Guild Wars 2

This is something I’ve noticed becoming increasingly prevalent in updates, and I don’t think it’s being done deliberately.

Many of the traits that have an effect on killing an opponent only trigger if the opponent grants experience (and loot). On release, this was a reasonable state of affairs – enemies that did not were generally too puny to be worth triggering those traits.

Increasingly, though, we’re starting to see more numerous and more powerful opponents who have this characteristic, and it seems to be being done as an anti-farming measure. Most enemies in the Queen’s Pavilion did not grant experience and thus did not count for trait activation, even though some of those enemies were quite dangerous. In the new story instances, I don’t think any of the enemies fought in a story instance granted experience and therefor trait activation – probably to prevent unscrupulous players from grinding the instances for experience and loot.

The problem is that this phenomenon is increasingly making ‘on killing an enemy’ traits rather pointless – I remember one fight in there when I fought two veterans with nothing else in the fight, and killing one of them failed to trigger the Renewed Justice minor trait on my guardian – a trait that is one of the cornerstones of a Radiance-based guardian build in PvE, particularly if combined with other traits focusing on frequent activation of Virtue of Justice. While this is the case that I observed, I would also expect this to have a similar effect on builds in other classes that have made a strong investment in similar traits, such as Triumphant Distortion on the Mesmer and Death Nova on the Necromancer.

I can understand why farming of mobs in a story instance would be something you’d want to discourage, but would it be possible to make it so that mobs in such instances do still trigger on-kill type traits and similar effects?

These are the same mobs that give zero XP and drop no loot. Anet is moving more and more towards this type of mob.

Summoned creatures do not count as regular creatures for death effects. This starts with not getting loot bags, since you could let more and more creatures get summoned for more and more loot bags. You may have come across a number of summoned enemies in the new instances.

I got the impression the OP understands what type of creatures act this way, it’s just that he disagrees with them becoming so common. An on this I second his opinion. This is begging for a fix, not regarding exp or loot bags, but trait activation only. Those things should be entirely separate, ALL enemies that aren’t “grey” neutral critters should grant on-kill trait activation, regardless of them granting loot/experience or not.

Tristavel has it.

I know full well why the ‘does not provide XP or loot’ feature of some mobs exist. I also recognise that it was good sense on release to link on-kill trait activations to mobs that provided XP – because back then most mobs that didn’t provide XP were weak summons where it would be abusive if you could just keep triggering the trait over and over again (okay, some have internal cooldowns, but the Radiance minor master trait doesn’t) and the cases where you had mobs that didn’t provide XP were rare enough not to be worth worrying about (just don’t bring one of those traits to Claw Island).

Now, though, we’re seeing them more and more – including mobs in story instances that don’t infinitely recycle like the Claw Island mobs do. As I said in the OP, I can understand the economic (read: antifarming) reasons for having mobs in story instances not give XP or loot. The problem is that traits like Renewed Justice has become collateral damage to this policy.

The two properties really need to be decoupled.

@Stooperdale: It’s not just summoned creatures:

It is not just traits. There are also consumables and sigils that are affected.

Khisanth.2948:

It is not just traits. There are also consumables and sigils that are affected.

I was going to start a thread about this. I noticed it acutely running through this story when my (fully ascended geared) Guardian found himself downed about half-a-dozen times throughout the episode (as opposed to other, typically less robust characters some of whom made it through without hitting the ground once) and then I realized ANet had screwed me out of a good portion of my character’s DPS because I was using Bloodlust Sigils and Renewed Justice.

This screws up (makes worthless) the following Sigils (in order or value at the TP): Bloodlust, Momentum, Corruption, Perception, Life, Restoration, Luck, Benevolence, Stamina, Demon Summoning and Celerity.

This also screws up “kill a foe” traits: Guardian’s Renewed Justice; Ranger’s Remorseless and Master’s Bond; Thief’s Assassin’s Retreat; and Necromancer’s Parasitic Bond and Spiteful Removal.

I think this is mostly an oversight on ANet’s part (unless they have something personal against the above Sigils and Traits and the players who use them), but it needs to be fixed. If the issue is that certain mobs have zero experience, and therefore don’t count as “foes” then simply make them all worth 1-5 EXP on kill or something and fix it. If they can make a mob worth zero experience they can make it worth 1 experience and allow those Sigils and Traits to work normally.

