’t like butter in paper armor.
I miss heroes or even henchmen for this reason alone. you always had someone there to help. i love to play with others but also love to play alone at times.

To people complaining about respawns and too many mobs that kill you: Consider not building so fragile a glass cannon that you shatter if a vet looks at you. you should be able to easily solo a vet your level or even a level or two above without issues, as well as their attendant commons. If you cannot, fix your build.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Just checked, the Inquest in that area are on a shorter respawn timer (30-60s) but there’s nothing that respawns in 10s. I checked all of the troll spawns in Hezran Outcrops, and they’re using the 95-120s respawn timer, so my above comment applies. (Could another player have run through and killed them before you got there, so they respawned after you go there? Could trolls in a different area have been killed, so when they respawned and randomly picked a new position, they ended up appearing near you?) I couldn’t find anything that respawns in 10-30s, and nothing forces them to respawn.

It’s not other players. The mob you just killed will respawn on that exact spot before the corpse even hits the ground. If your timers in teh DB are set to 95-120 then there is something wrong with the code using those timers.

95-120 second respawn.. rofl. 30-60.. omfg. No wonder stuff is messed up, and bots are rampant. This is why Renown hearts can be done basically by standing in one spot while watching Netflix.

There is a skillpoint in Gendarran hills that requires you to kill trolls, a veteran troll, a pile of oozes and a Veteran ooze, all within close proximity of each other, and the respawn guarantees fighting mobs you just cleared. Just one example. Skill points like this are all over.. Vet Jotun Spiritkeeper in Lormars is another good one.

95-120 seconds is fail in outposts that are taken.. you kill 4 mobs and you cannot possibly res any of the NPCs before you get hit by another wave.. leaving you with no choice but to solo it.

And, somewhat of a sidetrack, given the sorry loot table atm and lack of rewards, I find myself soloing almost all events unless I am in Queensdale or Wayfarer Hills.

Amariithynar.1470:

To people complaining about respawns and too many mobs that kill you: Consider not building so fragile a glass cannon that you shatter if a vet looks at you. you should be able to easily solo a vet your level or even a level or two above without issues, as well as their attendant commons. If you cannot, fix your build.

Way to not get it. I don’t see anyone complaining regarding difficulty of Vets and attendants. That IS the encounter. Not a Vet, attendant, and the 4 mobs you just killed. Or the 3 more that show up because the ranged mob (you just killed) bombing you proximity aggroed more mobs (you just killed) out of your aggro range. Include adds you gain from areas you just cleared by using your avoidance skills, engineer skills are great for aggroing a huge area you just cleared.

Respawn timer is bad because of the tried and true mechanic of making bosses have HP as their main toughness factor. HP means time, and time in this game means adds you cannot usually avoid by playing smart.

Respawn Adds make scaling and mob difficulty problematic. I would gladly fight tougher mobs, had I the guarantee that I would not be fighting respawn mobs as well.

This skill point was a bit annoying to get. The Spirit of Excess creatures respawned way too quickly. I thought I cleared them out, but as I was about to fight the veteran, they gradually respawned.

I didn’t even take that long – my character has pretty good strength. Plus you have to commune with the statue so that gives the creatures even more time to respawn.

Deathful Dante.1239:

I love the idea! really, post it in suggestions, man! This sounds clever, makes it better for people killing and does not affect anyone who have not killed it yet.

But I think you should add to it a longer timer to “checked” players too. so that mobs respawns to people who did kill them already, but at much much longer timer. Because otherwise if one clears an area which is not too populated, he would be forever walking on a desert land.

I’ll go ahead and post it to the suggestions forum and see where it goes.
I’m not sure about the timer on checked players though, since the idea was that if no new players had entered respawn range, the mob wouldn’t respawn at all (not just a longer timer.) This helps preserve immersion when possible, and makes for a better experience for folks trying to clear out a tough area, for example the enclosed areas often found around skill points.

BrokenSymmetry.2593:

Yes, for me this is the number one reason why I don’t enjoy the game. In GW1 it was so satisfying to clear a complete zone, and then just run around it, looking at all the sights. In GW2 you never have a moment’s rest to look at the beautiful art.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

This is one of the major things I miss from gw1, the sense of freedom one felt after vanquishing a map of being able to run around do mapping , or just enjoy the scenery knowing that as long as you stay in that map, there are no more enemies. It was really something quite special.

I never played GW1, but this feature sounds really REALLY fantastic. I would love that in GW2.

Mechrophilia.6987:

I never played GW1, but this feature sounds really REALLY fantastic. I would love that in GW2.

The problem is that GW1 did all explorable areas as instances (as GW2 does for story missions) that were unique to the player, so one player clearing the area didn’t affect anyone else.

I don’t see how it would be possible to do the same thing in GW2, because of fundamental differences in the game architecture.

That’s not to say the spawns can’t be adjusted in other ways, of course.

Everyone complaining about respawns either needs to rethink their build or upgrade their gear i’ve never had an issue with respawns and I have 4 80s. Everyone just wants everything easy mode faceroll. Also respawn rates were faster in the beta yet you people still think its too fast just aren’t satisfied until you can roll your face across the keyboard

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

this is how I see it:

I loved the feeling of progression I had in the instanced GW1-Missions. I killed mobs in a certain location and now felt safe in that area. I could retreat to those areas if it got a bit too difficult and it felt like I made a difference.

