Hello,
These botters are really getting out of control now, they are everywhere. Questions for the developers:
Isnt there some type of movement detection program that should signal when people are warping around the zones?
What is the best way for us to report them? they spawn and disappear so fast it is hard to even grab a name rendering the traditional reporting mechanism ineffective.
Also screen shots are not really proof either since it looks no different than any real player harvesting a node.
thanks!
Don’t know if it’ll help, but there’s an ongoing discussion on this topic here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Report-tool-ineffective-vs-new-type-of-hacker/
Physical authenticator, please. Really can’t understand how a company can expect their MMO to ever be taken seriously in this day and age without providing players with an option to purchase one.
Doubly so when said company seems to be incapable of providing support for compromised accounts.
Anyone who thinks teleporting bots in GW2 don’t exist really has to look no further than Youtube to see the disappointing reality with their own eyes. (shrug)
…because those that aren’t upset are playing the game..
^ False (or indeed total lack of) logic.
I know many people that were unhappy with certain aspects of the game, the majority of which did not post on the forum, but neither are they happily playing the game, they are playing other games, some got refunds.
Which is in part the reason for this thread, when some idiot comes out with “vocal minority” garbage they base it on utterly false assumptions such as the “silent majority” disagree or that anyone still playing the game is totally happy with it.
If you think the only people who for example thought all the bugged DEs for the first couple of months were a bad thing were the minority who posted on it on the forums and that everyone else thought it was absolutely fine, you are gravely mistaken, as is anyone that uses the term “vocal minority” in a similar context.
We’ll take your anecdotal evidence under advisement.
Most of my guildmates that have left did so precisely because dynamic events are frequently broken (even to this day). You can argue that (being the meat of the game) it left them very little entertaining PvE content to do, or that it caused them to lose confidence in the developer’s ability to fix things, whatever. It was what it was.
None of them ever bothered to complain on the forums. Take that as you will.
People who enjoy the game, don’t come out and complain about it. Therefore you don’t notice them.
Get it through your heads, the overall reception of guild wars 2 is positive, while the overall feedback is negative. Because people who have a negative opinion are more likely to bring up their real or perceived slights.
I absolutely agree with the point about feedback being negative overall. Yes, most players come to the forum to voice a concern or complaint rather than to post praise.
However, to assume that the overall reception of GW2 (or any game, I’m not trying to pick on GW2) is positive is pure speculation. To assume that everyone not complaining on a forum is content or happy with a game is naive. Many people who are unhappy with a product will simply (and quietly) take their business elsewhere without stopping by the forums to ever speak about it.
I’m sad to say that most of my guild has stopped playing GW2. None of them have ever posted on this or any public GW2 forum, and some might incorrectly assume their absence from a forum was a sign that they were content with the game. They just ran into enough things that discouraged them and quietly left.
(edited by Edge.4180)
This happens a lot at the rich Ori node in SouthSun… I asked someone about it and they said they logged out there and logged in to mine the node.
I’m still not sure if I believe him, but the fact that he responded and it’s indeed feasible…
Yeah, I suspect a lot of legitimate logging in and out happens at a location like that. This is activity I see at much odder locations, like someone suddenly appearing at a normal platinum node in a bath-tub sized pond in the middle of a swamp with two hostile drakes guarding it (of all the places to choose to log in and out to farm a node, why there?). Or someone suddenly appearing in a forest area and gathering lumber from a tree and then vanishing, while oddly ignoring the two other lumber nodes not ten feet away.
Fair enough, but if you’re planning on reporting the player anyway, screenshotting allows you to submit the report at your leisure.
I should point out that (while not always) often these characters are “blinking” while harvesting the resource node. By “blinking”, I mean sometimes their position quickly shifts around by several feet during the harvesting process. They’re here, there, then there, then over here , then gone. In other cases, they appear to be flickering in and out of existence until they vanish entirely.
I suspect that is a byproduct of the exploit they’re using, but obviously it makes it difficult to reliably get a screenshot.
Not all of them do this (and why that is, I have no idea), but it just complicates the matter further because you see someone suddenly standing beside you at a node, aren’t sure how they arrived unnoticed, but you don’t see anything “buggy” happening so you conclude they’re legitimate. Then, suddenly, they vanish all the same and it’s too late.
(edited by Edge.4180)
Maybe, just maybe, they park an alt there once they find the node location and then they log in, mine, send it to the bank then log out?
The first few times I saw these events, I assumed that was what I was seeing. But after seeing a number of examples of odd behavior surrounding this, I made the point of catching the name of one of them and confirmed that they were still online and in the same zone after they vanished from sight.
