Guild Wars 2

Lord Yoshi.6738:

I had a theory that the amount of people that could tag a mob was actually capped at a fixed amount. In addition to this, if you were partied with four other people and one of your party members hit an enemy, it would tag that enemy with all five names. At that point, as long as you did at least 1 point of damage to it, you would get exp/loot. Of course, this is untested, but it would explain why my slow attacking ranger was having trouble even getting a kill at the camp north of pentinent path before the bot bans and invulnerability removal, even when auto-attacking the veteran spawn for more than 5% of its life, but was getting kills all day at the adjacent camp because the spawns were more spread out.

There may be a cap (and it would be nice if that were explained to us from an official source).

However, I can say that (real example) if you are in a party of two and one player in the party hits the mob and does 99% of the damage, and the other player in the party hits the mob and only does 1% of the damage, the latter player does not get kill credit when the mob dies.

This is a problem I have to be careful to avoid (but frequently run into) every evening when doing dailies with my friend. Many times I have to ask “did you get credit for that?” when I notice they began attacking late, at which point the response is usually “I didn’t see an XP message, let me check.. no (sigh)”. It’s easy to tell during daily achievement farming because of the two kill achievement counters that are a part of the daily.

Jason King.2647:

As Eva mentioned earlier, we’re working to fix this issue. To assist us in doing so, we’d like to try and identify commonalities between everyone experiencing this.

For starters, what race, gender, and profession are you? Which server are you on?

Here’s what I’m getting from what’s been reported so far:

• Occurs in PvE, PvP, and WvW, but encountered most frequently in PvP due to how often players reload the same zone.
• Occurs when reloading into the current zone and not when entering a new zone.

That last line doesn’t seem to be accurate. I just launched the game for the first time today, chose a male human character parked in Metrica Province (Tarnished Coast), and became stuck in an endless loading screen for that zone. Had to alt-tab out and kill the task. I wasn’t “reloading” the zone.

I think the Elementalist downed skill “vapor form” makes it very difficult to die in a group setting. It’s a skill I certainly wish I had every time I’m downed at the foot of a monster who is all too happy to continue attacking me while ignoring everyone else that is still standing. :P

It’s as necessary to have as your peers make it to be.

Which means completely necessary, or you’re not likely to get invited along on their reindeer games.

Animus.6073:

Like I said, I have no hard evidence to support the theory, but neither does the person you are quoting. How do you know his or her group was playing properly? Was he or she playing properly? Was the event bugged? All I can attest to is that while event farming in Orr, I have seen a noticeable difference in “tagging” ability based on whether or not I was part of a group, with no change to my play.

I believe that each group is treated as an entity, like each individual player who is not grouped, when being evaluated for loot/xp credibility. However, if players in a group do not contribute, they do not get included in the group’s credibility. I know that I am not incorrect in stating that group play increases your chances of “tagging” mobs, that much is confirmed in my mind. Anything beyond that is speculation, unless someone has a definitive answer.

First, my personal daily observations with grouping mechanics matches his results, where as they don’t match your hypothesis at all. I complained on the forums about the lack of proper group credit in parties during beta more times than I care to count.

Second, if you watch the video I linked above, at one point the streamer ends up reconnecting and lands in a different overflow instance than her party members, and yet even without their presence still continues to receive kill credit fairly effortlessly on her own – while pausing to heal other players, revive other players, mess with UI settings, communicate to people in chat, and continue commentary with her audience.

You’re suggesting people were playing improperly. I have to wonder what you mean by that, because getting credit in GW2 for kills has always been easy to the point of being overly generous. As long as you attacking mobs, it’s fairly simple to obtain credit for their defeat.

It’s really pretty simple. If you must contribute at least 5% of the damage done to a monster to receive credit, it is mathematically impossible for 21 or more players to all obtain credit for the same kill no matter how evenly everyone tries to spread the damage. Above 20 players and someone is guaranteed to be losing out. The fact that some players were managing to get credit without really trying while others were trying as hard as possible and not receiving credit suggests that something is not working right with the mechanics in crowded events like this one. And I can’t just chalk it up to one person doing superior damage over the other because my damage output was easily comparable, if not better, to what is being shown in that video, and certainly much more consistent.

The streamer of that video suggested during the event that people who weren’t getting any drops weren’t likely "contributing” to the battle. As someone who was trying very hard (and getting nothing) it’s difficult not to take offense to that, but at the same time I can understand her making that comment because she was spending more time not attacking than attacking, and yet obtaining credit very easily. So what other conclusion can she be expected to come to (if one is not willing to accept the possibility of a bug)? She was obtaining excellent results with minimal offensive effort, so of course everyone else must just be twiddling their thumbs. :/

This..

Animus.6073:

I don’t have any hard evidence, just some anecdotal evidence. I know it doesn’t matter whether or not you are grouped if you stand there doing nothing and your party does all the work; you will not receive loot in that fashion. However, the threshold of damage you need to output decreases based on your party status (and may be impacted by the number of people in your party). I have no numbers or percentages I can give you but this is what I have noticed.

