Guild Wars 2

Yes, it’s very much a bug. The Pale Reavers are supposed to be sniping them while we alternate between keeping said snipers safe and attacking the vine when its shields are down. Instead, we’re having to kill the vinetenders ourselves (which, like you said takes a lot of coordination because they respawn so quickly) for 4 different stages of the event because the Pale Reavers are just standing around and doing nothing.

ignore this, was my bad

RubiBayer.8134:

I wanted to drop in and share a few things. First and foremost, I’m sorry it’s frustrating. It shouldn’t be that.

Hopefully it will help when I tell you I checked in with the team that’s in the office this weekend for this event, and they’re aware of the problem with events stalling out. I’m at home, not in the office, so I don’t have more details, but I at least wanted to let you know.

Please don’t feel like you’re not contributing. We want you to have a great time, but this is also a true beta: Everything you tell us is helpful and making a huge difference. (See the revenant.) So let me assure you that the things you’re doing this weekend are making a direct impact on HoT.

Now as far as the gameplay. If something is blocked to the point where you are completely stalled out, beating your head on that wall, and you can’t do anything else to contribute to beta feedback or enjoy that particular part of the game, head off in a different direction. There are a number of specific things we need your help with this weekend, and if you spend some time with them instead for a while it might give you a more enjoyable experience.

Try out the new revenant, roll a class with an elite spec build you haven’t done yet, try Stronghold. Let us know how all of those things feel with different builds and classes, and what you think we should do to make them better.

If you really want to hang out in Verdant Brink, run around with an eye to daytime vs. nighttime. We want them to feel like two completely different maps, so think about that and let us know is we’re headed in the right direction. What we can do to make that experience better? (Besides make the events not stall out. :P )

I hope that helps as much as it can. Thanks for helping us test HoT!

The biggest frustration point for me isn’t the bugs or insane OP mobs or even having to resort to mob grinding for masteries due to event bugs, but the complete lack of developer interaction.

This is a bloody beta test, the developers should be interacting with us, collecting feedback, responding to concerns and making people actually aware that problems are being noted. It takes all of a few minutes to type up a forum post, so why doesn’t this get done? It’s frustrating to no end that you guys don’t even interact with us properly when we’re testing your product, let alone the general every day lack of interaction.

I’m not usually one to be short tempered with such things, but this is such a glaring flaw in Anet that has been ongoing for far, far too long. It needs to be fixed and fixed soon.

Zaklex.6308:

lilypop.7819:

~Snip~

I actually think there was a bug as you got a mastery point at the end of the shorten personal story but couldn’t use it – or at least I couldn’t figure out how to use it. The impression I am getting – having read a few other posts – is that they took the closed beta VB version and hacked it about a bit then dumped it into this beta weekend without any additional testing. Hence why THIS weekend’s VB doesn’t feel like a beta at all to those new to the beta events.

That’s not a bug, you’ll get the Mastery point before you can use it…as you need to fill up the experience bar in order to use each Mastery Point. In this case you get the Mastery Point first, then you can fill the bar up and use it.

You may well be right, but the icon display indicates you have two points whilst only one is effective. Don’t recall anything else that works this way, perhaps Anet might want to rethink this.

Point taken regards Bug Entropy resulting in VB lock-outs, would explain things a bit. Bad news though as this would indicate the expansion is well short of a release date – for PvEers anyway. Quite a contrast with the LW releases which generally had nothing like this degree of PvE bugs as experienced in VB. I don’t recall a single LW release that resulted in immediate lock-out or abandonment.

Personally I don’t think it’s a good idea to make PvE zones dependent on exp grind to be playable/enjoyable. All you’ll end up with is PvE Zergs. Also if you have to grind to get gilders or harvesting what is going to happen once you get those abilities – i.e. are you going to stick around in that zone to get the benefits of your efforts? – I doubt it, more likely you’ll be so sick of the zone you’ll want something different.

The ultimate in this game is ‘dress’, fine, exp-bar that. I am very happy that is how GW1/2 were designed – it means I don’t have to endlessly grind to keep up, which I really don’t have time for anymore. But surely it is a backward step to exp-bar content – like I can’t pick a mushroom (despite being able to do so for 80 levels) till I gain exp-bars. Really? What next, trees that can’t be chopped down till you fashion a ‘special’ axe.

