Guild Wars 2

Squishing forum bug.

Love you Anet <3

I was getting 37x or 39x Karma from events with the occasional 198 Karma (some Door gave more, some less) before the update. I tried changing characters, same deal.

After the update, I took a previous character in…198 Karma on every door. Changed to a character that had not done any Halloween content whatsoever. Same 198 Karma. Also, lots of bones and whatever the other trophy is; mostly bones, though.

I can’t really say much about the amount of ToT Bags, as I didn’t keep count before. I think I would get about 200 before and less than 100 or just over, after.

I will try again later, I guess. I was getting better rewards before the update/change than after, though.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Can you give more details? I’m playing Labyrinth right now — have been doing so for a couple of hours — and I’m noticing a significant increase in drops and no DR apparent. I’m talking the whole gamut, from doors to the bosses or regular kills.

Well thats just because you got a lucky RNG account, everyone know that.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t have exact numbers. I went in and found a busy map and started farming. Going by memory and not having noted exact times and numbers, what I saw was I killing mobs and getting bones and doing doors on my guardian with traps and staff and getting a couple of tot bags. I stopped after about half an hour or so and had ~19 tot bags. I don’t know if this is average or not, but it looked low to me. The char I used had had DR in there previously but should have been removed as I did events with it.

Maybe that’s average or my memory is faulty. Next time I go in I’ll use a different char and note the times and numbers.

Strange. I just logged in during breakfast, played for ~ 15 minutes in the lab and had around 80 bags. Well, I played my WvW wells Necro, so I can tag a whole area at once and it was an organized map that did Visc and Lich. Additionally it may have been a fresh map, 15 minutes is not too long etc. but there is a distinct difference in my loot figures and yours.

I just logged in from work to say THANK YOU. You literally saved the event! It is good to know you still listen to your customers.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Changed characters to one that’s not done any Halloween content yet, and still experiencing DR in the Labyrinth. Not sure what to do.

I hate to bring up the old spectre of Diminishing Returns being broken, but.. yeah. This is a great spot for people to be testing this out.

For me, I farmed a little bit ago until I had about 250 ToT bags, and it seemed to take less time to obtain them, and on the very last event that I did I definitely got full karma credit for it.
The character I used was used in the lab yesterday, but hit DR, so I took her to Ember Bay and did dailies and all 5 hearts there. From there I didn’t log her in until tonight (after the patch) to run in the lab.
That being said, I do have some characters that need to have the DR cooled down, so I’ll test them out tomorrow.
It’s good that the DR has been removed, but it is annoying that some people seem to have it stuck to their characters. Especially after Anet has stated over the years that there is nothing wrong with DR.

Well, I’ll gladly eat my words. Thank you!

Not sure if it’s the right thread to post this on, but since the devs are tracking it:

What happened to lunatic inquisition??? I saw it didn’t make Halloween 2015, but why is it not added to this Halloween? I know some fague reasons about glitches or exploits to win easier but sadly that’s almost the only thing I enjoy doing whilst the Halloween update is out. All the other things are just repeated all over and over again…. (a little boring too)

Awyissssss YISSSSS let the farm begin.

Awesome! Good to hear the boss beasties are buff once more, and that pesky DR has been shown the door.

Fantastic news… thank-you so very much for removing the DR from the Labyrinth! Every year I look forward to roaming that instance in the midst of a loot-drunk zerg while having netflix up on a second monitor. It’s the perfect combination of relaxing play and mindless entertainment at the end of a long day.

No more loot scaling inside the Labyrinth? I love you lads and lasses! Thank you!

I cannot wait to hop into the Lab. when I return home from work!

What about the Door spawn rate?

What about the other Areas (Clock Tower and Ascend to Madness)?

The other threads talked in detail about problems and “missing” features, that would be a delight to come back.

Redfeather.6401:

This sounds pretty awesome as I’ve never done the labyrinth before. Maybe I will join the other players and use my owl tonic, and sing “Magic Dance” while everyone is fighting all the baddies.