..is not meshing well with this..

Tiger Ashante.1792:

On the final event, I was even in a party of 5 all the way till we fought ancient kraka and i got kicked off the server, but no exp or loot during the entire event.

..or my own experiences with grouping, frankly. I think we’re barking up the wrong tree with the party excuse/theory.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

On the final event, I was even in a party of 5 all the way till we fought ancient kraka and i got kicked off the server, but no exp or loot during the entire event.

Well, there we go. We can dismiss the party being a factor theory, I guess.

If any one is interested, here’s a stream that shows a good example of heavy kill credit during the event:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/19/flameseeker-chronicles-guild-wars-2s-lost-shores-recap/#

During the video (~1:05:00) the column owner/streamer is discussing the loot complaints that are happening in chat and counters that by showing all the drops in her inventory which she’s picked up during the event. She suggest that if people aren’t getting any drops it’s because “they’re not contributing” to the battle. That was pretty annoying hypothesis to hear, honestly, since I worked my tail off during that event and received next to no kill credit during the many hours I was there.

Something is breaking in this area during these massive events and I would like to see it fixed.

Animus.6073:

Your group’s damage is factored into the kill in addition to your contribution. So if everyone else is grouped up and you are alone, it means that your damage potential is essentially 1/5th of everyone else’s. That probably doesn’t account for everything but that would be my best guess as to what you are experiencing.

Do you have any proof of this? Guesses are fine, it’s just it would be nice to see something official backing this up.

You can join a group with a friend, have him kill something while you stand there (even if you’re healing/buffing him), and you won’t get kill credit.

In fact, I often do my dailies with a friend and they will not get credit for a kill if they don’t do enough damage to the mob (which happens often if I do most of the damage before the get in range and hit it). In such a scenario they ARE doing damage to the mob that their party member is kiling, yet still not receiving credit because they aren’t doing enough. This often leads to me completing the kill task portion of the daily well before them, despite the fact that we are hunting together.

Update/Edit: Confirmed bug in the AMA Q&A.

Bleh. I posted this question about an hour before the Lost Shores forum was closed and archived, so let me move it here. Although it uses the Lost Shores event as an example, it’s really about large events in general anyway.

Note: this thread is NOT about event chest rewards.

Something was horribly wrong with our ability to receive kill credit (both XP and a chance of receiving drops from the corpses) during the Lost Shores event. The phase 3 event with the Ancient Karka is the example I’m going to focus on.

I’ve been watching a few recorded streams of the entire event and some of these video makers were receiving kill credit for almost every mob they bothered to attack during the Lost Shores finale on the island. I watched players obtain what seemed to be nearly a level’s worth of XP on kills alone, and obtain so many item drops from corpses that they had to go sell at a vendor mid-event because their inventories were overflowing with treasure. Shells, junk-loot, blues, greens, yellows.. they got it all and they got A LOT of it.

Now, as far as kill credit + loot goes, I usually do very well on normal zone events that require killing hordes of monsters, even amongst a decent sized (a dozen or so) group of players. And I was doing comparable damage (and often better) than these people who were recording the Lost Shore finale streams, with much more consistency, and being more aggressive with my attacking. The players streaming tended to multi-task often (typing in chat, fiddle with game settings, stop to make comments for the video, etc), usually just auto-attacking at these moments and sometimes not bothering to even do that. And yet, they would receive kill credit after kill credit. I watched one streamer fire just a total of TEN attacks against a veteran Karka, almost all the strikes minor auto-attacks, and still receive credit for the kill.

I, on the other hand, walked out of the 3+ hour Lost Shores finale with a total of 6 Karka kills under my belt (verified by the Karka kill achievement counter) and no corpse loot drops . How is that even possible? I would run up to a fresh karka, big or small, and attack it from start till death and still not receive kill credit for my efforts. And I know I wasn’t alone, because there were many, many people complaining about the lack of loot drops and XP during the event.

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. Let’s be on the safe/generous side and say 5%. Well, once you have more than 20 players fighting a single opponent, you’re obviously in a situation where some people are guaranteed not to get kill credit no matter how hard they try.

In fact, once you have ~25 people attacking one of these event monsters with large health pools, it is theoretically possible for nobody to get credit for killing the mob if all 25 players are responsible for no more than 4% of the total damage. Throw 50 or 75 players at a champion boss in one of these events and the likelihood of no one receiving XP (or the possibility of a loot drop) increases dramatically. It would be fairly difficult for an individual to be responsible for at least 5% of the damage done to mob (with a large health pool) if you have nearly a hundred other players attacking it also.

And that made sense to me, but what doesn’t make sense are some players making out like total bandits on kill credit while others who were doing comparable damage (or better) were receiving no kill credit during the phase 3 event. Something must be breaking down somewhere in how kill credit is awarded when you have dozens and dozens of players attacking the same monster. I can’t imagine what else could be causing such a huge disparity in awards.

