One question I have will the wait time for a game be increased by a lot? You can wait 10-20 mins+ now for a team/solo q game on occasions….
It should actually be faster, but we’ll need to wait and see how it performs in the real world (and not just our internal testing and simulations.) We have several ways we can reduce queue time by sacrificing match quality, or vice versa.
Server Programmer (sPvP)
Isle of Janthir: Flux, Latch, Aegir
This has only to do with solo and team arenas, correct? Hotjoin, at least manually choosing a server/match, isn’t going to be affected by these changes?
Correct. Custom arenas and play now are unaffected.
Server Programmer (sPvP)
Isle of Janthir: Flux, Latch, Aegir
What’s to keep people from queue-ing as a profession they don’t regularly play so that they enter the match at a lower rank and then swapping to a profession they do play a lot?
Leaving the PvP lobby will remove you from the queue.
Does the system take into account your MMR as a bigger percentage and then your rank?
Yes. Once I’m done with the wiki page you’ll see exact numbers once they’re ready. We’ll be changing them often before the ladder starts, but they should be stable after that point.
I would love to see that be how it is handled and I would also love to see a leaderboard with “Best overall” that showed players who were really good on numerous professions. It would be a great way to differentiate players and have them be identified as really good on a profession or two or really well-rounded because they are solid on a lot of different professions.
The new PvP backend servers allow for this sort of flexability, but it isn’t currently planned.
Does this mean that if you end up facing players from the top of the leaderboards, you have a lot more to gain than to lose? Or vice versa; if you’re at the top, you can’t gain much but you can lose a lot?
Yes. You can potentially gain more points by losing than they can by winning.
Additionally, are you going to show ladder points on the leaderboard, or before/after games on a pop up?
On the leaderboard, yes. In game, no, not with this build, We did not want to devote resources into new UI work until we get the community’s reactions to this leaderboard.
My concerns are with ladder rank and the ranked area. Based on what I’ve read, I see the potential to abuse this system by initially climbing the ladder on your main profession. Then, when competition gets stiff, swap to a profession and build that you don’t have many games on that traditionally does well at lower ratings.
We’ll need to wait and see. If it becomes an issue we can definitely change the rules.
For example, what’s the incentive, besides integrity, for a someone who never plays engineer to climb to the top 300 of the new leaders boards with their main profession…and then play turret engi, have their MMR adjusted, and boost their ladder points with the wins at this MMR?
If they don’t play a profession often then they should have a high RD, causing their rating to adapt quickly. We’ll keep an eye on it to see if its fast enough to prevent this sort of thing.
Server Programmer (sPvP)
Isle of Janthir: Flux, Latch, Aegir
Colin, I’m going to be a jerk about this (but I mean no ill will), and perhaps its just the English language, but it sounds like you are leaving an opening.
Saying “currently running” sounds like “not the exact system as china will come over from china, but we may implement a different one”
As we’ve said before: The royal system will not be coming to NA/EU, period.
Oh, we really want something like that as well. I have a design document built that we (CS) haven’t moved on because of higher priorities (getting you guys back in the game faster if hacked, etc>) but this is on the list. Also included are some unique ways for you to notice a GM when we’re online. I can’t promise any of this, of course, but it’s a direction we’d like to head if time allows.
did your tests with these new tools yield any results? I also hope that you will be spending time outside of T1, because there are still thousands of us down on the lower tiers.
Yep, they work. You’ll see us from time to time, though generally we’re invisible. And we never forget lower tiers. I’ve played on Anvil Rock, Maguuma, SBI, TC, and several others. My direct reports and I try to join a different server every season to get a feel of what’s going on for each of you (EU included). The account in my signature is open for friend invites or follows and you can always say hi.
Disclaimer! I will sometimes ignore whispers, don’t take it personally I’m very busy when online and get tell-kittened as I’m sure you’d imagine. I’ll pop my commander tag most of the time so you can find my toon and come say hello directly.
*Edit to update signature.
That is awesome to know. I have another question, though (so many questions!). Do you have the ability to jump between servers at will? You mentioned being on servers during seasons, but that isn’t exactly a catch-all. We had our adopt-a-dev Melnetta on our server during S3 and she would ask us after every matchup if this was the kind of thing we were dealing with all the time. After 23 weeks without a win, it was a bit of an exhausted “yes, every time.” She would routinely observe wrongdoing but had no power to do anything about it.
We need GMs on every server, and not just during the seasons. We had a flamboyant and very vocal person using foul play on our server during this current matchup, and while I see that he’s no longer ingame (kudos, btw), it took weeks to get that result. We really do need a full spread of people like you to deal with, well, people like him. Is that a possibility?