By the way, while logging out may seem instantaneous, anyone who has played with friends on voice (or in the same room) who had to momentarily log out knows their avatar remains behind for several seconds after the owner actually logs out. Contrary to that, these are characters that are vanishing the moment they take the last swing at a node. There are a few other signs that don’t add up as well.
There has actually been a number of threads popping up on this particular bot (?) behavior recently (example: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-new-type-of-bots/first#post923057 ), but they always get closed with the request that players report them. I feel like ANet is not understanding how difficult it is to carry out that advice in this particular case. I think this time around they need to rely less on our reports and more on their own methods of tracking these cheaters down.
These hack-users would probably get more attention if they were abusing this ability to cheat in SPvP/WvW, but since their purpose is to make money I don’t think they bother with those areas of the game.
(edited by Edge.4180)
- If you’re around to notice a hacker ‘suddenly’ appear, nothing is faster than a single keystroke.
- If they’re hacking using the method you mentioned, they won’t be running off normally, just like they didn’t run into my screen normally.
If you’re going to give circumstances that a system broken, and I give a reasonable answer on how to report them anyway using the circumstances you provided, telling me my way is useless because it’s slower is pretty insulting.
The problem with your proposed solution is, again, two fold:
You’re assuming whenever a player is using a resource node, their number one priority is being on the lookout for the sudden appearance of other players. They’re not. Me, personally, I’m usually keeping an eye out on monsters in the distance or taking this automated-resource-extraction process as an opportunity to look over chat. Often when another player appears it is extremely difficult to tell how they arrived (out of thin air versus legitimately running up unnoticed).
You’re assuming players are going to go through the trouble of manually filing a report after the fact with their screenshot evidence. Many won’t. The quick-report function is as painless as it is for a reason – to encourage players to use it. When players can’t use that function, many simply won’t bother filing a report. You can call that laziness, but that doesn’t diminish the problem of the vulnerability in GW2’s systems nor the fact that it is being exploited.
- Hacker appears.
- I hit Prntscrn
- I report him.
Why wouldn’t this work?
A) While it was simple for you to type that out, what you’re describing (manually submitting a report after the fact) takes far more time than the usual “right-click portrait, select report bot, submit” sequence, and thus it’s unlikely many players will even bother to do this. There’s a reason developers try to make the report function as quick and painless to use as possible.
However, the fact that many players won’t take time out of their schedules to do what you’re describing does not diminish the problem that a) this vulnerability exists in the game in the first place, and b) that people are exploiting it.
B) I would love to know how many pointless screenshots you’ve taken of legitimate players who you suddenly noticed at a resource node, only to see them run off normally, bringing you to the conclusion that someone simply managed to sneak up on you (and you overreacted by scrambling for the printscreen button).
Frankly, I think it’s a bit silly to suggest players start snapping screenshots of any player that suddenly shows up next to them at a resource node. Many times players will not know for sure they’re seeing a hack-user until said arrival suddenly vanishes into thin air (at which point it’s too late).
(edited by Edge.4180)
I chose that specific title because I’ve seen a number of threads trying to get the following points across, only to be closed with the unhelpful advice “please report these players”. The problems, put as simply as possible, are as follows:
1) GW2 has a vulnerability that is allowing players to suddenly appear and disappear to/from specific points on the map without the use of waypoints.
2) Players are exploiting this vulnerability to easily farm resource nodes, which is interfering with the game’s economy.
3) It is extremely difficult, to the point where you can not rely on players to help you with this problem, for a player to report hack-users who are exploiting this vulnerability in your game.
To explain point #3 further, the problem is said hack-user will suddenly appear out of nowhere at a resource node and immediately begin the interaction animation. At this point, any witnesses are likely thinking “Whoa, where did this fellow come from? Did I really just see what I thought I saw?”, and before that thought is complete the hack-user has already vanished away – and with that any chance of reporting his activities. Even if you target these hack-users in an attempt to access the report menu, the target is lost the moment the hack-user vanishes, making it impossible to file the report. In all likelihood you can’t even count on a witness to notice and remember the hack user’s name.
As someone who religiously uses resource nodes myself when playing, I regularly see a number of these specific type of hack-user during my play sessions. All of them thus far have been Ranger characters – and while I’m sure that’s not a guarantee, I suspect it’s not a coincidence. The Ranger’s pet would be handy to intercept and distract any mobs near the resource node, leaving the hack-user free to quickly appear, do his business, and disappear.
