Due to an potential exploit related to drops from Jade Fragments, we have temporarily disabled the drop of Jade Shards from the fragments. Players may continue to mine Jade Fragments for Unbound Magic and Bloodstone Dust, but will not get Jade Shards until we have addressed the issue. Thanks for your understanding.
This is completely unacceptable. I understand that there might be issues that would require the team to suddenly disable a feature but there is absolutely no excuse for having to learn game related stuff like these on forums. I wasted unbound mining picks on multiple characters (that’s 5000 karma each) just to find out now, completely by accident, that the jade fragments currently don’t drop jade shards.
How hard would it be to implement a simple in-game messaging system which would directly feed info like this to the players? You already use something similar every time a new build is released. Just use it to broadcast something like “hey, jade fragments are currently disabled until we fix them”. Instead, I have to spend more time on forums than in the game itself to get info about stuff that is actually happening in the game…
what was the exploit? i dont recall getting anything weird from the jade frags. so confused now
People were instance hopping to farm them, but surely that can’t be the reason considering there’s far worse things involving that. Bloodstone was however nerfed because of alt/instance farming. I’d have to guess there was a way to dupe the shards.
Due to an potential exploit related to drops from Jade Fragments, we have temporarily disabled the drop of Jade Shards from the fragments. Players may continue to mine Jade Fragments for Unbound Magic and Bloodstone Dust, but will not get Jade Shards until we have addressed the issue. Thanks for your understanding.
But can we buy the daily bag of shards from the heart vendors still? I mean it’s not ideal, but it would give me something to do to keep getting shards until it’s fixed.
Sarcasm, delivered with a
delicate, brick-like subtlety.
This is completely unacceptable. I understand that there might be issues that would require the team to suddenly disable a feature but there is absolutely no excuse for having to learn game related stuff like these on forums. I wasted unbound mining picks on multiple characters (that’s 5000 karma each) just to find out now, completely by accident, that the jade fragments currently don’t drop jade shards.
How hard would it be to implement a simple in-game messaging system which would directly feed info like this to the players? You already use something similar every time a new build is released. Just use it to broadcast something like “hey, jade fragments are currently disabled until we fix them”. Instead, I have to spend more time on forums than in the game itself to get info about stuff that is actually happening in the game…
They never have done anything like that in the past, so I’m not sure why you expect them to be doing it today.
That said, I agree that they should cross-post important information all the time, not just for urgent issues. This is the sort of thing that could be published on Reddit, the forums, their twitter/facebook feed, and sure, maybe in game.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
tbh, this is way too drastic of a measure if it was just loading into new maps to refresh the Jade Fragment nodes; the rich Ori nodes were refreshing also which they weren’t supposed to.
This is completely unacceptable. I understand that there might be issues that would require the team to suddenly disable a feature but there is absolutely no excuse for having to learn game related stuff like these on forums. I wasted unbound mining picks on multiple characters (that’s 5000 karma each) just to find out now, completely by accident, that the jade fragments currently don’t drop jade shards.
How hard would it be to implement a simple in-game messaging system which would directly feed info like this to the players? You already use something similar every time a new build is released. Just use it to broadcast something like “hey, jade fragments are currently disabled until we fix them”. Instead, I have to spend more time on forums than in the game itself to get info about stuff that is actually happening in the game…
They never have done anything like that in the past, so I’m not sure why you expect them to be doing it today.
That said, I agree that they should cross-post important information all the time, not just for urgent issues. This is the sort of thing that could be published on Reddit, the forums, their twitter/facebook feed, and sure, maybe in game.
Actually they did once, late 2015 I belive. Before they took down the servers for maintanace.
So now they’re making it even slower to get the new gear. I’m a wvw/pvp player but I actually spent time in this map and I actually care about getting stuff from this map. The skins are cool, the tonics are cool and the rewards are cool. To speed up getting the armor and 2 weapons (250 of these tokens) and the backpiece (200) I have actually been playing the new map. In total i need 450 to unlock everything I want. That is 9 tracks in wvw/pvp. 1 track in wvw (which is all I play since off season ranked is pointless) takes upwards of 10+ hours easily (for a roamer).
I managed to aquire the backpiece which would therefore be about 40+ hours of the game mode I enjoy in less than 2 hours doing this farm. Imo either make it less impossible to get these tokens in wvw and pvp in significant amounts, lower the price or reenable this farm. I am currently taking a break from the game until they make it able to actually get the gear I want in less than 50 hours or what I like or sub 4 hours of mindless farming.
what was the exploit? i dont recall getting anything weird from the jade frags. so confused now
I think a combination of instance hopping and multicharring
If this was the exploit “map hopping” then i guess i’m guilty of it. Though i thought that since this was the new “loot” map, i.e. nodes everywhere, leather farm, ect that this was intended maybe as a catch up mechanic for new players to get some easy ascended gear.