Whoops! I blurred a line here. When I was talking about us joining during different seasons I was referring to our play accounts. My team and I play the seasons in addition to working them. As for GMing WvW we’re here all year. I checked out some servers last night and got some great feedback – but I’m going to ask for more.
Vote for best red post update in 2014, Michael Henninger. Mike (can I call you Mike?), you have no idea how in the dark we were and how little we knew about how emails to exploits@ and ingame reports were handled. Thank you for your attention.
edit: and please don’t be afraid to come in here and talk to us. We have been desperate for any dev or support responses about WvW and “wrongdoing” for a long time. You’ve clarified many things for us. You have, honestly, done more for the WvW community by posting in this thread than any CDI or meager update has done in the last year. Bravo.
Also, please don’t take my responses personally. These were awesome questions and my writing voice was addressing all of you as a community, not an individual.
did your tests with these new tools yield any results? I also hope that you will be spending time outside of T1, because there are still thousands of us down on the lower tiers.
Yep, they work. You’ll see us from time to time, though generally we’re invisible. And we never forget lower tiers. I’ve played on Anvil Rock, Maguuma, SBI, TC, and several others. My direct reports and I try to join a different server every season to get a feel of what’s going on for each of you (EU included). The account in my signature is open for friend invites or follows and you can always say hi.
Disclaimer! I will sometimes ignore whispers, don’t take it personally I’m very busy when online and get tell-kittened as I’m sure you’d imagine. I’ll pop my commander tag most of the time so you can find my toon and come say hello directly.
Thank you so much for responding here. I would like to point something out which hopefully you can take into account.
You state that a GM must physically see the person hacking, however with the exception of speed hacking, most hacks happen in a limited time period, for instance jumping over a wall, glitching through a gate, and rezzing underground.
This effectively means that since it takes probably a while to work through the que these intermittent hacks cannot be caught yes?
Michael, the system as it is now in its unprioritized state leads to hackers hacking unmolested for months. Not a couple months either, it took half a year to get GOMs worst hacker banned…for a couple weeks.
WvW hacking is public. It hurts server reputation. It hurts player morale game wide. It becomes a toxic topic and it breeds more hackers to “fight the hackers”
It is, as far as I know, the only public cheating ingame, viewed by thousands who get the impression that ANET does not and cannot stop cheating. This makes people think they can cheat the markets, bot the game etc, because hey they cant even stop that one jump hacker.
Perhaps prioritizing the public, in your face, cheating that does instant damage to WvW ranking, server morale on BOTH sides of the cheat, and your reputation would be valuable?
Ok, first about us getting to cheaters before they disappear. Yes, it happens. The reports come into what we call the stream and are served in the order they’re submitted. However, our coverage allows us to keep on top of these in a very small window (sometimes seconds, sometimes a few minutes).
The reason for physically seeing the cheater is that we can then 100% say during an appeal that they were cheating. We have multiple methods of detection for a multitude of offenses but we’re always going to put eyes on the situation so we don’t accidentally terminate an account unjustly.
Cheaters fighting cheaters is a really bad idea; especially given how public the situation is and how I’m currently focused on the situation. If I catch someone cheating “I only did it once” isn’t a valid defense. Nor is “but they did it first”. If it feels wrong; then it’s wrong. If you’re not sure call up your Kindergarten teacher for guidance (an old joke from a friend).
As for the exploits are ANet address, this isn’t a Customer Support address. Exploits is more of a ‘I found a way to cheat here’s how to do it’ thing and Quality Assurance reviews those.
It’s great to see another red post in the WvW forums, and another one that seems like action will be taken.
But sorry we’ve been hurt before, many of us although thankful someone replied, wont expect much to be done.
However, if the exploit email if not for reporting hackers, then why is it for the last 2 years our posts about such have been closed and we’ve been told to send an email to exploits@areana.net?!
Your post here just shows we’ve probably been wasting our time for the last 2 years trying to report these hacks.
You’ve made several posts already, my advice is that, unlike all the previous red posters, it would be appreciated if you could keep up updated on these matters and not disappear into PvE
I’m around. You’ll usually find me posting in the Account Issues sub-forum. I rarely crawl out of it’s darkness for I find new things out here and I frighten easily.
That we cant speak with GM or pm then I understand and think is ok, but would be good if a map wide report came when a GM ban a player, like Player xxx banned 2weeks for flying, for all 3 servers on the map.
I’m looking at ways to let you all know when we terminate players, at least the most prolific ones.
I can’t speak to tools. I can tell you that using the ‘botter’ option is indeed sufficient.
As for the exploits are ANet address, this isn’t a Customer Support address. Exploits is more of a ‘I found a way to cheat here’s how to do it’ thing and Quality Assurance reviews those.
