Guild Wars 2

Iruwen.3164:

I think so too. Nobody can tell me playing with your friends equals attending those open world events.

Well, the problem is, it could equate to playing with friends.

A proper root cause analysis backed by ANet’s own statistical quantifiable data around server population, guesting data, looting data and so on — this would answer questions such as who was guesting to loot Meta chests. Who was playing with friends (in a party or not?).

Of course some of this could be worked around; anyone who wants to hijack a system can eventually do it. But if a “friend invitation” status could be added to “open guesting” then ANet could distinguish different guesters. Those who came to play with friends (or at least went to the trouble to get an invite), and those who came by for an event. They can look to see if they just came by for a chest. Etc.

They can take a server and add logging at a performance hit; the data is needed, collect some carefully if they don’t have it already.

Perhaps imposing the equivalent of a deserter debuff that says you can’t loot a Meta event chest for 15 or 30 minutes while guesting to help prevent exploitation. Along with adding a friend status, or open visitor. Different privileges.

If the game continues to get successful, the problems will only grow in size if proper measures and proper analysis/solution are not implemented now.

It is obvious though that a root cause is the loot/min mentality of some players, adjustment of loot mechanisms in such a way that does not penalize players who do not farm (eg, who play the game in a more well-rounded fashion as opposed to farming) is one of the ways to go. You can’t stop people from wanting to farm; at one time or another everyone will want or need to (money for something or another).

I really hate to bring it up, more directly, but also trying to herd players to places. Whether it is by fractal loot, meta event chest loot, or daily mechanics — is always a dangerous proposition. Everyone defines fun differently. Each time a new hurdle is put into place, whether it is kill in Kryta instead of just plain kill — this takes away from the game, it does not add to it.

I half find myself wanting to say this: Go back and talk about how originally this was more of an unfettered sandbox without boundaries and it’s becoming more an antfarm with the mad scientists performing experimetns. Or whipping out a magnifying glass. Perhaps hyperbolic, but it’s what comes to mind. You built a great sandbox, but some of the structures being added don’t fit right.

Sionelle.8214:

In my opinion, the whole world boss and dragon event concept has been prostituted by turning it into a loot-fest, and now we have the swarming masses out to exploit the system for their free ectos.

Even with guesting there was nowhere near this amount of disruption before the loot system was changed on these events. Even with guesting, I never, ever saw the overflow server in any of the world/dragon boss zones until this change.

So excellently stated, the description and observation in your post — I agree, and find it to be dead on.

Sionelle.8214:

And I strongly disagree that the only reason somebody should want to fight a world boss is for loot. That’s just plain greed in a nutshell. If that’s the case you might as well just remove them altogether, because otherwise they’re worthless. Besides, how many times have you gone to an event and seen map chat filled with “Holy ****” and “OMG he’s huge”, and other comments like that from people who are fighting the boss for the first time? Shadow Behemoth is a prime candidate for this. I would argue that people are fighting world bosses for different reasons than loot. Loot is just the icing on the cake.

The loot is a nice reward, for certain. Don’t get me wrong, once in 10 or so chests it’s nice to see a rare or so. Definitely a couple greens. Every 20? An exotic maybe. The reality was over the past four plus months quite different. And a precursor? That’s the grail; do the events (or dungeons) hundreds of times in a month, maybe within a year? Maybe?

What we have now is like the mint printing new $20s and throwing them out the windows and doors via leaf blowers. Only the people who have gathered at the front will get them, but it will still impact the economy as much as the community.

I would like to thank Kallah for a well formatted and thought out post. I don’t necessarily agree with all of what is proposed, simply because it does not seem on first read to address what I perceive to be a core issue:

Community has been, essentially, destroyed at these events.

I’m not criticizing individuals here, merely offering a general sense of what I have read on a number of threads — the gist seems to be that people are looking for a way to accommodate server natives on events, somehow (not rehashing all the suggestions). Optimizing number of people participating and optimizing their ability to get loot.

The game is not just about getting loot out of these few events.

The community, in my opinion, around these events, and as a result of the changes to these events, guesting, looting, etc., has degraded across servers. Not just my “home.”

ANet needs to take a step back and answer this question: Do they want hordes of that 3 million swarming to a handful of events, a fraction of the game’s content, for loot on a somewhat scheduled basis…

or

Does ANet want a robust gaming community where a greater percentage of the game’s content is enjoyed and people are duly rewarded for time invested in exploring, enjoying and sharing that experience with friends?

Fix the problems around loot distribution across the entire game.

Stop implementing quick, hackneyed solutions without performing proper root cause analysis.

Stop implementing solutions without performing test runs or smaller experiments to validate your solutions.

User-centered design following some sort of more rigorous methodology would be great. I’d hate to see such a promising game flush itself.

I do believe that those who live on a server full time have more “right” to play there than those who guest. I do believe that those who are server natives or residents have invested in their community, their friends, their guild, and the very nature of having to have servers and virtual neighborhoods or boundaries dictates that a choice was made and individuals freely chose and made those choices. Had months to choose another server when it was free. Had plenty of time to get on a “full” server with friends if they timed it properly and really wanted to.

Is guesting the whole of the problem? No. Of course not. Implementing changes to loot that now draw the full server population to an area for a short while for free rares is bound to have an impact. That does not change the fact that people who do guest for the sole reason to chase timers should not be allowed to do so. That is not “playing with friends.” It’s not in tune with ANet’s philosophy that players should be happy to see other players come along.

If the server architecture could handle the load, would I mind? Yes. ANet said guesting was to play with friends. They are not playing with friends. They are being disruptive of the community they are visiting, leeching, more or less. Not adding to it.

ANet has in my own opinion made many decisions of late where they have failed to live up to their own credo of trying to make players happy to see other players come along in an MMO. It was one of the main reasons I became enamored with this game when I beta’d.

Finally, the bandaid fix, what I call a tourniquet, of limiting players ikittenone, has crippled the game. Now I just end up in overflow unless it’s 4am and I wait for 3 hours. Literally standing around with 50 strangers. It’s no longer fun. I can no longer even complete an entire daily in the same zone while waiting. My community has effectively been disbursed.

Perform a root cause analysis, and fix the problems. Truly fix the problems. I originally suggested on day 1 to remove looting of chests from these events from guests. I still feel that is an appropriate solution. Increasing the frequency of the events is “a” solution, but these events are supposed to feel epic, even if the fights are somewhat rote, making them more frequent is just going to make them more boring.

Or better yet, redistribute loot drop rates across the game world so that these events are not the only places that “quality” loot is guaranteed. You still need to make it so that guesting allows people to “trial run” a server but without destroying the community while doing so. Put yourselves in our shoes, if you care to.

But as I’ve said, I’m voting with my wallet.

I have not weighed in on this topic since the first few days after the last content patch. The only reason I am doing so now is because there was actually a dev post noting that they were ‘tracking the issue.’ So I’ll weigh in one last time on the forums and then go back to (largely not) playing.

TL;DR :
The combination of change to loot mechanics, guesting behavior, and server structure results in “broken” gameplay. The “quickfix” which has apparently been to reduce the zone cap before shunting players to overflow is a tourniquet-type fix, strangling the game rather than actually addressing any root cause to the problem. ANet, you have killed your game, and I am voting with my wallet in the gem store (and with my time) until you fix this.

Long version :

• Prior to the changes in loot mechanics at the last content patch, I (and my guild) regularly participated in dragon and other world dynamic meta-events. This happened organically. A few of us started the trend, we started showing up as a guild, had fun, and then many of us began to keep track of these events. We would characteristically show up en masse, often 10-15 individuals sporting our guild tag would appear at an event. We would have spontaneous guild camaraderie and events. Those who enjoy roleplay would strike up in-character conversations with people hanging out, and gaming would happen. Community would happen. Those of us who might not be roleplaying ourselves could still watch, or run around and kill things, work on dailies, or tease people in WvW to join us. It was, in other words, fun and team building.

I could go on and on about how it “used to be.” The way we would troll each other about what loot we would or would not get. Sure, some would gripe about the quality of the loot, but we turned out in droves not for the loot. For the fun of it. It was not about loot per minute. The ubiquitous chance for a precursor remained, but some of us would attend these events all day long, stopping our other activities (much to the irritation of others, especially when some people would hop out of dungeons to run and participate “really quickly,” heh), but the bottom line? Our net fun was very high.

• Enter guesting and changes to loot. Almost immediately there was a change. Not just the lag, not just the inability to always get to the events themselves, but the temprament changed. The pace changed. Not so much gathering and having fun, the community around these events changed with the hurry-up attitude and the every-one-for-themselves attitude. People stopped sharing so much because your “spot” at the table was being squeezed out. Those who would do it for fun had their fun changed or taken away and the people who feel ‘entitled’ to their share of loot and fun began to show up.

My own personal experience has been largely a spiral into decay. Lag, more lag, unplayable lag, untargetable bosses, not seeing damage, the whole kit and kaboodle… then overflow and nothing. Not even the lag. No chest, no fun, no playing with friends, and worst of all? Being told to go guest if I wanted to participate. By whom? By people who were guesting on my server for their own convenience.