Respawning of mobs feels very artificial for me in general. Jeffrey, you want people to move on to another area if they killed a mob, respawning mobs are not the way to do this in my opinion. Farmers just stay in the same area and farm those respawning mobs, this is how botters survive too.

In GW1 you had some empty areas too when you played in a zone, that wasn’t a big problem for me. I definitely see it as a problem in GW2 when the area isn’t cleared by yourself but other players. I really would suggest a different way though.

example:
The world is dynamic already because of dynamic events. You could make the dynamic events the source of new mobs. Everytime an event starts those waves come from nowhere and occupy an area. What you could do: make some of the mobs split from the wave and return to the places where mobs are missing. But until there is no event in that area, there is no “mob-respawn”. This would feel more natural in my opinion.

example2:
introduce “breakout events” for mobs, where a big group of enemies patrols an area and some stay behind those areas where mobs are missing. There is this one event ( I think it was in Blazeridge Steppes) where a mobgroup of 10+ mobs with a champion-leader strolls around and it’s not a too easy task to defeat those. Love it.

How can you compare gw1 to gw2? If you didn’t realise gw1 was all instanced

This is my first post on the forum and I want to start with saying Thank You to ANet for this great game, which I have played with a lot of fun. It has been a great start amd I look forward to what is coming and what improvements will be implemented over the course of the next updates.

Playing an Ele I can only support the title of this post. The re-spawning is terribly fast, and whether it is the same mob re-spawing too fast or another one from before, it still brings numerous problems with it.
I may have a solution for this problem with happens to improve other areas that have been complained about: Treat mobs, veterans, champions etc the same as resource nods, i.e. after I have killed them I cannot kill them again for the day (the best would be if they were invisible but that may be a stretch technically). As I see it it would address and improve the following:
- RE-SPAWNING: No more respawns would allow a more tactical game, taking out one mob after the other without kiting into the three I killed earlier.
- HARDER ON BOTS: No more farming one small area and feasting o re-spawned mobs
- MORE REALISTIC GAME EXPERIENCE and sense of accomplishment: You can clear areas of mobs, and dont see them re-spawn like nothing ever happened to them just a few seconds/minutes ago.
- FOSTER MAP EXPLORATION and help to revive empty areas as people/we have to travel further to farm and kill mobs.

In order to still support group play mobs should be only unkillable/invisble after I contributed a certain amount of damage, can be different for different mobs.

I would be interesting what the forum and ANet think about this.

Respawn times are certainly too fast. That’s been one of my chief gripes with GW2 since the beginning. 95-120 seconds is too fast when it takes you 95-120 seconds to kill each mob. At that point you’re constantly fighting the mobs you’ve just killed.

Last night while finishing off my story line in Cursed Shore. As I was working my way around the zone I got to an area and started killing mobs to get though. I killed this one mob and the split second it died, it re-spawned in the exact spot I pulled it from the first time. Killed it and again BAM re-spawned the second it died. This happened 5 times in a row. I literally turned and started to run away after the 5th kill when I noticed it didn’t re-spawn. Go figure.

Like the random loud pet stomping sounds that was said to be fixed months ago and wasn’t, this is still broken as well.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

The default respawn rate is 95-120 seconds, so if you’re seeing locations where they respawn much faster, please report it with specific info! Event creatures will often appear more quickly (so the event doesn’t look dead if players kill them immediately) and if players were killing things in the same area, they might respawn near you. (i.e. if a group ran through and cleared an area a minute ago, a lone player might be in the area when their respawn timer comes up.)

I think I did report this a few times when I first encountered it in some lower level grawl cave, but I have since grown tired of abusing that report button. It seems like every single cave in the game is full of either grawl or dredge that respawn in roughly 5-10 seconds. I pretty much gave up doing map completion with my elementalist because it’s impossible to clear such content with a class is designed to snare and kite enemies around for 20 minutes before getting a kill. I remember times when I’d actually used my elite skill multiple times before even being able to set foot inside a dredge cave.

I was in the Diessa plateau yesterday. Found a cave with Flame Legion inside with a veteran in the back of the cave. Went in solo and killed them all. By the time I was finished, one had respawned so I killed it again. It respawned immediately. Killed it again. It respawned immediately AGAIN. Killed it again. At that point it didn’t respawn.

In general though, the respawn rate is too fast. If there are large numbers of mobs there is no way to clear out an area, solo or with a party, and not be surrounded again before you can finish. There is no sense of accomplishment, that you worked your way thru and killed everything. If you see a POI surrounded by mobs; it’s better to run in, grab it and run out. No point in trying to get it by killing them as they will respawn and surround you long before you get to the POI so that you have to kill them again to leave. For example, I was in the Harathi Hinterlands. There was a POI surrounded by centaurs. In Guild Wars 1, I would have worked my way thru them, clearing them out. But in this game, it wasn’t worth it. I just popped my speed boost, ran in and ran back out.

The only time that the respawn rate isn’t too high if you are in an area farming a particular mob for a mat.

TL:DR I feel that the respawn rate needs to be slower and some mobs respawn immediately.