GMs don’t belong to a server so wondering if you’re server has a GM is futile. We’re everywhere >=).
To further clarify – exploits@arena.net is not used for reviewing reports of cheaters. This is for notifying us of found exploits so that QA can work on reporting fixes.
Well this is a bit awkward as we have always been told by the mods and whatnot to report hackers that way as there was no hacking report option in the in game tool. I guess this explains why none of the reported people got banned then if it’s not their job to do that in the first place. Thank you for clarifying this! I have one question tho, if one happens to have video footage of someone doing some sort of naughty business, should we send it in via normal ticket or just rely on the “botting” report to do the thing instead?
In-game for botting is always the right way to go. This is (generic, I understand) a report that a GM sees and responds to by going into the game. I am looking at new ways to let players report but I’m going to need a few days to poke holes in my methods.
Thanks so much everyone for jumping on this! Now if you’re still experiencing this issue, could we get some pathpings from you all? Specifically, from this output:
So glad we can finally talk about the update! It’s been a long time in the making. I look forward to playing with you guys in a couple weeks! (though I’ll probably be nervously watching servers with the rest of the team)
These are all good changes, but I think a lot of us have been most looking forward to a new game mode. It was a lot of people’s #1 priority in the CDI that was run last year, and we’ve been waiting a lot time for it.
As Colin said, a new game mode is something the team is working towards. However, it’s not ready at this time. These other changes are ready, and we’d like to get them out to you on December 2. A new game mode is a serious undertaking that requires a lot of time and work.
As mentioned in John’s overview post today, we’ll be ranking players on the leaderboards based off of ladder points, rather than MMR like we do right now.
As some of you may remember, we’ve done leaderboard wipes before, but that also wiped your MMR, causing chaos in queues until everything normalized. In the new system, we’ll be able to save your MMR while wiping ladder points, allowing us to do resets a lot more frequently and easily – hence the test season.
Justin’s blog will explain it in more detail tomorrow.
Could someone PLEASE tell me what I’m looking/listening for in this video? I still don’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
At the 50-second mark of the video that the OP linked, the player successfully reproduces the bug after which point all the vocal sfx of the asura character are pitched up by ~25%.
I tested some new tools yesterday – thanks to BG, JQ, & TC for putting up with me while I figured things out =D. There are multiple things from overnight I want to address so let me get my day rolling and I’ll pop back in and do so.
That was poor wording in the press release, there is no “new game mode” in the traditional sense we’d think of (new map/ new rules) being released in this update, though our competitive team continues to work on new game mode options as we speak. As with all things, they’ll give details on this when it’s far enough along we’re able to talk about it.
The reference to “mode” is talking about how players will be organized in PvP games, details later this week.
Great! So I’ll just click on the invisible unclickable Unknown player and report them using the in-game reporting tool under the options for hacking……..oh wait.
Are you referring to players under the terrain?
A commonly seen hack in WvW makes the player/golem/what have you invisible and untargetable. Damage taken from them shows up in the combat log as belonging to ‘unknown’. You recognize them existing by noting the golem rockets coming out of thin air.
K, I’m on it. I’ll talk with Game Security and make sure we’re not missing these.
I can’t speak to tools. I can tell you that using the ‘botter’ option is indeed sufficient.
As for the exploits are ANet address, this isn’t a Customer Support address. Exploits is more of a ‘I found a way to cheat here’s how to do it’ thing and Quality Assurance reviews those.
GMs don’t belong to a server so wondering if you’re server has a GM is futile. We’re everywhere >=).
To further clarify – exploits@arena.net is not used for reviewing reports of cheaters. This is for notifying us of found exploits so that QA can work on reporting fixes.
I can’t speak to tools. I can tell you that using the ‘botter’ option is indeed sufficient.
I can’t help but feel that reporting a ‘botter’ does not quite have the required urgency when a player is speedhacking, flying, and disrupting the normal play of all 3 servers.
Every report is served in order. Even if it were a separate report option no extra weight would be given to a cheater in WvW over a botter, or a griefer, or someone spouting hate speech in DR. Well… maybe that last one.
Great! So I’ll just click on the invisible unclickable Unknown player and report them using the in-game reporting tool under the options for hacking……..oh wait.
All of us (GMs) have character names starting with GM (GM Proheals, for example). We are online 24/7 and responding to reports sent by you via the in-game reporting system. 98% of the time we’re invisible clearing bots and the like.
To remove someone using hacks (teleports, speed, etc) we have to witness the act in game so you must use the in-game reporting tool. The only exception is if you can point us to chat where the player cheating has said they are using a 3rd party program.
Hope this helps, I’ll check in later for questions.