The only obvious difference (I could see) between myself and players receiving tons of kill credit was that they were in a party and I was not. But that shouldn’t have been a factor AT ALL, because credit for kills is not shared between party members. I know this because it is one of the big things that annoy me about grouping. I wish they did because then it would be easier for players to focus on support roles during events, but it doesn’t: if one player in a group is doing all the damage and the other group members are not, only the player doing damage receives credit for the kill. It has always worked that way in this game.

So, if it’s not a party-thing, then what’s the deal? Something is breaking down somewhere. I’m curious to hear other people’s experience on kill credit during the Lost Shores finale.

Katz.5143:

There is a huge incentive to group. If you are grouped, as best I can tell, everyone in the group is getting some credit if anyone in the group hits the mob. Therefore, it is best to have the maximum size group in order to get decent drops.

This is based on my observations of when I have participated in events solo versus grouped. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.

This simply can’t be accurate. And I say that because it is so simple to test. Get a friend and form a group with them, and then go kill some mobs (or kill mobs in an event). If you simply stand there while your friend does all the killing, even if you are actively buffing your friend the entire time, you will not get credit for the kills. No XP message. No looting rights. You must do beyond a certain threshold of damage to the monster to receive credit for the kill.

In regards to grouping, I know it doesn’t work that way in nearly every other MMO. I wish it were true here because I’ve been complaining about that failing of the group mechanic since beta. But how I’m describing it is how it works (unfortunately).

Aexrael.5918:

Edge.4180:

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.

Source of this quote?

http://www.incgamers.com/2011/06/interview-designing-guild-wars-2-part-2

I still have the “evidence” in my pack that I collected during the investigation for the Lionguard (where you question members of the Consortium). I completed that quest but the game did not remove the evidence items from my inventory. I’d love to know whether or not we can safely delete those.

Note: this thread is NOT about event chest rewards.

Something was horribly wrong with our ability to receive kill credit (both XP and a chance of receiving drops from the corpses) during the Lost Shores event. The phase 3 event with the Ancient Karka is the example I’m going to focus on.

I’ve been watching a few recorded streams of the entire event and some of these video makers were receiving kill credit for almost every mob they bothered to attack during the Lost Shores finale on the island. I watched players obtain what seemed to be nearly a level’s worth of XP on kills alone, and obtain so many item drops from corpses that they had to go sell at a vendor mid-event because their inventories were overflowing with treasure. Shells, junk-loot, blues, greens, yellows.. they got it all and they got A LOT of it.

Now, as far as kill credit + loot goes, I usually do very well on normal zone events that require killing hordes of monsters, even amongst a decent sized (a dozen or so) group of players. And I was doing comparable damage (and often better) than these people who were recording the Lost Shore finale streams, with much more consistency, and being more aggressive with my attacking. The players streaming tended to multi-task often (typing in chat, fiddle with game settings, stop to make comments for the video, etc), usually just auto-attacking at these moments and sometimes not bothering to even do that. And yet, they would receive kill credit after kill credit. I watched one streamer fire just a total of TEN attacks against a veteran Karka, almost all the strikes minor auto-attacks, and still receive credit for the kill.

I, on the other hand, walked out of the 3+ hour Lost Shores finale with a total of 6 Karka kills under my belt (verified by the Karka kill achievement counter) and no corpse loot drops . How is that even possible? I would run up to a fresh karka, big or small, and attack it from start till death and still not receive kill credit for my efforts. And I know I wasn’t alone, because there were many, many people complaining about the lack of loot drops and XP during the event.

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. Let’s be on the safe/generous side and say 5%. Well, once you have more than 20 players fighting a single opponent, you’re obviously in a situation where some people are guaranteed not to get kill credit no matter how hard they try.

In fact, once you have ~25 people attacking one of these event monsters with large health pools, it is theoretically possible for nobody to get credit for killing the mob if all 25 players are responsible for no more than 4% of the total damage. Throw 50 or 75 players at a champion boss in one of these events and the likelihood of no one receiving XP (or the possibility of a loot drop) increases dramatically. It would be fairly difficult for an individual to be responsible for at least 5% of the damage done to mob (with a large health pool) if you have nearly a hundred other players attacking it also.

And that made sense to me, but what doesn’t make sense are some players making out like total bandits on kill credit while others who were doing comparable damage (or better) were receiving no kill credit during the phase 3 event. Something must be breaking down somewhere in how kill credit is awarded when you have dozens and dozens of players attacking the same monster. I can’t imagine what else could be causing such a huge disparity in awards.

The only obvious difference (I could see) between myself and players receiving tons of kill credit was that they were in a party and I was not. But that shouldn’t have been a factor AT ALL, because credit for kills is not shared between party members. I know this because it is one of the big things that annoy me about grouping. I wish they did because then it would be easier for players to focus on support roles during events, but it doesn’t: if one player in a group is doing all the damage and the other group members are not, only the player doing damage receives credit for the kill. It has always worked that way in this game.