Whether they are actually teleporting around the map or just taking advantage of an exploit that allows them to turn invisible at will, I have no idea. What I do know is that simply requesting that players report these hack-users is not helpful and not going to solve the problem. If you are depending on player reports to locate and remove these hack-users, then you’re unlikely to ever remove them in any sort of timely fashion. This time, the method of detection needs to come from ANet’s side. We helped you with bot-users when we could, now help us by taking this seriously and finding a better way to go after these individuals.
In looking at what monthlies should be like, one should consider purpose and fun.
For one thus, monthlies should be fun. Versatile, don’t force people into one role. So say if you place WvW there, don’t make it kills: make any way of contributing to your team (be it raiding camps, taking towers, defending, or even just running supply, or killing) count. Thus people can really play WvW for it, instead of just doing some PK’ing on the WvW map.
I agree with this. I find it strange that the emphasis from the monthly on WvW participation is on killing opponents rather than on completing objectives. I honestly don’t want players flocking to WvW specifically to kill other characters in order to satisfy the requirements of the monthly. Whether players are killed or simply driven off should not matter as long as the objective is completed. That’s how battles in WvW are won. Why is the monthly set up in a way to undermine that? Why create a task that is going to shift the focus towards scoring kills, even if its at the detriment of losing valuable territory?
Someone on the development team made a bad call here. And yes, I do believe you would see less players complaining about the WvW portion of the monthlies if the objective was something along the line of “complete X WvW events” or “successfully capture/defend X keeps”. Anyone can sit up on the wall pouring flaming oil down on opponents beating on a door and have fun defending a keep, whether they like PvP or not.
(edited by Edge.4180)
I’ll just say this regarding the Fractals being part of the monthly achievement: there’s a lot of PvE and PvP content a lower level character can participate in. However, in the developer’s words..
“Unlike the other dungeons, your party can be any level. We’ve employed World vs. World-style sidekicking to make this dungeon accessible to all players. But keep in mind, our aim was to challenge level 80 players. Going in at low levels is not for the faint of heart!”
I’ll also point out how unwilling higher level players seem to be when it comes to taking lower level players on Fractal runs with them.
Now, if the goal here is to specifically target and frustrate new or casual players that haven’t reached 80 yet, or prevent them from participating in monthly achievements, then mission accomplished!
Level scaling allows virtually the entire world to be used as end-game content. You can find challenges no matter where in the world you go, and can play anywhere without fear of ruining the challenge for others. Dynamic events would become a joke if one high level player was capable of single handedly wiping out an entire low level enemy force.
No it doesn’t. Because the drops aren’t scaled up to their levels. So why would anyone who is level 80 bother with a lower level zone? They’re not going to get anything out of it.
As others have already pointed out, a high level character can get high level gear in low level zones. That’s an intentional incentive, and a balanced reward because a level of risk is maintained.
how often do u get Bl kits from dailies
I have completed dailies religiously every day for the past three months and have received a total of four of those kits.
Of course, it’s all random and just comes down to that. But you’re collecting ectos, so you’re familiar with how random can work out.
Level scaling allows virtually the entire world to be used as end-game content. You can find challenges no matter where in the world you go, and can play anywhere without fear of ruining the challenge for others. Dynamic events would become a joke if one high level player was capable of single handedly wiping out an entire low level enemy force.
I’m playing less because many of my friends are playing less. They’re playing less because many dynamic events have a tendency to break down within days (if not hours) of a server reset, which makes for very dull and repetitive game world when only a handful of dynamic events remain available in any given zone most of the time.
Less fun = less logging in.
I think a lot of people are harshly judging because they have come from World of Warcraft, which to be fair, has had years to fix past mistakes, make improvements and, despite years of development, still manage to screw things up. When wow finally introduced raid finder, my initial reaction was, why the hell did it take them 5 years to realize this was a good idea. I think Anet should implement something similar to be honest, its just that good of an idea. Point is, the game has barely been out, you can’t expect perfection in 3 months, mistakes will be made, failures will be admitted (hopefully) and the game will continue to thrive.
I feel they’ve had enough time at this point to resolve this particular issue, and can no longer fault friends and other players for leaving over it.
Dynamic events are the primary form of PvE content players are expected to level up on. The fact that these events are still problematic and breaking down on a massive scale three months after launch has reached a point of no longer being understandable to many players. Myself included.
This was something that needed to be fixed with urgency.. like the “we can’t launch the game until this bug is squashed” type of urgency, not the current casual pace where it’s stretching out into months with zero signs of improvement. Whatever their current method for attacking this problem is, it’s not working. I feel fair in saying that because we are nearing 100 days now and dynamic events continue to break down without fail. If anyone doesn’t think this has reached the point of being silly, I would love to hear what that “number of days” has to be before you also label the progress on this particular problem as “ridiculous”.
