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Short Story: Delegation

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As a person who owns scorpions and a tarantula, I like Frostbite too

But yes, Scott did an amazing job. Our writers are all pretty awesome.

Serious Bug in Q. Gauntlet

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you posted this at 5am, and didn’t get a response for 3 hours, so you bumped your thread. It is now 8:30am… you need to give us some time to get here in the morning, lol.

I’ll alert our QA to this potential, and make sure it gets investigated. Any further information you may have will help.

It’s annoying that Developers don’t respond when players point bugs in this current Living World. For example, I’ve been QQ’ing on GW2 Forums because I can’t use the Tokens in Account Wallet to craft stuff on Mystic Forge.

We don’t reply to every single bug. More often than not we’re made aware of it, and then start doing something about it. This is something we are aware of.

Some cages are bugged - perma knocklock

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we’re aware of and working on a fix for this. Thanks for reporting it.

Best part of the update notes...

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I mean… technically the description was correct about applying confusion…

Missed opportunity

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I originally had the Mursaat/White Mantle as one of the factions. They’re certainly a stronger pick than something like bandits or pirates, but there’s a lot of factors that go into these sorts of things. Creating a new army never before seen is pretty complex and takes a lot of time and iteration. Not only is there a large design cost for it, but art has to create a brand new environment, new armor, new character models, new weapons, and those are not simple tasks either. I played a ton of GW1, so I know their significance. I also knew how much time I had to do this, what my asset request bank was, and knew that I couldn’t do the Mursaat justice… especially with such a small area.
If I’m gonna do Mursaat and White Mantle, I (as a hardcore GW1 player) would want it to be epic and grand. We haven’t ..forgotten.. about them, I just have higher expectations for them than what I was capable of putting out in this release.

…and yes I’m proud of that reference.

About Queen Gauntlet and its Time

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Actually it’s two minutes. And the map capacity of Crown Pavilion is limited to 75 before it starts to create overflows.

75 people, 6 people at a time, 2 minute matches = 75/6 *2 = 25 minutes

Obviously some people will finish their matches faster, but even if they finish in 1 minute that is still a 12 minute wait, and I doubt everyone will finish that fast.

some will finish it faster, and some will lose before those 2 minutes are up… and if they manage to hold out for two minutes, then they lose… which isn’t something they’re going to repeat often.
Also while you wait there is a bunch of content below you. Not everyone is going there for the 1v1 gauntlet.

About Queen Gauntlet and its Time

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According to the devs you will need to wait 25 minutes in order to get a chance at a 2 minute fight.

Good luck.

Could you please list your source? Being a person who has been highly involved in that content, I’ve never experienced, seen, or heard of a 25 minute wait time from any of our testing.

What disaster will befall QJ?

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man I love threads like these… so many +1…..

Queen's gauntlet

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Ugh. No dodge. What am I supposed to do with a necro, who doesn’t have any invulnerability/stealth/evades/blocks ?

All necro CC’s are pretty much useless because of Defiant and Unshakeable as well, so we have no way to protect against pretty much anything.

Gambits are optional. There are different gambits, so pick one you can handle.

More than every profession, I would like to know if players geared for all roles (support and control included) would be able to complete it or only DPS guys or super tanks will be able to finish.

If your character is geared and built for supporting others, and you are doing solo content, it’s going to be rough. That being said, having a well balanced character is pretty important; not just for Queen’s Gauntlet but in general. I keep the gear to swap playstyles on my character, and generally a respec is pretty cheap and easy even at 80.

why dont we have a group option for guantlet?

We wanted to build some solo challenge content. There’s plenty of stuff in our game for groups to do if they want challenging content.

(edited by Robert Hrouda.1327)

The new armor and weapon skins

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We’re aware that people want new armor skins. I want new ones as well, and we’re working on things. Armor skins are much more time/resource consuming and difficult as opposed to weapons.

Yet, we have all these useless town clothes and kitten hats you keep cranking out.

Okay, I laughed really hard at that picture in your original post. Like really hard. I was wondering when I would see a picture of that.

There are certain pieces of gear that are easier tan others. Hats and gloves are generally easier than a full suit of matching gear, since a full suit requires it for 3 different weight classes (light, medium, heavy). Fun hats and one-off gloves don’t require near as much resources.

Crazed Karka Queen achievement BUG?

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no time limit on the achievement.

Crazed Karka Queen achievement BUG?

