Guild Wars 2

Tbqh i would indeed love to see mini’s that are also pets for the rangers, and personally i would love to see the birds as mini’s … it be quite nice to have a flock of birds around … i wouldn’t even scale these ‘mini’ birds down, as there isn’t realy a need for it…

For the other pets i think this would work well also, as i already saw somebody with a bear and a bear mini. It looked quiet awsome seeing this guy run around with a bear family ^^

I think it’s easiest if you would have reported the thread OP and requested for closing it as the thread starter… with it gone though :/ … then again if nobody else bumbs this thread it will sink to the bottom of the forum realy fast … if it doesn’t get noticed by some moderator first and closed

I can somewhat agree with this on one hand, as it is not uncommen for PvE players to fully stay away from any PvP, and as such it is somewhat weird that there is a PvP requirement for a ‘PvE’ achievement. It might have been better if it were to say: ‘Kill 5 people in PvP or do 5 dungeons’. Where it fills up the bar with either…

Still though, WvW isn’t to bad, and sometimes people need to be forcefully introduced to something to realize it’s actually great fun… Esp. if one has pre-cognitions about a certain aspect of something. And seeing how WvW is set-up with total anonimity one could well see it as PvE against human controlled NPCs …

But in all i agree with the OP (though i would have formulated the request somewhat different), it is weird that there is a PvP requirement … or rather, it is weird that this achievement doesn’t have an optional PvP component in there… So i would be all for changing the requirement to:

Kill 5 people in WvW or Finish 5 dungeons

I would like to see a boss restrained/defeated by other things than fighting. For example, lighting fires to make a room to bright; or placing magical artifacts on certain locations; or restoring statues or building w/e …. the locations would be guarded by minions and the boss, though the boss’s attention could be drawn by agro’ing him/her/it… This would mean that a few people would have to keep the boss busy, while others deal with the minions, while one of them fixes/lights/places the object. Something similar could work with portals for minions, the boss wouldn’t open new ones, but for as long as a portal excists minions enter though it… I guess guarding an NPC to perform some ritual can’t harm, if only for one or two locations…

‘Problem’ mainly is that, for as far as i read, all the bosses have just one mode: hit them forever untill their bulky HP is reduced to 0…

While i agree with most of this analysis, and i haven’t played all professions upto a high level (yet). I do have some notes…

The first would be about the Elementalist, they have 2 elementals that function both as a meatshield and DPS source? I don’t see you mentioning them as part of elemental gameplay, while they perform the same feature as a pet does for the ranger…

The other is about the general idea about this analysis, why should all classes be equal? In this sense i am mostly looking at the engineer, i have been playing one and yes it is a fairly hard profession to play, esp. to solo with. Still though, i rather like the challenge it brings with it, see my main is a ranger and while it has it’s annoyances (mainly with pets) it’s a great profession for both solo and group play, it also seems fairly well equiped to fight in all ranges. I would go as far as calling it a ‘bread & butter’-profession… Sometimes though i feel the need to throw a bit more at myself, work a lil harder and be a bit more on my toes.

The engineer gives me this challenge, so in all i am not annoyed by it, in fact the experiences with the engineer increase my skills for other professions as well. So while i understand and agree with your conclusion, i do not agree with this analysis having to lead to making every profession a ‘bread & butter’-profession. Some professions are just harder to play than others, and why is that wrong?

I entirely forgot about this, but it may well be possible that you can find what you need in the player-manual that passed by in the ‘news-section’ not to long ago. From what i understand its an online manual that gives information about how to play. Now clue what kind of information is in there, but it might be worth to just check it out

obviously the wiki is also a good source for info, but you sort of already need to know the topic on which you want to enlighten yourself more. So combining it with the manual might give you even more info. And both can be done at any moment in time, on a smartphone or tablet aswell…

It’s way easier to add a ‘Major book’ for 1000g by the time we get to everybody being a commander. Giving off a yellow star on the map… etc and so on… I think the commander feature will actually be more usefull when more people have reached lvl80 and played through their PvE story.

Atleast i know that most my time is going to that atm. (lvling and enjoying pve), and that WvW is reserved for when i get to lvl80 and am looking for new challenges. Assuming there are more players like myself, the commander will proof it’s worth as more people join WvW, and those that have the experience can lead those (then still newbs) into battle…

I do agree on the Guild Option though! It soulds like a guild should deffo be able to unlock such a feature for the group leader of their guild. Meaning that any group leader in the guild becomes a Commander for that group once that group enters WvW, given that the Commander function is unlocked through the guildworkshop…

I personally like the system a whole lot, see, in all honesty there is no leveling in any world. A bear is a bear is a bear, no matter where… and there is no way in pretty much any world where you can mysteriously get more blood (aka more HP). So arguably leveling is just some silly concept that is likely originally used to give people access to more skills. There isn’t so much a lvl that makes you strong, no, the level indicates that you have a certain skillset. (if you check most traditional (judo, karate,etc) fighting sports that actually work on a belt-color-level system, it’s not your strength or height or age that determains your belt-lvl. It is the skillset you posses, and proven to have during an exam.

