Guild Wars 2

So the problems is when i shoot at enemy who is standing in front of me with no obstacles, i cant hit him because it say obstructed. this happens totaly randomly sometimes more than half attacks becomes obstructed, sometimes less. Maybe some one has more info what kind of bug is this and when it will be fixed ?

Something is changed and got wrong. Thats for sure.

I know warrious have alot of problems with rifles too. And for example as a thief, I cant hit with my pistol, but I can hit with my shortbow.

I have the problem Shintai mentioned, I am a warrior who uses First Weapon Greatsword and Off-Weapon Rifle for ranged fights and such, PARTICULARLY in TA I cannot hit the Volatile blossoms with my rifle, no matter where they are they are always obstructed so I’m forced to either wait for someone else to clear them for me, run through them and hope not to die, or wait for the cooldown on my greatsword throw which for some reason hits them when bullets dont lol, which is about 15 seconds? So I can kill one blossom, if i’m lucky two lined up behind eachother, every 15 seconds with sword throw then wait for cd.

It’s quite irritating, especially if I die during an encounter or to bad luck and have to run back by myself with blossoms blocking my path.

I play a warrior, and I have had this problem with my rifle. Not half, like you say happened with your ranger, but quite a few shots say obstructed. This happens when neither I nor my opponent have moved. One shot will hit it, the next two will say obstructed, then the next 3 or 4 will hit just fine.

My ranger cannot hit stationary (hostile) targets most of the time. Short bow works? nope. Longbow with its arrow shower skill works? nope. My pet won’t even attack them. It’s always say that message “blah blah target is obscured.” When quite clearly it is not obscured.

Only way I can hit stationary targets for the most part is to pull out a melee weapon and stand right on top of the target.

Happens to me on my thief from time to time. I use shortbow sometimes and it will randomly say obstructed, when nothing seems to be in the way. Also sometimes my attacks will randomly miss with daggers when I’m trying to destroy something like a centaur catapult? I mean, I’m standing right in front of it, can’t get any closer, and my attacks will hit it once or twice then miss until I move around to another side then it happens again.

I have to say I’m not getting any of these issues when playing a ranger or a rifle warrior… Ranger is perfectly playable for me, last tried a few hours ago today. Can’t recall getting any obstructed -messages unless the mob really was obstructed.

What do I have issues with is hitting structures with melee weapons – attacks will almost always miss unless I attempt to run and hit at the same time. Also, getting a lot of mobs randomly turning invulnerable when fighting in melee underwater.

Looks like I mixed the obscured bug messages with obstructed bug messages. I logged my ranger in, switched it from melee to short bow and went into a guild party for all the AC explorable paths.

Like 3/7 shots with short bow and longbow registered as “obstructed.” Great. Not. Now I have to deal with target obscured and target obstructed error messages while doing simple ranged attacks on my ranger.

From my experience with the “Obstructed/Invulnerable” Bug is that it happens with both ranged and melee weapons. I have had it happen multiple times on my 3 characters of Warrior, Ranger and Necromancer.

I’ve been getting this bug all too often when firing Flame Blast on my Engineer as well as on my Ranger. It’s getting old real fast.

I’ve been doing a lot of WvW this weekend and I’m about to rage all over from this obstructed bug. It seems to be a 50/50 chance that if I pop Rapid Fire or use Quickening Zephyr that almost every shot will be “obstructed” even though the target was clearly right in front of me.

I’m playing a necro and this has also happened to me in TA trying to shoot Blossoms. Even though I’m on same ground level as the flowers I get Obstructed message. I’m using a scepter.

