Guild Wars 2

Rooks Zaer.5846:

Wonder if they’ll compensate people if they go with the “it’s a bug and not intended” route.

I don’t think they will and I don’t think they should, because:

- everyone’s affected by the current developement in one way or another.

- there’s no guaranteed percentage for ectos salvaged in the item description of salvage kits (i.e. we’re playing lottery and we should know it)

- as far as we currently know, the salvage kits that can be bought for gems/money aren’t affected by it (which I can say from my own experience, as I’ve had 3 ectos drop from rares using a BLSK today).

Siigari.6587:

Vayne.8563:

Except EVERYONE isn’t complaining. Some people are complaining. I’ve also seen people say they’re getting the same results as they did before the patch. Saying everyone is complaining when everyone is not is called exaageration and doesn’t win arguments.

I’m sorry, the market doesn’t lie.

Sell listings for nearly every T6 mat are down since 4 days ago and prices are rising to match the lack of supply. Whether or not a few people experience ‘similar’ results the world market shows a depression in supply.

Also you latch on to one broad generalization instead of actually addressing the issue itself. Lol.

I think you’re saying two very smart things here.
First: The market doesn’t lie.
Second: The sell listing for nearly every T6 is down.

This to me indicates that this “crisis” is manufactered, rather than real. It’s true that the sell listings for some T6 materials have gone down considerably over the past days (e.g. dust, bones, claws). Others, however, have stayed untouched (e.g. blood, fangs, scales). If there truly was some error in code, why does it only affect some of the materials?
this whole situation seems rigged to me. But let’s just wait if ANet finds something.

Same problem here. A lot of disconnects today and not able to join the gamefor about 20 minutes now.

Malediktus.9250:

Because he was obviously intended to be fighted with his minions at the same time. They are respawning for a long time for a reason. The boss alone is just plain boring.

If that’s the case, why can you still pull the trash out? Why are the boss and the trash two seperate groups at all, instead of one big group?
Nothing in how the mechanic has worked and in fact still works indicates that you are not supposed to kill the trash and the boss one after another. All that’s been changed is the order in which you have to kill and the time it takes.

Malediktus.9250:

pull boss out exploit.

Seperating large groups of opponents to finish them off one after another is not an exploit, it’s strategical gaming. Why that option has been removed is beyond me.

Lerysh.8173:

You can still seperate Rabov from the trash, you just have to pull the trash now instead of Rabov.

True, but every time you do that you also have to take care of Rabov’s veteran. And the higher level of fractals you run, the more waves of trash you’ll have to beat, hence the more often you have to beat Rabov’s veteran.
That’s probably my main concern with this change, that it didn’t neccesarily increase the difficulty but just made the whole process x-times longer.

We did also encounter another bug when fighting Rabov. We tried seperating him and the veteran by having one of our team-members fight the veteran outside the room while the rest would take care of Rabov. Eventually Rabov switched aggro to focus the team member outside of the room, went after him, then suddendly dug himself in and respawned with full health.

I just did the dredge fractal on level 18 and I can’t understand most of the changes.
As has been said before, this fractal was already one of the longest and most dreaded and the one most people complained about because it was imballanced, compared to other fractals. I like that you’re no longer able to kill Rabov and his adds from the wheel, but all the other changes (including no longer being able to seperate Rabov from the trash) just drag out this fractal. I feel like these changes are pushing us back into the fractal-stone age of skipping a fractal alltogether because it takes more time than three of the other fractals combined.

I am with the majority of people here. I’m not one of those who have been banned, nor was I aware of the method that lead to the bans, still I think they’re not justified.
From what I understand there was a new recipee that could be used to de-value a certain material and for us as players it was impossible to see whether those changes to the market were intended or unintended from the developers side, yet players receive a ban for them, after they’ve been labeled exploits.
The two main arguments for this are: The players did so, knowing they would manipulate the price of said good and it was an obvious exploit because it would theoretically generate you an infinte amount of money.