Just posting to let you know your awesome reference wasn’t lost on me

I’ll go sing Magic dance too.

or puppy dogs tails….

I’m surprised at the power creep issue. I genuinely thought this game hadn’t had much power creep, at least not since the 2nd Halloween. It’s now possible to get a full set of ascended equipment and of course traits work differently and we’ve got elite specs, but other than that there’s not been much obvious change.

(The first Halloween was quite different because it was only 2 months after the game came out and many players (myself included) weren’t even level 80, and many of the ones who were didn’t have full exotics. Ascended didn’t exist at the time.)

And I can’t put it down to players knowing how to play more effectively, because we weren’t even bothering to use any special tactics that have come up in previous years, like stacking in the corner to fight the Lich or reflecting his attacks, and simply seeing more people with tanky builds instead of glass canons wouldn’t explain it.

I am really happy about the lab but what about the chest reward about the clock tower? it’s my third year of halloween and i didn’t get the chest piece of mad kings armor but my friend who is a first year player got it.
Please do something about it. !

Thanks ArenaNet for listening to your players and customers about this!

lusikas.9176:

I am really happy about the lab but what about the chest reward about the clock tower? it’s my third year of halloween and i didn’t get the chest piece of mad kings armor but my friend who is a first year player got it.
Please do something about it. !

I don’t know if this helps at all but they’re not unique.

The skins are the same as the exotics which drop from enemies, and which can be bought on the TP for a few gold (or less!). They do allow you to choose the stats, but there combinations you can choose from are the same as the ones available elsewhere.

In other words if you got a set of Seer’s, Sneakthief or Scallywag armour and put Superior Runes of the Mad King on it you’d have exactly the same thing as you got from the chest.

I have never been on the forum but for this i felt i had to log in and say thank you Halloween is the only holiday i really enjoy and try to farm everything from it every year so i thank you very much

It never really bothered me, but great to see swift comms and action on the issue. With such widespread feedback about certain aspects of halloween this yeae, there was a concern it wasnt being taken seriously.

Im enjoying halloween as always, but the grind and the focus on the economy alongside less activities have diminished the festival. It no longer feels like the premier place to game during these two weeks like it was.

I think we should be allowed to gain xp for maguuma masteries in the labyrinth too, especially considering the Mad Kings Realm is supposed to be seperate from everything but also be everywhere, it would only make sense that it would be accessible in Maguuma too

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,
Additionally, with this map being as profitable as it is, a lot of players have started triggering diminishing rewards. That’s just not cool. So we disabled diminishing rewards on this map.

Thanks for this good move.

But DR is not cool anywhere on any map.

Why not remove it entirely from all maps?

Gaile Grey why dont u pay any attention to the answers regarding ATM and Clock Tower? They should loose DR too, or in any case, at let us know why u choose to leave them as they are?

Blanche Neige.7241:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,
Additionally, with this map being as profitable as it is, a lot of players have started triggering diminishing rewards. That’s just not cool. So we disabled diminishing rewards on this map.

Thanks for this good move.

But DR is not cool anywhere on any map.

Why not remove it entirely from all maps?

Because it’s one of the main tools used to stop gold sellers and others who use bots, and usually won’t affect normal players at all.

You have to stay in the same area for over an hour, doing the same events and/or killing the same enemies over and over before you’re affected. Even in a map like Silverwastes where players will often run the same events (specifically the defense ones) multiple times it’s rare to see anyone hit with DR and they’ve usually completed the entire meta-event several times before it happens (I’ve done the entire chain twice in a row without any DR, at least on loot, I rarely pay attention to XP and karma).

Whereas automated gold farming programs (bots) will do exactly that – their creator will pick a spot where lots of items drop, like an event that spawns waves of enemies, and leave them running there for hours or days at a time, doing nothing but that one event over and over and over.

But because the Labyrinth is a relatively small map and the intended way to play it is to go around doing the same few events over and over (I think there’s about 10 doors in total) DR kicks in much faster and affects far more people. And since it’s only temporary it’s not really necessary to prevent farming there.