Of all the hours I had waited, or worked on zone completion or simply farmed, or hung out with roleplayers watching, or just waited those last fifteen minutes, for months, now it’s as if that investment in building community over that time frame, the actual playing of the game with guildmates on the same server, that convenience, has been undermined by people chasing timers and watching the clock.

Rather than openly admit it is an exploit of the ‘spirit of guesting,’ they tend toward the ‘the game is built to allow me to do it, it’s for my convenience, so therefore I CAN do it, so go do it yourself if you want anything.’ They do not seem to care about my community, my enjoying an hour or three of fun with twenty guildmates, not to mention those who are not in my guild but a part of my community who have also been showing up to these event for the last three or more months.

Loot is great, but it’s not the game. All those discussing the lack of impact studies and so forth are obviously aware of the short-sightedness of ANet’s implementation. ANet may have actually tried to be “nice” to players or reward them, or draw them to world meta-events, but it’s time for them to admit that they failed in their implementation if we assume even remotely that they want to maintain their core philosophy of making this game fun to play, and making it so that we are happy to see another player come along.

(more)

Falunel.7645:

Are we partly responsible? Yes. I would even say that I am partly responsible- I’ve told quite a few people who were lonely and wanted a good community to come to TC.

Do I regret it? Not at all. Many people who I directed here fell in love with the server- talked to other players, made friends, joined a guild here, eventually transferred, and are having a blast. TC is an amazing server, and I am not hesitant at all to share it with other people… who really want to experience the community.

That’s the issue. Legitimate guesters are good and peachy- I will still tell people looking for a great community to come here, and should a change be implemented that requires a host, I will be one of the first to step up and start bringing interested guests here. However, I am willing to wager that the current lag and overflow issues are NOT being caused by legitimate visitors, but event hoppers- the ones who swarm the server without a (friendly) word and then depart right away to farm another server. Even if the problems are in part caused by legitimate guesters, they will be much better when restrictions are in place. The rest, I will shrug and accept as the price of calling a great server home.

To be truthful, I don’t like advocating restrictions. I looked forward to guesting. I invited people in hopes that they’d find a home here, and love it so much that they’d begin giving back. I wanted more people to come here and enjoy the community, and leave happier in a way that had nothing to do with loot. Sure, I did realize there would be some trolls, but thought that the majority of people guesting would be good-natured and interested in the server’s community itself… but again, I thought a random commander in Queensdale had his icon on to help people.

Thank you, Falunel. Well spoken and stated more eloquently than I would have.

I did not advertise beyond my own personal friends to bring them to TC, or to people that I met by way of gw2lfg who were unhappy where they were and looking for a guild and/or server. However, I certainly supported ideas to help bring population to TC that might have helped us out in WvW, or otherwise contribute to the established community that we had.

I am not opposed to the concept of guesting or the spirit of being able to for free visit a server, see what it’s like, play with a friend who is in another time zone and/or guild who you might not otherwise be with all the time. I personally have a good friend who might have been in that situation, rolled on another server in another guild, but wanted to guest with me on occasion. There might be people who don’t want to live on an RP server but want to see what it’s like before transferring.

This is not however the spirit of guesting that we are experiencing. What we are experiencing is an influx of people exploiting the system, bouncing from event to event. Some will argue that it’s not exploitation because it can be done and the game permits it, I’m pretty sure that it’s not within the spirit of guesting as implemented.

Finally, having played on MMOs that have had queues, you bet I would impose a queue on guests and prioritize natives over guests for non-overflow areas. As I’ve already stated, natives have either made the choice to be on that server permanently, from launch, or paid to move there, or used a free transfer.

When you start playing the “guests are paying customers” card and infer that they are entitled to the same access to content on a server as a native, this overlooks the “sacrifice” that guildmembers have made to cohabit a server. To play together for months. To build relationships. Maybe we like showing up at a world event tenfold together, and to have a few of our guildies stuck in overflow because of an inundation of guests chasing multiple loot chests, well… that’s where I will request that ANet favor natives over guests.

Community is built by those present all the time. When you say ‘if it’s too laggy guest elsewhere’ you’re basically saying guests’ privileges are more important than the hosting server population native rights, and I just won’t agree to that.

Falunel.7645:

The people who will be hit hardest by this, unfortunately, will be the players in sparsely populated servers… that’s the only thing that gives me pause.

Remember that you can be in a guild that isn’t ‘native’ to this server. Now, granted, a lot of guilds might not be keen on this idea because they may have a pvp focus for WvW on TC (yes some of us do like our pvp) … but if there are guilds that have a community, leveling, or RP focus that doesn’t mind opening doors for guesting purposes, there are ways around this.

It may require people to seek out a host — that’s the thing I’d not like to impose on a player, but if it cuts down on trolls like that, I’d certainly understand. That’s why I proposed no chest loot, but I do realize some are spiteful enough to want to come and troll anyways. And I know exploiters will find a way to get an invitation to our server to work around requiring an invitation. So limits on chest loot may also be required. But it may take more than one ‘fix’ to really address the situation.

Though someone looking to guest could certainly go to the guilds forum and find someone to sponsor them, by joining a guild. There are ways around it.

Something has to be done though; when guests come to our server and then have the gall to tell us that if we don’t want lag then we should guest to another server… the system is broken.

Kumu Honua.2751:

You sorta brought this all upon yourselves.

You made the bed, now lay in it.

I don’t think it’s right to force a guest into overflow. They have every right to the content on the server they are playing on as you do. They paid the same price.

You don’t want lag? Guest to any of the other 23 servers for YOUR PvE needs.

Uhm, yeah. So that’s the caliber of guests visiting TC. Granted, it is not representative of the entire sample of those visiting, there very well may be people using guesting as it was intended…

But seriously ANet. Those of us who are on the server or have paid for transfers to the server are the ones entitled to experience non-overflow content on the server. Those of us who built the community and who are the community. As Kumu stated, we made the bed. If they liked the bed so much, why do they just want to visit? Have their cake and eat it too? Then transfer.

Guests should receive services as available, not at the expense of natives.

Cross.6437:

You kind of have to stay here. If you want any chance of getting in another event somewhere else, you need to slip in before “Overflow” becomes a word on peoples lips.

Well but we know some people are chasing events across servers. So they must be going home just for those events and then coming back to wait. I guess they are farming events and not doing WvW?

What a boring life. The annoying part though is that we have to make a choice now between what we do. Level or dungeon or whatever, or camp an event so we don’t get pushed into overflow.

I still stand by my suggestion of not letting guests come over, get loot, and go home. Think about the economy implications? It’s sort of like tax-free importing of goods. Even on other games, you’d have to make a mule and generally pay a fee to move goods across servers. If people are farming 2x the events and bringing that wealth back to a single economy, it’s really exploitative in more than one way.

This isn’t just about us being deprived of our own ability to enjoy the game that we paid for, on the server that we’ve chosen to be devoted to for one silly reason or another, through thick and thin.

The time I’ve been doing the tourneys has been both Tues/Wed at the 4pm – 7pm pacific timeframe. I don’t know if there will be better or worse luck at other times yet.

I third this submission, and did even go so far as to report it via /bug in game. I attempted to participate in the Maw events as a part of my daily today, and could not even -hit- mobs. I was channeling my staff attack so slowly on my necro that I barely did any damage at all.

Last night on Jormag, I was unable to cast heals on myself or do damage to ice spikes on phase 2 because the culling was so bad that I could not even see them. This is not my net or my computer; this is sheer server load and number of people present at the event.

This was bad, laggy, before the Tuesday update to the way loot behaved, but now with server natives likely having an increase in desire to participate in events for better loot, the guesting is making it unbearable.

When I found out that people were literally exploiting the system chasing events from server to server, I found this to be intolerable. Please put a fix in place to the guesting system immediately to stop this exploitative behavior.

Fiddlestyx.9714:

This is by far the best suggestion I have ever seen on these forums.
As it stands now people are just using other servers for their person gain.

I also wonder if they are even staying on the guest server between events, or ‘going home’ or to other servers in the interim. The ‘exploiters,’ it would stand to reason, would be chasing their person gain (loot) and not be hanging around to experience the community or do things with people on the server.

I don’t know if it’s working as intended since I don’t know “how” it’s supposed to be working, but I can tell you my experience with it.

I click “Join solo” and 8/10 times, it pops me into a solo party, after about 1-2 minutes MAX, that fills to five, and within a minute after that, I get the “join” button for the game. This is vastly different from before the patch, where I could go through the motions of creating a roster, solo, and wait an eternity, and never get in to a full party, or if I did, never get matched up with a team (paid or unpaid). I believe, in part, the reason is due to an influx of new players.

The other 2/10 of the time I get a network error button, some coded message, and the join solo failed. I click it again, once or twice, and it works.

I have never had the experience you are describing. I’m “only” rank 20, though, (gone from 19 to 20 since the patch), so as for tier balancing, I can’t speak to what you would think should be going on. If you’re really above or below me — I consider myself in the middle, from what I’ve seen in regular spvp matches.

