Guild Wars 2

so these are some examples of what has happened to me

1. kill a mob to get to a mine, walk up and start mining, in the middle of mining a new mob has already appeared an is attacking me

2. kill some veteran etc type mob to get to a skill point, walk up to skill point, and halfway through ‘communing’ i am getting attacked again.

3. finishe killing a mob, almost that same instant another pops right up and begins attacking me

is this anet’s idea of challenging? is this an intentional part of the game? it happesn all through the game.

This is hardcore.

has nothing to do with hardcore, to me it is more or less just a cheap tactic because they dont know how to make challenging content. so they just make things respawn almost instantaneously. crappy game design.

Used to happen to me a lot, now I’m more efficient at killing mobs so it stopped being a problem.

Agreed respawn rates must come down. Let me actually have a second to take in the gorgeous world! And nothing breaks immersion like mobs popping up all around you that you JUST killed.

I totally agree. Especially in the Orr zones the spawn rates are sometimes downright stupid. And not looking at the gorgeous world in a spot where I just killed a mob is something I unfortunately learned very early in this game…

There was a skillpoint in Orr last night where I had to kill the small few mobs in front of it about 3 times before they stopped respawning long enough for me to channel the skillpoint. It’s just dumb.

While I agree that some respawn rates are far too fast, think of the alternative. Would you rather fight the same mob three times, or walk across a zone with zero mobs anywhere because someone came through ahead of you? Some specific spawns need to be adjusted, yes, but not all.

I think it was intentional because they feared ppl would be left without anything to kill in the first days after launch when servers were almost always full, at least that’s my impression.

I’ve also read somewhere that they will be looking into respawn rates in certain areas in the future but I think right now they have other priorities.

I only get that in Orr really. Nowhere else is it as thick with fast respawning mobs. Usually its manageable, but I recall one POI I was trying to reach up a hill, and there were no less than three veterans along the path, with accompanying escorts of trash. Managed to get the second one down to about a quarter health before the first had reappeared and jumped me. By the time the second was down, all the previous trash had popped and I had to deal with them again. I should have split when I saw what was happening but stupidly, decided to press on. The first vet still had plenty of health left by the time the second one reappeared. They didn’t take long to double team me into oblivion.

I never did get a single shot in on the third vet and that POI is still unvisited. Every time I think of it, I hear calliope music in the background and some baritone announcer shouting “SEND IN THE CLOWNS!”. Not sure when I’m going to try it again.

There’s a difference between instant respawns, and in my case respawns before I’ve even finished clearing the place, and fast enough respawns to ensure there are enough mobs to kill for other players. One thing I think we can all agree on is the respawn rates in Orr is too fast – the place is never in danger of not having enough mobs because someone was rolling through killing stuff. It’s just a bit too fast.

I like what other games did and change the spawn rates based on how many mobs are dying and how fast they are dying – basically scaling to the number of players actively killing them in a particular area. That makes more sense.

Blacklight.2871:

I only get that in Orr really. Nowhere else is it as thick with fast respawning mobs. Usually its manageable, but I recall one POI I was trying to reach up a hill, and there were no less than three veterans along the path, with accompanying escorts of trash. Managed to get the second one down to about a quarter health before the first had reappeared and jumped me. By the time the second was down, all the previous trash had popped and I had to deal with them again. I should have split when I saw what was happening but stupidly, decided to press on. The first vet still had plenty of health left by the time the second one reappeared. They didn’t take long to double team me into oblivion.

I never did get a single shot in on the third vet and that POI is still unvisited. Every time I think of it, I hear calliope music in the background and some baritone announcer shouting “SEND IN THE CLOWNS!”. Not sure when I’m going to try it again.

Have you tried asking for help? It’s probably doable with 2-3 players.

only have monsters respawn if someone who hasn’t already killed that mob gets within a certain range (just outside of max draw distance, perhaps).

if you want to farm/grind an area b/c thats your play-style then have mobs respawn after x amount of time regardless if you’ve already cleared that mob or not. perhaps a few minutes.

so mobs would respawn if someone new enters a certain range or after a few minutes regardless of who is in the area and if you’ve already cleared them. but respawning after a couple of seconds in areas where there are only a few players is a weird game mechanic.

but just as kittenuper high respawn rates is the fact that mobs respawn out of thin air. this plus respawning after a few second is way beyond immersion breaking its made the game hard to play for some people. i wish mobs came from somewhere and were doing things instead of hovering or pacing back-n-forth.

im new to mmos and still trying to figure out if this genre is for me. if these things are just intrinsic to the genre and there’s no way around it thats ok and it is what it is.