They really need to add a ‘Historian NPC’ in the game so that players could “recall memories of the past” aka. replay past content. Players could even relive the introduction of the Mad King (when he destroyed the Lion statue), much like how Personal Story is taking place in the past (the instance uses past versions of the map).

“On the first day of Halloween, My O Brien gave to me a labyrinth to see.
On the second day of Halloween My O Brien gave to me two ToT Bags
and a labyrinth to see.
On the third day of Halloween My O Brien gave to me three deadly bosses,
two ToT Bags, and a labyrinth to see.
…”

Awesome, I was put off from lab farming initially due to DR and having to switch toons but now I think I’ll definitely be chillin’ in there more often (on my very guilty and lazy loot stick wielding Charr – hooray for guardians!)

Now its just time to remove some pointless DR just from the rest of the game to reduce the grind where no grind should be…

Or simply spoken, reduce more garbage loot out of the game and let drop stuff more oftenly, when the stuff that drops has some kind of impact for the player, is valuable ect. to reduce inventory spam…

Simplest solution for that would be to erase all grey garbage out of the game, unless its not needed for any kind of event or for heart quests ect pp or can be traded in for anything thats of value for a player.

Anet has to learn finally, that players don’t want massive ampounts of loot, just to get the feel of lottign something, when 90% of that loot is total garbage worth absolutely nothing.

People want to find loot, when that loot is of high quality!!
Because then it means something to them when they receive loot and know, that whatever it is, it will be somthing impactful for them and not total garbage, that will be instantly deleted and thrown away, because it would just spam your inventory full if you keep it, what happens exceptionally fast if you have first the Auto Loot Feature through the Mastery active (which you can’t deactivate anymore after you learned it once…at least not of my knowledge that you could if you want)

Reduce the amount of loot and improve the quality of the loot that you find, when you get some. Make loot in this game finally more impactful for the players and stop flooding this game with tons of trash that have only its reason of existance to spam the players inventory full, so that they are brought to the gemstore to increase their maximum inventory space – because lets be, true, thats the sole single reason for why you spam us full with so much trash in this game thats worth absolutely nothing, not even its time it takes to delete all of it …

Its very nice to see that tghe loot for a holiday event gets improved through the removal of the obsolete and annoying DR mechanics.

But please don’t forget, that there are also other areas in the games loot mechanisms and gameplay systrems for all the rest of the game, that need direly an overhaul too, because there has been done mostly nothing for these things in the rest of the game for the last 4 years.

I personally rather have in like say for example a play time of 1 day only like 5-6 loot drops, which are impactful for me in some kind of way, than instead like 500-600 drops from which 95% are generic grey worthless crap or items which i have to salvage first, before I get something useful out of them and have to waste first items and gold on them, before I get anything useful out of the loot drops

Quality over Quantity!!

JustTrogdor.7892:

I’m liking what I see from MOE in this last 10 months or so. I really feel like he is keeping in touch with the players.

Yeah we especially love his contributions in the WvW forum. So much to read.

Felblade.8701:

Now people can spam their 1 skill all day! Anet’s plan to make everyone zombies for Halloween, literally.

Much better than empty Lab maps with upset players. I for one am happy to become a mindless zombie along my hord of undead friends. <3

I think DR change was great and it works for me at least. Thank you for that.

But I don’t notice any kind of difference in challenge whatsoever. Did you maybe forgot to press some button to change things? 15 people runnin lab killed lich, was easy as ever. Melted like butter. We also had big candy corn + horror at the same time, no challenge there either. Can’t say I’m not disappointed.

Thank you so much!! This is a wonderful change and very much appreciated!

Valento.9852:

Felblade.8701:

Now people can spam their 1 skill all day! Anet’s plan to make everyone zombies for Halloween, literally.

Much better than empty Lab maps with upset players. I for one am happy to become a mindless zombie along my hord of undead friends. <3

I prefer soloing/duoing in the empty labs. Every time the zerg swarms by I can’t get in tags before everything is killed…. and last night when I was trying to stay on the other side of the map from the zerg, they got upset that I opened doors near me. I wasn’t even a member of their zerg/squad, and I got a message that I’d been kicked…. I didn’t know that was possible.