I’ve also died on my warrior on a few occasions because as many know they have a Vengeance trait which allows you to survive by killing an enemy in the short time you’re back on your feet. I noticed that alot of the vine monsters don’t trigger this effect. One example is the veteran vine event just a few jumps into Dry Top. I don’t really mind if some monsters don’t give loot or experience but if a monster has a certain amount of health it should at least give the player a chance to activate trait effects (or Vengeance) for killing it.

Khisanth.2948:

It is not just traits. There are also consumables and sigils that are affected.

Wanted to start a thread about Bloodlust sigil as well, with the following content:

Q: ANet, could you inform us if there will be more mobs with no exp gain in the future or you’re going to fix them to work with stacking sigils? At the moment, sigils like Bloodlust are getting more and more useless because of this and the recent water “fix”; should we wait for an alteration to theses mobs or just overwrite the sigils with something more working?

By the way, if it can’t be fixed properly, granting 1xp per kill should solve all the problems and I believe cannot be abused.

I think the main issue is loot rather than exp. Still a bit odd that there isn’t a way to just say “this mob drops no loot”.

One the other issue of this affecting builds, well this has always been in the game. The stacking sigils are mostly unaffected but for nearly every boss fight the others are basically useless.

LS2 Episode II: “We Tinker with Your Traits Again”

I’m horrible at paying attention to this kind of stuff, but seeing as this might very well be a big part of future content it should definitely be looked at and corrected.

Praise the sun!!!

People have begun to notice this!!!

I thought I was going insane with my guardian “staff 1+renewed justice+inspired virtue.”
There were plenty of times I should have been dumping might and looting bags… Not that it’s abusive or anything.

draxynnic.3719:

…snip I can understand why farming of mobs in a story instance would be something you’d want to discourage, but would it be possible to make it so that mobs in such instances do still trigger on-kill type traits and similar effects?

And this is why I will never get most of the achievements in this new type of LS.

Because If I:
1) put in the effort to kill the opponent(s) (we’re not talking bunnies here)
2) risk dying to do so
3) am victorious (eventually)

Then I:
Deserve loot, xp, an on kill stack and all any other benefits therein.

Repeating the same story over again to get an achievement without any loot rewards is IMO a waste of time. I’m not a bot so why should I be punished for it? Taking away from my loot won’t stop the farmers, but it will defiantly make some of us find other things to do. I still like the way they are rolling out this new season, but what would be the harm in giving us some loot for our efforts?

So the reason these give no xp or loot is because they are infinite spawning with relatively high respawn rate but there is actually already a solution for that in the game. There was a similar issue with the Champion risen giant’s spawn during the gates of arah event. The solution to that was making it so the spawns will eventually stop giving exp and loot. That way doing it normally won’t be affected and you can’t delay finishing it for easy farming.

Anet hates farmers. Want to farm a specific mob? Too bad. Want to grind for xp on specific mobs? Too bad.

Farmers actually bring the prices down on everything. The more supply, the cheaper the products. Just compare prices, during the first month of GW2’s release, and today. Everything was cheaper and most items ended up being vendored or salvaged.

I agree that this was likely done to prevent people from farming the story instances (the Inquest in “Disturbance” spawn continuously, for example, making them a superb source for level 80 bags/Crystalline Dust/Elaborate Totems if they dropped loot), but I also agree that it’s extremely, EXTREMELY annoying if you have your character/build setup to take advantage of kills. (My Demon Summoning sigil on my Necro, for example, which I picked for RP flavour, is completely useless!)

Maybe ANet can compromise by making it so these encounters DON’T spawn unlimited enemies. Make it so that the Inquest only send, say, 3 waves, and that’s it. That’s about 9 Inquest; you could get more than that just by going into the Abandoned Mine and and killing them all in a big circle. By the time you get back to the start, they’ll have respawned.

Yeah it’s bugged me for a while also.

Killing a creature is killing a creature, and should trigger everything related whether it gives experience or not. A summoned creature, sure, you could argue against that doing anything but the summons are far fewer and visually apparent.