Now in GW2 (and partially in GW1 aswell, though there we just had a very low top-lvl, and the strength wasn’t even in the level, it was in the attribute points) we essentially see the same thing, even though you progressed in lvl, in regards to the skills you have and the tricks you know, you don’t all of a sudden become stronger against some arbitrairy bear, that is going to be a bear no matter where, and only has this arbitrairy level, because it still has to fight you at any level…

Also, your scaledown level is actually the top level for the zone you fight in, so you should never be to weak, and given you are lvl80 now (but this goes for almost all zones 1-30) you also have way more skills and tricks to fight with, that should give you a clear advantage when comparing your first experience going through it, and the moments you revisit this same location at a much higher level. And you still get some sort of fun out of it, in regards to it being some challenge…

Then again, you may have been a kid that liked pulling the limbs of spiders, the wings of flies, and stamp on ant, and found a way to keep continuing that feeling in MMOs. In that case, there are more MMO’s in excistance that run on this kind of system than you can likely play in a day…

As far as sticking to GW2, well i would advice you (if you don’t like scaling back) to just make a new character, pick a different race a different (or even the same) profession, pick a different order. And have a whole new story line to work through, you be seeing low level areas from the race’s own perspective (instead of visiting there, likely scaled back), and enjoy the game for what you enjoy in it…

@Lord-Jaguar, F4-RM is described not to just offer questions, but a whole list of possible tests which can all be designed with hard to program responses from a computer. And even in multiple choice questions using a random location (a, b, c, d) for the right answer will make it considderably harder to accomplish for a computer, as it will have to actually identify the location of the answer to then click in the right location, as opposed to (this answer is known, it’s in ‘this’ location, click there), but even that can be hard as the computer would still have to identify which question is being asked…

Also, F4-RM specifically comes with the instructions to add & replenish tests, to combat the ‘the sollutions are known’ issue that can arrise from these kinds of test. Still though, nothing is preventing Anet to actually add a couple of Captcha’s as a ‘test’, i personally dislike them, as they can be harder to solve for a human than a computer. Especially if one considders the ever increasing (commercial) efforts to make ‘scan to text’ software, and ofcourse the use of these captchas in all sorts of forums, and thus the ever continued battle of hackers to bypass them.

WvW is a “Capture the Keep” PvP system where being a true lvl80 gives direct benefits. Being level 80 in PvP while not power wise, but surely experience wise, atleast gives you some edge when starting out vs. somebody that is still lvl1 and never played. All the lvl75-80 locations are (well not truely lvl80) restricted to lvl73-80 characters.

So i clearly don’t agree, and i also doubt you played all the events throughout all the area’s already. You may have done all the hearts and vistas, while running the skillpoints, but it is very unlikely you done 1500+ events in the game. Actually by running to lvl80 as fast you could, you skipped by all sorts of great content, that now feels like it’s missing. So please, just start back at some lower lvl area and slowly work your way upto the higher lvl areas again, i am fairly sure you will run into events you haven’t done yet, NPC’s that provide some minor hint or content you missed.

And if anything, i think more of ‘this’ content should be developed, as designing strictly lvl80 content will just do one thing. It will make everybody run to lvl80 to do this trivial content, to then come here on the forums saying that the lvl80 content is way to limited in amount, and that more things need to be added to ‘end-game’ … aka, we wouldn’t have moved one step further than where we are now with this thread… Go out into the world and make your own story, there are still tons of events to do, and stories to live (or just make a new toon and take your time, pick another race/ profession/ order, and you have a whole new story to live through)

@Asglarek, well GM in the sense we used it here is more like ‘Game Manager’, the person(s) behind the curtains pulling the strings. In a case where botting is concerned (and real players in case of mix-ups) i think nothing can truely replace a human. As they can check for chatlogs, buy/sell logs etc to truely determain whether an account is running a bot. For the lack of a better word ‘GM’ is used (by both of us) to indicate an ArenaNet employee with the rights to ‘alter’ playeraccount status.

@Asglarek, I do not agree with this, and this idea is by far a way to ‘punish’ real players, it is to provide real players with a rampant Golem that is designed to determain whether an entity is truely a ‘living entity’ … that this Golem is catching Bots (or rather, provide the GM’s with extra ‘humanity-test’ data) is the extra benefit…

Where it tends to go wrong is when actual players get a way to police themselves, as they (not all but surely some) will use all the tools given to them to harrass/annoy others. Sometimes this is just a matter of personality, but it can also be part of some fute, some past experience and wanting to ‘settle the score’. You can already report players, so if you want to be that police officer, be my guest and report every bot you see. All tiny bits help. But a system where players can turn on some sort of PvP at the slightest hint of botting, that only leads to endless drama…

You can even fix this by pressing the right button and retyping the header in the normal non caps font

Disregarding the topic, but i would like to ask you to NOT use all caps in your topic header the next time… tnx for your understanding

I mainly think that you shouldn’t use all caps in your topic header!

That may be simple, but how boring it is at the same time… why solve something with another boring interface panel, when it can also be solved by creating an ingame equivilent.

Seeing this is a problem inherent with using midnight/midday indications for anything, and even more so for those living on a 24h clock (totally ignoring the confusing, past/after midday/midnight – and yes i know it’s Ante, but who the heck even uses that word in 2012!) …

I would like to suggest using the following time indication: 23:59 w/e date. As there is no mistake (but perhaps the timezone) about which day and what time the patch is being implemented. Using 11:59 PM would still be confusing all those living on a 24h clock, while 23:59h should be clear to all, it’s essentially midnight but i doubt people will be concerned about those 60sec.

I dislike anything put in the hands of others, esp. players. Also this is a rather lackluster non-inspiring sollution … I would suggest searching for F4-RM on the suggestion forum (or clicking this link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/F4-RM-the-anti-bot-Golem-combatting-bots-with-bots ) … and express your support for this feature, that essentially does the same thing, but doesn’t give controll to people (that could use this to report players in PvP, WvW or even just in the world – to force a captcha on them), and it also gives the opportunity to confront the ‘detected’ players with an enjoyable DE, instead of an immersion breaking Captcha pop-up.