I would love to be “it’s all good” about this, but the fact is this problem more than any other has caused my friends and guild members to move away from this game. So, it’s not “all good”.
If I seem to be directing frustration at the person I quoted, I’m not. I am, however, directing it at the problem and the continued failure to resolve it.
(edited by Edge.4180)
I often get hateful whispers thrown at me (Especially in overflows) when I go into Lion’s Arch having forgotten to switch off my commander icon(Which is really easy to forget btw).
It really needs to stop, Why do people send hateful messages? Because it costs 100 gold?
I could care less about the money. However, I do care about unnecessary clutter on my interface, another player’s ability to oddly add to it, and the lack of tools on my end to do anything to remove it.
More importantly, when I was still new to the game and new to Lion’s Arch, I had no idea where a specific vendor was. I scoured the mini-map for a stupid amount of time trying to find the vendor’s icon somewhere on it, eventually coming to the incorrect conclusion that Lion’s Arch didn’t provide that type of vendor.
The vendor, of course, was there the whole time. The problem: players with commander icons were parked at the vendor and their icons were obscuring the NPC’s icon on my map.
I don’t enjoy having my time wasted, and this goes back to my initial complaint regarding unnecessary screen clutter being forced on me by another player and my inability to remove it. As far as I’m concerned, either commander icons need to auto-disable when leaving PvP maps, or players need to have a UI option to remove your commander icon from their display.
Until that happens, you’re probably always going to see some irritated whispers when you forget to turn it off outside of PvP zones. Think of it as driving around with your high-beams on.
I’m playing less because many of my friends are playing less. They’re playing less because many dynamic events have a tendency to break down within days (if not hours) of a server reset, which makes for very dull and repetitive game world when only a handful of dynamic events remain available in any given zone most of the time.
Less fun = less logging in.
6. As far as I know Anet makes the lore. You really think they don’t know what fits in THEIR world, THEIR lore.
Pretty much this. I think it’s a little odd to hear someone outside the team insisting what does and does not fit into the game’s lore because of some preconceptions of how an individual thinks this time period should work. The lore is correct as is because this is the world they’ve made. It doesn’t have to fit someone’s expectations based on fantasy and science outside of the game. From that perspective there’s a lot of craziness in Guild War’s lore.
My only questions are:
1) What did you think the “Unique” tag on the item referred to?
2) If you didn’t know exactly what that particular tag meant, what did the other players tell you when you put the question forward in chat in an effort to expand your knowledge of MMO terminology?
3) If you chose instead to remain uninformed, why?
After reading the Guild War 2 novel, Edge of Destiny, I’m pretty much ready to accept that the Asura can do anything with regards to power crystals and golem designs. Nothing unusual lore-wise here.
I’ll be happy if players just stop training mobs onto other players. Or ANet makes that practice impossible to do. Whichever comes first.
Well, for those of us frustrated by this, this specific problem was brought up during the AMA with Chris Whitesite last night and in regards to the problem people were having obtaining kill credit/xp/drops he stated “This was a bug and was not intended. The bug will be fixed moving forward.”.
So, that’s good to finally see. Although, why not just post that information here on the forums days ago, I have no idea. It doesn’t take much time to type “it’s a bug, fixing it”. :P
Hopefully it really will be fixed before the next large event. It’d be interesting to hear the details of what exactly was breaking down where, but I doubt we’ll ever know the specifics.
I’m a little disappointed that questions regarding grinding, ascended gear, and ANet’s philosophy on those two points seem to be dominating most of the Q&A. It’s like.. how many ways can the same questions be asked and answered? Let’s move on to something else, already.
Edge, I think they’re trying to ask the question in multiple structures to try to see if the answers are inconsistent. It’s like those psych evaluations you fill out as you apply for a job asking:
“33. Agree or disagree: It is okay to bend the rules once in a while.”
“72. Agree or disagree: Policy must be followed at all times.”
That’s fine, but are we interested in having a Q&A session where we get as many questions as possible answered, or are we more interested in playing a game where we see if it’s possible to trip up the developer on his answers. I prefer the former.
I’m a little disappointed that questions regarding grinding, ascended gear, and ANet’s philosophy on those two points seem to be dominating most of the Q&A. It’s like.. how many ways can the same questions be asked and answered? Let’s move on to something else, already.
Mistake me if i’m wrong, but doesn’t legendary weapon’s have the same stat/damage value as exotic’s? And if so how is bringing out another tier of gear gonna help? Won’t the same people that say there is nothing to do say the same thing after getting all the new gear?