Calavera.1086:

Blacklight.2871:

I only get that in Orr really. Nowhere else is it as thick with fast respawning mobs. Usually its manageable, but I recall one POI I was trying to reach up a hill, and there were no less than three veterans along the path, with accompanying escorts of trash. Managed to get the second one down to about a quarter health before the first had reappeared and jumped me. By the time the second was down, all the previous trash had popped and I had to deal with them again. I should have split when I saw what was happening but stupidly, decided to press on. The first vet still had plenty of health left by the time the second one reappeared. They didn’t take long to double team me into oblivion.

I never did get a single shot in on the third vet and that POI is still unvisited. Every time I think of it, I hear calliope music in the background and some baritone announcer shouting “SEND IN THE CLOWNS!”. Not sure when I’m going to try it again.

Have you tried asking for help? It’s probably doable with 2-3 players.

I was with a fellow the first time and we picked up the SP that was along the path pretty easily, dispatching the first two groups without much trouble. He was a Warrior so it was a cakewalk. I didn’t realize that continuing up led to a POI so I quickly left before the inevitable respawn, not taking time to consult my map. The circus sideshow happened when I returned later.

Most of these situation can be handled easily with a group around, and I’m usually content to wait around for others when I get stuck somewhere. But that episode left a real bitter taste in my mouth and I haven’t even been interested in returning to it. In fact, it was at that point that I started devoting most of my time to my alts, having been soured on the entire concept of Orr. I’m not expecting to return to the continent at all until I’ve got my Warrior up to 80 so I can farm properly. It’s going to be a while at the pace I’m moving at.

I think it depends on the mob. At low level oozes seem to pop back really fast, I don’t notice it as much with other mobs.

Mob respawns are pretty crazy IMO.

I had a mob respawn as I was pressing F to loot it .

Agreed that the respawn rates (especially in Orr) are too fast. In some areas with the larger groups of enemies, especially around a skill challenge, by the time you kill three quarters of the enemies and the end is in sight, the first ones you killed have respawned. I’m sure the respawn rates were an attempt to make sure you don’t explore an area and find it empty of enemies and fun because some players ahead of you cleared it out. Therefore as mentioned above, there needs to be some code added that checks if other (new) players have entered the area. If so, go ahead and respawn mobs. But if the same player(s) are the only people around, don’t respawn.

The 15-second respawn rate is pretty common near “Communing” skill points and I’m pretty sure it’s intentional there; they’re supposed to be hard to reach and hard to use, hence skill points. That said, the respawn rate is pretty insane in some other regions as well. As I’ve gotten better at killing, it’s been less of a problem, but I do think in most places it could stand to be toned down at least a little bit.

Hmmm I think I can sum this up with two words “Sea Witch!”
If you been there, you KNOW what I am talking about! Can hardly get into the bloody door between the fish, the vets, and this is before you even get to the Boss, when you do get to her it just doesn’t stop, even more so when you do kill the boss!

“Are the respawn rates intentional?”

No, someone at ArenaNet tripped and their elbow hit the button that increases the respawn rates, and then they just decided, “what the hell, let’s leave it.”

Of course the respawn rates are intentional. Is it possible they need to be adjusted in some places? Maybe…but mostly I think they are fine. Orr isn’t intended to be a vacation spot. It’s a war against an endless army of undead. You’re supposed to feel on-edge the whole time.

I found a rich gold vein today – only managed to mine it when three other players came to help me because there was absolutely no clearing the immediate area.

What I find most depressing is when you see things appearing right in front of you. It rather breaks any sense of reality. Why not a simple rule? Don’t spawn mobs within a certain distance of players.

Respawn rates ruin my leveling experience. Not always, but often…
I’m sure it was different the first weeks and all, but nowadays you’re more alone in the maps.

When I see a veteran I don’t want to call other people, I see it as a challenge!
But in order to take that challenge, I need to get past the mobs first. When I do get past them, they spawn in my back as I encounter the veteran.

I can take on a veteran by myself IF I play right, and that sometimes takes several goes (it usually does).
But that’s the fun of it. Calling for help in /map is for events, not for every little obstacle I encounter.

And for the record: /map is pretty darn empy these days, which is why you feel the respawn rate so much.
You didn’t feel it when playing the first weeks and it was crowded, and you don’t feel it when downleveling because downleveling isn’t tuned right. You still end up too strong as a max level in lower maps.

