Guild Wars 2

I was reading another thread some time ago wherein someone was complaining about spawn rates in game, and one of the devs (don’t remember who) stated that timers default to 90-120 second timers, and that if we see deviations from this we should report it as specific a bug as possible.

I never saw anything happen with that with regard to a game bug thread, and can still see some broken spawn points in game, so I thought I’d create a thread to collect specific locations.

Devs – I hope what’s provided here is enough information for you, but if it isn’t, please let me know and I’ll gladly gather as much information as you require to nail it down.

To start:

1) Fireheart Rise – west of Noxious Castrum: Fire elementals spawn within 5-10 seconds of killing them.

2) Kessex Hills – directly south of Bronson heart quest: Centaurs stationed at the gate spawn within approximately 10 seconds.

3) Malchor’s Leap – NW of King’s Passage/SW of Plaza of Lights: Orr spawn within roughly 5-15 seconds.

If you have any points of your own, please list them here so we have a consolidated point of reference for Anet staff.

Thanks.

New one.

Harathi Hinterlands – there’s a bridge that leads into a camp with slaves you’re supposed to free by the lvl 42 heart quest. If you kill the guards at the bridge, new ones will spawn immediately upon death of the one you were just fighting, making getting into the camp impossible without a large group to zerg it.

The entire camp at Modniir Gorge. Enemies respawn upon death. Zero delay.

TRUE, I have this problem as well1

Is the re-spawn timer triggered at death of the critter or when it’s engaged? I too have noticed some spawning much faster in Orr but it would depend on the timing of the trigger.

Hmm. How does this explain creatures that respawn virtually instantly, at the same location of a just downed mob?

When a mob dies and its respawn timer begins, is it then able to respawn at a random spawn point nearby (or one of a specific group) rather than always at a specific spawn point? If so, that may explain why things seem to respawn instantly, when in fact, it’s just some other mob that’s been killed earlier that randomly “chose” to respawn at a different, now open/empty spawn point nearby.

I absolutely HATE when mobs respawn instantly upon a kill. However, if my question/theory above is correct, it would at least be one less mystery to moan about.

I’d still rather see a method where a specific spawn point is blocked from anything else spawning at it for that 90-120s timer. This would alleviate some of the issues with solo players sensing that they’re not able to make actual progress and are forced to grind through mobs over and over—the “two steps forward, one step back” syndrome. I fall into this category, so I know what I’m talking about. ;-)

@Kruhljak I tested the spot directly south of Bronson heart quest yesterday and mr. Vaughn is right, respawn timer on those mobs seems to be at least 90 seconds. However, several times the mob I had killed respawned in the matter of seconds. So what happened?

It was actually not the mob I had just killed that respawned so fast. It was his buddy, killed some 90 seconds before on another spot, but this very mob decided to respawn on exactly this spot, giving the illusion of very short respawn timer. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. A pretty annoying one in my opinion.

Devs, I suggest to limit this behavior somewhat. Simply, just don’t allow a mob to spawn on any spot where previous mob has been killed in the last 60 seconds or so, or even drop this mechanic completely and come up with something new.

The harpy event @ Unbroken Expanse in BlazeRidge Steppes, at least for the eastern harpy “nest” if you kill the young harpies they respawn immediately. Killing the normal harpy makes the young ones go away.

I wouldn’t be suprised if this is exactly the issue that occurs worldwide. The typical player won’t notice whether it’s exactly the same mob respawning…all they see is “I killed the mob, and saw another one respawn immediately in the same spot.” I suppose it may not even be possible to distinguish for the end player if you have a few “Mobtype A” in the same area, and they coincidentally cycle through the same spawn point it would seem like you’re getting instant respawns. It might explain the ones I saw earlier as well. The mobs aren’t violating the timer, but the spawn spot has no restrictions on respawn times.