As far as I know Legendary weapons will be increased in strength so that ascended fits in between them and exotic.
Yeah I know, Legendary’s used to be an optional grind but now if you want BiS gear you need to grind for a legendary…..
Or you could get the ascended weapons? You didn’t “need” to grind legendaries when exotics were the best stats?
The concern is this: as long as ANet intends to continue to bump the stats of legendary equipment up for free so that they’re always “best in slot” (as they will with the release of ascended gear), then the only true way to make yourself immune to the gear chase (at least with weapons) is to get a legendary. And at that point legendary weapons start to feel a whole lot less optional.
So what you want is for legendaries that take 500-700 hours worth of material to create to not be bumped up into best in slot.
Can you show me exactly where I said I want that? All I did was explain why some people feel Legendary equipment has gone from “optional” to “necessary”.
Before, Legendary equipment was purely an aesthetic choice because the stats were on par with Exotics. You can argue that it is still purely an aesthetic choice, except now the stats are comparable to those Ascended weapons will have. To someone who just walked in on GW2, nothing has really changed. To people who have been here from the start, the bar representing the top tier just moved, and there’s no guarantee that it won’t move again in the future besides assurances from ANet that have already failed the test of time once.
If/when a new tier is introduced above Ascended, Legendary equipment will be boosted again so it can continue to be labeled “the aesthetic alternative to best-in-slot weapons”. Because of this, many people are now looking at Legendary weapons not as an aesthetic alternative, but instead as the only guaranteed way to protect yourself from power creep. Once you have your Legendary weapon you can say “Yay, I have the weapon with the best stats in the game.. forever”, where as you can no longer say that about Exotics, will one day no longer be able to say that about Ascended, nor any tiers introduced beyond Ascended.
Legendary weapons have become like the United States Post Office equivalent of the “Forever Stamps”, which were stamps that were introduced back into 2007 that you could buy in bulk and then (as long as you had some) use them on first class mail no matter how much the cost of postage stamps increased in the years to come. Legendary weapons are not just cosmetic alternatives any longer; they should literally have the words “whatever is currently the best-est” in place of their stat listings. There is no other class of weapon you can make that claim about.
(edited by Edge.4180)
(sigh) They merged the very helpful and streamlined Q&A thread with this discussion thread. Now we have a jumbled mess. I hate when they do that. It may make the forum look cleaner but it sure doesn’t do us any favors with sorting through all the different conversations suddenly mixed together.
Mistake me if i’m wrong, but doesn’t legendary weapon’s have the same stat/damage value as exotic’s? And if so how is bringing out another tier of gear gonna help? Won’t the same people that say there is nothing to do say the same thing after getting all the new gear?
As far as I know Legendary weapons will be increased in strength so that ascended fits in between them and exotic.
Yeah I know, Legendary’s used to be an optional grind but now if you want BiS gear you need to grind for a legendary…..
Or you could get the ascended weapons? You didn’t “need” to grind legendaries when exotics were the best stats?
The concern is this: as long as ANet intends to continue to bump the stats of legendary equipment up for free so that they’re always “best in slot” (as they will with the release of ascended gear), then the only true way to make yourself immune to the gear chase (at least with weapons) is to get a legendary. And at that point legendary weapons start to feel a whole lot less optional.
Serious question: why do mainstream companies like Anet use Reddit to answer questions like this, when Reddit is most famous for being a site that people use to post creepy pictures of underage girls? Also: it’s a horrible site for organizing any kind of information. It seems like the sketchy nature and poor structure of the site would be a terrible match.
My thoughts exactly. Using reddit is a seriously stupid move on ANet’s part.
They have always used reddit for their AMA’s. Since before the game launched.
That was understandable back when they didn’t have the official forums open to the public. Not so much now, though.
Maybe Reddit gets more traffic than the forums?
And that’s not likely to change so long as they continue to use Reddit to host these Q&A sessions. That’s kind of the point of the complaint.
Serious question: why do mainstream companies like Anet use Reddit to answer questions like this, when Reddit is most famous for being a site that people use to post creepy pictures of underage girls? Also: it’s a horrible site for organizing any kind of information. It seems like the sketchy nature and poor structure of the site would be a terrible match.
My thoughts exactly. Using reddit is a seriously stupid move on ANet’s part.
They have always used reddit for their AMA’s. Since before the game launched.
That was understandable back when they didn’t have the official forums open to the public. Not so much now, though. I’m not big on tradition for the sake of tradition.
Serious question: why do mainstream companies like Anet use Reddit to answer questions like this, when Reddit is most famous for being a site that people use to post creepy pictures of underage girls? Also: it’s a horrible site for organizing any kind of information. It seems like the sketchy nature and poor structure of the site would be a terrible match.