Tonight I’ll be jumping maps until I no longer see a commander tag.

~EW

Whelp, still getting 198 Karma on most doors, but occasionally 37x or 39x (I never can remember the full amount). Oh, well. Not that important. At least I got a refractor.

Thanks for doing this Mo! I look forward to Halloween and the Labyrinth every year. By adding the buff and eliminating the DR it feels like you are giving us all a gift! +1

I’m very pleasantry surprised and pleased to see this addressed in such a timely professional manner. Looks like we have a Fun Team on the job now.

Absolutely brilliant solution. Much applause to you and your gang

Thank you very much Mike.

This was a good change.

Next year, however, found you put back the center door that, in 2012, had the “Champion Family Sized Camdy Corn Elemental?” (People who weren’t around then, look it up on YouTube… There was a champion on top of the hill in the center).

The map, for years, feels like it is missing something. All of the other doors get finished and there is this boring time period of waiting for doors to respawn.

If the resources exist, update that boss to something fun and challenging and uses the newer Halloween skins (bloody prince, candy corn ghoul, hellfire skeleton, wraith, w/e).

But the flow of the map badly needs that HP sponge.

FANTASTIC NEWS!!

Thank you so much for this! A nice Treat this year!

Nice! happy Halloween all!

As hard as it may sound: could we please stop being naive and praising him endlessly?

“MO saves Halloween! Thank you for listening to the players. Anet cares for their players! That’s very generous of you Mo!”

They increased the DR this year before removing it. Why would they do that? They should know their players by now. It took them a huge sh*tstorm on reddit and the forum to do something about it.

And no, he did not save Halloween. They did not listen to the players. There are no new Halloween events this year. There is no story at all this year.

Anet has to stop taking an expansion as an excuse for the lack of new content.

Last time it was HoT. This time it’s the next expansion. You’re putting us on hold year after year abandoning everything else. That won’t work anymore.

Gaile or Mo: do you think we could get DR disabled in Ascent into Madness too? Thanks.

Tekey.7946:

Anet has to stop taking an expansion as an excuse for the lack of new content.

Last time it was HoT. This time it’s the next expansion. You’re putting us on hold year after year abandoning everything else. That won’t work anymore.

While I appreciate the Lab changes (thank you!) so very much this. I think it’s clear at this point that Anet doesn’t have the resources to implement all their grand ideas and it shows. Please polish up what you do have before heading off to the next grand idea. I know some won’t agree with this, but I’d rather have a polished and sparkling gem I can take pride in rather than a bigger gem with visible flaws.

Tekey.7946:

As hard as it may sound: could we please stop being naive and praising him endlessly?

“MO saves Halloween! Thank you for listening to the players. Anet cares for their players! That’s very generous of you Mo!”

They increased the DR this year before removing it. Why would they do that? They should know their players by now. It took them a huge sh*tstorm on reddit and the forum to do something about it.

And no, he did not save Halloween. They did not listen to the players. There are no new Halloween events this year. There is no story at all this year.

---

Anet has to stop taking an expansion as an excuse for the lack of new content.

Last time it was HoT. This time it’s the next expansion. You’re putting us on hold year after year abandoning everything else. That won’t work anymore.

I don’t recall there being an abundance of players asking for new Halloween content.

I farmed Lab for awhile in Guard and ran into no DR issues. Maybe XP from events dropped a bit but I was gaining loot near the end at the same rate that I was when I started. Do you have a source that they had increased DR?

You’re upset that an MMO has content gaps between expansions and other releases? Can you name an MMO that continuously releases content updates, along with expansions, that satisfy players need for continuous new content?

Danikat.8537:

Because it’s one of the main tools used to stop gold sellers and others who use bots, and usually won’t affect normal players at all.

You know, I never thought about that. Once a gold seller discovers DR, they must just close the game, uninstall, and move on to another game. wow. That’s genius!