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Thank You for the response!!
any idea if we are going to have to kill her again to get it? some of us might not be able to because, the people who have gotten the achievement won’t do it again. Thus making it a lot harder to get all 4 camps cleaned out to make her spawn

I’m pretty sure a world boss with 2 guaranteed rares or exotics, plus a chest and a drop off a legendary mob will inspire people to do it. It is similar to a dragon event meta in that regard, but with more guaranteed drops due to it’s higher difficulty.

My hope would be that it is done by guilds, and that players can use the API info to time when the queen is up to go do it like they do the dragons now.

edit:
To answer your question though, yes you will have to kill the karka queen again once we resolve the problem.

Crazed Karka Queen achievement BUG?

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Yes, there is a bug with the achievement that we are working on fixing.

The new armor and weapon skins

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The armor/weapons sold by the merchants does not have a special skin. It is a stat combo only.

Are they only available temporary only during the event or permanent after the event ends?

They will be permanently available after the event ends. The karka queen world boss, Meta event, and economists are permanent content.

The armor/weapons sold by the merchants does not have a special skin. It is a stat combo only.

I hope you understand how increadibly disappointing that is for everyone. There was a lot of hype at the idea that there might actually be new skins after all this time, since we’ve gotten tons of new weapon skins but absolutely zero new armor skins and armor is what people really want.

We’re aware that people want new armor skins. I want new ones as well, and we’re working on things. Armor skins are much more time/resource consuming and difficult as opposed to weapons.

The new armor and weapon skins

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The armor/weapons sold by the merchants does not have a special skin. It is a stat combo only.

Contractually Obligated achievement

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did you stick around until you got the final reward for the place, after the scene?

Ranger vs Canach

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Hey folks,

I main a ranger and I’ve done this fight a few times… so here’s a few little tips and such that I’ve found worked for me and my pets.

Bring devourer or spider. Position yourself nearby but in a safe spot free of traps, and either swap or f3 your pet to your position. Try to keep near NULL so that your pet doesn’t get pulled due to NULL running off after a fleeing player while your pet chases him/it. I found ranged pets were good in this instance since it meant they weren’t running off triggering things nearly as often as my drake/wolf was.
I tried it once with a Moa for the heals, but eventually gave up on Adrien Beaky as I found my devourer Citizen Snips to be more useful for DPS in the burst moments.

Bring Search and Rescue. It is especially useful if your group is struggling at the last 25% and you need help picking someone up quickly. Pet swap next to the body of the person before using it if there are multiple people going down and you need some focus.

Canach Solo fight SUPER Buggy?

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are you matching the proper mine defuse skill to the appropriate mine? An icon over the mine should match the icon of the defuse skill.

Where's the risen?

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If risen made it all the way up to LA, I am sure they must have pass through southsun cove.

The karka scared them away.

Or the Reef Drakes massacred them.

Last Stand at Southsun: Feedback/Opinion

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Our next schedule is much more relaxed than this one is though, so I’m very eager to see what we can do with it.

So in other words “expect less from the next release”?

I don’t know how you get that from it. More time = more stuff. I expect more

Meta Event / Karka Queen - When does it arrive?

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Well I hope they were summarily smacked upside the head.

Success and failure happens as a team, and no individual is purely responsible in these moments. It’s as much a failure of the patch notes is it is of mine not to have read the patch notes as closely as I should have.
It’s not my job to write the notes or to market the material, but it is my job to ensure what they are about to say is factually correct and accurate. I and my team failed to do that, so we share just as much responsibility as they do.
Lessons were indeed learned from the experience, and we’re changing a few procedures around to try and ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.

Last Stand at Southsun: Feedback/Opinion

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given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

Hm, all you’re currently releasing is living world content as far as I’m aware of, and most of it doesn’t seem to require a lot of work except the Molten Weapons Facility. How can he not have had enough time to work on this, and why did he have to do it alone? Makes you wonder how many designers there are to begin with.