Thank you for the respectfull way you adress this situation i wish more people would formulate their concerns in a similar fashion…

One of the ways this could be adressed, is to scale down all drops across the game a bit, to keep diminishing returns but reduce the slope a bit. Then compensate this by increasing the daily rewards, and adding in a weekly reward. To further compensate the still leveling players, making use of the Personal story instances could be a another way to specifically compensate players during the level-up phazes, these personal story steps can’t be repeated by lvl80 players and thus they could be a great source for specifically rewarding lower level players and specifically those on a less lengthy playsession.

Another way to compensate (mostly higher value drops) is to increase the chances they drop from ‘group event’ DE’s. These tend to be on a more lengthy recharge sequence, and these can not be ‘farmed’ by individuals. Because some of these events already reward people with a long list of items (sometimes in the absurde of 7 items or more), i would suggest reducing the amount of items, but increasing the chances on the items ‘to drop’ being of better quality.

A last measure, which is hard for me to judge, as i haven’t gotten there yet. Is to make the endgame areas 70-80 harder. So more time is needed to slay these monsters, and thus in essence, less items drop in a certain amount of time. It may be an idea to reduce the chances of high quality loot dropping from these critters aswell, but to introduce some Mystic Forge recipies that compensate this droprate by letting players combine their drops in the forge to create the desired items. Time spend in LA is time spend not farming, while the reward of getting the desired outcome (items to salvage for ecto’s f/e) is more then worth it. If Anet is smart about this, they will include 1 or 2 items in these recipies that can only be found in several lower/mid level areas, to stimulate these level 80 players to experience the intended ‘the whole game is endgame’-philosophy. Seeing various people will turn to the AH instead, it would give lower/midlevel players a good item to sell on the AH, and thus spread the wealth in another way…

In essence this would mean that less items would drop (or less valued) for all people, that harder group content is rewarded more (but these are also more timed), that leveling players are compensated to keep a balanced play-curve, and it would likely mean that if you get a good drop it is actually recognized as such. Shorter play session players, don’t get to far behind due to daily & weekly rewards. And long playsession players do not have to feel cheated out of their time, by being hit specifically by some artificial DR measure. Any lvl80 going for their legendary’s/armors will notice they have to work harder for their drops, and may notice a slight drop in returns from the current situation. BUT! By utilizing the Mystic Forge, they can still get their time’s worth of ecto’s.

Yes this would hit everybody in regards to worldly drops, but it hits everybody equally, and mostly it means that if you get a good drop you can feel extra rewarded for it.

I read this whole topic because i have only done one dungeon sofar (and it wasn’t at all to hard, nor to easy) … thus reading the whole topic would be the only way to understand the problem… I sort of got the problem, and to some extent a possible fix (in other games). But these are entirely overclassed by a feeling of uninspiring negativity, finger pointing and QQ-level critisism. If i would get this thread passed to me, as a dungeon designer, i would not feel inspired to actually do something, nor change something for the better. I would feel offended and likely misunderstood, i would reason that on a limited design budget, this was the best i could do, and yes with unlimited resources it may have been a lot better. But hey, thats not reality…

I have idle hope that somebody actually does some suggestions for all or various dungeons, in how they could be made more enjoyable more challenging etc. Because all i am reading now is just negative QQ’ing … it may have some valid points, but they are at all not comming across as inviting to do something about it …

There is a LFG browser window ?!?

@Nevarato, that seems to be a nice work around in regards to limiting the amount of people that can enter the specific/general waiting areas, i like it

As a supporter of mounts i have followed this discussion since GW1. During the development stages of GW2 I have worked out various mount systems as suggestions on guru. And at the first signs of the GW2-beta i have suggested atleast ‘testing’ mounts for GW2 on the wiki.

From all the discussions i can only conclude one thing, the people against mounts have yet to come up with an argument that isn’t easily refuted or worked around in the actual mount system. I could put a whole list here, but i don’t feel like doing so atm. If people won’t take my word for it, then i will supply the list at some other point in time…

I don’t realy care how mounts are added to the game at this point in time, it seems that even amoungst those that favor mounts there is a large devide in how these mounts should be added. So in the end i think it should be upto ArenaNet and how they would like to implement mounts… I mainly just want to own and ride a Dolyak !

I’m entirely for this, tbqh. i explained the dungeon system to work pretty much like this based upon expectations and general setup of the game. I was rather surprized to find out that it doesn’t work like this…

Though if i were to suggest a way to set it up, i would (instead of a waiting instance for a particular dungeon) advocate going the ‘GW-Nightfall Sanctuary’-way … which would be one big central waiting area, from which all dungeons could be entered. This would reduce the need to hop all around the world LFG if all you want to do is ‘A’ dungeon. One could just go to this ‘central dungeon chamber/cave’ and, find a team that needs somebody, then run the dungeon. As the gaming population settles down, and data about dungeon runners becomes more stable, this central area can then also be used to facilitate running dungeons with people from other servers, aka. it be a true ‘central’ area.

This chamber/cave could have a mixture of tunnels (with zone-portals at the end), Asura Gates and tunnels with Asura gates at the end. You would enter this central place through every dungeon gate in the world, at the end of the dungeon you would get the option to exit to this central place or into the world.