I just don’t understand why something like this isn’t done on the official Guild Wars 2 forums. It’s bad enough having to jump between twitter, facebook, and the forums for information. I don’t see the point in potentially attracting new users to Reddit instead of attracting them here.
Mike O’Brien:Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games – we leave the grind to other MMOs.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/guild-wars-2-interview-monetization/#s:guildwars2-16
Colin Johanson:The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.
http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success
Mike O’Brien:I would also like add that we have never said there would be no vertical progression. We do intent to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve.
.. ja, just LOW,
but threadmill we never ever would install to the game…
It’s difficult to ignore those statements (well, difficult for the players at least). Personally, I would love to hear what they were thinking when making each of those statements, and why they don’t seem to believe there are contradicting philosophies happening there. But I doubt we’ll ever see anything like that answered.
Sadly, the first two statements are among the ones that I sold the game on to my friends. They don’t pay attention to the forums, and honestly I haven’t had the heart to tell them “Hey.. guess what changed?”. :/
My longbow’s auto-attack (“Long Range Shot”, a direct damage attack) at maximum range (which yields maximum damage) does less damage than my shortbow’s auto-attack (“Crossfire”, condition bleed) over time. If anything it’s already killing mobs faster than my direct-damage alternative, not slower. I tear up with Crossfire, where as I struggle to stay awake with Long Range Shot, so I’m not experiencing the dilemma you’re painting.
For me, the only time it becomes an issue is when there are several people placing bleed stacks on the same mob. But there’s nothing wrong or wimpy about condition attacks when hunting alone or in a normal party.
I don’t know anything about ranger, but there’s also other factors in play besides straight damage on the autoattack. For example, longbow has better range (I think?) which might mean it needs less damage as balance. The other skills might also be better (or maybe not, I honestly don’t know what skills either one has) to even it out. Or maybe the longbow traits are better. You can’t just look at one autoattack in a vacuum and say condition is fine.
Well, this isn’t WoW where we have a dozen different damage dealing attack, where the whole trick is to juggle cooldowns in order to apply a constant stream of damage. In GW2 the longbow’s and shortbow’s default auto-attack are those weapons main source of damage, with most of the other abilities on the bar being situational. So, yes, you can compare those two abilities and easily see which is generally going to come out on top: “crossfire” and “long range shot” deal comparable damage over time, and then on top of that crossfire applies a decent stack of bleeds for additional condition damage. And that’s even assuming long range shot’s direct damage is being applied at maximum range, because when it isn’t the damage drops off considerably.
The outcome can obviously change as the scenario changes and more of those situational attacks come into play. But that just goes back to what I said earlier – use the right tool for the job. I don’t gripe about the loss of condition damage when I’m on my guardian fighting monsters that are immune to burning. I don’t gripe when my direct damage suffers against a target that’s pumped up on toughness and armor. I just switch to a weapon more suited to the job because that’s going to resolve the temporary dilemma a lot faster than the developers are, and I have a hunch that’s actually the solution they’re assuming we’ll use.
People are going for these pure condition builds when they know full well that every weapon is situational, and thus the effectiveness of their build is going to be situational at best. We can say the same about players who ignore condition damage – they are not going to be the best in every situation either. I’m not really understanding the confusion here. If you want to talk about conditions capping on targets that are being attacked by dozens of players, I agree that’s a problem. But people suggesting conditions are just broken and that they don’t have their place in the game compared to direct damage.. I disagree strongly.
This was posted a few weeks back for those that missed it:
There seems to be some confusion:
The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.
If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.
He went on to suggest that, at this point, the initial supply of gems and gold (and the initial exchange rate that was set) have virtually no effect on the current exchange rate.
That would be cool, except…this isn’t the case.
The only thing, I can see in this whole post, that is true, is that the conversion of real money to gems has never varied.
I am curious as to why you believe it works differently than how ArenaNet’s in-house economist describes. If you are so certain that he’s deceiving you, you can always go to the thread where he made that statement and set him straight.
(edited by Edge.4180)
This was posted a few weeks back for those that missed it:
There seems to be some confusion:
The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.
If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.
He went on to suggest that, at this point, the initial supply of gems and gold (and the initial exchange rate that was set) have virtually no effect on the current exchange rate.
(edited by Edge.4180)
I don’t think anything was fixed. The main problem is still there (you have to earn all the experience on one map without logging out or zoning). Which, according to a recent developer post, is a bug.
I earned mine a little while back by just adventuring in one zone (without dying, obviously).
