Guild Wars 2

Yeah, the 10k drink achievement was ArenaNet’s way of giving us the………cold shoulder. Get it? LoL

Yeah it was worth it, but an annoying grind. The shoulder skin seemed fitting for my Norn.

ImLegion.4018:

Sinbold.8723:

I watched the video, but that horrible sound (I think it was someone’s idea of music?!) made me watch it without sound. I didn’t notice skill lag or rubberbanding- can someone give me a time stamp on where this might happen in the listed video?

As to skill lag during the oasis event- I have never experienced this, even with groups the size shown in the video. Never. Not once. Ever. I WAS using an nVidia GTX 660 which burned out (after only 2 years? C’mon, nVidia!) and was replaced with what I thought was a better GT 720 card, but gives me worse performance at the same settings, so I’ve had to dial down things like post processing and reflections. But I still have no lag during the oasis event. So if some people have lag and others don’t, can you blame it on Anet? If you do blame Anet, why do people like me not experience it ever, at all, at any time during the event? Please don’t argue that I’m lying or that I do experience lag but don’t notice- that will only be counter-productive and not help the issue. If you’re experiencing lag, what speed is your internet connection (I think this is where laggers will find some commonality, but I’m not sure)? Are you wireless or not? What graphics card are you using?

What does a graphic card have to do with lag, are you serious bro?? If a whole group has lag issues it is all the peoples internet provider, ofcourse.

@Charrbeque.8729 perhaps they are using the same vid editing programme. Calling people hackers without any proof but a text font is a bit crazy, don’t you think.

Edit: Good point. I watched the OP’s video again.

It does seem crazy. I had no idea WvW was popular again. Every time I go to my server’s borderlands I hardly see anybody, which includes enemy players. I don’t get any lag though, but that’s probably because I’m not in large scale battles.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Charrbeque.8729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

@Fox

I think you’re grasping at straws in this whole matter because you want her to be innocent, possibly because you know her personally. However I think it’s most unlikely that ANet did not double check both accounts closely. They had to know who they were as content creators and this means that once it was publicly raised and the two of them both were accusing ANet of falsely suspending them, it’s unlikely they would only double check one account and not the other. Especially in not checking her’s as it was her video and her doing most of the talking. Her brother only came on the video for a short while. If they were only going to double check one, it would have been her, not her brother who was the secondary person on the video.

When her brother came into the video it was pretty obvious he was reading from a script. He didn’t come off as being sincere and seemed more like he didn’t even want to be in the video.

Yah I noticed that and said

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yeah. That was interesting to listen to. To me, the man’s voice tones in particular sounded like faked outrage rather than sincere upset and them going on about how they’ll never play Guild Wars 2 again when/if their innocent accounts are restored sounded over the top.

His voice was especially flat toned like he was an actor reading a script, badly, that called for a lot of outrage but he was feeling none of it.

In my defense there’s a whole lot of comments in this thread and it’s too much to read. LoL.

But yeah, something seemed off about the whole thing.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

@Fox

I think you’re grasping at straws in this whole matter because you want her to be innocent, possibly because you know her personally. However I think it’s most unlikely that ANet did not double check both accounts closely. They had to know who they were as content creators and this means that once it was publicly raised and the two of them both were accusing ANet of falsely suspending them, it’s unlikely they would only double check one account and not the other. Especially in not checking her’s as it was her video and her doing most of the talking. Her brother only came on the video for a short while. If they were only going to double check one, it would have been her, not her brother who was the secondary person on the video.

When her brother came into the video it was pretty obvious he was reading from a script. He didn’t come off as being sincere and seemed more like he didn’t even want to be in the video.

Well if you get too far away from the mini it will teleport itself directly to you so it’s not like it will get stuck clear across the other side of the map. Personally I think it works fine the way it is, especially because when I’m fighting stuff I’m not thinking about where my mini is.

I just got the shoulder skin yesterday. I didn’t buy a single item from the trading post for it. I did the jumping puzzle lots and lots of times (completed the infinite achievement 59 times to get enough drinks from gifts).

I didn’t get it for prestige or to show off. I got it because it looks nice. I don’t care what other people think about it.

Whether someone payed a lot of gold to get the items from the TP, or earned it through hard work, is nobody’s business. People who complain about someone having a prestige item are just jealous. I do agree though, people who bot/hack/cheat to get such sought after items don’t deserve to have them.

The funny thing is I looked forward to getting the shoulder skin so I could stop farming the JP. When I got it I was like “what now?”. I was so bored I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the game so I decided to keep farming the JP LoL. Well I do have around 10k out of 100k drinks towards the Thirst slayer achievement. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Community#Thirst_Slayer I could make some gold off the drinks but decided I’ll use them and sell everything else.

After I got the shoulder skin I figured I’d get the T1 and T3 Norn cultural armor (I already had the T2). I spent over 70 gold on it and realized none of it I wanted to use. I decided to buy the Braham’s armor set, Lawless gloves and boots, from the gem shop and go with that instead. So I wound up with 22g left after getting the cultural armor and felt dumb for wasting all that gold. But on the bright side I completed the achievement for soul binding 18 pieces of Norn cultural armor which bumped me up to just over 8k achievement points.

Edited for typos.

There has been talk from ArenaNet that they’re currently working on a WvW overhaul. They’ll probably add auto-loot then. I’m guessing they may make a mastery for WvW and we’ll have to unlock auo-loot like the Tyria mastery. No idea yet, but I look forward to more news in the future.

Well, charrbeque account is still up so I doubt that he bots.

I take it they tried reporting me.

Yeah, I’m no cheater/botter/hacker/exploiter, or engage in RMT. I’ve been here on and off since October 2006, and I’m not dumb enough to risk everything I legitimately earned over the years.

Yea, the dev tool is allow us to modified the game code to make us able to cheat, because Anet already have a variable that named TeleHackEnable = 0, so all we need to do is find this var and make it 1. If charrbeque still reading this, i want to thank you cuz u really made my day =P
(quoted user)
Probably.
I have 4 accounts, each account bot for 30 hours and then switch to another one, but all my 4 accounts down tho, have like total 5000 golds, but compare to my friends who have at least 30000 golds. Its just too less, but enough for me to learn how to do flipping in TP.

No idea what that even means about the telehacking thingy.