So, if it’s not a party-thing, then what’s the deal? Something is breaking down somewhere. I’m curious to hear other people’s experience on kill credit during the Lost Shores finale.

luna.4916:

CC Meinke.2749:

Hello everyone,
please refrain from making staff call outs in your thread title. We understand that you wish your thread to receive the attention it is due, however using ArenaNet in your thread title does not aide in making this happen. Therefore, that part has been removed from the thread name.

Greetings

This has been getting on my nerves. 90% of A-net posts on this forum are completely useless like this one. They really need to hire better Community Coordinators.. the ones on the WoW forums ACTUALLY take the time to address player concerns and discuss the game instead of this petty nonsense.

Honestly, he’s lucky he didn’t get an infraction. I received one once for using the word “developer” in this thread title:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Can-a-developer-please-clarify-condition-mechanics/

..and then, to make things worse, the thread was locked rather than the title simply being edited so a discussion could occur.

I’d say he was fortunate. It gets a bit odd at times.

Areann.1304:

I really hope the devs see this

The forums move so quickly, and I’m not sure how many opinions are every really seen by them. But I did see an associate producer commenting within a recent event picture thread indicating that he had a “a blast” during the latest event, and so it’s difficult not to wonder what is really going through their heads when they’re participating in these events alongside players.

Surely they see the complaints in chat about the sometimes constant 5-10 second lag time between initiating actions and the server responding, or the massive culling issues causing an unfair amount of deaths, or the NPCs breaking down and blocking the progress of quest chains. Do they just accept that this is the way things are and try to ignore it? Or are they coming back to the office on Monday saying “we have to fix these problems before we put out another event, we can’t keep shooting ourselves in the foot like this..”?

As for “having a blast”, I’m glad they had fun; there were certainly fun bits to be had and I think the effort has to count for something. But I think it’s difficult to deny that these events aren’t being severely marred by the many problems they have. I understand trying to make the best of things when you’re around players, but when they’re back at the officers with the development team I really hope they’re being a little more honest with one another about how things went.

Yes, when you attempt to modify the equipment in a manner that will automatically bind it to you, a warning prompt appears in the middle of your screen which you must accept to continue with the alteration.

The problem here seems simple enough: why can the chest be used by a character that didn’t participate in the event?

That doesn’t just go for this event, but all events. How many times have I jogged through Gort’s cave in Kessex Hills and spotted the post-event chest just sitting there? If I attempt to use it and didn’t participate in the event to clear the cave, it should pop up a message explaining that I don’t meet the requirements for that reward. Simple as that.

I think it’s naive to suggest that everyone who isn’t complaining on the forum is a happy camper. Many of my friends who play MMOs avoid the forums like the plague for a number of reasons, or simply can’t be bothered to use them. However, they all have opinions about how the game is working and any changes made to the game, and they’re definitely not always positive opinions.

But you won’t ever see them complaining on the forum. They’ll just simply quit the MMO and move on to something else. And that’s a whole lot of “goodbye” posts you’re not ever seeing. They vote with their actions rather than with their words.

Drake Brimstone.3706:

Have you noticed how people have been complaining about a Gear Treadmill that ANet said they wanted to Avoid? Ascended gear is a new tier of gear that is suposed to be between Exotic and Ledgendary. Ledgendary gear has always been intended to be the highest end gear in the game. Currently only Ledgendary weapons are available but eventualy they plan to implement other Ledgendary equipment pieces.

If they didn’t buff up the stats on Ledgendary Weapons with the addition of Ascended gear, then the Ledgendary Weapon’s wouldn’t be the best, and as I just stated, Ledgendary gear is suposed to be the best.

The Ledgendary weapons arn’t so much being Auto Leveled as they are recieveing a buff to make them better then the new tier that is suposed to be weaker then them.

There are really two different problems here. Obtaining a legendary weapon legitimately is such an enormous amount of work that it really needs to be “best-in-slot”. To invalidate the efforts in acquiring one would be a serious mistake. And, up until now they have been optional because there are other ways of getting equipment that is equally as powerful, although perhaps not as unique looking.

However, if you go that route and then continue to insert new tiers of equipment, and then keep buffing legendary weapons so they remain best-in-slot, what the developers are essentially doing is moving legendary equipment further from optional and closer to mandatory. Because, now owning legendary equipment is your only way of making yourself immune to power-creep.

Now, owning a legendary weapon may not have been a priority for all us, but not having to deal with power-creep is one of the main reasons many of us dove into GW2. The fact that we now have to own a legendary weapon to combat the change in design philosophy is stupidly discouraging.

I was disappointed to see that many players were simply standing on the edges of the event not doing anything. I guess they just wanted to avoid repair bills and collect the loot, but I assume their presence was scaling up the difficulty of the event.

Then there are the players who choose to fight naked (to avoid repair bills). Surely they realize the loss of stats really hurts their ability to effectively participate. And, no, it wasn’t a problem with no repair vendor being around; I watched plenty of them run naked right past repair vendors whenever we’d all have to respawn at Camp Karka.