A simple thing like respawn rates is changing your game experience, trust me. This is coming from someone leveling now, not weeks ago on crowded servers everywhere…

Respawn rates are totally crazy in some areas and do need to be looked at and revised for 2 reasons.
Firstly the obvious one so that when you clear an area to be able to interact with an item there you actually have time to do so.
Secondly, I’ve noticed that the areas with crazy fast respawn rates are where you’re likely to find the bots feasting on the mobs.
Reducing the respawn rates would hurt them more than it would hurt genuine players and a far better mechanism than the DR we’re seeing ATM.

Clear an area? Uh huh. You don’t even have time to walk around and swagger a bit in some places. You’ll be standing in one spot fighting the last guy and poof, one you just offed spawns on top of you. A bit short on the effort/reward scale of life. I clear a cave, I own the cave – at least for five minutes? C’mon. Past a certain point it all becomes busy work. YaaaAAAWWWWwwnnn.

Hey guys,
I used the think the same thing! I have come to realize that the respawn rates makes sense if you look into it!
Here’s the deal: If it’s a cave crawling with Skritts and a single adventurer walks on in, he should not be able to take them all out single-handedly! It should and does take a group-sized army to kill off the Skritts in a short enough amount of time to synchronize their respawn rates! When you manage to fight off 3 to 5 of them on your own, good job! But others will have noticed!
In a MMORPG, respawn rates allow for the impression of a larger number of enemy forces without having them all crammed up in a tight spot.
Here’s to hoping other players can share my opinion!

Signed,
Lalabu

Mob respawn is “crazy” only if you play solo and take forever to kill anything.

Blacklight.2871:

I only get that in Orr really. Nowhere else is it as thick with fast respawning mobs. Usually its manageable, but I recall one POI I was trying to reach up a hill, and there were no less than three veterans along the path, …

I ran into he same problem. Go at it from the other direction, drop down from the temple above instead of fighting up the path.

Agree with the OP’s point. Things respawn too fast. More than once I’ve had things respawn immediately after being killed.

well maybe they will look at it. i can also say a very funny thing happened to me today. i was in an area, and took a first shot of the fight at a lashtail type mob. 3 fire imps appeared, began chain-knocking me down, buried me in their fire circle things while i was down, and i was dead before i could even say wtf?!!! this was in an outside normal type area. just 3 mobs, poof, appear and kill me. was really awesome. lol.

This also harmfully contributes to “Training”. Eventually, people give up fighting the mobs, as they’ll only immediately respawn, so the only way to actually get certain places in the game if you’re not fully geared yet is to run and train the mobs.
Hell, even when you ARE fully geared, this can still be a problem.

I can’t get enough of the (warrior) combat in this game, so the fast respawns just add to my fun.

Especially Orr, which was designed to be run by small groups. I can imagine you might hate Orr if you’re just grinding crafting mats, but I can’t imagine why you would want to play a (this) game for that.

In other MMOs, “the boss you just killed respawns 10 minutes later”. Here, it respawns 1 minute later.

Nothing to see here but some more innovation. Move along.

Orr is intentional. The designer of Orr commented on it in one of these type of threads a while ago.

For other zones, I never see it happen, except for the occasional the mob I just killed instantly respawned, which I assume could be a bug. There are certain places (some caves) I’ve found with really fast respawns, but it’s probably intentional, because there’s usually a chest around.

I really dont think it is that much of a problem. It seems like they have dialed down mob density in some zones which makes the spawn rates not matter so much since you move through the zone faster. Either that or they turned down agro range so you arent pulling risen from 10 miles away.

I’ve posted about this before.

The issue, IMO, is not directly the respawn rate for mobs, it’s that there is apparently no intelligence behind the respawn mechanic: IF deathtimer(mob01) > 30 THEN respawn(mob01). It really does seem to be as crude as that.

What it should be doing is checking to see if there are any players within the aggro range of a respawn location and if the result of this check is true then defer the respawn event. (The player proximity algorithm could be finessed to check for things like deliberate spawn blocking, et al, by allowing a respawn to be deferred for only a set number of consecutive times, the value for which being defined by what kind of mob it is and its location.)

The respawn issue it more prevalent if you’re playing a low DPS build; no sooner have you defeated mob02 in a tunnel than mob01 respawns behind you within auto-aggro range. It does get pretty silly at times.

There are only three conclusions I can draw from this:-
1) It’s a bug.
2) It’s a design logic mistake.
3) ANet only want you to play high DPS builds / do not want you to play solo.