Simple solution.

Make it so that guests cannot receive loot from chests in events. Those who are guesting to ‘visit’ or ‘meet’ a community will continue to do so for valid reasons, those who are visiting other servers simply to coattail on events will stop. Those who are exploiting timers on events to chase events from server to server will stop.

It concerns me to hear that individuals from other servers are moving from server to server simply to take advantage of timed events or events in regular windows. As someone who farms in Frostgorge for an hour or so simply to have the opportunity to get the entirety of the Jormag Claw pre-event chain completed, and to alert guildies to the status of the event as it progresses, it irks me to no end to learn that there are others on other servers exploiting guesting to pop in and take advantage of our server’s forced hospitality to simply visit for that event. And then leave.

It’s not just dragon events; it’s the Maw, it’s Shadow Behemoth; it’s anything where the loot can be ‘good.’ It’s been happening since guesting was implemented and it’s been exacerbated horribly with the loot changes on Tuesday 2/26. Guaranteed rares? People are likely shuffling each character over for a stab at each chest.

I would like to offer a solution that is quite simple. If you are guesting on a server, you’re there to meet the community. The people. And you can do without the loot. Those events, sure, take the xp, the karma; but chests will not spawn for you. If you want to get a chest, participate in those events on your own servers. The events scale. I’ve done Jormag with 5-10 people. Yes, it takes longer, but we get it done. Frankly, I would far rather have it take me a half hour or hour and break through five ice walls and shepherd golems for what seems like an eternity than not be able to cast anything that isn’t instant, not be able to target a mob, and see myself stutter step across the screen, earn less than a gold medal on the event, and start to wonder who is exploiting the system to be there.

I’m to the point now that I wonder if you get a chest on your home server, you can still get a chest on MY server.

I have gotten by just fine without guests coming to my server and community. I know it sounds a bit elitist, but if you really want to be here that badly that you are going to come to all the events or level your character here, then transfer here. I’ve been here since pre-launch, through the good and bad, the quite ugly in WvW, the days everything is contested in Orr, or the days some events don’t get completed forever. It’s far preferable to not being able to participate in the game.

Someone mentioned elsewhere that if you build it, it will be exploited. People need to start thinking outside the box before implementation. My own ignorance led me to believe that you had to have a friend invite you to guest. I guess that’s not even the case?

I realize it sounds extreme, but I really do mean it. Take away the ability to loot those chests from people visiting other servers, and I bet the majority of exploitative guesting clears riiiight up.

LoonieMoonie.8379:

A cummulative counter of points gained in daily/monthly categories, would have been helpful to players keeping track of total achievement points.

Too true.

I know how many dailies I have missed (4 pve, 3 pvp) and monthlies (the pvp portion of the first pve, so what would that be worth?? etc), but not how many I have completed. I’d need to pull a calendar out and look at it. It would be nice if there was a running total. I also no longer have a way to look up easily how many points the old style daily total was worth vs. the new one. Someone might have it archived somewhere, but since this last mess, I took the time to actually create a spread sheet and document what I’ve done, point totals. This is silly. I’d rather take the time to play than to bookkeep on behalf of a computer.

I know I mentioned previously that not everything could be caught on a beta server due to idiosyncracy of live vs. test. But… a database (really can’t think of a non-inflammatory descriptor here uhm…) error of this magnitude is the sort of thing you would think some of us might have caught.

Why isn’t there a public test server? Am I mis-imagining how things must work going from dev to test where testing is performed?

Anyway, back to (re)installing a different game on this new machine; came by to see if ANet had said anything about this before the long weekend. Such things will influence my spending habits.

Conner.4702:

While overkill can be hard for some classes it should be doable if you have a level 80. Go to southsun cove with highest singletarget, singleshot dps character. stack anything that gives you higher dps and go attack white critters. Took me about 5 crabs before I got it again.

Thanks for tidbits like this. While waiting for feedback from ANet on this issue, I’m sure many of us are chasing down the ones that we have control over (in spite of how it may derail our other plans). This was one I remember getting by surprise on one of my non-mains, and I couldn’t remember where.

I feel for the folks who are looking at Miniature Collector unflagged. Even redoing lifetime survivor (should I pick a day to work on zone completion for an alt in Orr) is do-able; it’s just a huge time investment the way it’s coded now. (Got all skills maxed, not going to grind skills just to get it done again. Wasteful.)

Blah. Things like this drive home why I used to get hammered on expectations management when my old boss was let down on something.

rootnode.9546:

It’s not the bug itself that is “upsetting” me. I could care less if I have 50 points more or less at the moment. It’s just the handling.

Example: “We are aware of issues with the achievements. Especially for the lifetime survivor, which is not that trivial to regain as the others.” Bad. Bad Kitty. We sure hope that you’re aware of the problem. There’s been enough posts about it.
Instead, it could have said: “We have identified the cause of the achievement bug and are working on it. The fix should go live in the next few days.” or “Our dev team is currently looking into it and we will keep you updated about the progress.”
In addition, instead of just posting on twitter and then, a few hours later on the forums…

It’s just that their communication style has plenty of room for improvement. I mean, they manage to keep us updated on Facebook about every picture some player has drawn and every single kitten screenshot. But they tend to omit really talking with the community (except very rare cases).

So many, many, many times over; this.

Expectations management is the key to customer satisfaction. Lack of communication on their part now for this matter does have ramifications now for players. Whether it is dissatisfaction, players running around spending precious free/play time re-doing things they normally should not have to, gamers bad-mouthing the game or creating bad feelings for the company, any number of things — these things could be managed better by a simple regular update saying “We are still working diligently to fix this for you.” Or some such public relations ‘stuff.’

The point being is that many of us would be happier to have the solution itself delayed by the 5-10 minutes that expectations management would take each day, or each 6-12 hours, to keep us happy given what we have put in to achieve in the first place, rather than get a fix on a particular date.

It’s not that things break; yadda yadda things going to break in millions of lines of code moving from stage/test to production even if we did have a public live test environment where we could migrate our characters to view real time changes before they go live… Things would still break. Maybe fewer things, but things would in fact still break. But managing players’ expectations can keep spirits high, people still playing in the game, money still being spent, rage on forums down, it can work all sorts of miracles. Something that whichever management individual or individual with the power to make the choice to invest the time to perform the expectations management at ANet has obviously declared not worthwhile.

That’s the more grievous problem here, and what chips away at customer faith in the long run, in my opinion.

FYI, “fixed” this by leaving guild, being reinvited and repromoted to my former rank.

SeppH.1836:

Long shot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Accuracy_problems

I only appear to have lost about 10 achievements, totaling around 50 points, yet my achievement points dropped with at least 100. I know I had around 4350, and after the patch + daily 4250.

Anyone else seeing more achievements points gobbled up than the lost achievements make up for?

Yes. By a factor of about 4 to 3. If that makes sense. (200 points regained vs 150 on paper lost.) I didn’t do precise math though, only accurate to 1 digit here observing a change from 5.5k to 5.7k.

But… here’s my issue, having a) been a programmer, and b) used the gem store. How can they so keenly keep track of gem usage and fail to keep tally of achievement points? Integers are not exactly foreign objects.

So how is floating point math is to blame. Something else may be going on?

This started for me at log in on 2/13 at 8-9pm. I still had chat at 4am after update because I DO recall someone mentioning in guild chat that Jormag was up, while I was there doing the event. I made no effort to talk at that time, was sleepy.

Tonight though I was doing dailies and someone said hi to me. I had to be told by a friend in whisper that this happened so I wouldn’t seem rude because I missed it in guild chat. Looked for backscroll. Nothing. In fact, NO guild chat. Checked all my filters. Guild chat was in fact turned on. I turned it off then on again. No luck.

I stood down, represented. No luck. I logged out and back in, stood down, represented, no luck.

I quit the game, logged in, stood down, represented. No luck.

I tried swapping to my own guild (bank) and then did the whole shebang again (stand down, rep, etc etc). No luck. Tested all channels. Everything works except guild chat.

Checked for other guild wars processes. NO LUCK.

Put in a /bug report, but Lafiel is not the only person this is affecting. I do not know why the ‘fix’ that worked the last time this happened to me (August/relog, rerepresent) is still working.

Yes, I’m listed in roster. Others see me there. What’s up?

Achievements that I have lost:

Hero
Lifetime Survivor: 499,999/500,000 (still have Golden title)

Trades
Gold Hoarder: Max banked 1,999,999

Weapon Master:
Master of Overkill: 299,999k in one hit at 0 points, tier 7

Longbow
Greatsword
Hammer

Special Event
Pumpkin Carver, still missing you knew this was gone before; still have Master Carver title

Slayer
Just to be obnoxious I’ll list what I lost
Centaur, Drake, Harpy, Spider, Indiscriminate, Bandit, Skale, Bat, Shell, Devourer, Dredge, Elemental, Ettin, Ghost, Grawl, Griffon, Hylek, Flame Legion, Fish, Imp, Inquest, Insect, Jotun, Krait, Nightmare Court, Ogre, Ooze, Pirate, Raptor, Skelk, Skritt, Son’s of Svanir, Troll, Wind Rider, Wurm, Zhaitan’s Bane

Glad I didn’t invest the time to finish Plants or Minotaurs when I got irked with Arah path 4. We won’t talk about Giants.