These are all players who are leaching off the efforts of others and then being rewarded heavily at the end. If this were a raid group, they’d be kicked out, but that’s obviously not how GW2 works. And that’s fine, but I wish the game was smarter about detecting this when it comes time to distribute rewards.

I think kill credit also needs to be reexamined when it comes to these larger events. I do pretty well when it comes to getting kill credit (obviously you don’t get loot with every kill credited to you, but you will get XP) on the normal dynamic events that are part of the every day game world (even if there’s a dozen other players around). But my ability to get credit for kills changes dramatically (for the worse) on these special events that attract a hundred-plus players to a single encounter.

At first I thought it was simply a case of me just not doing enough damage (and, to be fair, it is). However, it occurred to me that it’s quite possible that many monsters during these encounters are killed and nobody in the player-zerg receives credit for the kill.

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. Let’s be on the safe/generous side and say 5%. Well, once you have more than 20 players fighting a single opponent, you’re obviously in a situation where people are guaranteed not to get kill credit no matter how hard they try.

In fact, once you have ~25 people attacking one of these event monsters with large health pools, it is theoretically possible for nobody to get credit for killing the mob if all 25 players are responsible for no more than 4% of the total damage. Throw 50 or 75 players at a champion boss in one of these events and the likelihood of no one receiving XP (or the possibility of a loot drop) increases dramatically. It would be fairly difficult for an individual to be responsible for at least 5% of the damage done to mob (with a large health pool) if you have nearly a hundred other players attacking it also.

I would just suggest that spending five minutes attacking a champion alongside a group and not even seeing an XP reward message pop up when it dies is disheartening. I know it makes me feel like I’m not contributing.. that maybe it doesn’t even matter whether my character is there or not.

kKagari.6804:

The first good boss battle was Prototype X in the Asura starting area.

You must be kidding. I feel that’s one of the worst fights in the game because you can literally blink and miss it. That boss dies way, way too easily/quickly (most of the tutorial bosses do, actually). And it’s a shame, because they have nifty starter mechanics that can make for an interesting mini-epic battle at that level, if only they didn’t fold over whenever someone blows at them.

I agree the final Karka battle had the makings of a cool fight (although unfortunately plagued by the many problems this game has with large scale events), but the pacing could have been better in some areas. I mostly appreciated the various stages taking us across a fair chunk of the island, which contributed to that epic battle feeling.

Agien.9834:

I had no problem seeing the mobs and my computer is far from top of the line.. Maybe you just need to update your hardware?

Makes me think of back on SWtoR Ilum fights on my old pos computer where I couldn’t see anything or do anything. Built a new PC on a budget of 1k and it was night and day.

Not saying your computer is good or bad but I get the feeling there are a lot of people crying about stuff like not being able to see things because they are running this game on less then optimal set ups.

The event was a blast and as I said before the only thing I would have asked to be changed was how long the reinforcements stages took.

Sorry you had those problems though..

Please don’t go there. This is a known problem on ANet’s end that they’ve been trying to find a solution for. It is not a user problem, or a problem with any player’s system.

You say you had “no problem seeing mobs”. You either apparently think the Karka have cloaking technology, or assumed they were “spawning” on top of players by design. Neither is accurate. Whether you realize it or not there is a big difference between what you actually saw and what you were supposed to be able to see.

On one hand you have people who missed the appointed time and thus are happy to see more opportunities. On the other you have people who went through the effort of making arrangements to have time at an earlier hour that was, perhaps, not optimal for them.

I don’t mind the event running all day long, but I do think that ANet needs to figure out which way it wants to go with these “one time events” and either stick to the plan or stop telling players they must be here at a specific time lest they miss out completely. Pick one. In advance.

I find it hard to believe someone considers this the “best event ever”. I simply find no joy in fighting (and dying) to mobs that I often can’t see because of the game’s culling issues. The intentions were good, the battle had the makings of being epic, but the delivery was very poor due to the many problems plaguing large scale events.

The best I could honestly say is “Thanks for the effort. Wish it had worked a lot better”.

I feel like this thread is turning a blind eye to the reality because there were shiny’s in a chest.

I did the event twice and the chest is already open the second time (thus, no treasure rewards). However, this was with the same character in two different overflows. I really should have tried it with two different characters.

Usagi.4835:

Personally, I’d prefer it if they used the first few months to fix all of the bugs, especially the ones concerning professions, rather than constantly releasing new content. Kinda frustrating. I’m not really interested in new content, if my class traits are broken and I feel less effective.

Yes, I’d prefer time be spent fixing the underlying problems that are causing all these events to suffer, rather than allocate those same resources towards supporting these events. I realize the event team is probably not going to be working on culling issues, for example, but I suspect there may be some cross over in shared resources with the programmers at least.

That said, the content team can either create content that works properly with the game’s current state, or create content that doesn’t work properly with the game’s current state. I think we’d all prefer to see the former, but they seem to be doing the latter. I get the desire to make these events as epic as possible, but I sincerely believe the biggest impressions they’re making lately are negative ones.

Wasselin.1235:

Those are some wonderful points.