This subject for me personally is the single thing that is, almost, game breaking for me!
I hate the respawn rates as it breaks immersion and make playing tactically and smart a waste of time.
One small example. I was in the Charr first zone (after the starter area) and theres this little area that looks a like a cave (it is more of a gully than a cave) and it is patrolled by 2 separate pulls of veterans and some trash. I pull and kill the first lot of trash and then pull the vet, upon killing him and getting ready for the next pull the trash respawn and the second vet pulls. I then spend a 30 second or so getting control and the first vet respawns along with the trash. It is so disheartening and instead of that feeling of “yes, I played smart and over came all” I am instead left shaking my head and logging off in disgust!
I understand that you have to make it quick if alot of people are playing the game but most times the respawns are silly.

Honestly, I’ve had the one off mob here and there be killed and have another respawn instantly. I’ve even pulled one mob and as that mob is coming to me, it respawns a twin for me to fight. Those are bugs.

The only constant problems I have in Orr are with the Acolytes and other players. Acolytes seem to aggro from miles away and then call all they’re buddies as they run to range. The other players seem to think it’s better to just train the whole map just so they can get every gather node. I’ve died more times to picking up someone else’s train then to any kind of respawn rate. I have seen times when the respawn rate seems faster, usually that’s due to something happening (even, active statues, etc).

FatalQuin.3057:

Hmmm I think I can sum this up with two words “Sea Witch!”
If you been there, you KNOW what I am talking about! Can hardly get into the bloody door between the fish, the vets, and this is before you even get to the Boss, when you do get to her it just doesn’t stop, even more so when you do kill the boss!

That vet guarding the door has stopped me more than once from participating in that event. If I’m on my Ranger, it’s a pushover. It doesn’t take long to clear him out and any spawns that show up. On my other characters though, if it’s there when I get to the cave, I just turn around and leave. Anyone close enough to help is already in the cave fighting the witch and there’s no way they have the time to break off to clear the entrance, even if they could hear you asking for help.

The event itself is good though. Very tough with the constant barracuda spawns. Getting in just to participate can be impossible though.

PalmTrees.3796:

Blacklight.2871:

I only get that in Orr really. Nowhere else is it as thick with fast respawning mobs. Usually its manageable, but I recall one POI I was trying to reach up a hill, and there were no less than three veterans along the path, …

I ran into he same problem. Go at it from the other direction, drop down from the temple above instead of fighting up the path.

Agree with the OP’s point. Things respawn too fast. More than once I’ve had things respawn immediately after being killed.

Thanks for the tip. I’ll do that next time I go there.

The respawn timers in certain areas are way off, yes.

The biggest offenders were the imps in Fireheart Rise. You could kill them and in less than a minute they’d all be replaced.

Report these things whenever you seem them in the Bugs forum. I think they actually fixed a few other instant respawns I reported.

Since mob tagging is obsolete in GW2, simply no need for spawns to be so quick. I had an event the other night that was impossible to complete because as soon as you killed the pack a new one was already spawning. Had zero chance to get the npc’s up and keep them alive.

Calavera.1086:

Blacklight.2871:

I only get that in Orr really. Nowhere else is it as thick with fast respawning mobs. Usually its manageable, but I recall one POI I was trying to reach up a hill, and there were no less than three veterans along the path, with accompanying escorts of trash. Managed to get the second one down to about a quarter health before the first had reappeared and jumped me. By the time the second was down, all the previous trash had popped and I had to deal with them again. I should have split when I saw what was happening but stupidly, decided to press on. The first vet still had plenty of health left by the time the second one reappeared. They didn’t take long to double team me into oblivion.

I never did get a single shot in on the third vet and that POI is still unvisited. Every time I think of it, I hear calliope music in the background and some baritone announcer shouting “SEND IN THE CLOWNS!”. Not sure when I’m going to try it again.

Have you tried asking for help? It’s probably doable with 2-3 players.

Go read every comment I made about the lack of community and help around here and see that its not that simple as asking for help…

They will say the same thing, that veterans are easy to beat solo and why should they go back to a map they clearly done 100% to help you get one poi? Also calling me a whiner that doesn’t know how to play the game or needs to change my build.

This game will not last more than a year at this rate unless ANET does something about the spawn rates and the lack of working together…

I’m pretty sure ANET wanted us to work together on all maps and not every man/woman for themselves…

Mungrul.9358:

This also harmfully contributes to “Training”. Eventually, people give up fighting the mobs, as they’ll only immediately respawn, so the only way to actually get certain places in the game if you’re not fully geared yet is to run and train the mobs.
Hell, even when you ARE fully geared, this can still be a problem.