Also, this could explain people noticing sudden massive price spikes on some items in the TP. The botters may be trying to do things legit now while also trying to screw unsuspecting players who don’t know better. But to my understanding, ArenaNet has people keep an eye on stuff like that.

DeathReign.7821:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Customer Support has carefully reviewed the data that resulted in the termination of the game account in question. They verified that this account accessed 29 map points in under 60 seconds. It is not possible to accomplish this without the use of a third-party program, the kind of program that is expressly forbidden by our User Agreement and our Rules of Conduct.

Because of these facts, the account termination will not be reversed.

Thank you for helping us understand. Such a pity if they really were hacking, but they deserve it if they were.

Also, both accounts in that household were banned. Was this an IP ban? Why would one account being banned affect the other?
Or were both of their accounts found to be using a third-party program?

In a slightly related note, is there any word on hackers in PvP being banned? I have screenshots of a recent incident I encountered.

Botters usually have many alt accounts and use them to pass off items and gold to a main or other account. If they only banned the accounts that botted they would still have their main or other account. Usually they don’t use their main account for botting and all of their alt accounts are expendable. So with their main account left in tact, they would just create more accounts to keep botting because they don’t care about their alts.

And often times their alt accounts used for botting are hacked/stolen accounts, so it’s not their own accounts getting banned, which is why they don’t care if they get banned.

Taking away all accounts associated with them means they actually lose what they care about (their main).

Alin.2468:

Bans are good, but is too little… too late. Wintersday is almost over. Besides, baned accounts are not a solution.

It was much easier to simply remove those achivements with 10k drinks and food since day 1 of Wintersday. That way there would have been no hacking, no exploiting, no bans, and no flaming in forums.

I never once saw evidence the botters were doing this for the achievement. All evidence suggests they do it out of greed, simply for profit.

Almost forgot, I didn’t have a single issue getting into the JP after getting the patch yesterday. So I’d say ArenaNet got a good handle on the situation.

Dondarrion.2748:

Oh, how I love the salty tears of banned botters. And good work Charrbeque on screenshotting and staying one step ahead of the botters reporting them to Anet

Np. Glad to help.

I’m sure they’re frustrated but that one botter doesn’t sound too upset. They knew the risks (and even warned each other about it).

P.S. Anybody who’s seen Noob Insurance in the JP knows for sure I’m not a bot. For a while people kept complaining about that “big norn in a dress” on account of I was blocking their view. Charr are the worse though. Even I have trouble getting across the presents sometimes with a furry butt in my face LoL.

anduriell.6280:

Personally i’ve thought the people teleporting around was just my connection, you see them fall and then back in the platform again.

In any case never bothered me that much, no more than players using a charr or fat norn to play the JP.
But i’m very happy that Aney is banhammering the cheaters. This will sanitize the game so it doesn’t get worst.

Time to go back to the JP i guess. I only have done the achievement 40 times

It’s not lag, I see it a lot. Especially if a player jumps right from the very edge of a platform where they drop down just a hair before jumping. I see it all over the game too, in other jumping puzzles and areas where people jump over gaps. I’ve always assumed it was just a weird graphical glitch of some kind that I see on my end, but to that player jumping they don’t see it. I never see my character do that, but I imagine I look that way to others.

Oh, wow.

probably the same guy botting and reporting bots ingame.

He was responding to the post telling people to mass report me.
Was I botting? No.
Was I reporting bots? You better kittening believe it!
Hell I’m probably the reason why they thought the other botters were reporting them. Because I’ve played GW since 2006, and GW2 since 2014. I know suspicious behavior when I see it and I know how to give detailed descriptions on what they’re doing.

Hell, one time years ago, just out of curiosity, I checked through my GW1 support tickets and counted how many bots I reported in a month and how many ArenaNet said were found to be in violation. I reported somewhere around 30 bots and at least 25 were found guilty. I’ve reported countless bots and gold sellers in GW1 and the amount found to be in violation was probably at least, by my best guess, around 75%. So I have a pretty good idea what to look for.

Also they posted this on their forum:

Heres a funny conspiracy theory for you guys… what if [redacted] is actualy part of anet team lol. Released a bot that works much better than the other bots and used the crashlog to confirm your account for bottin (; “Joined Dec 2015” … very clever coder… think about it xD

gg anet.

Well 2 things come to mind:

1. If that’s true, ArenaNet are way better at making bots than them.
2. If that’s true, the botters are much dumber than we thought, on account of they fell for it.

Oh man! They sound really salted.

Based on my experience, people who scream the loudest usually the ones who’s guilty. So, charrbeque is the most active hater, makes me believe, he/she had his/her reasons to get on this forum. Installing and setting up application didnt go well, while others making a fortune, he/she was left out and its kinda upsetting. Now he/she is a fighter for justice.
Charrbeque, post this on gw2 forums too, give other players food for thought.

BWUAHAHAHAHAHA! LMFAO
I NEVER registered with their site, nor would I EVER attempt to use such hack programs. First of all I don’t know a lot about computers, and second I know absolutely nothing about computer programming, or even understand what they do really. But ArenaNet understands just fine. As I pointed out in this thread earlier, their forums are PUBLIC, meaning, you don’t need to be a registered member to read them (but you do need to register to see links in posts).

What I do know is how to email ArenaNet with links to their forums, as well as reporting bots in the game, and give detailed descriptions on what they are doing.

They only have themselves to blame. I just happen to be the type that absolutely HATES these types of players, and I do have a tendency to make a fuss about it. Yeah I probably seem a little whiny about it. But I’m happy to have them out of our game.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Bug killer over 9000

Fixed that for you.

HEADS UP! I was right about the botters watching this thread!

What they said about me:

Hi, Someone is watching this forum and keep putting information on gw2 official forum. I suggest you think twice to share crucial information.

If you can afford abusing report system, report that account(Charrbeque.8729) just for fun or for your salt XD. If a lot of people report him, the account may get flagged for whatever reason or even suspended for several days.

Well I sent a PM to a dev to give them a heads up, just in case.

Thing is, for about the past week or so I’ve been emailing links to ArenaNet for their website, screenshots, and info on what they’re up to.

Screenshot as proof, without revealing too much.

Edit: Posting that even though they know I was keeping an eye on them was stupid.
Also, since I gave a dev a heads up, if something happens to my account, all they have to do is take a look at every single account that reported me. Abuse of the report feature is against the rules.