Obvious Exploit Theory
Let’s make this clear, the method could not have been used to make an infinite amount of money. From what I gather on these forums the method wasn’t known to too many players yet. As soon as it would have been, the ectoplasm prices would have dropped to a degree that making money was impossible. All it would have done is let ectoplasm prices drop significantly. Of course it’s going to generate wealth for those players who first discoverd the method, but so did flipping dyes or simply having a profession. Which leads to allegation Nr. 2

Market Manipulation Theory

So the second charge these people are facing is that they were trying to manipulate the market. Which is true, I must admit, but the question is: Is it unlawful (or obviously against the Terms of Service?)
Try looking up rare weapons/armor on the market and have a look at the buy orders of these products. For most of these, the highest buy order is placed by a single person, trying to buy said prduct by the dozens in an attempt to monopolize on it an thus being able to dictate the market price.
Is this a manipulation of the market? Of course it is. But it’s also something that happens in economies and judging by the lack of bans issued against these people it’s a manipulation that’s inteded.
Buying Gems from the Gemstore is basically a money printing machine, implemented by the developers. Is it a manipulation of the market? Of course it is. Gold, in the end, is nothing but a trade good. Being able to create an infinite amount of it leads to its decrease in value, which according to the recent reasoning would be exploiting the game, yet it goes unpunished because it’s intended.

The question we have to ask ourselves, finally, is: How are we to know which manipulations of the market are intended and which aren’t? This really feels like there’s a double standard here.

Gaile Gray.6028:

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

I just got banned today for saying that hating Germans would be nationalism and not racism. I wasn’t the one who said he hated Germans (I am German in fact), nor did I insult anyone else. Somebody, appearantly took my statement the wrong way, or I don’t know what and I got banned for racism (almost ironically)
It really seems to me like noone looks into these reports.

If you’re concerned about this — and I understand your point about the confusion — please submit a ticket and explain. The agent can check chat records to see what was said, and by whom.

Thanks, Gaile, for your quick response.
In fact, I did already file a ticket, but since I’ve only been blocked for three days and know the speed of the German support team, I have little hope that the issue will be resolved, before it solves itself, especially since today is still a holiday (although I’d gladly return here and state that I was wrong.)
My main point in posting in here was to raise awareness for this issue. I do not know about the methods you use for monitoring chat and punishing misbehaviour, but the speed with which I was blocked after making said remarks leaves little doubt that it happened on suspicion. Again, I don’t know about your methods and I might be the unlucky exceptional case, but in case I’m not, you might need to review your methods of filtering abusive chat language and racism.

Merry Christmas to all of you at ANet.

I just got banned today for saying that hating Germans would be nationalism and not racism. I wasn’t the one who said he hated Germans (I am German in fact), nor did I insult anyone else. Somebody, appearantly took my statement the wrong way, or I don’t know what and I got banned for racism (almost ironically)
It really seems to me like noone looks into these reports.

If I’m not completely mistaken, a legendary was on the market just yesterday for 1750 gold. (There was a thread about it.)
Also, the buy order prices for Twilight and The Inicnerator are now below 1000 gold, which indicates that a few for around 2000 have actually been sold.
Unfortunately I think prices of 2000 gold and lower for precursor are a reality we will have to live with.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Valento.9852:

Everyone arguments jealousy, but gold grinding isn’t the only answer for something being “legendary”, still think these weapons lost their purpose.

Yes, because I’m sure farming 9k gold isn’t a legendary task in and of itself.

And yes, buying enough Gems to convert to 9k gold is also a legendary feat.