This central dungeon chamber/cave should atleast have a vendor and an armor repair. So that people can ‘hop out’ to sell or repair their armor. I might not be a bad idea to have crafting stations there, so people have access to their banks and can do some crafting while they wait for a team. A couple of jumping challenges (of sorts) might keep people somewhat busy as well…

ps. a mixture of both could be an idea as well. In a sense that there is a small waiting area for each dungeon, that links to a central cave/chamber, and from this central cave/chamber all other dungeon waiting area’s can be reached. This would give more options in regards to creating a waiting area designed in the style of the dungeon to be played (instead of merely designing the tunnels/entrance). It would make it more clear who’s waiting for which dungeon, and people from several servers waiting for a specific dungeon can more easily be put together…

I personally went with a Gailic and Norlandic combination, and i linked my name to my profession and trees. Mainly the Yew, as it’s the tree to make bows/axes from, during my search (internet) on translating Yew to Gailic or Norlandic i came across a Norlandic ‘god’ of archery that happened to have his hall in a Yew-garden/forrest. The name of that place sounded rather cool. With some minor changes to get a nice ring to the name: Idho Ydhalis … Yew ‘of the’ Yewgarden (or as an indirect translation: Yew from the branch of rangers/yews) …

In general i think Irish, Gailic, Norlandic names look realy cool, but do watch out that you don’t end up with a name that would better suit a Norn. I think plant related names are rather cool aswell, and seeing that plants have a whole bunch of names (species, family, kind, etc) it’s not to hard to find one that signifies the plant you have in mind. Also, these names tend to be greek or latin, and as such they also give this ‘foreign’ look to them, while ‘insiders’ can realy marvel at the name you picked. Esp. if you make sure your sylvari design complements the name. During a BWE for example, i made a sylvari-cactus-thief, and i named her after the ‘morning-dew’ meat eating ‘cactus’. Sorry for not remembering the exact name :P

So while not a true ‘convention’ those would be the things i would look at for my sylvari names. Kind of ‘plant/tree/shroom’ in latin/greek, perhaps a name linked to profession profession, names in Irish, Gailic, Norlandic <- possible translations from ‘already taken’ english names.

Also don’t forget that your character may have been ‘given’ a last name due to comming into contact with other races. A human asking your character for a name, and you answering ‘thorn’, may well reply ‘thorn how?’, what you mean ‘thorn how?’, well usually sentient living being also have a last name, a family name. Hmm but all sylvari are my family. “well who are your mother and father?”, i was born from the Pale tree… “Well then Thorn of the Paletree” … or “You look as beautiful as a colorful rose” … ‘thorn rosepettle’ … another way of going about this could be "Thorn of the Thiefbranch’, or ‘of the branch’, ‘somethingbud’, ‘something seed’ etc…

@Kal, the problem with just detection is that you can’t validate a ‘find’ easily, this is where F4-RM would come in. F4-RM is not there to accuse anyone, it’s just there to check if ‘you’ are a living entity, by providing a small puzzle for you to solve.

If you read the OP correctly this F4-RM bot would essentially be a random Dynamic Event, that should indeed ‘bother’ everybody every once a while. But behind the scenes it should hunt for Botters.

With F4-RM a more certain flag can be raised, and a GM doesn’t have to take action on every person that happens to get flagged. Instead F4-RM takes care of that portion, and the GM can deal with those characters that F4-RM determained to fail the ‘living entity’ test multiple times. This will mean the GM’s can spend their time on actual bots, instead of chasing every account behind the scenes. Which in turn means that it’s more likely that something is done about the actual bots.

Tonics are also a staple at player organized events, and while dungeon running does give sharable tonics, i don’t see why the other tonics shouldn’t be sharable/sellable …

I support his suggestion, seems like a good way to make minion masters more diverse and give each a way to be the MM they thing they are.

Another option i would like to add is certain events where an attack wave is linked to morale (be it the morale of the attackers or the defenders). It would realy help if this morale would deplete based upon a timer (even if it is set on a long one), besides it dealing with just the waves. examples of these kind of events:

- Defend X from waves of Y: 6/8 waves
- Attacker Y morale [ =====——]

- Defend X from waves of Y: 6/8 waves
- Defending X morale [ ====——]

Now if something goes wrong with any of these waves, the timer would deplete the morale of either, and the event would either fail or succeed, but atleast it would move on to the next event…

I fullheartedly agree with this, the soul/account bound things are way to strict atm. In a sense i am glad they made it strict to begin with (actually making things more strict usually ends up in a rage), but i think that ‘now’ would be a good time to evaluate all these restrictions and re-evaluate which may not make that much sense in regards to player behavior.

I would like to see them go a step further though. I would also like them to evaluate which items may be suited to open up for trade & mailing, from the various character&account bound items. I am mostly shocked by the amount of small ‘fun’ items that are bound. See, as somebody that organized ingame events in GW1 i have been looking for somewhat easy to aquire but fun to hand out items, that could either make good prices or just good ‘things’ to hand out during events and games.

There seem to hardly be any of those, which makes me fear that community driven events could take a bit of hit, instead of becomming a hit! Tonics, firework, boosters, black-lion-keys/boxes, etc. The would be awesome things to give away during event games! … and i don’t get it either, i mean, sure opening them up would mean that players could buy these things for copper instead of going through the gemshop to get them. But then, you can buy gems for copper, so in essence you can already buy these things for copper! The only difference is the location where they are bought (gemshop or auctionhouse). There seems not to be any logic behind this…

So YES, please re-evaluate the bound status off all currently bound items, and loosen the restrictions where the reasons don’t make sense in hindsight, or where the restrictions limit the player’s convience in utilizing their account.

@ReinoudM, don’t worry, i am all for quivers !