I’m guess you’re new to MMO’s.
DoT damage needs to do more damage for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is because they are at a huge disadvantage during trash pulls. Burst damage will clear trash faster. This includes but is not limited to hard hitting mini bosses or elite mobs with low health. Direct damage will kill these mobs quicker while DoT damage has a significant ramp up time
Condition damage also pales in comparison whenever you need burst during specific events, like when the boss spawns adds or objects (crystals) which needs to be killed quickly. Condition or DoT damage users will fall behind considerably.
There is no “fire and forget” DoT in the game. You have to keep refreshing your DoT or your DoT will fall off within seconds. The damage is also balanced with the assumption that the player keeps refreshing the DoT during the encounter.
There are many other variables to take into account as well. Condition damage is a lose/lose/lose/loser in the game as it stands.
Extremely low damage/Damage becomes obsolete when other condition damage players are in your party/Cannot kill objects/No burst.
Farther from new than I care to admit. But are you new to this game?
I only ask that because you’re not going to see me trying to force the square peg through a round hole, where as you’re implying that’s the only way to play. You have the ability to switch to different weapons to cover different situations.. I suggest making use of that. If I run into a situation where my condition weapons are at a disadvantage I just swap to a different weapon. Most of the time I’m fine using condition abilities when I want to and they generally outperform my direct damage attacks in the right situations.
As for the “fire and forget” comment, my point was that I can continue doing damage to a mob through conditions when I’m forced to evade or heal. The same can not be said for direct damage attacks that are waiting idle in a queue. Pretty sure I already explained that earlier.
I came out from the start saying that condition mechanics in fights involving many players is problematic. But if you’re trying to convince me that condition attacks are always worse than direct damage attacks regardless of the scenario, I’m going to disagree.
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You’re right that direct damage is wasted too, but the most the can be wasted is 1 hit minus 1 damage (if the mob had one HP left). Condition damage can waste significantly more, especially in groups. How many times do you see a mob die with 10+ bleeds? that’s a considerable amount of damage lost.
Meanwhile, your ranger example makes my point perfectly. Your ranger loads mob #1 up with conditions and switched to mob #2, meanwhile a direct damage char doing the same (or more) dps would already have killed mob #1 since his damage is all frontloaded.
How is it better to have mob #1 still attacking you while you start on mob #2?
My longbow’s auto-attack (“Long Range Shot”, a direct damage attack) at maximum range (which yields maximum damage) does less damage than my shortbow’s auto-attack (“Crossfire”, condition bleed) over time. If anything it’s already killing mobs faster than my direct-damage alternative, not slower. I tear up with Crossfire, where as I struggle to stay awake with Long Range Shot, so I’m not experiencing the dilemma you’re painting.
For me, the only time it becomes an issue is when there are several people placing bleed stacks on the same mob. But there’s nothing wrong or wimpy about condition attacks when hunting alone or in a normal party.
Advantage? That’s… actually a disadvantage.
Power does all it’s damage up front, condition damage does it over time which gives the target time to heal, cleanse, or just die which means much of your damage just falls off and is wasted.
Condition damage actually needs to be stronger not weaker then power damage to balance out the fact it’s dealt over time.
I disagree. Your example of damage being wasted can apply to direct damage as well. If my next attack hits a mob for 2000 damage and it only had 100 health left, 1900 damage from my DD attack was “wasted” according to your example.
Where as when I play my Ranger character (using condition weapons), I can disengage one mob well before it dies and start my attacks on another mob confident that the conditions I left on the first mob will kill it off without any more assistance needed from me. That’s not something you can do with direct damage; there are no fire-and-forget attacks outside of conditions.
I’m not going to suggest that condition builds are balanced as is, but I would be surprised if anyone expects them to be on par with direct damage. Direct damage generally requires you to be constantly attacking your target to deal damage, where as condition damage allows you to continue dealing damage to a target (until the stack times out) even while you’re doing other things (healing, evading, using support/control abilities, alt-tabbing to update your twitter status, whatever). There have to be some drawbacks balancing out that advantage.
Outside of boss-style events where several people can easily cap condition stacks, it generally works very well everywhere else in the game.
(edited by Edge.4180)
There are not enough people to kick off the event. Solution, please support:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/Do-you-remember-when-the-game-is-started-and-the-areas-had-a-lot-of-player-I-want-it-back
Queensdale is not suffering from a lack of people to kick off events, nor are most of the events there so grand in scale that they can’t be handled by one person. They are simply broken. These events will trigger off even if there is only one person in the area if you visit them within hours of a server reset. However, after they’ve run a number of time something in the scripting breaks down. It’s a known issue.