So. I play this game for the enjoyment of chasing Achievements. I’m sure you can see that by breaking this, you’ve broken my enjoyment of the game. I do hope that this gets prioritized as something quick to fix. Sure I could go out and deal with the weapon masters and slayers, but since saving my 200g, all 9 of my characters hit 80. That hoard was allocated for gear and spent. Survivor? Not doing it again, especially without being able to change zones or log during the process. Pumpkin carver? Should be fixed by now, search who has the title and fix the display. Seriously.

I’m not an Arah noob but I’m not a pro, by any means; I still consider myself capable of noobish behavior. I’d like to get path 4 done, just so I can stop hating it. I’ve sunk too many hours into it already, with pugs + guild runs alike. Now that it’s supposedly ‘fixed’ with the patch yesterday I was going to give pugging a try, a friend pointed me at this thread.

Been hanging out more on gw1 than 2 of late (not a lot to do), but if you have an opening, I can be available any time.

Oh. ETA, I meet the criteria in your post, would prefer to take ranger, at least up to Simin. Have exotic geared guard, mes, ele, I forget what else. Just done most of my dungoeoning on the ranger.

arty.1986:

My point was the daily dodge thing. dont expect to dodge things that your pet kills or u can one hit. I replied to the post as a ranger that doesnt need to stow a pet to try and dodge something it or I can one hit cos thats just being lazy. I merely suggested karkas as something that doesnt take one hit. And I disagree with the course of ‘normal’ play to some point because if yer a level 80 (say without any alts) whats the course of ‘normal’ play? The variety is welcomed with me as opposed to the same old reptativeness

You’re making assumptions (perhaps the same erroneous way that ANet did) about ‘normal gameplay.’ The point about invoking user centered design is that ‘normal’ game play is defined by the user(s) themsel/ves. What’s normal to you isn’t normal to me.

arty.1986:

and by the way its crafting 10 things on that particular daily…. 10 x lvl 1 dough balls or w/e is lowest on the tier. Big deal….. i dont how u will manage it being max craft, its too hard to craft 10 lowest level tier items I bet

And why would I want 10 balls of dough? To throw it away? To make 10 pies to eat quickly toward my eating 1000 things achievement? It’s a waste of time and resources (in my opinion). I don’t farm the game for money. I play to have fun. I’m not going to go buy stuff to crank out a daily requirement. Waste is waste. Yeah some people probably will just roll their eyes, but I’m not rich and rolling in gold, and I won’t ever be.

You have your opinion, I have mine. Waste and lack of fun, things that just seem a forced way to send me in search of specific goals instead of letting me finish map completion on my characters is … silly. I was already out in the world seeing it over and over again. It seems that in their haste to force players to see the world, they are implementing punitive tasks rather than creative fun and play. If you can’t see the difference, I don’t know how much more I can wave hands and type to try to convey this.

Want me to dodge 15 times? Make a monster that if I don’t dodge, it hurts. Want me to use combo fields? Create a monster that only takes damage from one. Want me to go to kill karka? Oh wait I just killed a 1000 of them for another achievement, no thanks.

CharrGirl.7896:

1) Crafting – if you are level 400 then it shouldn’t be a least bit of a problem. If you play pve chances are you’ll be gathering around along the way, which is always a good idea. If you don’t – well you might start. Crafting 20 ingots or planks/low level foods is not that hard, takes seconds:P

….

You’re missing the point in several instances.

1) It’s a waste of materials. I have 9 level 80 characters, and all my skills are 400. I have no need for low level components, and no need to craft. Crafting raw materials devalues them. Yes, I gather while I am out playing. This is my income. If I am on a particular day where I’m in a hurry, or don’t want to spend the day on gw2, then I won’t generate enough materials to whip out 10 bolts of cloth or 10 planks or 10 bars of whatever. I have no desire to cook 10 low level foodstuffs; it’s a waste.

Cooking 10 high level useful items is a waste as well; I’d do that in bulk because it is time consuming. The cooking interface isn’t seamless enough for me to just select an end product and say ‘make 10 of these’ and be done even if I have all the materials; I’d have to make all the subcomponents, and I don’t want to stand around and do that. I’d rather work on map completion for my other characters.

2) You missed the part about me playing at 4am and no one else is around. Stop putting me in your shoes. This game is for all the people who play it, my point about user centered design is simply that they should have taken that into consideration. It’s fine when people ebb and flow together; but forcing it when I could be in a dead zone and what I want to work on that day — say map completing a particular area — has few people in it. It’s hard enough in some zones to complete some of the more interesting event chains when soloing and playing certain professions. Not all of my characters are created equal.

3) You assume I play in Orr and do dungeons every day. Not going to go into my play habits, but … surprise, I don’t do anything ‘every day’ except try to get my PvP and PvE daily’s done.

4) Again, you’re missing the overall point of my post. Sure, ANet is trying to nudge players out of their shells and into the gameworld. Well, I already have been out in the gameworld and I don’t like the boot that they pressed to my rear. It is unpleasant and didn’t feel good. They didn’t take playing the game for fun into consideration when implementing their scheme to get people to keep using the content.

As a player whose characters’ boot treads are plenty worn from ‘seeing the world,’ instead of weaving the tasks into the course of game-play, they have added it as tasks.

You might argue ’you’re getting a jug of karma and laurenl and stuff for doing it, quit your whining!’ I’d say, I have stacks of jugs of karma and coins, haven’t used them; I was doing the daily and monthly achievements for the sense of having accomplished something during the course of gameplay that was going that extra step. Gathering when I had no need to do it, or no desire to run those few steps on the map for a node. Killing that hapless bug that wasn’t part of a quest. Going on a slaughter to get a body count up. Doing events even though I don’t need the karma or xp or skill points.

Adding the onus of now having to find other people to lay down combo fields, map travel to a particular zone to find the right mob that I can kite for 10 minutes while I time dodges right because dodging early gets me nothing, traveling somewhere else to get to a body of water that isn’t overfarmed… now instead of a mystery adventure wandering the map, it’s more of a tactical execution of getting things done.

Frankly, it’s just not as much fun.

arty.1986:

Im also a ranger (mainly shortbow but long for some aoe) and i had no problem at all with that daily. You don’t need to put yer pet on passive just stop fighting things that your pet insta kills (im assuming u went to a low level mob to try to get yer dodge quota). easiest is karkas, fire at one, stay out of line of sight of your pet and just dodge, or better still go to a karka vet or event in southsun cove.

The first lot of dailies (pre-midnight) were a little annoying with that whole combo thing. What I thought were combo fields and finishers didnt seem to make any sense etc when getting the kills. But anyway, I think its alot better and more varied having differenciating dailies and im happy with it

Not everyone is going to be able to go to fight karkas for their daily, and not everyone who can will want to.

Daily achievements should be something that can be completed during the course of normal play — that is what was so great about the ‘old’ daily’s. You could just pick up where you left off in zone completion and go, and at some point you’d know you would finish your daily (unless you were somewhere weird like Orr, and mob variety was low, but then you could go somewhere else briefly or alt etc).

If time was of the essence or you didn’t feel like doing map completion you could hop to a low level zone and do some events, and pick the daily’s up along the way.

You could also do them in WvW.

Now by making them ‘overly creative’ in nature, it’s getting more problematic to just finish them as you wander the world.

Oh … craft things? Wait, I have all my crafts at max 400. I don’t NEED to craft anything. And the crafted things are generally worth less on the TP. Uhm. Great. So I have to take some cloth or ore or wood and grind it up, or take time each day to cook (not something fun) and churn out goods. This is silly.

Combos? Combos happen all the time. But to have to FORCE it? And with another player? What if I don’t see anyone because I’m in a low pop zone and it’s 4am? Do I miss out on my daily because no one is around? That’s absolutely stupid. Yes it’s an MMO but I shouldn’t be forced to get this done by running around and looking for other people to do a combo field.

Dodging? I dodge or sometimes I’ll soak. Sometimes I’ll dodge early, oh wait that doesn’t count!

You’re making it overly complex to get rewarded for playing. It’s not FUN any more.

Kill things underwater? Wait, with the 20 other people all crammed into the same spot fighting over mobs? sigh

Try to think things through. Please.

Did you let someone go into a black hole somewhere and get carried away with designing this, and toss user centered design out the window, and throw away use cases?

Truly disappointing. I know how combo fields work, I spent over a half hour fighting with it on various characters, and I ended up having to switch to my ranger to try to get it done. I shouldn’t have to play a particular class because it’s so finicky that it wasn’t counting combos that should have been valid.

And it’s very annoying to have spent time fighting with a daily requirement not to get it finished; so I don’t think it’s out of turn to request the laurel. Some of us do work very hard to finish every daily we can.

It’s frankly bad planning to release new content with such a short window to try to achieve something. It wouldn’t have hurt anything to wait until dailies reset to make the first laurels available across the board, so that everyone had the ‘standard window’ to work on it, and for bugs to be identified and removed or disabled.