P.S. A good friend of mine wanted me to pass on a message to the botters:

I told you, you were gonna get it. And I gave it to you.

Sincerely,
Skritt Foreger
Winter Wonderland resident

Electro.4173:

RoseofGilead.8907:

His name is Ho-Ho-Tron. You can get him from presents or on the TP.

He may be talking about this.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mini_Festive_Golem

It was only available during the first Wintersday, though. I do wish Anet would bring it back along with the Mini Infinirium. They brought back the Snowman at least, so that’s something. Maybe next year.

They also brought back mini Foostivoo the Merry. Combine 3 mini snowmen in the mystic forge with a stack of 250 flawless snowflakes. The problem is the mini snowmen stack so you need to hold the ALT key and drag it to an empty inventory slot to separate them all, otherwise you wind up putting the whole stack into a single slot in the mystic forge and the snowmen need to take up 3 out of 4 slots. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Foostivoo_the_Merry

Mini snowman is extremely rare, as in, I’ve opened over 8k gifts and still haven’t received 1. But I did spend a decent amount of gold to buy 4 from the trading post; 1 for my wardrobe and 3 to make a mini foostivoo.

It is nice that they brought back these minis, so it’s possible they might bright back the mini festive golem and mini infinirarium for next wintersday. Though it’s hard to say. The festive golem and infinirarium use to be combined in the mystic forge to create foostivoo and this year we got foostivoo a different way. So if they do bring them back they may be used to combine in the mystic forge to create a new mini, or perhaps just standalones you can buy in the gem shop, or maybe obtain from wintersday gifts.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Dinks.2478:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

It wasn’t a mistake last year. They told us it had to be that way due to the changes done to pvp, if I recall correctly. Because activities shared coding with pvp (dear gods why Anet?) or some such craziness. And they couldnt revert it ( heavy sigh ) I’m not even going to go attempt to find that post, too much work.

That is what they said , but it didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t make sense now. Parties are a thing in PvP. Saying that you can’t enter with your party because it is PvP is nonsense. Anyway, this is extremely disappointing that anet continues to treat their veteran players like this while putting in tons of extra development time to pump out a new black lion weapon set and outfit every single week.

It makes sense when you read it again. Activities SHARE coding with pvp. Not “they have the same exact coding as pvp.” Afterall, Activities do have “pvp-lite” in a sense that you can fight other players. Similarities exist for the wintersday activities as well.

To top it off, considering none of the other activities offer a team oriented content, and Toypoc is a yearly occurrence, odds are highly likely that they’ll not worry about “fixing” it any time soon. Especially when you realize they’d need to rework the entirely of activities or Toypoc to get it “working.”

The winter wonderland jumping puzzle is another example of an activity that shares PvP coding. All players in the map appear as enemies, even though your skill bars are all blank. However, often times when the map resets after the scoreboard pops up, for several seconds everything on your skill bar is available and you can actually attack other players, though so far it’s never lasted long enough to do much damage to another player before skills become locked out. It lasts for maybe 5 seconds or less.

And sounds like the banhammer hit. Copy/pasted from the botter’s forums. A couple things [redacted] to avoid giving people ideas.

started already… 4 accounts down the drain… 4320 hours suspended. I guess in 6 month I will have lots of boxes to open

In a later post he says it was for “Modifying or tampering the game” . Which means in 6 months he’ll come back to a ton of wintersday gifts to open and whatever else he obtained through botting. Hopefully ArenaNet was kind enough to remove all illegally obtained gold and/or items from any banned accounts, even accounts they only gave a 6 month suspension to.

And this is funny:

For people with multiple accounts:

Anticipating the ban I had created a free account before botting. I didn’t bot with this free account just yet infact I only logged 5min of gameplay and just parked it at the jp portal in DR.

After getting banned I checked to see if I was able to login with this current account (free) and I was. Moments later they banned my free account. I had not onced used a bot, hacked, or hooked [redacted] into the game under this new account and they still banned it.

The free account was also created under a VPN and only played on a VPN connection. This leads me to believe that they are [redacted] for your other accounts.

Bwahahahaha! Used a VPN on a free account he didn’t bot with and STILL got nailed!

They traced all the gold and items back to peoples main accounts this time… Oh well guess that saves us 6 months of gemstore skins >.<

I am banned on all 3 of my accounts. I ****** up. This bot was amazing though. Time to find a new game. I’m so sad. 3 years of playing and my greed took over me. For those of you that are still playing. Be careful and enjoy!

Sorry to hear that. However, it hurts at first lost, in a week you will be back with free account and have real fun.
I lost my main I played since day 1 of GW2, now I got 4 free accounts suspended for 6 month… Creating 2 more accounts now and feeling great lol
It’s all pixels.

Thank you ArenaNet. You were really on top of these creeps.

Commencing schadenfreude and victory gyrations!

Hmm…

When people are reporting each other, Anet will also look into reporter’s account. They are reporting themselves too, this will also get themselves ban. Although, i dont know who reported me, but i have some tips that might help reduce the chance to being banned by Anet. PM me if you need it.

Ps. if the list show them offline, they probably go invisible status, this is what i did when i use hack.

In my previous post here I said I wondered how they would know who reported them.

I see a few botting in my instance but I block them if they add me to their contact list. I also appear offline cause I’m botting. Why would I want to interact with others? No, I don’t report fellow botters.. it’s the code. Jk, don’t know about any codes but **** it. I don’t report fellow people that like reaping benefits.

TLDR: I block if you add me. I go offline when I bot.

Ya I really think they’re just set to appear offline.

I’m also having some problems since the 0g update, used to work pretty good b4.

After my last post here, Serval mentioned something about the botters setting themselves to offline.

The botters might be keeping an eye on this thread and may be saying things based on what was said here in order to throw us off. They might make themselves appear online now while botting to try and avoid detection/suspicion.

Aeon.4127:

Charrbeque.8729

These pics are great lol, Feel free to post mopre people *Remember to hide all names though as it would be considered “blame and shame” *. These pics are done well

Those aren’t my screenshots. I saved them to my computer. They were posted on the botter’s public forums* by one of the players botting the jumping puzzle.

*Public forums meaning no registration is required to read them.