I have had the same problems as well. First (all in warrior perspective), rifle shots happen to miss/be obstructed/whatever some percent of the time. Some times slightly moving seems to help but it still is an issue when both me and my target are standing still and 2/8 of the volley shots say “obstructed”. Second, while underwater mobs would sometimes evade/turn invulnerable/reset when I have done nothing to cause such behavior. Most often comes to mind Krait Nimross which after using their net wall attack would simply turn around and reset. I have also seen underwater attacks showing “evade” seemingly randomly (for instance, the thief Nine Tail strike would once hit all strikes, and another time the mob would evade all strikes without a change in positions). Lastly, the structure hitboxes, particularly when using melee weapons, seem a bit off as in being unable to hit them unless in a very specific place. Range weapons mostly do not have these problems though certain positions do give the “obstructed” effect forcing some movement to find a place that works

I get alot of Missed, obscure, obstruct messages while playing in WvW and PvP and dungeons across many many maps.

It happens alot with mobile targets that move alot or if another player is standing between me and my target.

It is even more apparent in WvW and PvP, because I keep on wondering of all the times I could have killed someone if not from about average 30% plus plus plus of my shots getting 1 of these 3 issues. Even when they are in range and I have clear line of site, just because they are moving.

Add in the fact that my pet cannot hit mobile targets, is extremely extremely annoying.

Invulnarable is a message that often pops up in underwater combat. I assume that this is a different bug.

Also get Invulnarable alot if I am on higher or lower ground compared to my target. I do not see why that would make an enemy Invulnarable.

Enemies get Invulnerable when they cannot reach you, it’s an anti-exploit mechanism that I’ve seen in other games.

It comes up more often against melee enemies since they’d have to follow a path to you rather then fire off ranged attacks. If the path isn’t available, they’ll become invulnerable until you move to a position where they can engage you.

Michael.4791:

Invulnarable is a message that often pops up in underwater combat. I assume that this is a different bug.

Long story short, yes.

And its equally annoying. Spent 30mins in orr the other day killing a veteran lvl dude for my personal story, without fail the moment i got him down to 5% health, what would happen? He would become invulnerable, swim to wherever and proceed to fully heal…..

Please fix this. Its getting a bit old. I did eventually kill him though.

This is a big problem in WvW. Defending a tower or keep you have jump up onto the wall to hit targets. This makes you prone to getting pulled off the keep (which is bugged that it can pull you even if you aren’t on the wall sometimes).

Invulnerability usually happens if you pull the mob too far, which can happen easily if you kite. There may be other issues with it, but I rarely run into any.

@ Jason King

Finally, a response, thank you.
You should consider looking over the many, many ranger posts being made. I’m fairly certain a huge chunk of the ranger community are on the verge of throwing in the towel.

lordkabal.4857:

Enemies get Invulnerable when they cannot reach you, it’s an anti-exploit mechanism that I’ve seen in other games.

I see what you mean, and anti-exploits are a good thing, but I don’t like this mechanic. When attacking at range, it is appropriate to use the terrain to your advantage. If I am above my target, the fact that he has no quick path to get to me to retaliate isn’t necessarily an exploit – it’s just a strategic attack location on my part. I’ve grown weary of attacking mobs from an elevated location, see them go “invulnerable” and be forced to walk down to where they are so allegedly they have a fair chance to beat on me.

Jason King.2647:

2. When attacking a creature: If you get an obstructed message when attacking a creature, the problem is most likely caused by the map. In this case, it’s something that we have to fix on a case-by-case basis. If you come receive an obstructed message while fighting a creature, please let us know your exact location (screenshots are a big help!) so that we can investigate it further.

Not sure if you’re still reading this thread but here goes…

I suspect this particular instance could be useful in helping you to investigate the issue since it involves a tiny sliver of something (a bit of rock protruding from the plain of the land?).

In the attached screenshots below, you’ll see two pairs of pictures taken from a slightly different camera angle. At my feet in half of those is a very small orange bump/lump. It becomes invisible when I pan my camera slightly. If I pan through 360 degrees, it is probably visible less than 20% of the time.

I was fighting some Risen in this location and that TINY orange lump did the following:

1. Initially it obstructed my thief’s ranged shortbow default attack #1 (and it was when I was panning to try to figure out the source of the obstruction that I noticed it in the first place)

2. when I shifted slightly I was able to hit a mob with an attack. The mob then began to path to me (it was a melee thrall). Just as it approached it happened to path to a point where it was on the opposite side of the TINY orange lump. It immediately went invulnerable and started walking away and healing. I am not certain if I had an obstructed attack when it was there, though…wasn’t paying close enough attention.