Fake math always bothers me.

http://www.jedcampbell.com/?p=262

n = 30 should approximate population behavior.

RNG is RNG.

Just finished AC 1 with a guild group. Upon clicking ‘accept’ to get my rewards, I got booted from the game, disconnected. So did everyone else from the party. We all clicked about the same time. I know I received it. I had leveled. Another person in party got a rare, I had loot that was trash.

When we got back in, some people in group were complaining about not getting their tokens. I know I had but then I noticed that I had lost a level or two, and my tokens were gone.

So… any ideas what happened? No one got the dungeon completed, no one got any of their loot, coins, nothing.

haviz.1340:

Until anet fixes it, if you wipe at lupi while Randall was dead, and all of you choose to respawn, he’ll respawn as well. But if one of you remains dead and wait for rez when everyone else comes back, he’ll stay rez.

Learned this “behavior” the hard way. Not what I expected. I am by no means inexperienced, just … with the idiosyncracies of the way it works in GW2. Which is to say, no, I haven’t lived in dungeons to learn all the workarounds. I do them, I do them quickly and get out. I guess I’ve been lucky.

But thank you for confirming this suspicion; last time it happened I was indeed to the point ‘just leave me dead guys, and rez me when you get in here.’

stof.9341:

Fractal Jellyfish : eats ranger pets which do not struggle so it stays in the “eating” phase a looong time taking barely no damage.

I meant to report this ages ago. Thanks for bringing this up.

What we discovered was that you really had to watch your pet and basically swap pets to force the pet to stop being eaten, the equivalent of struggling free. Of course if your pet swap functionality was on CD you were out of luck.

It would be great if pets were not targeted by this attack simply because they won’t auto-struggle. And if they did, it’s too “easy” on the party.

As for Simin/Path 4 Arah…
Yes please do whatever you can for the sparks not to glom on to Ranger Pets, Necro pets, or the NPC. It’s to the point now that I can’t get a response from people in pugs for that path on my ranger, and with guildies I get asked to bring my less geared mesmer instead because of the pet issue.

Also with mesmer clones, it’s nice to have my usual trait up for dodging to create a clone but in this fight it’s impossible. Dodge out of AOE on the way to get to position for a spark and … the clone is still there when you come back with a spark. Not good.

Can’t tell you how many times we’ve forced the NPC in Arah to die just to get rid of him for a boss fight. It’s just horrid, and people get SO angry if he gets rez’d either for Lupi or Dwayan or whoever. And if he is dead, you run too far away from the boss and back he pops up alive. Or someone in the party drops on top of the NPC and you rez the NPC by mistake, and suddenly you can’t get sparks in because of him. Just an absolute nightmare.

Also I noticed you mentioned these weren’t live. I hope they do get mentioned in patch notes when they go live, I know some people are to the point they won’t go near path 4 until there are changes of some kind or another. Would be good to know when I can start begging again.

Path 4. Three attempts so far.

1) On the second attempt, high dps group, 3 warriors, guardian, ranger, front half of the run was clean and fast. End up in front of Lupi and he would not activate. Just sat there all green and asleep. Everything we tried would not work. Letting NPC die, letting us suicide in the room outside, waypointing running back, going back to kill the champion spider that we had skipped. Nothing.

The only similarity to other things mentioned on the forums regarding Lupi not waking up is the NPC died in a trash pull in the room outside Lupi.

I’ve had Lupi activate properly on the first run when we skipped the champion spider and much of the dungeon’s trash, as well as the third when the NPC also died but we had killed the spider (to hope Lupi didn’t bug out).

2) Simin
What isn’t there to say. Tried every possible way to do this. Between the first and third run I’d say spent over 10 hours on this boss. Absolutely ridiculous.

• Sparks and Pets/NPCs
  Sparks aggro on pets. Thanks for making it so I cannot take my ranger on this path. Or that if I do, I have to alt out to get my mesmer for this fight. Even standing WAY OUTSIDE the cave, and using Guard to send the pet away, if something goes wrong and someone is downed, petrified, etc, no way to help. If there are two rangers?! Forget it. Only dungeon/path in the game where you pretty much cannot take a pet class. The pet AI is too bad. No way to put the pet away and keep the sparks off of it.

• Sparks and their ‘Holes’
  They won’t go in them. We tried the ’let’s fight the boss in the middle of the room, grab sparks, and run in a circle around the pole in a stack in unison so that the sparks have NO WHERE ELSE TO GO!!!’ strategy. This failed. Why? Because the sparks decide to go off or bounce or follow oddly, or won’t follow. You move across the hole, and they go the other way.

• Outside the cave, red circles/target areas for AOE
  Maybe this is supposed to be a huge clue that you should be inside the cave; but honestly don’t know. For all the attempts that I did outside the cave, the red circles were nearly impossible to see due to the glare of the contrast of the sky/water/sand/death background whatever. Honestly they weren’t that easy to see inside. I had to adjust my gamma for that fight, and this means playing in fullscreen vs. windowed fullscreen for that fight. Please make them more visible.

• Healing at a fixed percentage regardless of time invisible
  The whole “she heals at 45%” (or whatever)… so how can you get her below 45%? In some cases, flawless execution yielded such fast cloaking and healing that we lost ground even with perfect spark runs. Makes no sense. No time for it to be the DPS’s fault or lacking.

I don’t know if this is being explained properly. We could have a series of perfect runs, to the point of her having less and less and less health each time she unstealthed. One would think that this would lead to the boss dying. Not the boss eventually ending up full health because there was some random interval that she healed at.

The boss should not heal at some random interval that denies the possibility of success. It certainly seems that it does.

3) NPC’s.
The NPC cannot die fast enough. Lupicus? Get a grub on it. Simin? In the way for sparks. How many times do we have to run a boss through an extra phase just because someone rez’d the NPC or the stupid NPC did something… well… stupid. It’s fine if the AI is bad, just let us keep it out of the way. Or kill it. Faster.
And let’s not talk about the NPC’s.

4) Tears and Petrify
It was hit or miss, ha ha ha, not funny, that too often tears did not clear petrify. Person with debuff? Check. In target area? Check. Tear thrown? Check. Petrify cleared? Nope. What’s up with that?

So in three runs of path 4, I had one great run up to Lupi that was completely a failure because Lupi wouldn’t do anything. One nasty pug experience that was 8 hours long (though admittedly it was at its five hour or so mark the first Simin pull) and entirely believable that people weren’t avoiding the “fire” but the spark runs were near flawless, DPS probably lacking. One hardcore guild run that was nearly 8 hours where we got to Simin inside an hour and half with three people never having done Lupi before and burned through everything else like paper — but couldn’t deal with Simin because of Sparks not locking into where they were supposed to be, which consequently let Simin heal too much every single time. And even though we were always making headway, this one fact meant that if ANYONE got petrified or had issues during the spark stage or transition, it would be a failed phase.

Please fix this. Sick and tired of bugs.

No, really. Why CAN’T we play with friends on this one?

Sure, I can somewhat understand it on snowball fight; you don’t want to skew the teams too heavily so that you get steamrolled over and over again by powerful teams. </sarcasm>

But on this one, where it is player vs. AI? Seriously, it’s a holiday festive event, why can’t you let us enjoy it with friends and guildmates?

Instead, we’re all in vent, talking about clear and obvious winning strategies, and how other players on our teams won’t cooperate, and one lucky person gets a good team. The rest of us are stuck with teams that can’t get it right, and how many rounds do I want to sit here and do this event when I have real life obligations to prepare for?

Building snow forts would be FUN if in fact I could actually build a fort with people… but I am also getting fed up with the general forced pug mentality. In some instances I can understand it for “fairness.” But if we can provide enough people for two teams, and we’re not “throwing games,” then why can’t we go have fun together just like the good old days?

You wonder why keg brawl is a ghost yard? Aside from the achievements being bugged?…

Silly to put in so much effort to create fun and unique experiences, and then not to let us share them with our friends.

I hate to say it, but I would look upon opening packages and leaving those nasty dolls for some poor low level character to find, or new player, as griefing.

I had considered doing it myself earlier tonight when working on zone completion in Metrica and my 67 warrior was being owned by level 9 dolls, while level 11. The buffs those dolls have are just insane. I was not about to go get my necro out just to kill dolls, I was there to do my daily and complete the map.

When I let the confusion wear off, and go back and pull them one at a time with a rifle I was able to kill them. Ridiculous amount of time… and the present despawned by then. Stupid.

I don’t know what to suggest the solution is. Make sure you remove the confusion debuff, but even so the protection buffs they have are … unfair. The difficulty increase between the ventari and the dolls is absurd.

But don’t open packages and leave the mobs. Not cool. Get packages another way.

Every time I went off aggressively to “win” by hunting present carriers, I was run over by “team” members who happily took kill credit from me after I got the carriers down to 5% health. Rather than help me fight off the mob of enemy or assist.

When I finished this achievement, I was still playing to win, but I did not go out for the kill. I had to hold back and “save” my assault until the player was lower in health. This after my “team” mate had blown through all their burst.