The original post specifically mentioned the bull event. I’ve watched that activate with only a couple of players in the immediate area (which is rare, as that is a fairly busy part of the zone). However, that particular event is notorious for eventually breaking down, even when that corner of the zone gets extremely busy.
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The problem, simply put, is that many events tend to cease functioning within a day or so of a server reset. Sad, but true.
If you ever want to see a zone “alive”, log in within a few hours of a server reset and be amazed at how many events pop up that you likely had no idea existed.
This game is really cool when events (the meat of the leveling process) actually work. Unfortunately, that rarely seems to be the case, and the developers don’t seem to feel that fixing it is a priority. I mean, I know they say it is, but we’ve had this problem since launch and here we still are with no improvements.
Words are nice. Action is better.
(edited by Edge.4180)
It’s not unreasonable to consider that these dungeon encounters were balanced with the idea that players would have at least some of their available stats allocated towards “magic find”. It’s not like they balanced it around the idea that everyone is min-maxing.
I honestly never encounter buged events, but bugs are server bound. It might be that the events aren’t fixed at your server. Yes it sucks they didn’t fixed it.
The reality is you probably have and simply didn’t realize it. You can think of bugged events in two different ways:
1) the ones that break mid-event and are obviously not working (example, an escort NPC that is partway through his route but no longer moves).
2) the ones that just stop triggering because something broke, and thus are never seen until just after a server reset (at which point you see them very often, for about a day).
The latter failure seems to be a lot more common, but you’re also much less likely to notice that they’re missing if you’re not familiar with the events that are normally available in a zone. Momoztli Grounds (Bloodtide Coast), for example, has at least three fun events associated with it. But if you were just passing through that zone for your first time today, you’d never know it because all of them stopped triggering shortly after the last server reset 5(?) days ago. You’d just think that it was a dull heart-task area and move on, none the wiser, to a different part of the zone.
(edited by Edge.4180)
At least 8 of the events that are supposed to be playing out in the Bloodtide Coast map on the Tarnished Coast server have broken down in some way. They’re no longer functioning, and it’s been this way for about the better part of the week. They worked properly for about a day after the last server reset, but then stopped working, and haven’t worked since. I wish I could say this was unusual, but this is pretty much the norm for most of the zones in this game, isn’t it?
You know, the friends/guildmates of mine that have abandoned the game didn’t do so because they ran out of content at level 80, it was because they ran out of fun things to do on their way to 80. You lost every one of them before they even got to max level because they simply got tired of the bugs and waiting for fixes. And I honestly can’t justify trying to encourage other friends to try out GW2 when core bugs like these have gone unfixed for so long.
I feel like this really shouldn’t be necessary to point out, but dynamic events are the meat of this game while leveling up. And when too many of them break down the leveling process through these zones becomes stale and repetitive quickly. In other words.. this bug = fun killer.
Quite a while back I read a comment indicating the developers were working on the problems that cause events to break down over time, but (for whatever reason) the problem really doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it deserves or we wouldn’t still be playing through zones where events break down repeatedly. Promises are nice, results are better. I don’t know how else to say it at this point.
Edge,
Where can I find the interview for this:
“Now, I was assuming that practically no one was receiving kill credit, and the reason for that is this: according to developer interviews, to receive credit for killing a mob (and thus be rewarded XP and a chance of a loot drop) you have to be responsible for at least 5-10% of the damage required to kill your opponent
I knew I had to do some damage but was unaware there was a percentage involved.
http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2
I got 5 drops, all crafting material, while being in a full party, for 2.5 hours of killing Kraka during the event. Excluding the final chest.
I’m very disappointed in this.
And yet, if you watch the video in the link below, you will see the host who (like you) is in a full party during the final event and received so many drops that she was forced to detour to a vendor to clear her bags for more loot partway through the event. And I would argue that she spends more time doing things other than attacking than actually attacking.
Something is off here.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/19/flameseeker-chronicles-guild-wars-2s-lost-shores-recap/
I answered “no” to that question because of the way it was worded. It didn’t ask if I would refer a friend to Guild Wars 2 (because I definitely would). It asked if I would refer a friend to Guild Wars 2 based on how the Lost Shores event went.
And to that question the answer is no, because the Lost Shores event was plagued with bugs. And the truth is I had told friends to check it out prior to the update arriving. But after it arrived and I saw how completely buggy it was, I was hoping my friends would not show up because I felt like my reputation for recommending that mess was on the line. The good intentions behind the update were there, but the execution was pretty poor.
Fortunately, the rest of the game outside of that update is still pretty good.