Guild Wars 2

I’m not going to name servers or individuals here because I don’t want to diminish their luck and accomplishment.

I have noticed a very disturbing issue with Tequatl that I think many of us already saw coming: People simply do not want to do him again after beating him.

A recent server success hit me square in the face on this one. In an effort to organize many of the same folks who participated to do the encounter again I was confronted with apathy, disappointment and frustration.

As it turns out, a great deal of people simply do not want to repeat their victory over Tequatl. Granted, some individuals do; however, it seems the majority (and in a specific case I’m thinking of, the leaders and commanders who organized and lead the success of the event) simply do not want to go through all that hassle again for what, I feel, the absolute majority of people agree: The rewards are 100% not in line with the required effort to complete the encounter.

The attitude I was confronted with was disheartening and showed the true colors of “Tequatl The Funless”. The fight may be the single most interesting experience Anet has put in the game, but the overflows, guesting issues, afk/troll people, general apathy and complete lack of reward have made the fight simply a “I’ll do it once for the achievements then I’m done… I beat it and can do better elsewhere.”

This breaks the encounter for every other person who wants to complete achievements and wants to engage in one of the most interesting battles in the games history. Simply because Anet did not adequately plan nor establish server capability to handle the fight (i.e., they did not first find a solution to overflows, coordination and, frankly, the ‘people’ factor).

Without the help of individuals who have already beaten it and know what to do involved as well as the capability for them to get access to the main server to participate (replacing mentally challenged people who just lay there dead and do not WP or who afk/troll turrets) it makes it much less possible for people just now entering the encounter to have a chance to beat it. Essentially, as time goes by your chances of beating the encounter become less and less. This is a severely broken game mechanic.

I want to be very clear here: I do not want Tequatl nerfed.

GW2 needs battles with this complexity and scale. But, to do them there needs to be rewards to match (so people return to the fight) and the means to build the crowd necessary to beat it (eliminate afk/trolls and force dead people to WP).

A solution to afk could be as simple as a system in the zone during the event that works similar to Sanctum Sprint where you are booted if you stand still for even a few seconds. The solution to dead people not using the WP is even simpler… You die and you are automagically ported to the quaggan WP so you can swim back alive. If you do not re-enter the event zone, the afk timer kicks in and you are booted so someone who is paying attention can replace you. Simple enough.

Speaking to the overflow situation, Anet needs to figure out their performance issues (maybe take a look at using the GPU instead of one core on the CPU for everything?") and increase the amount of people who can populate the main server significantly. The preference for natives coming in versus guests is already in place (though, if a guest has a ‘friend’ they can still join through their party but that seems reasonable as playing with friends is kind of the point).

I would like to urge all of those who have beaten this encounter to not stop doing it regularly and to instead do it as much as possible (at least once per day) to continue to help others get through it. It is not an ‘elite’ fight. It is actually a pretty darn easy one. The only difficult part are things out of most players control. If people continue to get frustrated and angry about how this is working out, there will be no one left interested if more encounters come about like this. There will be a great deal of exodus to newer games on the horizon preventing such things from even being doable at this level again. We have to continue to help each other every day. Kudos to those who have been.

Good luck.

Sorry for the extreme topic title, but it’s becoming more and more evident.

At first, I was too lazy to write this post but after reading comments by a karma food seller in a karma thread I realized just how far insider trading is beginning to go.

This individual had commented on how he knew exactly what the demand for karma food was (as he made it frequently for profit) and how much sold, then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he sold multiples of what he usually does and saw a huge demand spike on the TP. Low and behold, two days later the ‘accidental’ removal of karma boosting happens (mid-August).

My personal story is much more severe…

I was one of the few people who still made The Crossing. I made them very regularly and had become quite familiar with how they fluctuated in price and how frequently they sold. Then, a couple days before this last major patch where they suddenly could not be made anymore (and we had no public warning of) one of my older listings at a much higher price sold… I found this strange as literally THREE MINUTES before there had been seven others listed lower than mine. The Crossing DOES NOT SELL THIS FAST… ever. It is expensive and a true specialty item.

After the patch it became immediately clear to me why this happened. Someone had gotten inside information that it would a) no longer be craftable b) would be blessed with the ability to pick which stats you want on it and, the big one, c) it would not become account bound in the same way other MF stat items would. In other words, you could sell The Crossing on the TP with the ability for people to pick whatever stats they want and with ZERO new supply because it can not be made anymore!!

I guess there’s no question why someone bought up nearly a dozen of them to have an exclusive supply monopoly on them where they could charge practically any price.

Did I mention that I had stumbled into a /say convo in a hidden jumping puzzle where someone mentioned the crossing not being able to be made anymore in the next patch shortly after the TP incident? How did these people get this information!?

I feel this is coming from testing and some people who have been given privileged access to content prior to public patch notes or comments. Many of them play regularly, are in guilds, and have many friends on servers. They can talk to their friends on Mumble where Anet has no clue they may have tipped them off. They may not be in the same guild or anything so tracking the source is even more difficult.

This is a major problem. The affects can be seen in legendary issues, specialty item issues and all other aspects of the market as certain players with access to this information are becoming more and more bold with how they use it to benefit (or give to their friends to benefit).

Please Anet, get your house in order and stop the proliferation of this information. Since you can’t control it, you need to make it public immediately before it hits test servers or preview servers. You must communicate these changes before these people have an opportunity to poison the well. Unfortunately, it is the only solution.