@SHM , no in that quote i was saying that Anet should communicate about these measures and explain them. In my post as a whole though i advocated to try and offer constructive critisism more than just saying ‘this and this’ is not like an adorable kitten… I am not pointing fingers with that, as everybody themselves probably knows whether they used a nice way or a negative way to adress certain issues…

While i support this as a gem option in regards to body changes, I do think that several services in regards to minute character changes should be available for a copper charge… These services could also liven up cities

- Barber: change hair style/color and beards
- Tatoo-shop: change norn tatoos (possibly add them to other races as well?)
- Beauty parlor: change make-up
- Ear-atron: stretches or trims ears on Asura
- Sap-replacement-‘plants’: change the color of luminescence on Sylvari.
- Horn-sculpturers: changing horns on Charr.
- Etc.

Various of these services could be extended by offering ‘packs’ in the gemshop. In the form of, hair styles, beard styles, tatoos, make-up styles, ear-decorations, Horn-adormenets. Luminecent paterns?

Like many things in a game i think there was a certain ‘budget’ available for developing the crafting system. I think this meant that they figured out a crafting system that was somewhat like recognizable crafting systems from other games, and added a bit of flavor (discovery & XP system) to it, and then left it at that seeing the budget was spend and the system largely worked…

For crafting enthusiast though, well, I can’t say i am too impressed … the discovery is realy nice, but in essence it’s still the boring linear (grind) tree. And without a doubt the actual crafting interface quickly turns into a mess. It’s linearity is also largely disappointing, no interesting mixing of materials (low level + high level), although some ‘upgrading’ of low level materials (mainly in jewelcrafting) has been a nice thought.

The main problem i have sofar with the crafting system though, is that there is NO choice for design. With that i mean that all the armor made by crafting is of design X, and if that is not your style, well, tough luck… (atleast for the levels of which i have unlocked the items this seems to be the case) … this is somewhat dissappointing, as i given 2 different ways to accomplish diversity in crafting, that would both work with the system that is in place now:

1. The use of tools in the actual crafting system, the tools would represent a certain design. One would make the components, add them to the crafting window, pick a tool, and the end result would be Design X,Y,Z based upon tool X,Y,Z..
(or)
2. Use the components themselves to represent different entities of the armor, the outside component could determain the design (and some stats), while the inside component would determain the level requirement (and some stats).

Both these systems could have given the crafters ways to craft diffent looking armor, for all levels (and thus these would be unlocked during gameplay, tools by finding them in the world, the other just naturaly by crafting and discovery)…

Another thing that i find realy annoying, and possibly the biggest let down for myself, is the use of the recipe list. I personally want to interact with the various resources and components every time. Basically i want to have the discovery pane, and use it for my crafting as well. And i gave an actual visualisation of how the crafting system would look in such a system on this forum, during one of the BWE’s. It still let people craft from a list though, if they so choose

But, all in all i am glad there is crafting in GW2, seeing there wasn’t much of it in GW1 :P … and i have faith that as we all move forward the crafting system will change and improve

@Xetelian, was this player driven? aka could i force this captcha on you? because that be mighty annoying, and may well end up being used to troll people. Though in essence F4-RM would be somewhat of the same, only driven by behavior recognition software and it would offer a wide variety of mini-puzzles instead of a captcha.

@Houdini, i doubt that would happen to often, you would have to be mighty intoxicated all the time to fail simple tests. You would also have to act in a computer logic kind of way to trigger F4-RM to show up (which doesn’t sounds realistic along with the word ‘intoxicated’). Also, F4-RM would only flag an account, i am fairly sure that even if everything goes wrong, a human could distinguish between you behaving like a drunk idiot and a bot

@Actracts, hmm tricky, my curiosity would likely have me locked up there atleast once :P … and i don’t like to accuse people in public, it may only trigger people to behave in a different way, just because they saw an official looking server message telling everybody ‘you’ are a bot.

I have also realized by now, that F4-RM might not even have to ‘kick’ bots and players off after a failure to pass the test. As it may well turn out to be realy annoying for less fortunate people, it should just test an account after certain ‘behavior’ and F4-RM would perform a puzzle test, if the test itself fails, it should likely test again in a shorter period of time, and likely test a 3rd time. All this would do is ‘flag’ an account for further investigation. That would be the least intrusive and most immersion guarding behavior. It would just feel like a rouge random event for most, while still performing it’s bot-hunting tasks on the backend

EDIT I edited the OP to include some additional ideas that sprung up during discussion.

lol, well i would have to actually read the answers to know the answer, cuz right now i’m sort of drawing a blank :P …

Another good indication i just picked up, characters that keep playing on end without fixing broken gear. And thus keep on fighting endlessly without any clothing… This should be excluded in dungeons obviously, and possibly in some events as well (i know atleast one where i died so many times that i was as good as naked for quite some time ) … but any human would likely fix their armor after those events. Bots are ‘stupid’ though (for now) and likely won’t fix their armor…

Or go search for a thread that has ‘F4-RM’ in it, just use search you will likely find it in the suggestion forum and leave a comment on whether you like the suggestion

my highest atm is lvl45 (or so)

Kungkonung.6758:

This all boils down to ANet not knowing how to set up decent security measures, and thus we have thousands of hacked accounts and bots around – resulting in this.

This game has been going downhill ever since it was released. The fact that they don’t even bother to communicate their reasoning behind this to us is troubling to say the least.

No i doubt that is true, it all boils down to people being somewhat ‘dumb’ to not get a decent firewall/virusscanner/malware scanner on their computer and use it regulary. They rather spend money on other things, realy $60 a year gives your computer a very decent protection against all sorts of key-loggers and other hacking activities.