I didn’t even think of that idea but the “scavenger” hunt events would be best suiting to a personal instance similar to the personal story. In fact they could really expand on them there and tell the lore in a more compelling way.

I know they didn’t do that because they want the world to appear alive but the fact of the matter is that their events can not handle hordes of people. Even when they don’t break it isn’t fun fighting with other people to tag mobs that disappear in seconds.

I get the whole “wanting the world to feel alive” desire also. And I do understand that some players like to see others around rather than the lonely feeling that can come with private instancing (particularly if you’re playing solo).

But when we make our way to one of these event NPCs and the intent is to have a conversation with said NPC that ultimately leads to a fight with said NPC.. well, just look at the NPCs “Noll” and “Canach” from the Lost Shores event. You have dozens of players standing around these NPCs waiting to kill them (especially because the content is only available for a day or two), most too nervous to even blink lest they miss their opportunity to progress past the current stage. There is no opportunity to even read the opening dialogue of these NPCs because the moment players can activate them the AOE effects start flying and three seconds later the fight is over (much to dismay of anyone naive enough to be pacing themselves through the dialogue boxes).

So, that entire stage of the event becomes a joke on a number of levels. Yes, we’re in the open world and, yes, we’re feeling alive and social, but even when nothing is breaking we’re being reminded the entire time that the entire setup is ludicrous. Compare that to a private instance where you may be alone (or alone with your party), but at least things move at a pace of your choosing, you can actually take the time to read the dialogue these NPCs offer, and the fights at least have a semblance of being challenging. ANet could fix all the bugs, but in the end there’s just no way we’ll ever get that sort of reasonable “realism” out in the open game-world.. not when we’re standing around with dozens of other players waiting to mug one NPC before everyone else can.

I just want to add that I too don’t understand the decision of having a free trial this weekend, knowing full well that the game struggles whenever you combine population and events. It’s really hard to recover from a poor first impression, and it’s one thing to combine a trial and a special event when you know you have the delivery nailed.. but the same problems are still there and there should be no surprises at this point with how things went.

I also refuse to believe that they’re designing and testing these events in even remotely similar conditions to how we eventually play them. It just seems impossible that the developers go through this content the same way we are and walk away from it thinking “well that was a lot of fun”. I’m sure it is a complete blast when it’s working and 5 devs are running around testing it together. But that is far from the way we’re experiencing this content.

(cont)

I want this MMO to succeed so badly, but you have got to either find a way to fix the numerous issues that are plaguing your events, or stop shining a huge spotlight on how glaringly broken your setup is are by creating events that can’t work with the issues your game currently has. Every release seems to be failing harder than the last, and the most frustrating thing is you’re probably trying harder with every consecutive attempt. I genuinely feel bad for you guys and your predicament, but at the same time the whole reason I’m playing games like this is to have fun, and this isn’t fun.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We’ve also made a few changes to react to the lag that some players have been experiencing.

If you truly feel that’s an accurate statement.. that’s really discouraging.

edit: I just want to elaborate. ANet sent out one of those in-game mails instructing everyone to flock to Caledon Forest to fight back a karka invasion. According to my own observations and all the complaints spamming in-game chat, everyone was experiencing:
- delayed response in ability casting just while heading towards the event area
- massive lag while at the event area, including a complete lack of sound for the first few minutes, no visible players, no visible karka monsters – just loads and loads of AOE spell effects and the occasional karka corpse eventually littering the landscape.

Your team has openly admitted there are big culling problems with your rendering that need solving, so I simply can’t understand why you continue to release events that cast a huge, ugly spotlight on these issues.

BurnWeed.5902:

Thankyou for that very detailed info
Just tried it – and it looks glorious +1 to you
Really low spec computer (my integrated graphics wasnt even on the list as being able to run the game) and notice an avg increase in fps .. it was >20 without any fov, <20 with the old fov and now im back up >20 with the new fov . . . good job
EDIT : i’m even getting >40 fps never had that before (ok so i am looking at a wall )
Ps could you fix the invulnerability bug ? pleeeease

Any performance improvement you’re seeing would be unrelated to the field of view changes. If anything, the FoV change is having a negative impact on your performance (particularly on lower end hardware). The reason being that when you increase the field of view, you’re displaying more of the game-world at any given moment, meaning you’re GPU/CPU is having to render more scenery, process more animations, etc.

I think they’re always tinkering with performance, so any gains would likely come from that (or that less happened to be going on around you during your tests).

Linenoise.5380:

They never fixed it for the Halloween materials either. Just another hustle to push people into buying more inventory and bank space.

Which would at least be semi-acceptable, except for the fact that there is a cap on the amount of bank space you can purchase for your account (which seems like a weird business decision for a company that wants to make money from the cash shop).

Yes, the loss of smaller increments when zooming in and out with the mouse wheel is one of the larger things I dislike about the change. As you described in the first post, zooming all the way in and then pulling back one notch is just too drastic of a jump for my tastes.