I imagine one could argue that it “evens out.” But it does not afford team play, in most cases. I consistently played as a team member until I was frazzled and had played for 20 hours without getting the last 2 carrier drops. It was getting silly. The “longer” the holiday has gone on, the more scattered the play has become. The disparity between good and bad teams has grown, even just since yesterday afternoon.

Package delivery was not anti-team participation in my experience, but perhaps others let carriers die. Couldn’t say. As long as I was either having fun (team play was present) or I was making progress on the achievements (hate to say it but they tended to be mutually dependent unless you got the first present turn in), I didn’t mind what was going on.

Kudos to all the good players though. Thanks to those who dropped packages at the turn in spot when I was escorting — didn’t need it for the achievement, I was just there to escort you safely. But I’m sure others appreciated it. I sure would have two days ago when I was still learning :-)

This “sport” or pvp activity, whatever you would like to call it, is fun. What isn’t fun is the way the carrier achievement divides a team from a team consciousness.

THE SAME:

• Please? Find something to do about the wait? I have a life. I am paying you, ANet, tons of money. Be considerate of that. I will be a lifelong customer, or you can irk me and I will go away. To those saying “stop your whining,” no. I invest my time, I stick it out and I finish. I could care less if you finish on your first, second or tenth try. Or after a half hour, or two. Clocktower took me thirty and I yelled so loud I got yelled at. This one took me 11. I did the same, only I yelled twice.
• Charr with big armor? It still created tension, though not quite as much. Many already took off big armor, some still delighted in tormenting others. And honestly, Charr did cause me to miss jumps a few times. I was already flustered for one reason or another, and it did not help. With the fractal where we all become charr, I know it’s possible to turn us into something. (Just not Charr :P or Asura. Something reasonably sized where the camera aspect won’t go akimbo at edges, and I can still see my feet.)

Clocktower made me a better platformer. I admit it. I had only done a smattering of the puzzles at that point, and as I said, now I’ve done all but two. But I never played console games that required much of it. And the ones I did play, that was MANY years ago. Never on a PC. But I am invested in GW2, and I intend to enjoy ALL of it. Even if it gasp makes me grow as a gamer. I will fight tooth and claw and rip out hair to be better, but please don’t waste hours of my life making me wait for others.

Sure, snowballs are ok. But even the first night when I got into an instance by myself (and stayed up many hours that I did not intend to because how could I pass up a chance to practice alone) … I could throw four or five snowballs just waiting after I failed. I don’t need time to surf the net, read the forums, shop the trade post. I want to do the puzzle.

If you MUST group people together because of server load, and if having groups is part of the “fun” or “challenge” (I am not knocking small groups, 2-3 at a platform was fun, I followed someone on my successful run, not that I needed to to “know” the path) — PLEASE find a way to take those that finish and dump them into an “empty room.” Recycle instances. Don’t make us wait for them to finish. A minute or two is a long time when you group up all the failures due to learning or stupidity or fat fingers or spacebar not jumping or lag over the course of 11 hours.

And lastly, thanks for letting us watch others do the puzzle. Having had to wait it was nice to be able to watch. But you could have put the snowman holding us on the other side, so we could have watched all of it. Sure you probably wanted people to have some suspense getting to the end, but it’s not like the puzzle was not on youtube within 20 minutes of going live. Would have made the last half of the unbearable wait slightly more bearable.

Anyways, thank you for the thought that went into this puzzle.

Here is my feedback on this holiday’s jumping puzzle. It is in my opinion both easier and more difficult than Clocktower. And some things remained the same of course, that could still stand to be changed or evaluated in the future.

EASIER: Many things I’ll miss noting here, but they probably obvious to those who felt it was fun and challenging and easy, as well as those who felt it was too hard.

• It is nice not to have the acid rising, the more passive death by freezing is still an indicator of how much you have to “hurry” but more forgiving of pauses here and there along the way (at least after you pass the snowflakes).
• It is nice not to have the grabbing hands. They often grabbed even when you felt the acid was not there, or they tripped you up etc. However, there are many times lag seems to glitch you on the snowglobe and you seem to land a jump and then load into start.
• It was nice not to all start together, the rushing horde really confused things last time.
• It was nice not to have one of the gating factors be right at the top of the two steps of stairs (eg, the stop and jump and hurdle those first blocks). I lost rhythm, and I had trouble with it the entire first night. On this puzzle I made it to the snowballs the first night and frankly if I had known the snowman was going to blow at me I may have finished that attempt.
• The speed buff was nice. I’m sure the puzzle was adjusted for it, incorporated the need for it, but psychologically it helped, and it helped make jumps that are obviously simple but when rushed, can cause a bit of stumbling.
• Thank you for removing the ability for others to grief us due to their elite skills and so forth.
• Thank you for not having there be any bumping into edges or having the camera go wonky, at least from my perspective.

Note, I use a laptop, have for years. I can’t sit at a desk to play, I can’t use a mouse. For clocktower and snowglobe I -had- to. This is a limited time accommodation for me, but I make it because I enjoy the content and the challenge, as much as I hate how unused I am to interfacing with my computer that way. It is a handicap I adjust to normally quite well. I’ve done all the puzzles in the game (save for the last 2 added, just haven’t bothered yet), and I find them quite fun. I just tend to need to take it slow, and my wrists won’t allow me much strain. I can go fast in a straight line or with some turning, it’s the 90 degree or hard turns that I really cannot do without my handy trackball wireless mouse.

HARDER:

• So thanks for breaking the group into smaller groups but uh … uh … please, please, don’t go making them all new all different. Or let us choose which ones we hate, heh :P Now, I love the snowmen, I am o.k. with the quaggan, and I hated the gingerbread men. I got my achievement on… gingerbread men. So I will do what it takes, but here’s the deal. I either tough it up and do ALL THREE paths, taking three times as long to learn something (this is hard for me, it doesn’t come naturally, this hand-eye coordination and muscle memory) — or, I skip one. And wait longer. And the RNG hates me, it seems and the times I just grumbled and skipped those evil breaded men, I got them over and over again. I half wonder if that was intentional or the universe goading me to get my prize. But… really. If I HAD been able to stick to ONE path, I would have finished in one third of the time, easily. To all the people who think “that nerfs it” — you guys are the ones who finished in 1, 2 or 10 tries. So no, I don’t think it nerfs it for you. It nerfs it for those of us who will invest the time to finish it come armageddon or high water, I just think it’s ridiculous to have to do that. I have snowball present carriers to annihilate.

I’ll conclude my feedback in my next post.

Kimbald.2697:

Reward system in this game is a bit old-fashioned for a game being rahter innovative about roles to fill etc.

Supporting gets you nothing compared to pure dps’ing and saying ‘sod all’.
Sad but true.

Also as a leveler in WvW I get not a lot of badges.
I’m lvl 37 with my engineer leveling in WvW and I think I have about 40 badges…

Why so few?
Firstly because I don’t spend much time killing worms or giant trees, or jumping puzzles. Secondly because of my level I think. Thirdly because I fight supportively.

I escort Dolyaks, I run supplies to siege up towers without using their own supplies needed for reinforcements. So I do a LOT of running. It gets me some xp building something, but mostly it gets me next to nothing for my trouble.

In fights I heal others, I use cc like pushback etc.
I hardly dps targets down myself.
Again: I get next to nothing for it.

In sieges I’m usually using my flamethrower on doors.
I burn down a LOT of rams and get some xp for it. But not much more than that.

Basically I play as supportive as a player can in WvW, and my rewards are a little bit of xp here or there, and the occasional rare lootbag.

If I were to throw grenades at the walls of SM all day, being almost useless for the larger battle, I would get WAY MORE badges than now.
How sad is that…

I spent over 40+ hours last week in wvw, and over 50 levels across 7 characters ranging from level 50 to 80. I got more badges in the 3 trips through jumping puzzles I took brief time outs for than the rest of the time.

Now, I spent plenty of time in combat, taking towers, camps, keeps, running with an army or a small group — but some things to comment on.

1) Bags do NOT always drop at your feet. In particular, on my thief, there were a number of times that loot bags were many yards away. I only saw them because the mouse cursor trailed over and the yellow text highlighted. I had to dive into an enemy zerg, grab it and dodge back out to get it, other times I had to pass.

2) While on siege, the priority is defending. Someone commented ‘to the victor go the spoils.’ We might win, but my winning might be interrupted by a run back or a prolonged wait to be rez’d after being melted on a cannon depending on the situation. Loot does despawn. I am not going to stop defending to loot. My choice yes, but … more lost loot.

3) I’m constantly moving in combat. The priority is combat. I only notice the loot sometimes the -second- or third time when I’m running past it. If we’re on a hit and run detail, there isn’t always time to loiter to look for loot. Again, winning is more important, my choice, but…

4) To the points in the post I quoted, I emphatically agree. In the 40+ hours that I spent in wvw, I spent a -ton- of time in support mode. Guarding SM, rebuilding, building siege, running supplies manually all over the map. I will prioritize rez’ing an ally in most situations.