Also, having one email account and everything running the same password is another thing. There are still large files of emails-password combos cycling around that have been gathered when various breaches were made (some) year(s) ago. It may be hit and miss, but as long as people keep using the same email and the same password for everything, well… no matter how good your game-software is protected, you can’t protect against the right info being used. Heck the IP/Location logging that they use atleast gives some indication back to the user, but if your email is using the same password, well then it’s obvious you already gave permission to log on, and the email has been deleted…

===
In regards to communications about these issues, YES i fully agree with you! Seeing various of these things seem to be implemented fairly recently (or maybe they have always been there and people are just now running into them). It’s adament that some of them get explained, and that feedback is used to tweak these measures to a level where they still protect the player, but prohibit large account clearing actions, or guildbank robbery…

Problem may be that it seems (on numerous issues) the pitchforks have been picked up and the torches lit. And saying anything about it may only fuel the (maybe misplaced) rage by sounding petronising. Then again, saying nothing doesn’t make the issue go away … Communication is a two way street, and if i were to met somebody that started ranting about something they didn’t agree with, i too would largely ignore them and put my effort to those people that keep some cool and reason. I’m not pointing fingers nor am i accusing anyone, but it just strikes me when i read a lot of these threads. Even I am guilty of these things at times, gaming is emotion, and those that use the forum are usually heavily involved in the game, and post their opinions (emotions) because they care…

It may be better though to approach these things from a constructive point of view, and perhaps ask questions in regards to the why. Instead of throwing off a rant, and wondering why nobody is responding, i am sure that if I came ranting at your front door, about your garden, you too would just slam the door in my face… Not saying that that is what Anet is doing, but they are put in a catch 22 here…

Still though, communication is clarification and its the best thing to do, if one doesn’t take critisism seriously, or can’t explain ones reasons and perhaps have to accept to be wrong. Well then how can you grow… Nobody is always right, we are humans, we are like Asura, prone to failure and mistake…

I think i should adress some concerns here. While i obviously have no controll over how F4-RM would be implemented, i personally would NEVER have it BAN people. It should be an automated ‘test’ for finding out if an account may run a bot and flag this account for further inspections….

Second, F4-RM could easily be programmed to give accounts an ‘inspected’ status, that could run for a certain period of time (even randomized), so that actual humans are bothered less for certain activity.

Certain activities could be exhumed from testing, like standing still in towns, or while doing certain activities, like using bank or w/e. In this regards i don’t think F4-RM should ever turn up when you are in ‘combat’ state. Unless it came with a way to instantly scare off any foes to a safe distance. and release you from it’s ‘grip’ with a clear warning. So even if foes would be within close to near agro range (while not drawing agro while in it’s grip) so you can leave this status undisturbed..

What i hear about runescape doesn’t realy sound like this idea, it sounds like triggered foe spawns that take you on for a fight. I wouldn’t wan’t F4-RM to fight, it should give you a puzzle that is currently near impossible to solve by a computer and thus determain if you are in fact a living entity, and not some ‘bot’. That is also why i am against it banning people! It should run off the actual bot detection software that is likely already in the game (or use parts of the DR system to construct such software), but this kind of software can only ‘detect’ possible botting, and afterwards there is nothing that can realy be done but inspect rigorously. So what F4-RM does is it actively tests (with a puzzle) if the character is run by a human, or not, and if not (or no response) it should merely kick the player to character selection. Depending on when this account logs on again, it should test again. If no response is made, or faulty responses, F4-RM should flag this account for that rigorous inspection.

So what it does is add a test, and a minor action. It could remember the status of an account to limit bugging accounts for every action that is bot suspicious. Because if you farm undead for an hour on end every day, and it tests you 2 times, it’s more than likely you are you, the 3rd and 4th time.

At ‘i rather have a pro-active approach’, well this costs resources, and those are limited, i rather have them deal with accounts that are flagged by F4-RM than dealing with every account that may have some sort of possible botting behavior. Which likely are loads more… F4-RM is a pro-active approach, as it is just a test that any bot-fighting department would like to run, aka. determain if it is a bot or not… With that partially automated the amount of accounts to truely look into get reduced considderably, and with it the chance to eliminate bots increases aswell… (also read on to the next)

In regards to ‘well bots will get smarter’, true, but bots will get smarter anyways, every year there is the ‘chat-bot’ challenge, if you ever heard of it, it’s a challenge to make a chatbot that can’t be distinquished from a human. Every year these get better and better, so realy, ‘talking to a person’ by a GM may soon be totally rediculous. Next to that there are programs under way to construct ever smarter computer, so they will come no matter what you do. That doesn’t mean though ‘we’ should stop now and deal with the bots we can deal with now. And even if it would eventually spawn a bot that is truely clever in dealing with these puzzles, well true that would suck, but then again it would also be incredible awesome. Now these bots will come anyways, regardless of our actions now, atleast we could say we contributed to them being developed and marvel at the possibilities the software could give in all sorts of usefull aplications. You just can’t stop the future, but you can stop a good deal of market destroying bots in the game now, and possibly discourage them from comming back for quite some time…
======
Some other stuff I been thinking most of the day about some Lore for F4-RM and i came up with a nice background for him/her/it. F4-RM was originally designed and build to research steam creatures in lonar's pass, but like many of Asuran tech, it takes a couple of versions to get things right. F4-RM was obviously version 4, of a Golem that is supposed to diagnose if an entity is truely a ‘living entity’ … I am not entirely sure which Asura (names) would be available to fullfill this role, but the lore surely lends itself for a now rouge Golem, with build in site to site transport, questioning creatures to determain if they are ‘living entities’