Difficulty should be assigned to Dungeons rather than general PvE – do they really need to exp-bar gliding, harvesting and much else in the FIRST zone of a new expansion? This is what annoyed me about Dry Top and SW. I have played a number of MMOs down the years – ones where if you glance away from the screen you run the risk of instant death – and frankly all that happens is the zone becomes time-barred to peak population times as little else is possible outside those times. People (well PvEers) then get bored and await a new expansion when the game becomes playable again.

Anet need to add overall utility to an expansion as a given, like easy use of Xbox/PS controllers. As I said I have played lots of MMOs and the thing that gets you in the end is Keyboard RSI. Anet might want to think ahead a bit. They certainly need to think about 3D maps given the direction they are taking. People want the game polished with an expansion, so far we are getting ‘more content’.

It is also going to appear a kitteneap to have LW content gem-blocked if you have owned the game since release and have subsequently purchased the expansion. It’s no lost to Anet to release this content – or whatever they can.

rapthorne.7345:

RubiBayer.8134:

I wanted to drop in and share a few things. First and foremost, I’m sorry it’s frustrating. It shouldn’t be that.

Hopefully it will help when I tell you I checked in with the team that’s in the office this weekend for this event, and they’re aware of the problem with events stalling out. I’m at home, not in the office, so I don’t have more details, but I at least wanted to let you know.

Please don’t feel like you’re not contributing. We want you to have a great time, but this is also a true beta: Everything you tell us is helpful and making a huge difference. (See the revenant.) So let me assure you that the things you’re doing this weekend are making a direct impact on HoT.

Now as far as the gameplay. If something is blocked to the point where you are completely stalled out, beating your head on that wall, and you can’t do anything else to contribute to beta feedback or enjoy that particular part of the game, head off in a different direction. There are a number of specific things we need your help with this weekend, and if you spend some time with them instead for a while it might give you a more enjoyable experience.

Try out the new revenant, roll a class with an elite spec build you haven’t done yet, try Stronghold. Let us know how all of those things feel with different builds and classes, and what you think we should do to make them better.

If you really want to hang out in Verdant Brink, run around with an eye to daytime vs. nighttime. We want them to feel like two completely different maps, so think about that and let us know is we’re headed in the right direction. What we can do to make that experience better? (Besides make the events not stall out. :P )

I hope that helps as much as it can. Thanks for helping us test HoT!

The biggest frustration point for me isn’t the bugs or insane OP mobs or even having to resort to mob grinding for masteries due to event bugs, but the complete lack of developer interaction.

This is a bloody beta test, the developers should be interacting with us, collecting feedback, responding to concerns and making people actually aware that problems are being noted. It takes all of a few minutes to type up a forum post, so why doesn’t this get done? It’s frustrating to no end that you guys don’t even interact with us properly when we’re testing your product, let alone the general every day lack of interaction.

I’m not usually one to be short tempered with such things, but this is such a glaring flaw in Anet that has been ongoing for far, far too long. It needs to be fixed and fixed soon.

I’ve done a lot of betas. WTH do you mean by interact? Come in and hold your hand?

I’ve NEVER seen a developer interact in any way except to take bug reports and work on them. In fact, I’ve seen more responses over the course of the game here in GW2 than any other mmo i’ve played, period.

Ronah Lynda.2496:

Chicho Gosho.6507:

Sinope.5630:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

This is not a beta, this is a demo for a) tricking people to pre-purchase the game and b) actually rewarding people who got lured into the trap.

The area to play in is so tiny that there should be no surprises for the QA team, the duration is too short to get any valuable data from the “test”.

Real beta testing is a thing of the past or – in rare cases – some more serious companies than ANet, this is just a teaser for the hype.

Feel free to send feedback, but don’t expect anything to change.

Beta test weekend my kitten…

I have to agree with Kaiyanwan.8521, this is not real beta testing situation. It is just a teaser for the hype.

In real beta testing there should be a document where all testers can read known issues relating to this beta testing. Those issues are what QA team have seen, but Anet haven’t got time to fix yet. When people are testing they can read from that document what issues are already known and that way they can find out what issues are new ones, so they can report only those new ones. That is Beta testing.

So my guess is this, people are sending bug reports what are already known by ArenaNet. People are feeling important by doing reporting and they think that they are really beta testing the game. But infact they are doing same reports what QA have already done before.

So this is not real beta testing situation, it is just try to start hype train again.

I have played almost every MMO from the past 10 years(granted some of them only for a couple of hours) and i’ve played in multiple betas. I have never seen anything even remotely close to what you are talking about. Betas have always been done like this weekends beta.