Speaking of which, 1 of the botters posted this on their forums:

So I added another botter as a friend to check their AP out of curiosity, but the list showed them offline. This means one of two things: they either blocked me or reported me. Considering that I never spoke to them or gave any indication that I was at the computer, I assume they didn’t block, but reported me instead.

I started checking to see if I was being reported by every fellow botter I saw. At least half are reporting me, which means they’re probably reporting you, too. It’s probably safer if the botting program didn’t put you under the starting area so that others would know for sure that you’re botting.

It’s disgusting to think that the main source of ban reports that ArenaNet reviews comes from our own ******* community.

Sounds like the botters are turning on each other. LOL

Note the bolded part in the quote. I’m curious as to how they would know who is reporting them or even if they were reported.

Moira Shalaar.5620:

I ran into a pair of players in snowball mayhem just now who would take the present and take it behind their tower and sit there without turning it in, stretching the match out to an extreme because points only were then being scored on kills, and denying everybody presents. Pretty much everybody else was frustrated with them but they kept insisting it was legit and not trolling. It seems to me that they are exploiting the game design to deny everybody else rewards. Can anybody comment as to whether this is trolling (my opinion) or legit (their opinion)? I kept their names, but I know that naming and shaming is against forum policy.

Email exploits@arena.net
Give them the character names and/or account names, as well as attach any screenshots you took of them and explain what the player was doing.

Really though, the present should automatically despawn and a new one take its place in the middle of the map after a certain amount of time has passed. If a present is dropped by a player and nobody picks it up after a while it resets after a short amount of time. It should do the same if someone is holding it too long without adding it to their base to increase their score. It might be too late in the event to do something about it now, so our best hope is they fix it next year.

Little Leota.5849:

I was in the jp just a little while ago and I can confirm that those using bots are arriving at the end underneath the chest.

Yep. But it seems they are able to teleport under the environment at the end but have to manually move to be under the chest before they can open it.

And the idiot botter posted a couple screenshots of himself. I censored them to avoid naming and shaming, even though I personally can’t figure out who it is. But it’s something for us to to look for.

Taltevus.3289:

I don’t see why tab targeting can’t be prioritized by the player with a typical default for the class.

Targeting priorities are not the same between a ranger and warrior and a mesmer.

The system is not intuitive at all as it currently stands.
Just because there is a priority in place does not mean that order is well off or proper.

The obvious answer is that the targeting should be defined by the players and how they play.
There are way too many play styles within in one profession alone for any actively thinking person to truly believe that one targeting system is conducive for all of the play styles and absurdly on top of that, for all of the professions that have completely different mechanics.

Ooh. good points. I hadn’t thought of how a ranged class might be better off having a different targeting priority compared to a melee class.

More options would be most welcomed. Though I’d be fine with what we have for now until they can make that happen. I don’t think forcibly changing the way it is now would be a good idea since some players may like the current system. Additional options is what I’m asking for, that way everybody can have it the way they feel suits them best.

Edit: Typos. :P

I’ll suggest it again: add a check box in the game options to prioritize enemies based on how close they are to use, regardless of the enemies tier. This way we have options. Players who prefer to target based on highest tier first, and those of us with swords in our face can deal with them first.

@Illurim
“I have a sandwich so you can’t be starving” isn’t a valid argument.

Aha!

Notice the guild keg in your screenshot. I actually saw one, along with a fireworks launcher, next to the wintersday merchant in Divinity’s Reach a few days ago.

It all comes from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Banquet It puts out a guild keg, banquet table, and “other party items” which I’m assuming is the fireworks launcher.

Edit: Strange. After answering the OP’s question his post isn’t showing up and only my post is in the thread. o.O

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Charrbeque.8729:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Here is how Tab targetting currently works on live:

In descending order of priority. All targetting within the same tier goes from nearest->furthest.

1. Epic mob
2. Legendary mob
3. Champion mob
4. Enemy player/Mesmer clone
5. Enemy player pets/AI (everything but Clones)
6. Elite mob
7. Veteran mob
8. Regular mob

Ambient creatures, objects (aside from Engineer turrets), and other interact-able objects never appear on tab targeting lists.

If you are getting anything out of this order, it is because you are clicking on things.

Well that doesn’t help when you have a melee enemy right in front attacking you and you go to use a sword/greatsword leap skill and wind up going after another enemy behind the one attacking you or even a non-hostile yellow named enemy.

It would be nice if target priority went by nearest enemy (red name).

I have it set in the game options so if I use a weapon skill when I’m not targeting anything it will target the “nearest” enemy and attack that, but most of the time that isn’t the case. There have been countless times I became disoriented and had to figure out where I was and manually click the enemy I want to attack, or even killed because I go to attack the enemy on top of me and I leap at something too far for my weapon skill to even reach and wind up aggroing other hostile enemies and become overrun (guardian greatsword skill Leap of Faith for example).

Bolded relevant portion in my post.

I’m not sure if you posted before or after I edited my post earlier, but please see the bolded part.

For the part of my post you quoted, I did mention that sometimes the tab key will select a yellow named enemy when there are plenty of red names attacking me. How is that working right? I imagine a regular moa bird is a lot less a priority then a charr warrior. And no, I’m not “clicking” the yellow names. The tab key actually selects them when I’m cycling through targets trying to get the one I want. I repeat, most of the time when I want to select a different target for whatever reason, I actually have to click on it because tab targeting is unreliable.

The whole system is wonky and needs to be fixed.

Edit: To reiterate, if there are higher tiered enemies on screen but far enough away they aren’t attacking me, tab targeting will target them first instead of cycling through the few lower tiered enemies directly in front and attacking me. Sometimes in the heat of battle I’ll something like a greatsword leap skill going towards those enemies not attacking me because the game insisted I target them first, then I wind up getting too close and have them attacking me on top of what was already attacking, and I wind up overwhelmed sometimes because I just can’t run away or get immobilized or something.

In other words, the game prioritizes based on what is on screen and close enough to be targeted, not what is actually near you. If a champion is half a mile away but close enough to be targeted it will be (whether you use tab or simply left click it), instead of the enemies that are the closest to you.

The system may be working as designed but it is a major problem, and that’s our point we’re trying to make.

Technical limitations to the game perhaps? Maybe if they increased the max amount of account bank slots you could buy from the gem shop it would horribly break the game and cause you to lose a lot, or all, of your hoarded junk?