Sad truth. I’ve gotten quite good at running around Orr not killing stuff just out of necessity. :\

@Yumiko – I haven’t had a problem with people not working together actually. The only issue I see is more mobs than are people in the zone to kill them. It was likely tuned for the game’s first week rush but there’s a lot less people in certain areas now so it just needs to be scaled back a bit I think.

That’s beside the point though Calavera. Enemies shouldn’t be respawning so fast anywhere in any game.

Otherwise it’s an endless grind of move forward 5 steps, stop and fight, move 3 steps, another fight, repeat and it’s what I call difficulty inflation.

It’s not a valid way to turn up difficulty, it’s just a nuisance.

Board won’t let me quote…I’m not going to wipe my cookies/history for one [broken for months RoR] site.

Re: defektive.3540
I’d add #4 to your list: too high a price (resource-wise) to implement a robust algorithm to determine spawns.

Granted they might be able to implement a “spawn server” dedicated box to do the hard number crunching to offload from the main game servers. But it’s extra complexity and hardware costs.

The cost of transmitting character positions to/from this extra box would probably be worth it since instead of the game box doing a basic calculation (as it may [is probably] be doing now), it would be spending that time on transmitting character positions every X seconds (not a critical time, could be 3-5 seconds or variable depending on game server load). It’d be something like max of 500 people per zone per server (overflows are different boxes), each users data would be [x,y,z] for the spawn box to know density…so that’s like 6k per update (~12 bytes per user) across the internal network, and quick lookup for game server (assuming all users are in RAM and doesn’t require a DB query). The response would be larger since it would include which mob to spawn (it’s ID#), at which position (x,y,z), and possibly more than 500 (just saying: more than the max # of players it could be sent) mobs spawning. It’d be a non-blocking asynch request/response system of course.

That way, the team would be able to increase the complexity (brains) of whatever system they build to manage spawns. AND, probably also be able to create truly scaling dynamic events…some sort of k-means clustering mix-up (I’m no math expert).

But ya know…us being arm-chair devs and all…don’t know all the in’s and out’s…fun with meta I guess tho ;p

Cancer.9065:

Used to happen to me a lot, now I’m more efficient at killing mobs so it stopped being a problem.

Still happens to me now. I can mow down pretty much anything so this respawn rate is nothing more than an annoyance and blood pressure raiser at times.

I honestly just don’t think anet know how to properly control it. I mean they can’t even make the Orichalcum, Ancient Wood or Omnomberries spawn in random locations without rebooting the servers. It’s sad that every server has an online zone map pointing out the locations and gets updated within hours of a server reboot.

This pretty much forces players to run through huge groups of mobs because killing things on the way to your destination is not feasible. Then other people get hit by the big group being trained by the guy running through. It’s a giant cluster-kitten of kitten proportions.

It’s particularly bad if you are solo (which most players seem to be) or if you don’t have a very high DPS build. I know outleveling an area seems to help a lot because I can simply kill things that much faster. I think the general “respawn” rate is tuned pretty high because they expect players to work in groups or be focusing on damage constantly. It does feel sort of random sometimes, though.

They already said they’d check and fix MANY respawn rates and such so stop complainin or speculating, it’s obvious that bugs go first.

ummmm, if all the respawn rates throughout the entire game are messed up, isn’t that kind of a bug? you really think this is not a huge issue? it is not in certain places, it is gamewide.

andybmcc.8751:

This pretty much forces players to run through huge groups of mobs because killing things on the way to your destination is not feasible. Then other people get hit by the big group being trained by the guy running through. It’s a giant cluster-kitten of kitten proportions.

Yup, happened to me last night. I was working my way though Malchor’s Leap getting the wood and ore nodes when a Thief ran past me with a huge group of mobs on him (one a veteran) then he vanished/stealthed. All the mobs turned and jumped me. I died within seconds.

vincentvfx.1794:

ummmm, if all the respawn rates throughout the entire game are messed up, isn’t that kind of a bug? you really think this is not a huge issue? it is not in certain places, it is gamewide.

I only notice the fast respawns in Orr, mainly Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore. Now I can handle myself, I’m full exotic geared and solo kill anything lower than a champion without a problem but non-stop chain spawning (depending on the mob type) or getting to many on me is still going to kill me.