Hmmm, 9h passed and nobody responded :o … i thought this to be one of my brightest ideas in years, expecting large amounts of players to agree with this better alternative for combatting bots than the DR-stick… tobad i can’t see +1 status on threads that may give a good indication if people realy like this, but have nothing to contribute to it … or not, and i overestimated the likeness of this idea by a large margin

@Illushia, well such a thing could be included in F4-RM, the thing is though, if it were just some ‘promt’ during gameplay it would annoy players (i know i get annoyed by these kinds of things, so i am sure others are too). Yet, packaging it into a random DE-puzzle Golem, that could introduce itself, it’s purpose, excuse itself for the mixup, even offer a small reward for the inconveniance. That be mighty funny, and stay within the parameters of immersion

@Mithran, lol, well yes true ‘rolleyes’ , that may be a slight side effect, but as long as things are simple for humans but hard for computers, and the puzzles are random every time, i am sure players can get one of them right… Heck, F4-RM may even be forgiving and offer a ‘try another puzzle’ given it’s clicked in those 30sec, or so… giving humans a bit more chance to come across a puzzle they ‘can’ solve. Perhaps 3 strikes for a gold/silver/bronze event reward?

Eochaidh, well see that is the whole thing, F4-RM can be programmed as such to intercept any Bot-like Behavior, it could even just ‘bother’ genuine players every now and then.

As long as F4-RM introduces himself properly, explains it’s purpose, and heck he may even give some reward. He won’t annoy players much.

Bots on the other hand, will less likely be able to deal with random puzzles of kinds that computers just can’t solve (yet). F/e a puzzle like the one offered by Oola’s lab, are truely impossible to solve by a computer, esp. if the answers get placed in random locations every time. Meaning that even with programming they are hard to solve. Having tons of these would make it near impossible to get bots passed such a test … see even though computers are programmed by using logic, computers themselves don’t understand it… but the more kinds of puzzles offered the more fun F4-RM will be!

And yes, creating an even more human like bot is a way to bypass F4-RM, but bots are only usefull when they are deployed for long periods of time. Relogging can be noticed by F4-RM and thus ‘playtime’ can be taken as whole. Including random appearance times and random survailance times can help a lot… F4-RM can be the way to outsmart the Botcreators in a direct fashion, also showing the community that something is being done about them, in the least obstructive way…

Botting should be combatted in another way … and i think the support for stopping botting is high amoungst the gaming community as a whole, so much so that i think they would tollerate a little annoyance to do so… If done this right this could turn into a random mini puzzle DE, that could even be enjoyable…

Thus I introduce the F4-RM Golem, project X101_Y45 by an Asuran Inventor of the school of synergetics (yours truely ). F4-RM was originally designed and build to research steam creatures in lonar's pass, but like many of Asuran tech, it takes a couple of versions to get things right. F4-RM was obviously version 4, of a Golem that is supposed to diagnose if an entity is truely a ‘living entity’ … I am not sure which Asura (names) would be available to fullfill this role in that area, but the lore surely lends itself for a now rouge Golem, with build-in site to site transport, questioning creatures to determain if they are ‘living entities’

This golem would be an actual ingame entity (instead of a pop-up captcha, and thus reduce the annoyance threshold, and preserve immersion), we all loved Dhuum when he showed up, so why not F4-RM. This golem can be programed to appear at any character that ’doesn’t move for 30min’, that has been playing non stop for 3h (or use the timeframe that Arbo-Code recommends for deskjobs, to take a short break, and on confirmation of a human have it recommend taking a break), on slaying foes of a certain type/or certain area on end (if this can be recognized), and any other types of game behavior that could be linked to botting…

F4-RM is programmed to ‘paralyze’/Turn to Stone? a character, after which it randomly picks a puzzle from a wide variety of puzzle options:
- simple math
- simple text
- simple logic
- simple drag/drop (real puzzle)
- simple slide puzzle
- etc… ?
And giving the user a limited amount of time to solve this puzzle, 30sec or so. The randomness of puzzle forms is obviously to try and ‘fool’ bots, seeing they are not to clever, the limited time is to give bots a limited time to solve what to do, and how to respond.

After the puzzle is solved the player is released from it’s grip and can game on. If the test is failed, farm should release the character aswell, but F4-RM should re-appear within a random short time period (0-15min) to present another puzzle… after a couple of these events, and constant failure, F4-RM should Flag the account for further inspection (possibly it could kick the account back to character sellection after these test, and retest after logging back on. As it’s still likely that a player gets booted for just being AFK, but unlikely that the player will go AFK multiple times after just having logged on again… a bot on the other hand will likely relog automatically after loosing connection.)