1.) Can we please have a “cheating” selection on the reporting screen (as mentioned numerous times already)?
2.) Can you impart some information explaining why we are seeing players – who have been verified as abusing the system – return to the game within a short time frame (weeks, as said by others)?
3.) Could we please see a little more open communication from Anet, such as a message from the GM resolving the issue to let us know our reports have been received? This will cut down on your players feeling neglected and unanswered.
This one is tricky but I’ll see if there are some sort of numbers I can share with you.
4.) If your GMs are overloaded with botting and other in-game bugs they are attending to outside of WvW, would you consider dedicating a small team of GMs to monitor WvW issues (not just cheating but general bug reports as well, of course)? WvW is a competitive environment that players pour hours of work into in order to scale the ladders of their tier. It seems almost negligent on Anet’s part to not provide ensured coverage for regulating the battlegrounds, both on and off tournament seasons. I understand the need to make all aspects of the game fair and balanced, but I would think WvW / PvP would be treated separately because of what is involved during seasons.
Thanks.
1. I will bug the appropriate teams and see if that can be squeezed in. =)
2. First offense in many cases is a 2 week suspension. Further violations (of any kind) will result in account termination.
3. This one is tricky because we have a strict policy against allowing GMs to make contact in-game outside of a few unique circumstances for reasons of security. I’ll take another review and see if we can help further.
4. This is an issue we are currently working on. I know it seems to you (any outside observer) that nothing is getting done but that’s simply not true. My team was given another set of tools today that allow our hunting in competitive to yield faster results and you should see results this week. .
I can’t speak to tools. I can tell you that using the ‘botter’ option is indeed sufficient.
As for the exploits are ANet address, this isn’t a Customer Support address. Exploits is more of a ‘I found a way to cheat here’s how to do it’ thing and Quality Assurance reviews those.
GMs don’t belong to a server so wondering if you’re server has a GM is futile. We’re everywhere >=).
The last patch (or couple of patches) fixed one of the coolest, and yet, harmless bugs in GW2. Why does important stuff go years without patches and things like this get ruined?
Uh, this bug might’ve gotten fixed incidentally when some improvements were made to audio scripts that address an issue related to the size of character models and their relative pitch.
The audio department makes updates like this one to ensure consistency across the board. The fixup wasn’t made because we see you having fun with a particular bug and then decide to destroy said fun with fun-killing laser beams. We probably didn’t even know this particular bug existed—just thought that it could theoretically exist or had potential to manifest under certain circumstances, and this seems like one of them.
Also, the bugs that the audio department can fix possibly might not be the same bugs that you think are “important stuff that goes years without patching.” But in either case, you should open specific threads about the bugs that are bothering you and those bug fixes will be handled according to their priority.
This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.
I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.
Your wording says 26 people “hit DR.” Does that include people who were already under DR? Is it “all the people who are under DR in the last hour” or “all the players who just got DR’d within the last hour?”
Also, it appears “within the last hour” was sometime monday morning. Care to share what the numbers are during primetime?
Since the halloween event, we haven’t hit triple digits in any hour.
- Have offensive racial, ethnic, national, or cultural connotations
- Include hate speech or bigoted slurs
- Use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules
The name shown in the screenshot is absolutely in violation and will not be granted an appeal.
For inquiries regarding a character’s forced rename in general, players should submit a ticket here . Please be sure to select “In-Game Issue” from the drop-down list on this page to ensure that your ticket is filed with the correct department.
No further statements need to be made regarding this inquiry. Closing.
Hmm – I sense Zhaitan’s nefarious work here. There are some text books I need to consult within the Durmand Priory library that may shed light on this situation. I will return. Many thanks for your assistance.
To help us expedite investigation, can those experiencing the lockup on accessing the Story Journal please post which step in the Personal Story the character experiencing the issue is currently on.
The exploits address is for reporting exploits so the team can gather data and work towards a solution to close the exploit. The exploits address is not monitored by Customer Support. CS monitors the in-game reports and tickets opened on the customer support page.
This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.
I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.
It’s not a thing anymore because veterans like me have a better feeling for when we’ve hit the DR boundary and how to rinse it off (invigorating!). It still annoys me that I have the potential to be in the middle of Melandru and not notice that the evil mechanic has quietly taken hold of my soul.
That said, there is “loot DR” and “reward (ex:karma) DR.” Are these tracked together?
..and of course, questions you probably cannot answer:
1) Do you keep a history of when people hit DR?
2) Would you do a blind study where you compare the log of when a player hits DR with their manually tracked log of when they think they hit DR? (that is, without ever revealing the data to the end user, or having a juicy NDA in place, etc etc.)