For those that wasted “hours” and karma farming, it took me about 5 or so nodes not getting any before i came to the forums to find out what was going on. At least unlike blizzard ArenaNet posts on their own website about these issues instead of Twitter.
Due to an potential exploit related to drops from Jade Fragments, we have temporarily disabled the drop of Jade Shards from the fragments. Players may continue to mine Jade Fragments for Unbound Magic and Bloodstone Dust, but will not get Jade Shards until we have addressed the issue. Thanks for your understanding.
As this is a fairly significant change to an element of the new map, I believe players would appreciate an in-game mail informing them of changes like this. Some form of in-game notification would prevent people from continuing to accidentally farm them.
When the jade was deactivated was the blood stone nodes deactivate as well? I have mined so many today and have only received unbound magic and bloodstone dust. Or is it just a random glitch I may be experiancing?
“My potions are too strong for you, traveler.”
Potion Sella
For future problems can you please just disable the node usage entirely? Disabling a part of a drop just causes anger and is not clear why players are not getting what they exspect. Thanks.
If you are also going to check the home instance nodes, you should know some of them are using the Petrified Wood model instead the Jade Fragment model, and do not have the correct map icon.
SUGGEST-A-TRON says:
PAY—ONCE—UNLOCKS—ARE—ALWAYS—BETTER.
No exceptions!
Maybe we could have got an announcement? Until this I was spending karma on picks so I could get bloodstone (there are plenty of other ways to get UM).
well so much for my theory I have the unluckiest account in GW. I just considered not getting them normal for me.
I could not figure out what was going on either. Every time I was mining I was getting 0 shards. Given how much time it takes to complete this map it looks like I will stick to Bitterfrost Frontier and Ember Bay to get ascended stuff for now.
So the $64,000 question would be why was the AB ML allowed to continue for ages when this nipped within days ??
I can guarantee you that there were likely hundreds, if not thousands, of players who literally only logged in to mindlessly farm ABML.
It was also the only HoT map that saw any serious activity these days. VB has been dead for over a year now and I rarely see people bother with tangled depths events anymore.
Either the situation finally got so bad they just had to intervene or they figured a new raid would keep people placated.
So the $64,000 question would be why was the AB ML allowed to continue for ages when this nipped within days ??
It was also the only HoT map that saw any serious activity these days. VB has been dead for over a year now and I rarely see people bother with tangled depths events anymore.
I had no issues doing VB and TD last weekend. There was plenty of people.
Heck , you have facebook, tweeter, web site and login screen (where some announcements far less important are placed). Couldn’t you have placed info on anyof above. Not everybody follows the forum.
There are no stupid questions. Olny stupid answears.
I can’t believe how snarky people are being about the devs trying to fix an exploitable problem. If they tell you the exact reason they’re fixing something, this could clue nefarious evildoers in on how to exploit other farmable items in the future. So it’s best to be vague and fix the issue. It’s not like karma is hard to come by, and some players who’ve been here since the beginning have millions of karma to spend. It’s not like they’ve disabled it and they’re not trying to fix it. Give them a break, they’re doing their jobs to the best of their ability and fixes take time.
I can’t believe how snarky people are being about the devs trying to fix an exploitable problem. If they tell you the exact reason they’re fixing something, this could clue nefarious evildoers in on how to exploit other farmable items in the future. So it’s best to be vague and fix the issue. It’s not like karma is hard to come by, and some players who’ve been here since the beginning have millions of karma to spend. It’s not like they’ve disabled it and they’re not trying to fix it. Give them a break, they’re doing their jobs to the best of their ability and fixes take time.
They could have done a MOTD or something about it. They chose not to do that.
They could have disabled the nodes entirely. They chose not to do that (sorry, bloodstone dust is just junk so there is no real reason for the nodes other than UM …. and you get that in plenty of ways).
The assumed ‘problem’ breaks with precedent. Yes, you can only mine your home and guild nodes once a day but you can run other S3 zones with multiple characters. The only issue I see is instance hopping. Given that many nodes are often protected by WM it is not like they are all free loot either.
As it is now the new ep item (shards) can best be gotten at a heart (3 for each heart a day and character). If there is not an event at them that counts towards the goal (usually killing WM) they take a long time.
Believe it or not 5,000 karma is nothing to sneeze at. Especially when you buy several tools a day to cover your other gathering as well. My karma supply has steadily been going down since the season began.
So because it’s temporarily disabled, the unbound picks are going to expire before they fix it?