3. I then stepped over/through the orange lump (did not require me to jump…just walked forward a few paces) and reinitiated the attack. The mob cheerfully began to pummel me so I used the #3 bow skill (disabling shot) to evade backwards and cripple it…except the TINY orange lump happened to be directly behind me so I got “stuck” on it which caused the usual ~240 jump-back to become a non-jump/non-evade and I got smacked nice and hard by the mob.

4. When I stood up again, I dodge-rolled backwards to try to get some range (and leave behind some caltrops) and the exact same thing happened again…dodge failed. Since I had some endurance left, I made a fractional adjustment to my angle and dodge-rolled back again…and it worked like a charm.

So to sum up, this tiny orange sliver of rock that is only visible from a few limited camera angles was able to (1) obstruct a ranged shot, (2) cause a mob to turn invincible on pathing, (3) caused a key skill to fail by obstructing it, and (4) caused a second key skill to fail by obstructing it.

If this sort of tiny protrusion is able to cause these issues and you have to fix them on a case by case basis with landscape tweaks this issue will never get solved. because there are probably thousands and thousands of little glitches like this spread out across the world (and understandably so!). Any meaningful solution is almost certainly going to have to be one where you tweak/adjust/recode-from-scratch your pathing and obstruction methods.

Exact location: Ehmry Bay Server, Sparkfly Fen, Battlement Shore (in the north-east corner of the map) just slightly to the east of the camp along the shore where there is a small slightly orange-tinted patch of sand. The fist screenshot provided below will give you a good idea of exactly where on the beach I was standing. The Risen I was attacking we to the west of me along the shoreline.

Additional note re my previous detailed post..

After a little more experimentation, I notice the camera zoom has an effect on whether that little extra orange lump is visible or not. When I zoom out to max, it is visible to a greater degree — on and off through about 50% of my 360-degree pan. It is also visible through larger sweeps of arc (30 degrees or more of pan before it disappears). When I zoom in and pan, it tends to flicker back and forth between being visible and invisible, is visible far less often, and does its flickering through much smaller degrees of panning arc.

lordkabal.4857:

Enemies get Invulnerable when they cannot reach you, it’s an anti-exploit mechanism that I’ve seen in other games.

It comes up more often against melee enemies since they’d have to follow a path to you rather then fire off ranged attacks. If the path isn’t available, they’ll become invulnerable until you move to a position where they can engage you.

^^^ This..

If anyone of you played WoW this also happened in that game. It’s working as intended to prevent you from killing things that can’t get to you.

i will add my most hated instance of this ‘bug’

AC explore path one (hodgins or w/e his name is)

the room where all the burrows spawn at the bottom of the fire trapped stairs

first burrow not an issue

second burrow, if i switch to deathshroud as i am running in, the first lifeblast goes off alright, but as soon as any mob spawns, i get ‘obstructed’ now if i move to the rear of the burrow, the message changes from ‘obstructed’ to ‘out of range’ even when i am stood ON the burrow, and this happens for the rest of the burrows in this ‘event’ this also happens on the path 3 event where u have to protect the exxence collector thingies for the asura dude, the first burrow gives me no issues whatsoever, yet all the subsequent burrows either give ‘obstructed’ ‘out of range’ and primarilly on deathshroud ‘1’ and any other single target attack that has a mob in the path of the projectile (even if there was a clear path when i hit the attack, and a mob decide to run in fromt of it as it is flying towards the target [staff auto attack i am looking at you here…])

@JasonKing

I play with the spider pet, and 100% of the time, the first arrow that hits after my spider launches poison cloud is obstructed. Hopefully that’s easily repeatable so you can see that case in action.