They did add crafting profession slots to the gem shop a good while back, allowing you to have more than 2 crafting professions on a single character (the slots are account-wide unlocks). Then later increased it by 1 or 2 more max. So anything is possible.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Here is how Tab targetting currently works on live:

In descending order of priority. All targetting within the same tier goes from nearest->furthest.

1. Epic mob
2. Legendary mob
3. Champion mob
4. Enemy player/Mesmer clone
5. Enemy player pets/AI (everything but Clones)
6. Elite mob
7. Veteran mob
8. Regular mob

Ambient creatures, objects (aside from Engineer turrets), and other interact-able objects never appear on tab targeting lists.

If you are getting anything out of this order, it is because you are clicking on things.

Well that doesn’t help when you have a melee enemy right in front attacking you and you go to use a sword/greatsword leap skill and wind up going after another enemy behind the one attacking you or even a non-hostile yellow named enemy.

It would be nice if target priority went by nearest enemy (red name).

I have it set in the game options so if I use a weapon skill when I’m not targeting anything it will target the “nearest” enemy and attack that, but most of the time that isn’t the case. There have been countless times I became disoriented and had to figure out where I was and manually click the enemy I want to attack, or even killed because I go to attack the enemy on top of me and I leap at something too far for my weapon skill to even reach and wind up aggroing other hostile enemies and become overrun (guardian greatsword skill Leap of Faith for example). And if I use the tab key it still targets something far away instead of what is right in front of me.

Almost all of the time I wind up having to manually click the enemy I want to attack, whether that’s before or after I start attacking.

Edit: There are also often times the tab key won’t even cycle through the enemies properly. I could be attacking 1 enemy and see another that I feel I should defeat first and it can take me sever tries to target it. Most of the time I wind up having to click the enemy I want because the tab key will go back and forth between the other 3 or 4 enemies and not land on the one I want.

And that’s most likely my problem. With a group of enemies of mixed tiers, the reason why it doesn’t want to target a mob I think is more important is because the game insists I kill the higher tiered enemies first.

Insert obligatory “it takes away player choice” (by forcing you to attack certain mobs instead of the ones you want).

If possible a checkbox in the game options to have it target the nearest enemy, then the next nearest, and so on by default would be nice. It’s really annoying when the game forces enemy prioritization based on how strong an enemy is. Especially when a low tiered enemy with heavy condition damage and/or controls could be more deadly then a strong warrior with a big sword.

Just to clarify I’m referring only to NPC enemies. Player enemies is a whole different story and one needs to manually decide for themselves which player should be a priority because there’s no way the game could ever decide for you properly and going by the nearest target might not be a good idea in a lot of cases.

TexasRanger.5107:

Interesting insight from one of the dev’s on his personal blog why they don’t post more here, don’t just read I what quoted read all of it from the link.

http://www.joshuaforeman.blogspot.ca/2013_09_01_archive.html#4916848020404903535

The other thing I’ve been doing is interacting heavily on the forums attempting to ascertain how much of the complaints are legitimate and how much angry hyperbole. I’ve been trying to articulate our team’s intentions and be up front with the mistakes we made and how we plan on addressing them.

Now, I’ve been reprimanded a couple times over the last couple of years for my forum posting. I’m not diplomatic enough, mention things I shouldn’t, make specific comments that could be interpreted as promises by the community, set precedent for forum interaction that my co-workers shouldn’t feel the need to have to meet, etc. I took the forum posting class our Community Team gives in order to be cleared to post on our official forums twice. I’ve listened carefully to the Community manager and our studio producer who pointed out specific things I’d said wrong. I’ve been pulled aside by my boss to be told that other departments were unhappy with things I’ve said. Every time this happens I sincerely apologize and try to make sure I re-adjust my attitude towards my communication style.
I thought I was getting better at this skill but I got another one of those talks this morning. I can’t go into any details except to say that I am not getting good enough at this skill. I was hoping that I could find a way to follow the rules (Which I agree exist for good reasons) while still maintaining my personality when posting. I guess I cannot. I think my basic personality is simply incompatible with the diplomacy necessary to protect my company and co-workers. So even though I’m getting responses like these:

…I have to shut up. It’s really hard for me to collect the valuable feedback offered on forums without response or questioning. Especially when it’s evident that the community likes it so much. Oh well. If the company that pays my paycheck and lets me work on my own crazy pet projects like SAB tells me to resist a difficult urge to interact with players because I’m jeopardizing the company so be it. I’m told I can still post, but much much less, and I need to get my posts approved first. So it’s not really a total shut-up. But I know I’d have to come off as a different person if I go through this procedure, which pretty effectively kills the urge.

That blog is dated 2013 and things have changed since then.

Ayrilana posted a link to a recent post (less than 2 weeks ago at this time) on the forums by Gaile Grey explaining that the devs are allowed to post here but are not required to post on any specific type of forum. Basically the devs can post where they feel more comfortable posting, and in some cases Reddit seems to be their favorite place.

Little Leota.5849:

Shikigami.4013:

Pandaman.4758:

Well, the easiest way to spot a teleporter would probably to see one at the end chest but with a score of 0. Physically impossible to get to the chest without getting a point unless you cheat.

No that does not work, I have already observed one of them not showing up at the ending chest at all, probably the location/port script was edited so that they not just pop up next to the chest like one video on youtube shows, but also port under the chest were they are not spotted right away, just like they are hiding under the fire to try to avoid being seen.

This exactly. I’ve waited at the end to see if the ones I saw hiding in the snowman platform showed up at the end. Although their bar in the player list went black, they never appeared at the chest. Then their bar would turn red again, indicating they were back at the beginning.

Now my concern is that, since I don’t actually see them appear at the end, will I get in trouble for reporting them? I’ve reported at least half a dozen that I’ve seen hiding in the platform. Is that enough to prove they’re using bots?

You shouldn’t get in trouble at all. It doesn’t matter if they managed to open the chest at the end or not. If they’re hiding inside the platform at the beginning of the puzzle and/or teleporting across the map, they are most likely botting. They don’t need to actually gain anything when botting. Botting alone will get them in trouble if the devs can find evidence of it. If they can’t find evidence of wrongdoing they just delete the report ticket and move on.