Also, 5k in karma takes what? 5-10 minutes of farming in in the bitterfrost? (Yes I have all the boosts too)
Sounds complaining for the sake of complaining…wait a few days, farm it then – do something else…if that’s your entire life, to farm on single item and that’s it and without it, life is over, there isn’t much that can be done for ya…
Some of us are actually gasp working towards items/skins the various S3 vendors are selling. If the nodes do not work in this ep it is more efficient to spend my limited game time in either of the past 2 zones. All we are asking for is a MOTD or such to tell us about these things (rather than chalking it up to bad RNG or diminishing returns for a few days), why is that such a problem to you?
Some of us are actually gasp working towards items/skins the various S3 vendors are selling. If the nodes do not work in this ep it is more efficient to spend my limited game time in either of the past 2 zones. All we are asking for is a MOTD or such to tell us about these things (rather than chalking it up to bad RNG or diminishing returns for a few days), why is that such a problem to you?
Yes, you are correct about changing into the other zones to get Unbound Magic, but you are riding around the entire issue. The problem is that the dev could’ve handled this much better; putting a limit of how much Jade Shards one account can gain per day, banning people who preyed upon the supposed exploit of refreshing Jade Nodes in mass, and more could’ve worked.
Instead, we normal players get penalized for something that would not have come to our attention. Message Of The Day or anything similar would’ve been a start to better handling of the issue, but W/O Jade Fragments working there is very little for me and many others to bring us to Lake Doric.
Just want to know when this bug will be fixed? Honestly having a hell of a time to collect shards using the other means.
But I understand wanting to prevent abuse, its just that a good “Hey we wont have this fixed soon.” Or “Hey we think we are on to something should be within the few days.” I know you (Anet) don’t do so but here’s wishing.
I try not to tell other programmers what is the best solution as I have not seen the code (and we do not have confirmed what was the issue). Given your other characters can farm the zone UM item in previous S3 episodes though I am not sure why they decided it was even a problem if the previous guess was accurate. Hopefully that was not it, like people found out a way to get a shard on each strike or something. The major problem is they did not communicate when something was partially disabled. I am sure many people are still mining those nodes (and sometimes getting downed in the process) thinking they have some really bad RNG this weekend.
Agreed about little reason to go to LD until this is fixed. I was not there at all today. Yesterday because of this nerf it took me nearly 2 hours just to gather around 20 shards because I was unlucky with hitting good events (so not only did I not get many daily achieves but the hearts took forever with nothing going on around them).
Hopefully there is a way to turn the jade nodes in the zone off completely until the fix. I doubt many people are intentionally mining them for just dust and UM. That is like saying people are doing Teq for spoons.
what was the exploit? i dont recall getting anything weird from the jade frags. so confused now
I think a combination of instance hopping and multicharring
Which makes it seems like that is not all of the story. In every other zone (including S3) you can farm the resources in a zone with a character, come back with another character, and have new nodes (same places or not). About the only exceptions are the home instance and your guild hall (and rich-whatever nodes I think).
I can’t believe how snarky people are being about the devs trying to fix an exploitable problem. If they tell you the exact reason they’re fixing something, this could clue nefarious evildoers in on how to exploit other farmable items in the future. So it’s best to be vague and fix the issue. It’s not like karma is hard to come by, and some players who’ve been here since the beginning have millions of karma to spend. It’s not like they’ve disabled it and they’re not trying to fix it. Give them a break, they’re doing their jobs to the best of their ability and fixes take time.
We are not “snarky” about them trying to solve the problem. We are just upset about the way they announced it. Not everybody follows the forum and the thread is not even placed in accouncement section. Some ppl spent a lot of time blaming their incredibly bad luck.
There are no stupid questions. Olny stupid answears.
You can still get shards but VERY slowly as for the most part you will need to do hearts. I just hope that when they bring it back it will not be one character/day as that will break with precedent. Limiting mined shards per character to stop instance hopping, fine, but we can do other LS3 items with multiple characters in the same day if we are willing to put in the time and effort.
Home instance node works as expected and drops three jade shards per day (confirmed on at least three accounts). However it’s shaped as a petrified wood node and is displayed as a regular mining node on the home instance map. Some people report it disappears but I haven’t experienced that behavior.
As long as it gives me the shards ….
First thing in new zone: buy the scroll
Second thing in new zone: buy the node
Third thing in new zone: go to my DR home instance so I would not forget to mine it before reset
If I do nothing else at least I have a guaranteed 3 shards/day (assuming I do my home instance) now. So without even going to the new zone I can get almost 6 backpacks in a year (assuming enough UM from the other zones).
People might disagree on the value of home instance nodes (rubies, wood, berries, jade shards) but it’s a one time investment of 10 000 unbound magic and 50 gold per node that will drop stuff for the rest of the game’s lifetime. I my opinion a well worth investment.