Unfortunately it still means the same thing from the player standpoint. It doesn’t matter what mob spawns in at the point, it still will seem like the respawn speed is too fast.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about—when the respawn timer hits 0, the next creature will look for an open spawn point, which might be the one that you just emptied out. This can make it seem like creatures are respawning more rapidly, but they’re really not.
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Any chance of adding a “cooldown” to spawn points, as well as spawns? Or making it so that a spawn isn’t really “gone” from a point until 30 seconds or so after a defeat?

It really is annoying (and quite immersion-breaking) to have stuff teleport-in on top of you. Regardless of the technical means required to solve this, I think solving it should be on your list-of-things-to-do…

That sheds useful light on this perceived problem. Knowing that, yes, I think it would be reasonable for the dev(s) that set policy on this sort of thing to strongly consider the benefit of locking down a spawn point for at least some reasonable amount of time before allowing anything to spring out of it again.

I don’t see the plus side of having mobs quickly, if not instantly, respawn at the same spot, but I do see its annoying minuses.

One of the more glaring issues with this is in areas with fairly high mob density (mobs that are all associated and share spawn points). The incidence of fast respawns at a given point is higher because multiple mobs have to go down at roughly the same time (since there are more in proximity to the player or along the player’s path). Thus, when the timer’s up, the odds of a respawn occurring at one of the most recently (and closest) spawn points is higher since many mobs are respawning at almost the same time. Locking down spawn points for a little while will give a solo player or pair a fair chance to take care of business before any/many of the same mobs they’ve just pushed through show up yet again.

Granted, a change like this wouldn’t please many farmers (and all the bots), for obvious reasons.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about—when the respawn timer hits 0, the next creature will look for an open spawn point, which might be the one that you just emptied out. This can make it seem like creatures are respawning more rapidly, but they’re really not.

While the average respawn time is the same, creatures can respawn more quickly than in 95 – 120 secs due to this mechanic and respawn time can be as low as zero. So yes, the respawn rate is too fast in my opinion. (Nobody knows that the mob which respawned two seconds after the player killed the previous one is actually not the same, but a different creature killed 100 seconds before some 300 paces away by another player.)

I think that 95 – 120 is little too low if you play in a confined area. Zero respawn time which is possible because of this mechanic or even the average respawn rate of 30 – 60 seconds stated in another thread are pretty crazy. I suggest you to limit this behaviour somewhat.

95 to 120 seconds is too low. There are often cave systems you can explore, and if you just go in one direction and it’s a dead end, you have to fight the complete respawn on your way back. I virtually stopped exploring those places since it doesn’t contribute world completion and even if there’s something interesting like a veteran, it doesn’t drop anything at all most of the time. And normal chests tend to be placed where they’re easily reachable, not deeply buried in those caves.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about—when the respawn timer hits 0, the next creature will look for an open spawn point, which might be the one that you just emptied out. This can make it seem like creatures are respawning more rapidly, but they’re really not.

This doesn’t only happen in Orr. Experienced that in Sparkfly Fen yesterday, there was no event going on and I was alone in that area.

The fact that we have to kill the same thing twice is the problem here. The concept of a dead creature respawning is ridiculous, but necessary since other players will need to fight the same monsters when passing through an area.

But you know there’s a problem when players have to FREQUENTLY re-kill the same mob, regardless of which spot it respawned in. It should almost never happen. We’re essentially killing the next player’s spawned enemies. And on top of that we get no exploration XP.

There really should be some kind of spawn blocking if a player is in the immediate area, especially if that player has already killed the spawn.

I am getting really tired of the fast spawn times. They take out most of any tactical approach in PvE, because it is not about how you kill the mobs but if you are fast enough to avoid the never ending flow of mobs and manage t survive. I as an Ele was at the D Plateau in the Ghost Town in Blasted Moors and during my time there the two of us destroyed the same trebuchet 3 times….. How are you supposed to decrease the mobs and work you way through when you get tackled and killed by the very same mobs and equipment that you just destroyed.
This is really frustrating….