It’s anti-farming, but it’s also one of the patched in creature types without due care. There are others very noticable such as the scaled up mobs spawning at world events. It’s very very obvious when you know it.

For instance: Maw pre-event. You kill a mob that dies in fraction of a second, and get the on-kill benefits. Then you’ll get the exact same named mob that takes a few seconds to kill and get no on-kill benefit. The exact same thing happens with Fire Elemental. Pre-event mobs spawn, die, give on-kill. An elite spawns, takes a while to kill and gives nothing.

It’s a throwback to the ‘Original’ Guild Wars 2 release. Those mobs that work were the same mobs spawning at release date events. To counter the mega-server/zergs/easy events, there were new mobs thrown in to the mix to increase the difficulty and it’s these creatures that do not have their correct properties.

Might be an aspect of their quick 2-week turn around showing, where small details like this fall through.

Khisanth.2948:

It is not just traits. There are also consumables and sigils that are affected.

Yeah, instances and dungeons aren’t giving me stacks on my sigils

There’s another dubious effect that may be related. I don’t think these mobs count towards achievements. One night I spent an hour in dry top doing all kinds of events and, at the end, my daily Maguuma Killer was at 0%.

This can be pretty lame when it happens.

However, the wolf pups in TA give no loot but do give xp and on kill benefits. So the code is there to fix this, if they just want to avoid loot farming.

Lord Kuru.3685:

These are the same mobs that give zero XP and drop no loot. Anet is moving more and more towards this type of mob.

Anet needs to ask themselves:

If a player kills a virtual character and received no virtual reward and no experience why is the player staying?

Answer:

They aren’t.

For real, my guardian dies a little inside every time he doesn’t get renewed justice because of some BS…

Crossplay.2067:

There’s another dubious effect that may be related. I don’t think these mobs count towards achievements. One night I spent an hour in dry top doing all kinds of events and, at the end, my daily Maguuma Killer was at 0%.

They don’t. I very quickly recognised that there was no point doing the pavilion for Daily Kills, for instance.

draxynnic.3719:

Crossplay.2067:

There’s another dubious effect that may be related. I don’t think these mobs count towards achievements. One night I spent an hour in dry top doing all kinds of events and, at the end, my daily Maguuma Killer was at 0%.

They don’t. I very quickly recognised that there was no point doing the pavilion for Daily Kills, for instance.

That might just be an oversight. I can see this for temporary content like the Pavillion, but the new maps are here to stay and thus should count towards Maguuma.

If they wanted to make the mobs not farmable, they could always, you know, make them not endless.

Arrow.4619:

I think this is mostly an oversight on ANet’s part (unless they have something personal against the above Sigils and Traits and the players who use them), but it needs to be fixed. If the issue is that certain mobs have zero experience, and therefore don’t count as “foes” then simply make them all worth 1-5 EXP on kill or something and fix it. If they can make a mob worth zero experience they can make it worth 1 experience and allow those Sigils and Traits to work normally.

This. Breaking the mechanics of the game to prevent people from getting more XP is not really acceptable and definitely not fair.

Agree with the op. Having specific mobs giving no xp to prevent farming is important.

However, in this case we are talking about a level 80 instance with non easy to kill ennemies. They should yield xp. Besides, what is the point of farming xp at level 80 ?

On a side note :

Farmers actually bring the prices down on everything. The more supply, the cheaper the products. Just compare prices, during the first month of GW2’s release, and today. Everything was cheaper and most items ended up being vendored or salvaged.

This reasoning is a giant fallacy : farmers concentrate the wealth of the game, making casuals relatively poorer in the process. That is the reson why games that care about their economy try to limit farming.

Farmers don’t concentrate the wealth of the game if they are farming for their own use. The trouble is that it’s hard to distinguish between “subsistence farmers” and farmers who farm for profit.

The reason why prices for mats were so low at the start of the game was largely due to bots. Automated farm bots were harvesting thousands of mats every day and just pumping it into the economy in order to get gold to sell to players. Most bots have been banned now, and with the new ultra-high mat requirements for Ascended gear, prices for mats have steadily risen.

Almost forgot this one. There is a similar issue with all the on crit consumables/traits/sigils as well.

I would really like to hear some info from ANet on it.