MMOs have Alpha tests which is for “their close friends”, then they have closed betas for the “hypers” who signed in and been RNGed and later the open betas for the “hyped croud” created with the help of " the hypers". All leading leading to a full release for “the general public”
A-nets betas are a mixture between closed & open betas due to pre-purchase system, similar to “founder’s packs” in F2P MMOs.
The word “beta” is put in there to cover up any bugs while the real reason is to get the feedback from the players of their likes and dislikes. They dont necesarrely care about bug reports – they have testers of their own – they just need to see what people enjoy and what not. This is what they “test” and nothing more. Plus they create a marketing campaign.

This isnt entirely accurate. Bugs that are not found by a limited number of people internally can suddenly crop up with a lot of people playing the same thing. Its a whole economy-of-numbers kind of concept.

However, yes, they are also testing the balance and enjoyability. They have already done some substantial adjustments to the Revenant by using this method.

That doesn’t mean that they arent ALSO marketing. There is nothing evil or sinful about marketing. But the people saying this isnt a beta test are flat out wrong and ignorant.

lilypop.7819:

Quite a contrast with the LW releases which generally had nothing like this degree of PvE bugs as experienced in VB. I don’t recall a single LW release that resulted in immediate lock-out or abandonment.

The original aetherblade hideout had a potential lockout bug for half of its two-week availability period… and it happened right before the final boss, too. There have been others, I think, but that’s the one that really sticks in mind.

Well there was the Dragon’S Reach LS Update where the Events in the Open World were broken right after releasing it.

If this were a real beta, the large number of problems would have caused the developers to pull the plug and shut it down by now. Yes, this is probably partly marketing and partly noisome fan appeasement and partly see how bad it’s broken testing.

Play what you can, report problems with as much detail as you can, and stop whining like spoiled children… this helps no one to ever get a working product. It is completely unrealistic to expect anything to get fixed anytime in the next few weeks,

@OP, yes the Pale Reavers are broken but interestingly the players managed to come up with a workaround of beating each Vinetender down to something between 5 and 10% health, stomping them all down as quickly as possible, and then jumping down the Breacher’s throat for a quick kill. Unfortunately, by the time the zerg managed to cooperate enough to do this (this first Breacher took forever). enough time had lapsed that night started. The next two Breachers were taken down fairly quickly once we figured out how to do it.

This thread makes no sense. It’s a beta. Bugs are supposed to be here so they get reported and there are no bugs in the final version.
It’s not a demo, it’s a beta.

Knaifhogg.5964:

Test this thing!

I can’t get to it, it doesn’t work!

Ok, cya at next beta!

This is how it feels, and it’s super frustrating.

That’s how it’s supposed to feel. I don’t get your rant. Beta is for testing all kinds of things. You’re perception of what the Beta should and shouldn’t be is not relevant. There are no ‘rules’ for game devs to make sure their beta release complies to some standard. If you don’t like it, don’t play it.

Obtena.7952:

Knaifhogg.5964:

Test this thing!

I can’t get to it, it doesn’t work!

Ok, cya at next beta!

This is how it feels, and it’s super frustrating.

That’s how it’s supposed to feel. I don’t get your rant. Beta is for testing all kinds of things. You’re perception of what the Beta should and shouldn’t be is not relevant. There are no ‘rules’ for game devs to make sure their beta release complies to some standard. If you don’t like it, don’t play it.

I am referring to their own feedback request, it’s not my pie in the sky dream of what they need of me. Of course betas should be guided by the devs, they are the ones that are organizing the players’ test areas. They don’t want me to make a thief and go to Queensdale for the duration of the beta.

I am saying that the broken event chains are affecting too many key parts of the beta. There should be more dev interaction because of it. Rubi replied to this thread which is great. It would be great to have some idea of which masteries are available in the map too, what’s the point of having people wasting limited mastery points?

Feedback that doesn’t apply anymore after they fix the events: Leveling masteries was slow, events not progressing, couldn’t play the adventures.

Feedback that could have been avoided by dev interaction: I wasted mastery points.

Kaz.5430:

You guys realise that when events that ‘were’ working reach a point where they stop working, that’s exactly the sort of thing that beta testing is supposed to find out.

There are all sorts of things that can cause events to stop working when you have thousands of players interacting with them, such as triggers that fail under heavy load (start event, start event, start event, start event, start event), mobs that spawn in a location that allows them to be killed but not recorded for the event, causing it to register too few kills to complete (spawn, die oops). Not to mention finding novel ways to exploit an event that wasn’t anticipated and therefore causes it to break… and so on.