It would be a great improvement to autopick-up badges.

In fact, it would be excessively great if these things (for WvW, Dungeons, anything) were -currency- and not physical items. They are account bound. They can’t be ‘sold’ or traded. Why would I want to delete them? Why am I penalized storing them in the bank when I need literally hundreds of them across multiple characters to build or purchase significant investments.

Let’s be innovative, disassociate them from ‘loot’ and make them an intangible currency. It can still be randomly awarded (though the frequency could still stand to be adjusted, bearing in mind the other remarks about siege costs).

I honestly cannot believe people. The storm is 1000 miles in diameter, 11 foot swells predicted tonight. 50 million people are in its path, and they are predicting that some people will ultimately end up without power for up to a week.

I’ve lived through hurricanes and flooding, and it’s not trivial. Even if it’s only 500k GW2 players, it’s still a decent consideration for them to give them a short amount of time to get back online when they have a natural disaster coming down around them. Wouldn’t you want the same consideration if there was an earthquake or typhoon or other disaster elsewhere in the world?

Who cares what country it’s in, or whether people should be preparing for the storm instead of worrying about a game? If 11 feet of water was going to plow over your home, you might have done all you can and be worrying more about a game, because worrying about anything “real” would be too stressful at that point.

Look at it this way. A game is a pasttime for recreation, you’re right; we’re not getting paid, we are ostensibly doing it for “fun” or “want.” No one probably “needs” to be playing this particular game. It was just released, even if they had the full 50/50 HoM points, it would be a questionable motivation to pick this game out of another investment of time at launch if one did not prefer it over other investments of time for pleasure’s sake.

Then consider what affords an individual the sense of recreation, or re-creation. It is as varied as individuals. Some may be dysfunctional or co-dependent and find their recreation to be co-dependent in turn. Others may simply have unique or iconoclastic or off-the-wall definitions of fun or find atypical things to be rewarding.

Games like GW2 that create a ‘virtual environment’ this thoroughly, and in fact have dynamic environment that attempts to exist whether the player interacts with it, can be quite immersive. If someone is roleplaying it may add an additional layer of investment into the game. Anyways, it’s sort of pointless for me to try to list all of the ways that a game could be ‘won’ or a player could try to enjoy or win a game like this. One thing is certain; if designers implement something there are going to be outliers who try to find a way to have fun that wasn’t covered in a use case.

The complexity for finding ways to have fun is going to be all the more vast when the game isn’t linear or on rails.

Now, take this rich, diverse world and culture around the game, into which players have a great amount of time, money, emotion invested, and plop down this jumping puzzle (or any other ‘new feature’).

There will invariably be groups of people who feel excluded. There will also be people who invariably say “Just don’t do it.”

Now I don’t know how many people actually do study psychology or marketing, but it is not a smart idea to invest a great deal of time into an activity which generates more frustration than fun. This is why user engineering and user-centered design are such hankittenen things.

There would have been any number of ways to implement this puzzle without creating the level of furor, but at the same time still maintain a high degree of difficulty and even a low rate of completion. They could have done this and let people feel more included, more like they were achieving and participating.

Doing this isn’t dumbing down the game. When working with something like the 80-20 rule, catering to the 20% and making the 80% unhappy is ultimately inefficient for a number of reasons.

Think about it. It’s one thing to say “I succeeded where others did not.” It’s another thing entirely to say, “I succeeded and because you didn’t and are unhappy about it, you’re a whiny entitled brat who should just learn to cope with disappointment and go do something else.”

No, not quite. I still maintain that the game designers failed. I don’t care if the puzzle is fun for a few, what needs to be acknowledged is that many players will spend 20-40 hours over the course of the holiday failing, perhaps not improving, and walking away miserable. Why is this something to gloat about? It’s not. It’s bad for the community, it’s bad for the game, and the development time that went into the puzzle could have gone into something just as difficult but fun for a higher percentage of players if only the developers understood their player base as a whole rather than catering to a smaller subset.

It’s been mentioned time and again by those who are in the subset who will stay in the pot of boiling water and not get out, that there are camera issues. Many of the things that are not fun or could have improved fun for more people have been mentioned. None of these things would ultimately make the puzzle less difficult, but they would have made it more fun. People would have walked away hopefully with a sense of accomplishment even if they failed, and a sense of fun.

This would have been a better design and a better contribution to the community.

And I really do think one of the reasons it is so shocking to so many players is because of the lengths to which ANet has gone to make the game overall friendly to players and community.

mischwoof.9785:

I’m a charr. I think it’s hilarious that people freak out when I do Clock Tower. “GET YOUR FAT kitten OUT OF THE WAY MEDICAT” all the time ahahaha

Hey man, i’m just trying to get my treat bags. If you can’t see, that’s not my problem.

So players like this intentionally agitate other players who are struggling with the puzzle.

Then other players start spawning their elite summons, and dragging more trash into the puzzle.

Suddenly a minute or two is entirely wasted while excess pets are all over the screen.

I’m happy that some of you can do the puzzle blindfolded. That’s nice.

Many of us are visually oriented. No amount of telling us to do things ‘blindly’ is going to make it happen suddenly.

It might happen after a 30 or so successful attempts at something (30 or so being a ‘nice’ number at which something can become habitual); however, in order for this to happen, we’d have to be able to see what we were doing in the first place to be successful.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Why is their immediate response “sorry you fail and are incompetent, go do something else” ???

For the first time I am being denied the ability to purchase gems from the store. I have had no prior issues, no suspicious activity on my account. I have now been told that in order to purchase gems I have to contact customer support to confirm my identity.

This seems absurd. There has only ever been one IP address connecting on my account. No suspicious activity on my credit card. What’s the damage? You don’t want my money any more?

Tarage.8632:

Once again, people complaining about not being able to see their character wouldn’t be able to complete it anyway. Face it, you’re too slow. End of story.

This is part of the problem. You cannot LEARN if you cannot do better run after run.

When I have to make the same mistake dozens of times and somehow get it right once or twice in there, without rapid reinforcement and rapid ability to train myself to get it right over and over again, I CANNOT teach myself to do it right.

So I am essentially learning to do it WRONG.

All the people telling me to keep trying and I’ll get there, do not understand how learning works, much less PHYSICAL learning.

Great, I’m glad you all played other comparable games and know how to do these things. Or have the appropriate tools to do so quickly.

Not all of us do, but we’re willing to try to learn. Many of us. I am not whining about difficulty. I am COMPLAINING about the lack of consideration for those of us who want to learn but are not being afforded the opportunity to participate in the fun and given the chance to learn.

I’ve been a teacher. Of Math. I’ve had students who have historically failed math. I know well the difference between giving them the resources to get B+’s in classes they previously failed, and just ignoring them and giving them the chance to fail again.

This puzzle is like going into a class you’ve failed before, and not getting any help to learn. You want to learn, but no one cares, and the people who HAVE mastered the material all point and laugh and demean. The person who put the class on the curriculum say it’s optional and not to take it.

This is all missing the point. Some of us do want to learn and be included and participate and have fun doing so.

You’re all missing the point that no two people learn in the same fashion, and we’re asking to be included. Not catered to, not having it watered down. But that the designers be creative and provide opportunities for people to be successful in surpassing the difficulties that they may never have encountered before in order to gain the tools needed to succeed.

Yes, it’s just a game. But think about what a game is. It’s recreation. It’s what we do to re-create ourselves, to take a break from the stress, to have fun, to let go of all the crap we deal with in the “real world.”

It’s not something to be trivialized so much as everyone else seems to think.

Hard is one thing. Not feeling as if you are learning anything in the process is entirely different. Not feeling as if the experience is AFFORDING you the opportunity to learn enough over the dozen plus hours you have invested. Or feeling that the ratio of learning, fun, and progress compared to the amount of stress, griefing and hassle experienced is unbalanced…

These are some of the things that are being said, and said loudly.

Why the people who walk in and complete the puzzle after two tries or twenty minutes seem to think that the feedback translates to whining for those who have invested 12-20 hours… well, it boggles me, and makes me question their reading comprehension capabilities.

After much experimentation on many alts, what I see above isn’t quite the easiest run. I tried this on my higher level alts and did fine, but on my low level alts (12-24) they had a few too many problems, even with an 80 escort on one. Sorry I won’t have names of waypoints, I’m not in that area right now or on the right alt.

Here’s the wiki map for reference:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/b/b5/Bloodtide_Coast_map.jpg

1) Go through LA to Bloodtide Coast. Hang a sharp right north of Archen Foreland to avoid drake aggro—but don’t worry if you get it. They like to run up pause and breathe. Just be prepared to hit v while moving if they seem like they are going to bite. Follow the road as it meanders to the south toward Stormbluff Isle.

2) Hope there is no event on Stormbluff Isle. If so, the inquisition is usually busy at the keep, you can avoid it. Stick to just easterly of the road. Don’t hug the cliff too close, there is aggro at the north end of the island. Head to the waypoint to secure a rez spot. Grab the juvenile blue moa if you need it.