I still have underwater (ascended, unsalvageable) weapons with empty sigil slots which either need to get a Bloodlust sigil if this gets fixed (to fix ANet’s Bloodlust “fix” in turn), or something else not worth 10g if it doesn’t.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance is probably a more appropriate place for this.

it’s not a balancing issue, it’s either a bug or an oversight. Forget loot and exp for a second, if you kill an enemy other than an ambient creature, you should trigger the ‘on the kill traits/sigils’ but this isn’t happening. I’m hoping people are creating tickets about this problem, as that will reach arena net far faster than posting in this forum will

Was in Fields of Ruin last night, east side of map in that cave where you have to kill 3 veteran flame legion leaders.

Anyway, everything you kill yields XP, yet nothing in that cave gives a) credit towards Daily Kills or b) triggers sigils/kill streak boosters. Was very odd.

Those mobs also don’t count for a lot of things like daily kills, kill variety, stacking sigils, etc. Extremely annoying if you want to play the living story and get your dailies done before you need to leave.

I’ll also piggy back the fact that ranger pets don’t do damage to the sparring hylek, since that literally invalidates some people’s builds.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep taking away our game mechanics. Design monsters to be balanced around us, don’t penalize us for trying to play the content.

Edit: One thing they do right, often the main bosses are very high health veterans rather than champs (like the golem in the first story instance.) Which means we can use CC. VERY welcome feature for me.

I tried playing a guardian that relied heavily on “on kill” effects such as Renewed Justice, on kill sigils, and charge on kill sigils.

It was a extremely annoying. I could not blind as often, not pour as much vulnerability, and didn’t get stronger over time staying alive as usual.

There’s events and lots of instances that have enemies that give XP but drop no loot.

And if anyone wanted to farm XP, there’s countless better places for it.

This has been an oversight.

Whoever set these NPCs, set them both “NO_DROPS” and “NO_EXP”, instead just “NO_DROPS”.

Even better, they should have added some sort of “KILL_COUNT” tag so they can disable on kill effects on critters and weak hordes, without having to use the XP tag to get them to count.

But now it’s probably too late or that. Think of the countless NPCs already set around.

MithranArkanere.8957:

But now it’s probably too late or that. Think of the countless NPCs already set around.

At the very least, they can avoid doing it in future installments.

draxynnic.3719:

MithranArkanere.8957:

But now it’s probably too late or that. Think of the countless NPCs already set around.

At the very least, they can avoid doing it in future installments.

Looks like a simple SQL query to me… The only explanation is laziness or clumsiness, or if they have a reason to have put it that way deliberately.

Since nobody’s said anything about this yet, I’ll play devil’s advocate:

Making it so that no-experience (for convenience, from here on, referred to as “trash”) mobs give 1 experience each is still exploitable. While not very useful for the human player, who will grow weary of killing 1-experience creatures quite quickly regardless of how easy it is, a script does not get tired or bored. Say there’s a personal story part with unlimited spawning trash. Let’s also say that player X had a script, character and build that would let him reliably kill one trash mob every fifteen seconds with proven 100% survivability (yes, that’s pretty much impossible, but play with the thought). The script could, while player X is away, gain 4 experience points every minute. That’s 240 experience in an hour. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But a script can run at any time, for any length of time. Say player X went on vacation for two weeks and let the bot go wild. 80,640 experience. That’s 80,640 experience more than a player following the rules. And what’s more, since the bot is running around in an instance, nobody can spot it and report it.

Now, this above example isn’t very likely to happen. You’d probably be able to kill trash in about half the time, server uptime isn’t 24/7 even if we might wish it, there’s all kinds of problems between player X’s computer and the server that could cause the bot to stop working, and of course there’s no way to guarantee the bot won’t just fall over and die to the trash. But I believe it illustrates why ArenaNet might not be interested in solving the issue by just giving trash experience.

I agree that this should be fixed, but I propose that rather than changing the experience values of every single trash mob in the game to fit the current system, change the current system to one that checks for a trash flag on mobs and doesn’t trigger on-kill effects if the trash flag is set. Alternatively, for future-proofing, have the trait/sigil/achievement compare your stats to the enemy’s stats on death. If the difference in health is too great (in the player’s favor), no on-kill benefit for you.