The botters are talking about trying to find a way to make it so their health doesn’t stay 0 while teleporting and goes down slowly instead, like it does when you actually jump the puzzle yourself. They’re also talking about finding a way to port to the present at the end of the puzzle so they can increase their score a bit and look less obvious. So we may need to look harder to spot them and report them.

Yeah. Guess they took a day off. I’m having a bit of trouble of getting into the JP today and so far I’ve seen 3 bots, 2 of which were at it for quite a while.

Hmm…..The botters mention something about ‘dev tool’ on their forum. I’m wondering if they mean ‘ArenaNet dev tool’, as in, something only the game developers are suppose to have. It would make sense. Having software that gives them some ability to do what the devs do would allow them to access things in the game’s coding allowing them to use their bot programs and find ways to avoid detection.

Also they said

Add Zero Gravity and port under the first few jumps PLEASE! you would never fall off and would not be seen …

Keep your eyes peeled. They’re trying to find ways to hide their characters better than under the platform on snowman path so it’s harder for us to spot them. They also talk about somehow making multiple instances for themselves, which may or may not be the cause of our problems getting into the JP, but certainly would explain it if it’s true.

However, here is an almost surefire way to spot them that I noticed: the moment they start teleporting across the map their health bar instantly goes solid black and stays that way for a good 10 seconds or so. You can see this in the player list on the left side of the screen. While at the chest I saw a bot I had called out as a target and had a black HP bar on the left of the screen, and after he opened the chest he used the portal to go back to the start where his HP instantly went back to red. If it’s a player actually jumping across like they’re suppose to you’ll notice their HP goes down slowly, due to the frostbite debuff, but refills when they get to Tixx in front of the popping presents.

While at the beginning of the puzzle, click on them in the player list on the left side of the screen right after their HP goes red again. You’ll probably notice while having them targeted you can’t see them. Press CTRL+T to call them out as a target and you’ll probably see a little red circle just poking up through the middle of the snowman path platform.

Yesterday I was able to get into the JP on the first try every time except once where it kicked me back to Divinity’s Reach. I didn’t notice a single bot at all, and I completed the puzzle 45 times.

Does this mean ArenaNet managed to stop them? Maybe, maybe not.

From what I gather on da internets:
*The botters are annoyed too many people used their program. This is probably the reason why we had so much trouble getting into the jumping puzzle; because there were so many of them.

*Something about “no more sharing the bot due to rapid deflation of sell price for the alc?”

*They’re well aware people are complaining about them on Reddit, the GW2 forums, and in the game.

*They’re annoyed about the fact people noticed them sinking into the ground at the beginning of the puzzle, and one of them wanted to know if there was a different way to set up their program to avoid that. They’re also annoyed people call them out as targets (CTRL+T while targeting them) so we can see them teleport across the map (some players posted videos on YouTube showing this).

*They seem to have decided they got enough wintersday gifts and decided to call it quits (which is probably why I didn’t see any). One bragged about making about 1,000 gold and is closer to a legendary.

*They seem worried about getting their main accounts banned.

Here is the real kicker:
They are hoping ArenaNet isn’t smart enough to track the items/gold their bot accounts passed off to their main accounts, out of fear their mains will get banned.

Edit:
*They mention something of a banwave on January 4 while poking fun at ArenaNet for taking so long to detect them while saying it was probably because they had trouble getting into the JP themselves. They posted a link to a Reddit thread where someone was talking about how much gold the bots could possibly make. There doesn’t seem to be a single post from a dev in that thread, so I have no idea where they get the Jan. 04 date for the banwave (insider information, or just a guess?).

Ayrilana.1396:

Shara.4716:

So some one mentioned a post about the hitting in map chat. So I googled it and found this as well.
[Link removed by me]
I hope anet can find and permanently ban every one doing this.

Check the timestamps of those posts.

Yeah. That thread dates back to 2012 with no new posts since Dec. 12, 2012. It really goes to show just how long this problem has been around. No idea if ArenaNet has ever done anything about it. They probably have. The problem is when the devs find a way to stop the bot programs from working, the botters modify the software to make it work again.

P.S. It’s a really bad idea to post links to any kind of website like that. I’d recommend you guys edit your posts to remove that link before you get yourselves into trouble with a moderator.

Juclesia Elcritian.8410:

So, all my googling shows that a backpiece with Sinister stats does NOT exist in either exotic nor ascended variety (Viper’s ascended back exists as a raid reward but I’ve written that content off).

However, the website gw2skills.net shows that an exotic version of the Sinister stats DOES exist on a backpiece. I can’t seem to find out which one that would be though. Anyone have any clue? It’s not Mawdrey/Initiate’s Pack/Agent’s Pack/Luminate’s Plate.

Then again, gw2skills.net doesn’t have the ascended viper’s rings/earrings/back as options and we know they do exist as raid rewards. So maybe the site is just wrong.

The skill planner doesn’t necessarily mean a sinister back piece exists in the game. I think what they do is add new stat combos and rarities to everything to cover their bases. This way if we ever do get a sinister back piece they won’t have to add it later. It saves them time in the long run.

AegisRunestone.8672:

Is there a “-png” assignment? bmps are much larger, but pngs are about the same quality without the large hard drive space.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments The ‘-bmp’ is listed but there doesn’t seem to be one for ‘-png’.

Quick! Somebody go to ArenaNet headquarters and drop a mesmer portal in front of their coffee maker. When they go to get coffee they’ll be ported to the forums by accident, ’cause you know how mesmers love dropping portals in front of stuff people need to click on.

And for good measure, drop 2 portals in front of the donuts.

Disappointing. Going by the reddit dev tracker they seem to have posted a lot about HOPE and Astralaria IV item collections, but haven’t addressed a single issue with wintersday, such as:
A lot of players having a difficult time entering the jumping puzzle or other activities

The 10k drink achievement to get the shoulder skin – Yes there is a thread on the forums asking for feedback but the only response we got after the first post was to let us know some threads were merged into it, and another thread that let us know the achievement was going to be available all year, but players still have concerns about it.

Or whether or not they are doing something about the massive amount of botters/hackers in the jumping puzzle.

:(

Djinn.9245:

Apparently they haven’t been silent on Reddit…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-quotes-from-Reddit

Reddit dev tracker https://www.reddit.com/r/gw2devtrack
:)

Yeah. Best we can do is report any suspicious activity and hope for the best.