3) From Stormbluff you will be running south off the island, past the skelk (?) into the water at the furthest south jutting part of the land (to give you optimum dodge roll window). Do so however avoiding the eastern skelk as wide a berth as possible. Don’t stop to look to the side. Keep an eye out for the skelk to the west (your right) but keep running. Hit the water with a dive and stay on the surface. (If you’re a ranger, grab the juvenile shark if you need it as you pass.)

4. Swim southEAST. You will be going east of the north tip of Merchantman’s Strait and west of the coast of Risewild Hills in the water, keeping an eye out for red in the water. As you pass the narrowest gap in the water, hug the walls of Risewild. Be cautious. There will be some mobs in the water. You -can- outswim these without problem.

5. Grab the waypoint north of Mole Head and west of Firth of Revanion. No aggro here but for one drake that might chase you a bit. Get another pet if you’re a ranger and don’t have it. Take a moment.

6. You will turn EAST, through the cave right down into the Firth of Revanion past all the scary spider things. They run up behind you and generally do not bite first. Sometimes they do and you might die instantly if you are low (24, eg). Be prepared to dodge roll. Evasive running here, running wide as they approach and jumping creatively helps. Thread the cave. This ends you up in Wraithwalker Woods.

7. Ignore the waypoint north of you, it is underground. Keep going south, a hard turn right as you come out of the cave. There are spiders right there. You really have to be judicious with your stamina on the dodging but you can do this easily if you’re used to running creatively. Thread the mobs heading easterly south, past the undead toward the waypoint that is generally contested in Wraithwalker Woods. The worst thing here that can happen is if you run into a grub at a low level before a big undead. The grubs spray and don’t shamble over. You can usually run/evade the undead one blow and keep running. The grubs though spray poison and will one-shot low level alts.

8. When you sail past that waypoint you are pretty much home free. Your stamina for dodging should be full, only a few undead ahead of you, and the last most southeastern Bloodtide waypoint await. Grab that and zone into Sparkfly Fen.

9. When you hit Sparkfly, keep running. A little south and you get the waypoint. Hug the right/west and go around the bend, you will be greeted by a mosquito and maybe candy corn. Ignore candy and dodge mosquito. Another mosquito will await you, be prepared to hop, skip and dodge over the terrain and past the bug into the Fort. Get the waypoint, run halfway up the steps to the ruins and be prepared to log out if the fort is contested.

You can come back later with friends or when the fort is safe. If the fort IS contested when you get there, zerging the fort or just dying and coming back later is fine. You got the waypoint at the north of the zone as a restore point.

The end of your journey awaits you. Good luck. And thanks to the kind souls who helped out here and there. I did make a point to help out in return when I was on higher level alts myself. Enjoy.

Wreave.2138:

I remember seeing this article linked to a while back. It really put the finger on one of the things that I really liked about GW2.
http://kotaku.com/5945347/guild-wars-2s-subtle-mind-control-makes-me-actually-like-other-people

A quote: We really wanted every player, when they see another player, to be happy to see that other player, [Isaiah] Cartwright said.

Is that what’s happening here? People glad to see other in their fourth hour of trying to complete this puzzle? People glad to see Norn and Charr? Norn and Charr finding other players glad to see them and giving them friendly hellos? Players glad to sit and wait after they’ve failed while other players proceed?

Thank you so much for finding this URL. I looked via Google and couldn’t figure out good search terms earlier. After five hours of fail yesterday, and six more today, I wanted to note that I had realized today what bothered me most about this jumping puzzle portion of the holiday ‘festivities.’

I don’t mind hard work, I don’t mind failure to achieve success. I don’t mind having to work hard and long to get to something that others gain quickly because they are better than me at it. Life isn’t ‘fair’ and I’m not demanding that everything be equally ‘easy.’

However, I sold this game to two long-time friends on this whole ‘MMO where it’s not horrible to see other players’ concept. And here I am in an event where not only is it horrible to see most other players, but it’s also horrible to hear from most other players.

People are bad-mouthing players with larger character models.

People are griefing by summoning elite adds and dragging them into the puzzle with them (still not “fixed”).

People post videos of completing it ‘blind’ — grats, but I’m not you.

Remember, the ability to advance and progress, improve, at something is facilitated by the opportunity to learn from one’s mistakes. To correct behavior and get feedback, to correct the behavior. If I am forced to make the same mistake 1000 times because I can’t get past the first obstacle due to some reason many find trivial, where is the fun? How does that work with the philosophy I sold your game on? Why did you design something with the intent that only 5% succeed?

Hard is good, but limiting the opportunities for others to improve is an epic failure on your part. And engineering community abrasion goes against the grain of how I sold your product, why I am loyal to it, and why I spend money on it.

Oh and by the way, somehow I ended out of overflow and into the ‘main’ instance. With one other player. Two for a while. I made more progress in that hour than I did in the other 10. So I keep trying, acting out the definition of insanity, hoping to do something ‘better’ or less wrong, but waiting to find my way into that magical fantasy land where there are fewer people again… so I can really break through and have a chance to do what I know I can do under the right circumstances — beat the puzzle, just like I have most of the rest of this game.

Ok been at it some more, made it past one ‘stuck’ point, and now working up to another. My feedback still remains:

• Keep people from bringing in elite-summoned adds like hounds of balthazar, their golems, etc.

I was in one particular run where an Asura was upset with not being able to see themselves because there was a Charr, and so they summoned their Golem just to ‘distract’ the Charr. Hey, whatever, I don’t need to be griefed by this sort of annoyance either.

• A slight delay between the cut scene and the actual start will give everyone a chance to fail less.

The cut scene is great; but I zone in and see too many with the little movie icon on top of heads.

• A practice tower wouldn’t have been a horrid idea, one with no loot, no timer, no acid, for people who aren’t good at these things to learn.

• A stealth buff on all the other players present so you can save sever load by having it instantiated but still let people get the feeling that they are there alone.

• An option to group with your race. yes there is still height variation within that, but it won’t be so extreme as me being on my Asura and running with gigantic Norn. Yes I can learn blind jumping puzzles, and have done those in game but they don’t have time limits where then I have to sit around and wait for a minute to try again.

It doesn’t help that people are bringing their hounds of balthazar along though. Or that you have to wait a minute to go again when you make a catastrophic mistake early on. That does not help you improve. When you’re stuck at a particular spot and you can’t hammer it repeatedly over and over without having these waits in between, it turns what could be a half hour or an hour into four hours.

I’ve done some of the nastier puzzles in the game. I know this isn’t my strong suit, and I work on them until I get it. I don’t mind putting in the time or the effort. I do mind having to sit around waiting and doing nothing while I get cold, and lose progress, or progress goes slowly.

Sure it’s common to have people in your way (the big charr, or the big norn) on a puzzle, but you can generally pause to let them pass if there are camera angle issues. Not on this puzzle, and there’s no leeway for it. I wouldn’t mind so much if the imposed wait wasn’t there. It’s a lot of time thrown away.

You might say ‘oh it’s for ten worthless achievement points.’ But some people play expressly to have a sense of beating the game by accomplishing these, difficult or not. You are also wrong, because it’s not just for achievement points. It’s also for a piece of loot in the chest. The slippers are exotic; so it’s not just bragging rights. It’s a piece of loot that some people are getting because they have good hand-eye coordination and can jump well, and others are willing to put in a dozen hours to get and can’t get because of various things in the way. No lack of effort or willingness to work at it.

There’s a difference between design consideration and fun, and catering to whining.

It’s not a bug but they won’t tell us what we need to do to achieve it? :P

I am having the same problem between 10/1 and the first update of the month. I vividly recall that it rolled over properly but then after the first update, it broke. It has not been fixed as of tonight’s (10/3-4) update.

I submitted a ticket via /bug in game with a screenshot of this.

Please fix this issue before the end of the month. While I know I can complete this requirement in short order on my level 80 alt in Orr, I know many people cannot do it so easily. I recall last month early in the month when my highest level alt was 40, with all the glitches in how it “works” accruing XP while surviving, it took a lot of effort on my part to get it done the first time.

On Tarnished Coast, for the last three days, I’ve been doing nothing but putting in /bug reports throughout game play. It’s getting increasingly frustrating.

Please RESTART the servers.

I do not know if you are collecting data on what fails over time, but enough is enough. I’ve personally submitted enough failure reports to keep a dev team busy for a few days. Please give us back the game; the waypoints, the renown vendors, the fun of playing through the dynamic events at least until they freeze up again.

My play time is precious and the rollback last night where I lost rares and map completion was bad enough. Please.

I solved my dilemma. Thanks to everyone who added information along the way.

Four “areas” come along with the story quest completing the Claw Island portion of the story quest. So if you for some reason paused in your story quest (like I did) for favor of exploring and other game activities (the hazard of an open ended game), you can end up with exactly four areas missing and since the game is new enough and documentation not great, … well.

I had been plodding along in my story quest and almost gotten there in amidst with jumping puzzles, when I stumbled upon some game forum somewhere that someone had the same “problem” I did — 171/175. They noted they got 4 out of story, turned out I was only 4-5 steps from my goal by then.