Le edit: This system I mentioned last could, of course, be adapted to check for other values as well. Including, but not limited to: what spawned the mob (other mob, scripted event, natural spawn), how many of that particular mob you’ve killed in the past five minutes, how long since your last use of a heal ability in relation to the amount of time spent out of combat. If we want to get really fancy, we could even check for how much movement and diverse skills were used to dispatch the foe to check for bot activity. But that’s just me brainstorming.

Finally, this is probably a wider scope than just Living World. Change of forums might be a good idea to broaden the audience.

The worst part is that there have been instances of enemies that don’t drop loot but can still give EXP/count for stacks, kills, etc (The Nightmare Pups in TA and the bomb golems in COE 2/3 come to mind), meaning either someone screwed up on this, or did it on purpose. Bad design, and makes me not feel like fighting them unless I have to.

Jigain.8231:

I agree that this should be fixed, but I propose that rather than changing the experience values of every single trash mob in the game to fit the current system, change the current system to one that checks for a trash flag on mobs and doesn’t trigger on-kill effects if the trash flag is set. Alternatively, for future-proofing, have the trait/sigil/achievement compare your stats to the enemy’s stats on death. If the difference in health is too great (in the player’s favor), no on-kill benefit for you.

Or, alternatively, they could just design encounters where there is a finite number of mobs that spawn. It doesn’t make sense that the Inquest could throw millions of disposable grunts at you, after all. I mentioned in my post in this same thread how this could be done.

For the Disturbance in Brisban Wildlands instance, for example, instead of having the Inquest waves come endlessly, there is a fixed limit of 3 waves of three Inquest that spawn. After those are slain, the workers can repair the walls in complete peace and quiet. It thus wouldn’t make sense for people to farm the instance when they could simply farm the Inquest in the Abandoned Mine instead, where they spawn in greater density and frequency.

This would also open up alternative methods of completing the encounter. A player whose build is more focused around support and healing could take up position near the workers/Seraph, and keep them alive with buffs and heals, relying on them for support to defeat the Inquest. A player whose build is primarily offensive could instead position themselves further away and simply kill all the enemies before they even get close to their allies. Both methods work, and the net result is you have two players with different playstyles who both feel satisfied and validated that their “strategy” worked.

Zaxares.5419:

Or, alternatively, they could just design encounters where there is a finite number of mobs that spawn. It doesn’t make sense that the Inquest could throw millions of disposable grunts at you, after all.

Very, very, VERY MUCH this!

There should never be an endless supply of enemies. It simply doesn’t make sense. Even if you say they’re using waypoints to retreat and recover (like we do), eventually they’d give up.

If a mission has so many enemies that people farming them is a potential problem, then I’d have to ask why there’s so many enemies in the mission. The solution would be to rethink the mission to fix the problem, NOT to throw away the balance of Risk vs Reward (and on-kill effects are a reward) so you can ignore the problem.

Wickonian Pirate.8716:

it’s not a balancing issue, it’s either a bug or an oversight. Forget loot and exp for a second, if you kill an enemy other than an ambient creature, you should trigger the ‘on the kill traits/sigils’ but this isn’t happening. I’m hoping people are creating tickets about this problem, as that will reach arena net far faster than posting in this forum will

It’s actually not a bug according to the Devs (though when they created this particular design implementation, they might not have foreseen the way the Living Story would end up). I imagine they will go back in and change things, eventually, to account for all the mobs in these instances granting no XP.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Sigil-of-Stamina/2117405

Palador.2170:

Zaxares.5419:

Or, alternatively, they could just design encounters where there is a finite number of mobs that spawn. It doesn’t make sense that the Inquest could throw millions of disposable grunts at you, after all.

Very, very, VERY MUCH this!

There should never be an endless supply of enemies. It simply doesn’t make sense. Even if you say they’re using waypoints to retreat and recover (like we do), eventually they’d give up.

If a mission has so many enemies that people farming them is a potential problem, then I’d have to ask why there’s so many enemies in the mission. The solution would be to rethink the mission to fix the problem, NOT to throw away the balance of Risk vs Reward (and on-kill effects are a reward) so you can ignore the problem.