Sinning.7483:

hmm yes well I said “stupid” because it is stupid and lazy…its punishing the many to limit the damage of a few in a reactionary measure. Ever noticed that your country has heaps more laws and workplace heaps more policies making life so much more difficult than it used to be? Of course Anet’s concern prob RL $ so as long as doesn’t affect that then not “stupid” from their perspective maybe.

As to TP, yeah i think its great having the TP (as opposed to GW1 and none), be nice to be able to trade as well without it tho.

I see that all this has been mentioned in that thread anyways so just asking Anet to review as after all the value of gold in this game changes over time. But if they need to keep a Gold trading limit because their security is so bad then I guess they won’t be changing it (hopefully is has gotten better over time? idk).

That is completely backwards of what ArenaNet has said.
Let me spell it out for you:

Looking more directly at those transactions, a large majority (98.228%) of those mails are being sent by RMT or compromised accounts (after selling off everything of value on an account).

At 500G, it is not only functionally effective, but also it will only impact 0.175% of our players during an entire month’s worth of mails (if an account would hit the restriction once per month/30 days).

Only 0.175% of players sending such large quantities of gold through the mail were legitimate.

This means that most accounts sending such large quantities of gold through the mail were NOT legitimate and WERE damaging to the game.

A majority of legitimate players who send gold through the mail send it in small amounts and will almost never hit the 500 gold limit.

You are the 0.175% of legit players affected by the limits. You are the MINORITY.

Sinning.7483:

Simply put can Anet pls lift or remove the 500gold (a week!) limit on sending gold to other players. Its annoying for delegating stuff in guild and guildies trading items outside of using TP. I’m sure its there for some stupid reason like dealing with gold sellers or cheaters or something but is just a nuisance for legit players.

ty

“Stupid reason”? Based on their data:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gold-Transfer-Changes/page/5#post4933116

500G may seem like an entirely arbitrary number, but I guarantee it is not. I took a look at our mail data (believe me, you guys really like mail and there is a lot of data) and set the value based on that. At 500G, it is not only functionally effective, but also it will only impact 0.175% of our players during an entire month’s worth of mails (if an account would hit the restriction once per month/30 days).

Looking more directly at those transactions, a large majority (98.228%) of those mails are being sent by RMT or compromised accounts (after selling off everything of value on an account).

Yes, there are going to be some edge cases that this is going to bump into, and as we look more into the impact that this change will have, we might change the restriction. However, we feel that this change is going to significantly impact RMT in our game along with help remove a very large reason to compromise accounts.

This is just the first step in our plan to help users keep their accounts secure. More will come as we progress through the year (and forevers!).

And: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gold-Transfer-Changes/page/7#post4935986

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Cleary’s data suggests that only a few thousand players transfer 500 gold or more per week via email. It also suggests that many more are involved in buying black market gold or selling off assets from stolen accounts. This change, therefore, should protect many more people than it inconveniences. We should all be happy about that aspect.

There are two issues with the solution that are not covered by Cleary’s post:

• How many people withdraw 500g or more from guild banks in a week? I suspect the fraction is much larger than stated, if only because I know lots of people that add/subtract a few 100g every few days; I know very few who have 500g at any given time.
• How about guild leaders managing lotteries, donations to guilds moving from other servers, or otherwise pooling guild assets?

I’ll go ahead and pitch in on these 2 points, as they seem to be the most prevalent in the discussion so far.

On the first point about guild bank withdraws.

Yes, this will impact players with personal Guild Banks storing gold. However, a majority of players here are talking about personal guild banks for storage of wealth. These are basically the same as storing gold in the old personal bank. While there some benefits to doing this, the account wallet was implemented to be a single storage point for an account. On a single account basis, this does not impact anyone’s ability to move your gold unless you still have a large quantity of gold sitting in your guild bank as of today.

When multiple personal accounts are taken into account, this has a much larger impact on the ability to move wealth between accounts. This is just going to be an unfortunate side effect of clamping down on large wealth movements, and if you have multiple personal accounts, there are many different ways to store and transfer wealth between your accounts.

On to the second point about lotteries/donations/pooling assets.

There are plenty of workarounds that can be done for almost all of these situations that are being brought up. None of these situations are actually prevented by implementing the gold restriction, they are simply slowed down. Gold transfer does not need to be performed by one person/account for guild matters, as almost all guilds that are doing these activities have a guild officer core they can rely on.

There will always be cases where multiple of thousands of gold need to be moved, just plan ahead for those events. That being said, donations of gold are probably no longer the best means of transfering wealth between guild members if you are trying to move large quantities of wealth.

As far as trading items outside the trading post goes, Gaile Grey’s thoughts on the matter:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Policy-on-the-LFG-Tool/first#post4769104

Rauderi.8706:

Rauderi.8706:

Gaile, thanks so much for forwarding those details.

Secondary question, though.
Since group-selling (taxis/paths/dungeons) are confirmed as legit, are there policies in place about how to handle scams/griefing? Or is that still very much “buyer beware” for those willing to buy/sell LFG spots?

Unfortunately, CS is seldom able to get a clear view on scams of this type. Tracking who agreed to what, and who promised to provide this service or that service is difficult to verify, especially when some of the arrangements are made or finalized outside the game (on Vent, TeamSpeak, Skype, etc.)

So every transaction of this nature is simply, by necessary, considered “Buyer and/or seller beware.” If the team is able to verify that a scam took place, they may be able to act upon the account of the scammer, but that would not involve returning lost items or currency or the fulfillment of the player-to-player “contract.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: TP fees are my insurance, as a player. They’re my protection as both a buyer and seller. Dodging fees might sounds attractive, in theory, but I’ve seen too many nasty outcomes to even consider doing trades or sales without using the game system that was built specifically to support those transactions.

And that is why we have the trading post and no player-to-player trading system – because too many players in GW1 got scammed and the system in GW2 was built to (hopefully) avoid that.

250 hero points needed to fully unlock your elite specialization http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Specialization#Notes

Keep in mind you need to unlock all core specializations before you can start unlocking your elite specialization. That’s 300 HP for all of your core specializations but you get those as you level up. Once you reach level 80 you have enough HP to unlock them. But still, that’s a total of 550 HP to fully unlock all core and elite specializations. No idea where you’re getting the 1,200 from.