Like many other rangers, I get the obstructed way, way too often to document them on a case by case basis. I’d be submitting bugs practically every third or fourth fight. I concur with Lori that it seems to be linked to little bits of detail that block not just shots, but movement as well even though they are nearly impossible to notice until after you’ve gotten stuck trying to move, dodge, or shoot.

p.s. I’d also vote to kill the invulnerable on mobs that can’t figure out how to path to you. The possible exploit value of farming mobs that can’t fight back is nowhere near as damaging to the game as the current situation where mobs routinely go invuln when you’re jumping and dodging in fights. More than that, on several occasions I’ve had to restart story missions because a mob would get itself stuck on the geometry (the best of which was the fight versus the undead you do with the Vigil where a mob got stuck at the top of a flagpole at the town gate while I was off fighting inside the town…no idea how the thing got itself up there)

Xavori.3768:

More than that, on several occasions I’ve had to restart story missions because a mob would get itself stuck on the geometry (the best of which was the fight versus the undead you do with the Vigil where a mob got stuck at the top of a flagpole at the town gate while I was off fighting inside the town…no idea how the thing got itself up there)

Hoisted by its own petard?

Jason King.2647:

…While it is possible, and entirely probable, that this game will always have bugs (e.g. Guild Wars 1 still does, and it’s been out how long? ), our current solution is to fix these things on a case-by-case basis. We’re always looking to improve the game and our methods of addressing bugs, however, and we may find that there’s a better way to do so. For now, however, we appreciate detailed reports on where you’re seeing this so we can continue to eliminate these issues.

A bug-free game is probably an impossibility.

I guess the point I was trying to make is that to fix this one bug someone on your staff will have to go in, locate the exact position I reported, and then nudge up the landscape and/or adjust the (rock?) position/rotation to have it no longer break the plane of the landscape. Once changed, it has to be added to the build. I suspect in terms of labour the fix would take at least, what, 10 minutes?

Now multiply that 10 minutes by the thousands upon thousands of locations that this is happening. Yes, it’s really that many. I’ve encountered these invisible obstruction bug issues since launch, dozens and dozens of time in every zone, every dungeon, throughout the entire game. I might have 100% of the map “explored” but I’d guess from the standpoint of “can I stand in this exact spot and hit a mob without a phantom obstruction causing me grief” I’ve “tested” less than 1% of the total land area. So that’s hours and hours and hours of your staff’s time to fix issue on a case by case basis and still probably have many more instances of the problem still be out there waiting to be discovered (and annoying players when they encounter them).

My hope/suggestion was that perhaps rather than the case by case fix approach, you take one step further back and look at the problem as a “our obstruction algorithm needs to ignore any little non-obstacles like this,” particularly because that same algorithm (or it’s incestuously close cousin) appears to also be used for a multitude of other things such as mob pathing, character dodging, and a dozen or more skills that involved a character moving from point A to point B. I would guess that a single solution that teaches the pathing to ignore miniscule non-obstacles could be written. tested, implemented and rolled out in far less time than the case-by-case terrain fix could; and further that it will instantly resolve almost all such instances rather than only fixing the ones that players happened to notice and record well enough to be able to make a detailed report about.

Less developer time, a more global fix…seems like it would be worth considering anyway.

(Apologies if this is OT for this thread, though it does relate to the obstruction topic…)

Jason King.2647:

I think some further clarification on this might help, as there can be a couple different causes for the “obstructed” message to come up. But first, let me clarify that this is not a profession specific bug – it can happen to any profession.

There are two scenarios (that I’m aware of) that can cause your attacks to become obstructed during combat:

1. When attacking a stationary “gadget”: There’s a known issue that when attacking objects, your attacks can become obstructed. We’re currently investigating this, but it’s a widespread bug, so it may take us time to get a fix in. We understand that this bug can make some fights more difficult, and thank you for your patience while we work this one out.

2. When attacking a creature: If you get an obstructed message when attacking a creature, the problem is most likely caused by the map. In this case, it’s something that we have to fix on a case-by-case basis. If you come receive an obstructed message while fighting a creature, please let us know your exact location (screenshots are a big help!) so that we can investigate it further.

I hope this clears things up!

It has been almost 2+ years and the bug still persists. Here are some screen shots of the bug.