I tried hard to like the new FoV when it was being beta tested the past few weeks and just couldn’t. Glad we can still switch back; hope it remains supported.

Is there any chance of just getting that added as a UI option from within the game?

That example where you buy something at a store and then it eventually becomes available at a lower price is probably going to be used here soon.

It was around 700 megs. Just a tad over.

I’m confused as to why anyone is surprised by this. They said there would be offensive and defensive infusions. Were people under the impression they meant something else beyond agony protection + an additional offensive or defensive style buff tacked on?

Additional tiers of equipment is more likely to make me eventually stop playing altogether, leaving sooner than I otherwise would have.

Escalating stat changes on equipment do not somehow make a game “more fun”. This is a game where:

1) Stats scale down depending on your location, making an increase in stats fairly meaningless for most of the world. And that’s a big deal in GW2, where the entire world map is largely considered to be entirely end-game content under this design.

2) As players are given equipment with increased stats they are ultimately countered by NPC opponents with increased stats, making the entire thing a pointless wash.

Take a level 10 character, for example, and pit him against a level 10 monster. Now take that same character, give him equipment that has three times the stats, but raise the stats of the monster by a factor of three to maintain the balance. There is going to be no difference in the feel of that fight beyond seeing bigger numbers everywhere. What actually makes higher level content more exciting is the introduction of new abilities, mechanics and tactics on both the player, the environment, and the NPC opponents. You don’t have to throw in stat changes on top of that to accomplish the goal.

The only thing character stats are really good for in GW2 is to slowly unfold the world around the player. A level 10 player can not survive a level 80 zone until his stats have improved. That gives them a location and a goal to strive for over time. It becomes the point of leveling up – to be able to survive in more areas of the world. But once you reach max level, increasing stats just for the sake of increasing stats does little beyond making your current gear obsolete (which I doubt anyone is fond of). It’s also mechanic that can also be used to gate content by forcing a player to get tier 1 equipment in order to raid a tier 2 dungeon, to then obtain tier 2 equipment to raid a tier 3 dungeon, and so on.. but that’s the treadmill this game was supposed to be avoiding like the plague, and even now the developers are insisting they’re opposed to this design.

Players want to believe that there’s always a dungeon out there that is unconquerable until they have invested both time and effort into coming up with a way to survive in it and ultimately conquer it. WoW has taught us that the solution to this dilemma must always come in the form of gear with better stats. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We shouldn’t have to make our current gear obsolete every time we do that. There are plenty of other ways to gate content and make players feel like they are progressing through challenge after challenge. WoW rarely bothers trying this because they already have a mechanic: the illusion of gear “progression”. GW2 could continue its brave trend of being different and use a different way if they really believed in their original philosophy. And I really wish they would.

When players cry for progression, I think what they actually want is a never ending opportunity to open that loot panel and see something amidst the bits of treasure that excites them. That usually tends to be equipment that is more powerful than your current equipment in most MMOs. Really, it is in the hands of the developers to replace that with an exciting alternative or just settle with copying every other MMO. Personally, I would prefer not to see the latter.

Reaver.9256:

They’ve already lost a lot from not having enough to do. How many posts have been on these forums of people complaining about lack of players? I know a lot of my friends/guildies quit because they already accomplished everything to do. Most people don’t care if there weapon has a pretty unicorn on it or not. Most people I know want better/cooler items to work for.

You’re downplaying aesthetics while at the same time suggesting escalating stat changes is somehow “cooler”. Unfortunately, this is a game where:

1) stats scale down depending on your location making an increase in stats fairly meaningless for most of the world (and the entire world map is largely considered to be all end-game content under this design).

2) as players are given equipment with increased stats they are ultimately countered by NPC opponents with increased stats, making the entire thing a pointless wash.

Take a level 10 character, for example, and pit him against a level 10 monster. Now take that same character, give him equipment that has three times the stats, but raise the stats of the monster by a factor of three to maintain the balance. There is going to be no difference in the feel of that fight beyond seeing bigger numbers everywhere. What actually makes higher level content more exciting is the introduction of new abilities, mechanics and tactics on both the player, the environment, and the NPC opponents. You don’t have to throw in stat changes on top of that to accomplish the goal.

The only thing character stats are really good for in GW2 is to slowly unfold the world around the player. A level 10 player can not survive a level 80 zone until his stats have improved. That gives them a location and a goal to strive for over time. It becomes the point of leveling up – to be able to survive in more areas of the world. But once you reach max level, increasing stats just for the sake of increasing stats does little beyond making your current gear obsolete (which I doubt anyone is fond of). It’s also mechanic that can also be used to gate content by forcing a player to get tier 1 equipment in order to raid a tier 2 dungeon, to then obtain tier 2 equipment to raid a tier 3 dungeon, and so on.. but that’s the treadmill this game was supposed to be avoiding like the plague, and even now the developers are insisting they’re opposed to this design.