Oh, please stop using the 9k off the TP as an argument. We all know that price is lunatic, and will never be paid by anyone for a legendary and is bound to go down drastically as soon as there is competition on the market.
I do agree with most people that whoever wanted to buy a legendary in the past could buy most of its components anyway. Even with legendary prices going down to 2000 and below, it would require an insane amount of gold-farming or real money to get one of those off the trading post.
With that being said, I’m still of the opinion that having legendaries pop up on the market as tradeable goods makes them loose a lot of their emotional value. I know this is an irrational thing to say but seeing them pop up next to pieces of candy corn, iron ore and butter as a regular trade item to a certain extend makes them lose their appeal.

Nike.2631:

Personally I adore how them going up on the TP deflates the egos of folks who thought their shiney made them special.

Get a legendary because you think it looks good on YOU, not because you think it makes you look better than OTHER PLAYERS.

It’s called emotional value. Something has a meaning for you that it hasn’t for others because you connect something special with it, in this case having worked towards it. Emotional value was also the only real reason to craft a legendary, because, as many people have pointed out, it’s basically just a skin.
Unfortunately, if you put a price on something, emotional value goes lost.

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

I don’t know if this is an actual issue or if I simply have terrible luck, but ever since that 12/14 patch, the dc-issue seems to have taken on such a frequency that I haven’t been able to complete a single run with five people – the majority of runs actually saw 2+ disconnect – which ultimately meant that I was able to complete only about 25% of the fractal runs I did since that patch.
Not sure if anyone can validate this observation, but to me it seems that something you did in that last patch has made the DC-issue worse than it was before.

I’d like to add to this point, that the problem appears to be especially frequently in the dredge fractal, after the button mechnism, but before the frist boss. So either when you do the bombs or the canons, somebody always disconnects (on my last run it happened to two people.)

It’s probably a test of some sort. I doubt anyone who’s gone through the tribulations of crafting twilight would be willing to part with it now.
Unless they plan to quit the game, in which case making 9500 gold doesn’t make much sense either.

I don’t know if this is an actual issue or if I simply have terrible luck, but ever since that 12/14 patch, the dc-issue seems to have taken on such a frequency that I haven’t been able to complete a single run with five people – the majority of runs actually saw 2+ disconnect – which ultimately meant that I was able to complete only about 25% of the fractal runs I did since that patch.
Not sure if anyone can validate this observation, but to me it seems that something you did in that last patch has made the DC-issue worse than it was before.

Heliox.8632:

Puandro.3245:

I want a dev answer if this is going to be changed to no affect running different paths too fast.

ive personally talked to a dev and the reason behind such a DR is to combat the fact that people can hack and incredibly do fast speed runs of the dungeon without having to manually tweak each and every dungeon so that its unhackable.

I find that reasonable, however that is not really an answer on why that system seems to also target players who are doing the dungeons without any hacks. 4 dungeons in 2 hours doesn’t seem to me like “incredibly fast speed runs”. I say they should leave the system in place but change its variables so it no longer targets honest players. Can’t be too difficult.

Fildydarie.1496:

The challenge will rise and, as was always intended, players will find there is a maximum level of difficulty at which they can complete fractals. Impossible is part of the design, so it is very possible that with current skills and gear progression is not meant to be possible at these tiers.

Well right now it seems to be easily possible on lvl 40+, provided that you get the right fractals. On the other hand, you can get stuck on level 10+ if you’re unlucky. We’re currently at a point where players are seriously discussing strategies on how to avoid certain fractals altogether (as in: every player enters the dungeon solo until they land in a fractal they want to avoid, then leaves the fractals and rejoins the group), rather than how to tackle those fractals. This can impossibly have been the intention behind this recent patch.

stof.9341:

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this but in the underwaterlevel, where the Krait is usually stuck in the ceiling, there is a hole in the ceiling that lets you step out of the fractal entirely. I don’t really think it can be used as an exploit, since there’s no other way to get back into the fractal, but it gives you and interesting look at the fractals from the outside. There is for instance a small scaled version of the giant from the cliffside fractal standing beneath the main hub.
Be warned though, don’t go there when you’re actively doing the fractals as you may fall into water holes there’s no escaping from (which is particularly emberassing if the whole group wipes and you can’t reset and everyone has to restart the fractals all over.)