Each profession’s skill #6 is unique. As ekkue pointed out the mesmer’s is to create a clone of itself. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Snowball_Mayhem#Profession-specific_skills

Saw another hacker doing the same thing. Here is a screenshot as proof (name blacked out). I have the player targeted and pressed CRTL+T to call it out as a target, which placed a big reticle above its head. You can see the reticle is just barely sticking up through the platform, but when I walked up to the player the reticle couldn’t be seen because the player was below the platform. They stay under the platform for about 30 seconds or so then suddenly they’re gone. Sometimes they will go too far under the platform and fall, then be placed back onto it.

While I had this player called out as a target, I was jumping along the snowflakes on quaggan path and saw the player blip, blip, blip, right across the snowflakes then the popping presents at super speed. It looked as if the player was teleporting 3 or more snowflakes at a time, and didn’t stay still for more than a split second. The player got across the snowflakes and presents in about 2 seconds.

Just saw a hacker on snowman lane.

What he was doing: just standing there. Then suddenly he started to slowly sink INTO the ground (candy cane platform). He stayed under the platform for several seconds then for a split second he was a few snowflakes ahead on the path and was gone. In the list of players on the left side of the screen his health bar was solid black for about 15 seconds, as if his HP was 0 all that time. Then suddenly he respawned back at snowman path. I also stayed at the end where you open the chest and he would spawn there for a split second.

The scoreboard showed he completed the puzzle 0 times, but I have no way of knowing if he actually got any gifts at all from it.

It’s possible the hack was a real hack job and didn’t accomplish much, or maybe he was working on his hack to get it working right. No idea but it was disturbing to see.

He had the word ‘Suspicious’ in his character name (not his full name of course), which was ironic. I didn’t even notice until someone asked if he was glitching across the snowflakes. And it turned out that player wasn’t seeing things.

Sandpit.3467:

Charrbeque.8729:

I never once said anything about teleporting to the end for the reward. That was the other thread by somebody else https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bots-invade-Winter-Wonderland-JP

Sorry, it was that one I was referring to, though it makes me wonder why you started another thread if you knew that one already existed :P

Because I didn’t see the other thread at first.

Velvet.8610:

OK, besides the frustration at having to grind to get 10,000 festive drinks, I have encountered another problem with the Winter’s Presence Collection Achievment.

I purchased the blueprint a few days ago, and the items I had already earned from completed Wintersday achievements immediately unlocked in the collection panel for Winter’s Presence. However, when I completed 2 more achievements today (the JP for the Snowglobe and the Toypocalypse one for the Toy), I received both items, but they did NOT unlock in the Winter’s Presence Collection Achievement panel!! I am afraid to “use” these for the karma reward, since there is no way for me to get these again, so I am not sure what to do.

Did anyone else have this happen to them? Please help!!

-Velvet

Even though I obtained most of the items before I unlocked the collection achievement, not a single one were added to it until I used each item to gain the karma from them. So it’s safe to use them any time before or after you unlock the collection. If you use the items and they don’t count you can always contact customer support and ask them to look into it.

Sandpit.3467:

They camp the instance because the JP is bugged and hard to get into. Yes they are using auto-run, and the angle is the default respawn angle after you reset following completion. These players have completed it, respawned, pressed auto-run and then gone to the bathroom/whatever

As for OP saying he sees them teleport to the end for reward, sounds more like sever lag updating where players really are; if it is genuine then that isn;t a bot, it’s an exploit but given how these things go, if there were an exploit then everyone would be dong this by now.

I never once said anything about teleporting to the end for the reward. That was the other thread by somebody else https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bots-invade-Winter-Wonderland-JP

Obviously the ridiculous requirement for 10k drinks and the annoying bug making it hard to get into the JP is driving us crazy and some players are doing certain things just to stay in the puzzle, and apparently cheat at it, just for a friggen shoulder skin. I do want the skin and hope I can get it before the event is over so I don’t have to buy the drinks. But I’m not going to resort to weird tactics/cheats to get it.

Shikigami.4013:

Three hours and nobody came up with the obvious yet? Sometimes things like these are really hard to believe. Ok, I will clear this one up for you.

First of all, this is not a macro and not a bot. Who would use a bot that does nothing at all for them except run their char off a platform indefinitely? Thats downright stupid. Also, you do not need a macro at all. Just like with the rangers who abuse their heal autocast function to afk farm events (usually the Zyphyrite Kite Event in Dry Top) you only need the regular Guild Wars 2 Autorun function that has been in the game since it started. None of you know it?! Press Numlock and there you go. Your char will run by itself.

Second, it is not a bug, glitch, display problem of whatever. It is simply a solution to not get booted out of the Jumping Puzzle in case you have to leave your PC for a short time. People may not immediately realize this, but many events use the mechanics of PVP maps to function, and in PVP maps you will be automatically kicked out if you stop moving or using a skill for 2 minutes. So what do you do if you just stood in Divinity’s Reach and spent half an hour trying to get into the Jumping Puzzle, and now that you are in, you need to go to the bathroom? Well, you press “Num Lock” and let your char move so that you are not kicked out and have to try another half hour to get back in.

Seriously, this is neither a big deal nor is it against the rules. Autorun is not a macro, those people are not doing this for an extended period of time (the maximum time they could do this is limited to 30 minutes by the system anyway) and also they have no gameplay advantage for running their chars off that platform.

As much as I hate bots, afk leeching exploiters, cheaters and all kinds of people who just play unfairly, this one is really not an issue and would not happen if the entrance to the Jumping Puzzle was not horribly cumbersome.

Auto-run, of course! Never thought of that.

Yeah I can understand people having to do this when they need to AFK for a bit because of how hard it is to get into the stinking map.

The problem is, I believe, ArenaNet went on vacation right after the wintersday event started and won’t be back until after new year’s. Which of course means there won’t be time to fix this jumping puzzle until NEXT year.

So for now we just have to put up with this crap.

Personally I always leave the map if I need to go AFK, no matter how short a time I’m away, this way others have a chance to get into the map when I’m not actually doing the puzzle for a few minutes. My belief is if I’m not doing it I have no reason to be in the map. That’s just me though, but I can totally understand the situation better now. It’s such a shame though.