These sort of things require large numbers of players to find them. Sure ANet want feedback, but what they ‘really’ want is to identify places where the live community can break events that don’t break under internal testing.

• chuckling to self *

This brings to mind the Halloween event in GW when Daniel Frozenwind rallied a large number of players, each downing high amounts of absinth (nifty green fire effect) and zerged through LA, thus crashing the server. Game was down for quite some time while the devs rushed to figure out what happened. It was great.

So, yes, peoples… STRESS Those Servers! If there are bugs – Report Them! When we purchased the pre-order we signed on as part of the development team. WE are the BETA testers. If WE do not do our part, then how else is the greater community going to have a near perfect game to play? That’s what BETA Testing is all about.

- First of all I would like to say that I’m really curious how long it will take to have events without bugs after HoT release when we can test only two event chains and we have to be very very lucky to finish at least one on the same map. Probably never according to the Foulbear Chieftain example. I saw chains bugged in several different events, there was not only specific one (but some were more often).

- 45 minutes for night is totally out. There is nothing to do except defending posts against waves of enemies. Maybe there was prepared also something else, but it was not used, because daily events are broken. Also players are mostly leaving maps in first few minutes of the night.

- Larvae’ event is quite weird. It’s known now what we should and should not do to finish this event, but we don’t know if it was intended or it is just our workaround (it seems so).

- I was lucky enough to finish Pact chain twice and Itzel chain three times, but each one was different.

— The biggest problem was time for the Itzel chain in the beginning of the beta weekend (when events had not been bugged yet), because collecting and burying eggs took too much time. Collecting is ok now when players have gliding and mushrooms masteries unlocked, but burying them is still the same. When I fought with wyvern for the first time, nobody was able to brake her bar and do any damage during first two times when wyvern was on the ground but when she landed for the third time then the bar was immediately broken and we killed her during this one session on the ground. In the second encounter she landed without bar immediately. The third encounter was something between – landed with bar, but we were able to remove it.

— First Pact chain I did was quite smooth (many players deaths included), but second one was very chaotic, when no side didn’t know for a long time if it is not bugged.

- I played with DH, Reaper, Tempest and Revenant and most of the time in the VB and I tried to find at least some viable build for them to be useful and survive, but I didn’t tried many possibilities. I tried them also in CS, ML and MM maps and it’s hard to say how good or bad they are, because core game is much easier then VB. I only confirmed my fear that DH is poor. The rest was playable for this beta, but they still need some work.

- The one thing I would like to have immediately available are the map rewards.

What disappointed me most was the fact that ANet should have been putting their best foot forward with this beta event. They limited us to a very small corner of the new maps, yet so much of it was broken. I logged in last night, and this was my experience within the span of about 30 seconds: “Oh, 20 bomb shells hanging suspended in midair, that’s not right. What, this event next to me isn’t working? What about the one up north – oh, someone in map chat just said that’s stuck too.”

This whole “beta event” leaves me wondering if they have a snowball’s chance in the Ring of Fire at successfully getting this expansion out by the end of 2015.

That’s why I don’t do Betas.
That,and the suspicion that the most important “Beta” will take
place in the weeks after the official release.

Ayrilana.1396:

What’s disappointing is that while it’s impossible to progress the south event chain with the two NPC’s, it’s entirely possible to do that with the north event chain. It’s just that you have a bunch of people who don’t listen and mess it up as there’s a certain way you need to do it to not have it bug.

What’s disappointing is that these types problems that have been in the game since the original beta and almost 3 years later and I assume a lot of work put into the expansion(maybe not?) and nothing has changed.

I was hoping to hear about actual improvements to the game and not more of the same old broken events all over the place.

Khisanth.2948:

Ayrilana.1396:

What’s disappointing is that while it’s impossible to progress the south event chain with the two NPC’s, it’s entirely possible to do that with the north event chain. It’s just that you have a bunch of people who don’t listen and mess it up as there’s a certain way you need to do it to not have it bug.

What’s disappointing is that these types problems that have been in the game since the original beta and almost 3 years later and I assume a lot of work put into the expansion(maybe not?) and nothing has changed.

I was hoping to hear about actual improvements to the game and not more of the same old broken events all over the place.

What do these new events have to do with the ones from the original beta? Events bugging, and not being able to be progressed, is a type of bug. Bugs are present in just about any release as you cannot anticipate everything when used by your target audience. Hence the point of these beta tests. It’s also not “broken events all over the place” as it’s only occurring with two very specific events.