It is important to keep developing mini puzzles in all shapes, sizes and forms, and have this done by programmer & developers that truely understand what computers ‘can’ and ‘can NOT’ do easily. And replace, add, replenish the puzzles that F4-RM offers… Efforts should also be put into determaining good bot identification ‘actions’ that can be tracked, as to not bother players a whole lot. Logging that a character is controlled by a human on a couple of tests may also prevent F4-RM turning up endlessly due to certain player behavior…

F4-RM will likely solve a lot of botting issues, and may well present some random, yet unexpected game content for actual players. Meeting F4-RM can thus be kept to minimum annoyance… As long as F4-RM introduces himself properly, explains it’s purpose (and heck he may even give some reward, F4-RM could even give people a ‘Living Entity Badge’-trophy item, worth a couple of copper, for the inconveniance… ) he won’t annoy players much. Let’s be real, who wouldn’t want to meet this cute lil golem …

This sollution is offered free to use, to ArenaNet, after investing the time and money to make it a reality

I can’t say i noticed the DR conciously, but then i haven’t realy paid attention to it yet. It may also be due to my highest character being around lvl44 …

But i must say that reading this thread sort of horrifies me, i am a real casual player and from what i read some of these things in this game will be something that will take years to accomplish for me. esp. if during the couple of hours i do play, my bounty is reduced after the first 30min…

There is though the whole catch 22 in herent to games with loot in regards to farming. If you don’t add rewards that take a big effort, the game won’t have this high reward in the game. If then you make them easy to farm/drop, you might as well not have made them this high cost. So if you make them high cost and low drops, you automatically introduce this big grind… There is no way to add high cost rewards in any game without adding a huge amount of grind … period … it should be edged into the 10 commandments of game development.

> and NO if you make something realy difficult with a real high reward, so you have a 2% of succeeding, then you have to grind this one thing to get that success. Which is just another way of grind.

SO, now that we all know this is impossible we can all send in an email to Xtra Credit (or w/e that nice gaming development flash vids series is called), to do an episode on the IMPOSSIBLE things in gaming development, starting with how it is IMPOSSIBLE to add High Cost Reward without adding GRIND…

Thus GW2 has grind and i think they should be open about it and honest that somewhere along the lines it turned out to be impossible NOT to have grind…

So now it’s all about what type of grind we want:
- do we want all the rewards/drops scaled down,
- do we want a system that punishes what you choose to do by some DR system (diminishing rewards).
OR
- do we just except that some people farm the heck out of games and get filthy rich in some pseudo currancy, driving up Gemprices (most likely), which then becomes great for those that have some spare money (as they get good gold for their cash)

Well from all those options a DR system is BY FAR the worst! If i like to do DE’s why should i not get the reward that is linked to that DE just because i already done 3 or 4 in the last 30min. So I would say that if anything, the rewards need to be scaled better after a certain level, or just be scaled down a bit after becomming lvl80 (assuming that the whole level curve has already been largely plotted for the general group of gamers). And when i read that the OP kills a 100 lvl80 foes in about 10min, the difficulty of these high level mobs should go up a notch.

So what this does is that the OP can kill less foes due to difficulty in the time frame, and from that he gets a tad little rewards. But if he wants to fight in Orr 24/7 slaying undead, well then let him! For all we know the undead killed his whole family and then forced him to ‘kill’ them to save his own life. Well with a ‘story’ like that i would likely be killing undead in Orr 25/8 if i could!

And when this is done i think Anet can just be fair about it, they made high level area’s to easy and the rewards to high, hardcore rush players are gaining wealth to quickly by ‘farming’ high level areas. And these Hardcore rush players will likely be the first to admit that yes, that is why they rushed in the first place and were pleasantly surprised the farming was so easy… Tobad the fun is over, let’s make the game as it is supposed to be… We could all except that, i think?

As far as botting goes, well i think we do need to adress this, but in a whole different way. This DR system won’t scare of any botter, it will just mean they have to bot a bit more! It’s a bot, they have all the time and no feelings! we on the other hand !!

I’m all for this. Just from reading this you convinced me entirely… let’s hope this is the same for ArenaNet…

If you want range and AoE, mostly for PvE events (or WvW zerg fests), the Axe is what you want to look at. Combine it with the torch for a fire field f/e.

As for utilities, well i can realy advice bringing along Lightning reflexes esp. as you get higher in level. it breaks some effects and the extra dodge + endurance regen (more dodges) is realy helpfull…

After that it realy depends on what you like or not… and that will also determain which traits would work best.

Using Axe+ Warhorn/Torch myself and i Love it, but that’s because i realy like that midrange location for some reason. Close enough to see the fight, far enough to keep the overview. I run it with traps atm (spike/frost) and healing spring, all giving an area effect and great combo fields (torch obviously already gives me a fire field). lightning reflexes to break any unwanted effects and have another dodge…

Sure when you are careless you sometimes draw an extra target in, but it’s usually nothing that can’t be solved (if all else fails, Warhorn also gives a speedbuff )

Yeah, this must be one of the most annoying things about most pets atm. appart from the sometimes hardly responding F2 … The overshooting of pets when ‘you’ halt has put me in some realy dangerous situations…

Only work around i have found sofar is to use a bird (raven), they seem to stop pretty much where you would stop, and their halting animation is upwards and not forwards. So they don’t draw any unwanted agro…

+1 for giving pets a good ‘heel’, in the meantime, use a small bird as your main pet, and switch to the pet of you liking when you are ready…

It’s alright dude, see, it’s not the size that matter but what you do with it :P

There are so many pets with so many abilities, that i am fairly sure you can find one that suits your needs. If you dislike pets in general, i would advice you to take 2 small birds. They take up the least screenspace and don’t walk infront of your feet most the time, they also seem NOT to shoot over when you stop walking… I personally like pets, but i dislike some of the things mentioned above from other pets, so I run with 1 raven most the time. The other pet is a Hyena, which i draw out when i notice i’m being overwhelmed, i quickly hit F2 and get another Hyena… between the 3 of us we tend to do fairly well … but my Hyena friends get nothing more than what they kill and a pat on the back, when i stow them away for my Raven… they are way less of a ‘burdon’ (see, the name in it self offers the sollution … pets annoying? = Burd On