You know, it’s like players want to believe that there’s always a dungeon out there that is unconquerable until they have invested both time and effort into coming up with a way to survive in it and ultimately conquer it. WoW has taught us that the solution to this dilemma must always come in the form of gear with better stats. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We shouldn’t have to make our current gear obsolete every time we do that. There are plenty of other ways to gate content and make players feel like they are progressing through challenge after challenge. WoW rarely bothers trying this because they already have a mechanic: the illusion of gear “progression”. GW2 could continue its brave trend of being different and use a different way if they really believed in their original philosophy.

camoflaugz.5031:

Yep keep it coming. Real MMO players play MMO’s for character progression and for the social aspect, that doesn’t mean your hardcore that means your playing the genre for what it is. Dont hold back because some of these people want a single player game MMO’s dont handicap players, it keeps going and going. As long as you implement progression in a fun way of doing things there should never be a problem.

I believe the thinking here is that if you want the type of MMO you’re describing, there are already a host of MMOs available like that for you to select from. If you wanted something different, you could play GW2. There is no need to turn GW2 into those games.

For GW2 to make itself like every other MMO would be suicidal. GW2 can not compete directly with WoW if it chooses to make itself like WoW.. WoW has over a dozen years of development time behind it now. To foolishly go that route, GW2 would just become “a WoW-like MMO, but with less features.” It can, however, successfully offer itself as an alternative to WoW by remaining different than the standard MMO.

greyblue.4962:

It’s rather the opposite.

I think people expect this to work out well for ANet, as they’ll pick up a few thousand WoW players. If they lost 50,000 current players and get 10,000 WoW players, it’s still a net win for them because all of the current players have already paid.

You’re making the assumption (which I think is flawed) that none of those 50,000 players lost in your example ever planned on spending money on the cash shop or that none of them would have paid for expansion packs as well.

To believe the opposite is to really expect them to ultimately apply that sort of bait and switch tactic to every single controversial design choice they made when designing the game. Because, why wouldn’t they if all they cared about was units sold of the original product.

Satans Chosen.1024:

The title of this thread is faulty unless you have data to back up your claim of “vocal minority.”

I agree. What an odd claim by the original poster. Regardless of how one personally feels about the announced changes, the idea of how gear and progression would work was sold to the masses very early on. ArenaNet was not shy about their philosophy and their disdain for gear chases.

My point is, everyone who purchased this game knew what they were getting in this area ahead of time. To purchase a product hoping one day the developers would do a 180 on their philosophy is silly. Thus, it stands to reason that everyone who gravitated towards Guild Wars 2 did so because they agreed with the original philosophy.

To now suggest all the players are now a “vocal minority” is just ridiculous. That would be like suggesting all the players opposed to flying mounts are a minority. Or that all the players opposed to 40 man dungeon raids are a minority. Or that players who are in favor of the absence of quest-hub theme-park style adventuring are a minority. These are all principles the game was built upon, and if you (for some insane reason) purchased GW2 despite apparently hating all the design choices the developers originally made, then you have nobody to blame for your disappointments but yourself. Don’t pretend you’re standing on the side of the majority for a second.

I also don’t see this change as solving any problems. Eventually people will have ascended gear and those who complain about progression will still be complaining. The only difference is that you ended up selling out your original philosophy for nothing. You can not dip your proverbial toe into the progression pool and expect anyone to be pleased – it’s either all in or not at all.

I would say that you have to take a stand, but I thought you had already taken one at launch.

With this change I honestly feel like I’m now forced to have legendary equipment so it can continue to be automatically upgraded to any future changes and thus allow me to avoid the progression treadmill. I don’t think this was supposed to be the point of legendary items. I’m not supposed to look at a legendary weapon and the first thing I think of is “this is GW2’s version of the USPS Forever Stamps”.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

I don’t understand this statement because, right now, there isn’t a massive jump in reward between exotic and legendary. What it does sound like, however, is that you plan on creating one by introducing tiers between these equipment types. Is that not “adding a new tier of gear.. that we expect everyone to chase after”?

You would have a point if there actually was a massive jump between exotics and legendary rewards currently (rather than just an aesthetic difference) and you were simply attempting to introduce a voluntary tier bridging the two equipment ranks that players had the option of skipping, but that’s not what you’re doing. What am I misunderstanding?

Simply suggesting that legendary items will always be the best equipment doesn’t eliminate the possibility of chasing tiers of gear if you keep “moving the bar” and inserting additional tiers between the exotic and legendary ranks. I mean, that’s something you can literally keep adding in there forever. I guess it’s great for characters once they’re completely decked out in legendary equipment, but for new players/characters that particular finish line keeps getting further and further away.

I really don’t see the mechanic as being innovative, or any less annoying/gimmicky than Blizzard requiring players in WoW to bring elemental resistance gear to fights that make heavy use of elemental damage – a practice ANet made a point of saying early on they were going to gladly steer clear of.

So… after 118 pages this thread is not so much a Q&A or discussion with developers on the philosophical shift in design, but rather just a dumping ground for all comments on this subject?

That’s almost as disappointing as the change itself. I was hoping to see some feedback coming from the other direction by now.