Khisanth.2948:

Ayrilana.1396:

What’s disappointing is that while it’s impossible to progress the south event chain with the two NPC’s, it’s entirely possible to do that with the north event chain. It’s just that you have a bunch of people who don’t listen and mess it up as there’s a certain way you need to do it to not have it bug.

What’s disappointing is that these types problems that have been in the game since the original beta and almost 3 years later and I assume a lot of work put into the expansion(maybe not?) and nothing has changed.

I was hoping to hear about actual improvements to the game and not more of the same old broken events all over the place.

I doubt that the Bugs that break the events now are the Same Bugs that broke them in the Past.
For Example. There is a bug that initiatis the Colossal Vine Event and while this one is active none of the Pale Reavers seem to shoot the Vine Tenders.
Another Bug has something to do with the PAthing of the two NPCs. They go through Walls and port to their Locations so the Game can’T really recocgnize them.
The Itzel Event has a broken Basket Counter wghere not all Baskets count towards the Event, and sometimes emptying the bugged Baskets can kill the Progress.

Events can break on many Points and even if they worked just fine internal or in Stresstests, with no Bugs, they can break the moment they go live because a Beta like this is a different Environment than internal testing or Stresstests.

Also we are here to report such things and even break Stuff to find Bugs, not just playing the new Content.

RubiBayer.8134:

Happy Monday, everyone! I thought those of you in this thread would be interested in the update I just received. We’re going to extend the beta weekend event by an hour today so we can gather a few extra details on the stalled events. You don’t need to do anything differently than what you’ve been doing all weekend.

The gameplay and feedback from all of you this weekend provided a lot of valuable information to the teams working on this part of the map and this content, so thank you!

Thats good News. Hope you are also investigating the things that soem of us think are one of the stalling reasons.

RubiBayer.8134:

Happy Monday, everyone! I thought those of you in this thread would be interested in the update I just received. We’re going to extend the beta weekend event by an hour today so we can gather a few extra details on the stalled events. You don’t need to do anything differently than what you’ve been doing all weekend.

The gameplay and feedback from all of you this weekend provided a lot of valuable information to the teams working on this part of the map and this content, so thank you!

Will there be a beta finale? Right now we are just partying with fireworks, bobbleheads, and aviator glasses. Oh also some beer, food, banners, and box-o-fun!

Looking like pre-orders was a form of crowd source and HoT really hasn’t been developed much: take money in advance, use money on HoT, and profit?

I kinda doubt we will be seeing this expansions release until xmas at the earliest…infact I dare say might not see it until spring next year. Reason? It’s abundantly clear HoT isn’t even near completion, this beta is in alpha state. ie. not even close to finished, a complete lack of polish, and basically: buggy as all get out. I would have expected at least one hotfix this weekend but nope.

Oh well, here’s hoping next bwe isn’t a super frustrating bugfest like this one was…

Thanks for the update Rubi and thanks to those not dismissing this thread as a “omg beta isn’t working” thread, I meant it more as a criticism of how interaction and info would make the beta better after the fact that the map wasn’t working entirely as intended.

RubiBayer.8134:

Happy Monday, everyone! I thought those of you in this thread would be interested in the update I just received. We’re going to extend the beta weekend event by an hour today so we can gather a few extra details on the stalled events. You don’t need to do anything differently than what you’ve been doing all weekend.

The gameplay and feedback from all of you this weekend provided a lot of valuable information to the teams working on this part of the map and this content, so thank you!

Extending the beta was very helpful, but also cruel.

I don’t know who did it, or if you guys stepped in to fix it somehow, but the event with the frogs got pass the “gather and protect bugs” event. In which case, we were able to do the hunts, the fire event, and then the chain for stopping the zealots started….

UNFORTUNATELY, nightfall came, and we never got to make it to Wyvern :’(

Knaifhogg.5964:

I am saying that the broken event chains are affecting too many key parts of the beta. There should be more dev interaction because of it. Rubi replied to this thread which is great. It would be great to have some idea of which masteries are available in the map too, what’s the point of having people wasting limited mastery points?

You hve a very academic argument here and I’m not sure it’s relevant. People aren’t wasting their masteries. It’s a test. Progress is not retained. Again, the beta doesn’t need to have sensible progression. Anet can’t be responsible for people that think it’s their opportunity to get a leg up on the content or achieve something more than just playing around with traits, etc.. You just play until you encounter broken stuff and report it.