There are multiple living world teams, each with assets from all departments. The initial scope for Canach’s instance was as it is now – we had a shorter time table to build things, so we just wanted to plan for a story boss fight (easier) and a multiplayer boss fight (harder). The designer accomplished what we planned to do with it, but we never really considered it a dungeon – that was just a bit of a marketing mistake that set unrealistic expectations as a result of calling it a dungeon on the heels of MF.
He did it alone (or as alone as we all develop things as a team) because it was only a couple bosses in a small area – he didn’t and shouldn’t have needed any assistance with it, and it was finished within the scope of our initial plan.
I can’t give estimates on how long our team was developing this content, but it was an accelerated dev cycle for our team. Thankfully due to the schedule of our release, our team was staffed with some of the fastest iterative folks from the company to get something good out in a short time.
Our next schedule is much more relaxed than this one is though, so I’m very eager to see what we can do with it.

Last Stand at Southsun: Feedback/Opinion

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Yeah, I was a bit perplexed on why it was called a dungeon as well. Coming from the dungeon team previously, it really felt more like a boss instance, but I don’t write the patch notes or do the marketing.
I didn’t build the Canach encounters, but I did enjoy them. It’s a neat variation that changes gameplay, and I liked the mechanics. Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

Meta Event / Karka Queen - When does it arrive?

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We’re having a small issue with our patch notes we are attempting to resolve currently. The Meta Event is not yet active on the island.

That makes no sense. How exactly do you have technical “issues” with a text file?

Not technical at all. The person responsible for writing the patch notes shouldn’t have released the information about the meta event or karka queen in such a way that made it sound like it was immediately available.

Settlers and Consortium Achievements

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we’re aware of it and working on a fix. Thanks for reporting it.

Daily Reward for Canachs Lair

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Players were exploiting it by deleting and remaking characters, so we made it based on your entire account.

Edit:
Due to the reward being so high, and the upscaling for the living world, this was seen as being bad.

(edited by Robert Hrouda.1327)

Issues with Consortium Harvesting Sickle

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thanks for reporting this. I’ll be sure to forward this along.

Last Stand at Southsun: Feedback/Opinion

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hey folks,

our patch notes jumped the gun a bit. Canach instance is NOT the ending of the living story. That will come next week. Stay tuned!

No reward

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I’m one of the people that happened to be on right when the event went live too, and didn’t get anything as well. Very sad. Oh well.

Plans are already in the works to make sure people who didn’t get the rewards get it. Just hold steady

No reward

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The dungeon was accidentally available before the patch, so the rewards that were being hooked up in the patch were not given to those who did it before the patch. Since we only intended for those rewards to be given once, that means players who did the event once cannot get the rewards again, even if they didn’t already get the rewards the first time during the gap before the patch.

We’re working on a solution to the problem though.

Meta Event / Karka Queen - When does it arrive?

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Yes. The Meta event and Karka Queen world boss will be a permanent event added to Southsun, and it’s drop will be permanent as well.

One of the core problems of the island was the lack of events. I’;d hoped to solve that by adding an island wide Meta event and a world boss.
However it is NOT out until next week. We’re actively working on modifying our patch notes.

Meta Event / Karka Queen - When does it arrive?

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Hey folks,

We’re having a small issue with our patch notes we are attempting to resolve currently. The Meta Event is not yet active on the island.

SAB vs. crab

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one of them was developed in a few hours by one person, and the other was developed by a team for a few months. Comparing the two really isn’t fair.

That being said, Crab Toss isn’t for everyone. Some people enjoy those things and some people don’t. The good thing is that you aren’t forced to play crab toss to get the rewards, so you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. I personally enjoy it, and get a bit of a kick out of grabbin’ crabs.
Different folks like different things, and that’s okay. We’re trying to build content for everyone, so everyone can be excited about something with our release.

Good feedback would be telling us about the things you didn’t like about it, and the things you did like about it. A nebulous statement of “It sucks” isn’t constructive. If you want to actually see change, you need to give clear feedback so we as developers can talk with each other about things we could change for next time. Whether its an activity, a dungeon, a boss, etc, giving us feedback about why something didn’t sit well with you is far more valuable than just telling us something didn’t sit well with you.

Crate drop rate nerfed?

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Nope. Haven’t done anything to the drop rate.

Will Southsun end in a Group Dungeon?

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Is this instance temporary? (Like Molten Facility)

yup.Temporary until the end of the Southsun story arc.

Southsun Omelette Gourmand Acheivement

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I said this in another thread, but I’ll just say it again here…

The achievement should stick around, so when you reach level 75 you should be able to munch on it and get the achievement point. I don’t foresee Owain giving up on making omelettes.

I’m currently still working on my ability to see the future, but know that if other devs intend to change those things and break the achievement, I will fight tooth and nail for it to not be touched.