Here in the real world: Gold sellers and bot makers are constantly updating their software to keep one step ahead of bot restrictions. Everyone talks about how Diminishing Returns has some mystery to it as to how it works, etc. I guarantee you that bot makers know exactly how it works, how long it takes to kick in, and how to circumvent it by using other maps. They have thousands of hours of data to look at to make adjustments to maximize the profit. They don’t even have to program their bot to look at evidence of DR. They simply time it to farm for x amount of time in one zone, then switch to another zone, and so on.

The only people that DR hurts is honest players who play in one zone for more than 45minutes or so.

Neural.1824:

Danikat.8537:

Because it’s one of the main tools used to stop gold sellers and others who use bots, and usually won’t affect normal players at all.

You know, I never thought about that. Once a gold seller discovers DR, they must just close the game, uninstall, and move on to another game. wow. That’s genius!

Here in the real world: Gold sellers and bot makers are constantly updating their software to keep one step ahead of bot restrictions. Everyone talks about how Diminishing Returns has some mystery to it as to how it works, etc. I guarantee you that bot makers know exactly how it works, how long it takes to kick in, and how to circumvent it by using other maps. They have thousands of hours of data to look at to make adjustments to maximize the profit. They don’t even have to program their bot to look at evidence of DR. They simply time it to farm for x amount of time in one zone, then switch to another zone, and so on.

The only people that DR hurts is honest players who play in one zone for more than 45minutes or so.

A lot of bots and gold farmers are not overly smart people. No matter what the game is there will always be dumb ones where DR will effectively stop them.

Also, I think a good argument in favor of DR is to encourage people to play different content. The best way to burnout and leave the game is to farm the same content so much that you just can’t stand the thought of logging in anymore (and honestly I’m surprised this hasn’t happenned yet to the majority of people who AB/ML). Personally I disagree with DR on seasonal content, but for the rest of the content in game it makes a lot of sense to keep it in.

Tekey.7946:

As hard as it may sound: could we please stop being naive and praising him endlessly?

“MO saves Halloween! Thank you for listening to the players. Anet cares for their players! That’s very generous of you Mo!”

They increased the DR this year before removing it. Why would they do that? They should know their players by now. It took them a huge sh*tstorm on reddit and the forum to do something about it.

[Read the following with sarcasm dripping from each word]. “Yes, let’s be hateful to Mo for doing something nice. That’s helpful.” [End sarcasm.]

Some people will find something hateful even in the nicest of gestures. It is just sad that you want to tell the rest of us not to be nice for something we are grateful for.

Yes, they did increase DR. But there was always DR. Players complained about DR period. Mo took it away completely. No DR at all. Therefore: Listened to players.

People were complaining about the bosses not being tough enough, so they buffed them. Therefore: Listened to players.

I have seen the occasional concern about no new content, but have never seen anyone complaining about no new story. Just you. Most people want to farm the Lab. They do. Mo made it better. Life is good.

It is nice to see people being nice to Anet and Mo for a change. Please do not ask people to be hateful and mean where and when there is simply no cause to do so.

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t recall there being an abundance of players asking for new Halloween content.

I farmed Lab for awhile in Guard and ran into no DR issues. Maybe XP from events dropped a bit but I was gaining loot near the end at the same rate that I was when I started. Do you have a source that they had increased DR?

You’re upset that an MMO has content gaps between expansions and other releases? Can you name an MMO that continuously releases content updates, along with expansions, that satisfy players need for continuous new content?

People weren’t upset because it’s the same events since years but there’s even less than it used to be. They didn’t continue the story and cut other events we had.

To the DR: Please, read through the threads.

To the expansions:
We’ve missed out on lots of content because they developed HoT. Actually, they never stopped working on HoT in order to deliver the content they promised at release. Again, putting everything else aside.

And now they’re already working on the next expansion?

Absolutely amazing. I had just told a Guildie of mine last night that this issue would most likely not be resolved until next year, if addressed at all. Thanks for proving me wrong! Heck of a job!