It’s particularly crazy in the first ley line hub instance – you get told that you’ve finished killing all the Inquest in sight, when what you see is a dozen or so Inquest on screen that just magically disappear. Particularly if you’re going for the No Tricks achievement and thus you’re not killing groups in a single blast.

Zaxares.5419:

Or, alternatively, they could just design encounters where there is a finite number of mobs that spawn. It doesn’t make sense that the Inquest could throw millions of disposable grunts at you, after all. I mentioned in my post in this same thread how this could be done. <snipped for brevity>

This is not a universal solution, because in some cases it makes perfect sense (lore-wise) to have “millions of disposable grunts” thrown at you. The most obvious one, of course, is Zhaitan’s minions. A large part of the story of the game, in fact, is that one person cannot do everything. If conflicts in the world of Guild Wars 2 were as simple as “just have this one person kill thirty of these guys and everything’s a-okay”, that’d hardly make for an interesting setting.

Jigain.8231:

This is not a universal solution, because in some cases it makes perfect sense (lore-wise) to have “millions of disposable grunts” thrown at you. The most obvious one, of course, is Zhaitan’s minions.

Even there, it doesn’t really make sense. Yes, he may have thousands, maybe even millions of undead, but he doesn’t have them all right there. They’re scattered throughout Orr and various other places. If he had thousands of undead waiting to fight you at any one point, you’d likely see the huge mob (or pile) of undead waiting for you before you even get there.

I realize that it makes good dramatic sense to have waves of undead, or Inquest golems, or whatever else attacking, but there comes a time when it goes from intense to silly. Sooner or later, if you cut down everything thrown your way, the waves should end.

Jigain.8231:

This is not a universal solution, because in some cases it makes perfect sense (lore-wise) to have “millions of disposable grunts” thrown at you. The most obvious one, of course, is Zhaitan’s minions. A large part of the story of the game, in fact, is that one person cannot do everything. If conflicts in the world of Guild Wars 2 were as simple as “just have this one person kill thirty of these guys and everything’s a-okay”, that’d hardly make for an interesting setting.

There are still ways of preserving that sense of “they just keep coming!” without having them spawn infinitely. For instance, there might be 50 Risen mobs between you and the gate, but they come in waves of 2’s and 3’s so it seems like there’s a non-stop rush of enemies. You can further pad this with “suicide” enemies like Plague Bearers that do not give XP or loot; the player will likely accept that these guys are not really “killable enemies”, but more like environmental hazards.

You can also see in the surrounding landscape dozens more fights between more Risen and Pact forces. You can’t actually join in with these fights (they’re on unreachable terrain), but they provide the illusion that there’s a huge war going on.

Additionally, in at least the instance I mentioned in my last post, they’re not supposed to be effectively infinite. Instead, they just keep spawning until the game decides it’s enough (is it on a timer? Is it based on killing a certain number, but the game spawns an excess anyway?) and then you get congratulated on killing them all and the excess is just unceremoniously despawned, even if a few seconds ago there were a dozen of them mobbing you. That goes beyond silly and becomes ludicrous.

I feel I must reiterate the core of my posts in this thread, as I fear it may have been lost on the readers in general.

What I’m talking about is a proof of concept that no solution is 100% ideal. Through reasoning and my own opinionated opinions which are opinions and as such not facts but rather opinions, I suggested what I personally believe would be the best solution. Again, best does not mean 100% ideal. Whether it is feasible for Zhaitan to have a thousand undead in the water that you just didn’t see, whether you fight 2-3 Risen at a time while the rest just glance at you and say “don’t worry, we’ll wait”, is entirely out of the scope of the proof of concept I provided.

So, to summarize, my proof of concept provides three basic points as subject for discussion:
1) Why ANet might not consider “just add experience” to be a great solution,
B. No solution fits all, and
III- The best solution I can see based on my opinions and the facts available.

That is all. Thank you for your time.

draxynnic.3719:

(…)
I can understand why farming of mobs in a story instance would be something you’d want to discourage, but would it be possible to make it so that mobs in such instances do still trigger on-kill type traits and similar effects?

Just to emphasize the core of this thread.

Anet, please fix this.
Really annoying and actually plain rude.
I feel like Anet considers everyone a bot.
Not fair at all!
If this is a programming error, by all means, fire the noobs!