Someone already reported that and said you can go from there to the ascalon fractals. Once you get close enough, the Charr NPC will start following you even into the next fractal where they’ll give you a hand (they cannot attack underwater)

I saw Ascalon, didn’t see the NPCs though. I was also able to make out the swamps, the ice fractal and the dwarve fractal. The jade sea fractal was somewhere in the air and you were able to make it out because there was “Jade Kraken” written into the grass, when standing under it, same goes for the main hub, where “HUB” is written on the ground.
To be fair this might actually be exploitable in some way or other, I didn’t really look for exploits as I was far to interested in just exploring the area.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this but in the underwaterlevel, where the Krait is usually stuck in the ceiling, there is a hole in the ceiling that lets you step out of the fractal entirely. I don’t really think it can be used as an exploit, since there’s no other way to get back into the fractal, but it gives you and interesting look at the fractals from the outside. There is for instance a small scaled version of the giant from the cliffside fractal standing beneath the main hub.
Be warned though, don’t go there when you’re actively doing the fractals as you may fall into water holes there’s no escaping from (which is particularly emberassing if the whole group wipes and you can’t reset and everyone has to restart the fractals all over.)

EDIT: Upon checking the area out again, the guy under the main hub seems to have vanished with yesterday’s update.

malevolence.9487:

-The Ice fractal, there is an Ice condition right? when we killed the Elemental and ran through the forest to fight the Boss, I forgot to stay next to a bonfire to remove the Ice condition, when fighting with the Boss I still had the condition and worst, I had the condition still in the next fractal (swamp), I tried everything, even dying, and the condition was still there making me useless to run in the swamp. Lucky, the condition was removed when entering water just before the boss fight in the swamp. But what if the next fractal didn’t have water?
.

I had this one once and the next fractal was cliffside (which has no water) and the effect was taken off me after a few moments – probably because there are torches standing around at the beginning, not sure though.

Jezath.7395:

im by no means a white knight and theres also no need to project onto me the ossible failure of mmo. There asre things i dissagree with and I have a right to my opinion just as you do. Just because i do not beleive in the same way does not make my points any less valid than yours.

I agree with you that there is no point in blaming somebody personally right now. But I do understand a lot of people’s anger today. The fractals, good as they may be, still have a lot of issues that hinder progress (you see the impressive list on page one.) In contradiction to those, there were relatively few, which actually made going through the fractals easier (some of them still there, like jumping the wall in Ascalon.)
I think what’s upsetting people right now is that yesterday’s patch prioritized fixing exploits (wich introduced new bugs) over fixing bugs. I’m totally with you that these exploits should be fixed evetually, but it should have been made sure that the rest of the fractals run smoothly first. The way it is done now, it’s going to put many people off the fractals and who knows how many of those will return?

Well first of all, thanks for the post. I really think this is currently the best strategy.
I was in a group yesterday and without having read this, at some point we figured out that this was our best strategy to get to the boss.
The problem was, though, that, apart from hitting you with aganony, the boss also has the ability to teleport you into one of the cages standing around on the map, which made your chances to stay in that hallway (and with your group) very slim.
So ultimately, what we experienced was that someone would get ported into that cage and either die there or upon freeing themselves pull all the mobs from that corner into the hallway, causing a wipe for the group.

After having tried this for a good hour, we decided that this fractal is currently pretty much impossible on higher levels and skipped it.

I really think that ANet has done a good job with some of the fractals, like the swamp or the underwater level, which seemed to be pretty unfair in the beginning, when nobody had an idea what to do and people were constantly skipping these levels but they actually rewarded you with a satisfying learning curve. But the idea behind some of the levels just seems to be to spam the players with more and more mobs, to the point where it becomes impossible to beat them all, which I personally find rather dull and anoying.