Will Southsun end in a Group Dungeon?

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It won’t end in a dungeon. We have however included an instance that will open up that has a single player version, and a more difficult multiplayer version.

The ending is different

Backpiece clipping

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I think it’s the case that there will always be clipping in one way or another When we pull it far enough off the back for it not to clip on heavy armors, people in light/medium armor have a large gap between their back and the item. We try to find the happy medium where we can appease as many as we can, but it’s not going to be perfect for everyone.
That being said, we are looking into these issues and trying to develop better systems for the back-slot items that will result in less clipping and less gaps. Certain armors will always be problematic, but we’re always looking into solutions for things like these

Omelette Achievememnt

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I don’t know if we plan on changing the level of the omelette, but I do think that the achievement will stick around, so as soon as you do reach that level and munch on Owain’s omelette, you should be able to get it.
I can’t guarantee that Owain will always be selling omelettes in the future, but she does seem quite passionate about it, so I imagine they’ll be available for a while.

Excuse me! Do you have a moment?

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They should make some NPCs that follow you and spam “Spare some change?”

“I need about tree-fiddy…”

No High Dive?

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There’s a high dive in the karka Hive…
:3

Consortium Whip

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Hey folks,

Thanks for liking the whip I created (well, as much as a single designer creates anything that is). Currently the whip is not an item players can use. Thieves can steal a tentacle whip off of some creatures, but I don’t think it is something players can use.

I’ll try to keep in mind that there is interest in that weapon, and see if there’s not people I can talk to about adding more permanent solutions.

Crab Toss: Forcing PvP for a reward is wrong IMO! [Merged]

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We made sure to allow enough achievements so that if folks who didn’t want to do PvP or jump puzzles would still be able to get the full meta achievement completed, and get the backslot items (we did that for the sample collection as well, only requiring 10 of the 11 samples to complete the achievement since one of them is more difficult to get to than others)
Everyone likes different things, so we try to make a little something for everyone. Its okay not to like something, just don’t do it. There’s still plenty of stuff on the island to do, and more to come in the weeks ahead.

(edited by Robert Hrouda.1327)

Excuse me! Do you have a moment?

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we’re aware of it and working on a solution.

New Backpiece is from your nightmares

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Ah crap well I’m never going to get 25/25 achievements:(

Just keep at it, I’m sure you can. There are more than 25 total achievements, so you have options on what you plan on doing. Every achievement counts towards it, so go do a few of them and you’ll be there before you know it.

Will players be up-leveled for Southsun?

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yeah, you’ll get scaled up to level 80 for the duration of the story.

Monthly SLOW Phases like F&F was?

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Not to sound too negative (or disrespectful), but all I get from that last sentence is that there might be some NPC changes and possibly monster changes/spawns. We know the crab tossing game is going to be temporary, which means probably any other stuff like it (such as the end dungeon of F&F) will also be temporary. I’m still really disappointed by how F&F was handled, so much so that I can’t really even look forward to any new content, since nothing (worthwhile, at least to me) seems to be permanent.
Anyways, thanks for giving us an/the answer Mr. Hrouda.

Nah, it’s cool. No disrespect for stating your opinion about things. I don’t want to spoil things, but I have been working near exclusively on the content that is going to be a more permanent fixture of the island. It is significantly more than NPCs and some spawns. When a precedent has been established, it’s okay to be skeptical/doubtful, and it’s okay to voice those things. I do hope you’ll enjoy the permanent content I’ve been working on, and it changes your opinion

Monthly SLOW Phases like F&F was?

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I’d rather be beating 1,000 polar-bears with the same piece of wood rather than using it to build even one sign.

For some reason I want to see this as a minigame.

Whack-a-bear!

Based on a living story

The Norns won’t appreciate this.

I’ll just leave this here…
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bear_Club_for_Men

Monthly SLOW Phases like F&F was?

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Hey folks,

The Southsun Shore stuff will not be like the previous Flame and Frost stuff in regards to how time-spanning it was. We’re a separate team than that one, and we have been working on this content while you all were playing F&F content.
Our story will last a month and then be over with, and as a result is more condensed. We’ve been listening to the feedback on F&F, and tried our hardest to adjust where possible. So our temporary content will last just the month, but we are making some permanent changes to the island that will persist after the living story bit is over.

New armour?

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no new armor models in the southsun shore story stuff.

Although looking like a crab would be pretty sweet.