Guild Wars 2

Kuari.8106:

Here’s the thing… the down leveling is based on your gear some it looks like… so if you’re going to a level 10 area in all exotics, it seems to treat you like a level 10 in exotics, which how many level 10s are equipped in exotics?

No, it doesn’t. Your stats are multiplied by the ratio of your base stats at your actual level to the base stats of the effective level.

Due to the 2nd order polynomial growth of base stats (it is actually a series of linear approximations of a 2nd order, but that is beside the point) and linear growth of traits, the effects of traits diminish with level. Gear follows the 2nd order polynomial as well, however, increases in quality are present to offset the decrease in value given by traits.

An 80 in full exotics has higher stats than a natural level 10 because the level 10 player doesn’t even have a full set of gear.

Anytime you are scaled to below level 30, there is is a strong disparity in strength, but it is not because the scaling is messed up.

A character below level 10 probably does not have a full set of armor.
A character below level 20 probably does not have a full set of jewelry.
A character below level 30 does not have a full set of skills, and likely has a sub-ideal collection of skills.

When you are level 80, you are a seasoned adventurer that has already overcome these shortfalls that novice adventurers have.

Oh, but exotic gear, and traits, you say? From level 39 onward the impact of traits shrinks as you level. Higher tiers of gear are needed to offset this, as level 80 blues scaled to level 20 are the same as level 20 blues. Major and Minor traits, better skill selection, and gear that is the best you can have for the level (until 80, “best” is a moving target) all add to your strength, but this is not the cause for the massive disparity seen when you take an 80 to a level 2 zone.

If you really want to scale appropriately to a level 2-5 area, take off your gloves, hat, shoulders, rings, accessories, amulet, back piece, and use only your weapon and heal skills—no utilities or elite. The scaling is right, what is wrong is the expectation that a fully geared adventurer is supposed to fight no better than a poorly-geared one.

I have a hunch that bleed is calculated at the same time as the other damage over time conditions, but the damage appears staggered for the sake of appearances. The damage appears based on the condition “slot” that the bleed occupies. Each stack of bleed occupies a different slot (so that it has that nice staggered effect) but other conditions beginning or ending can cause it to shift a few slots. This would explain ticks after the condition has ended and the nice “stream” of bleed damage numbers when you have many stacks on the target.

Regardless, I’m not planning to use bleed as my baseline damage-over-time condition for looking at the effects of partial-second durations.

What I’m looking for is exactly when the ticks happen (and after I have this figured out, I’ll be looking at how fractional-second increases in duration benefit/fail to benefit condition damage). Conventional knowledge says damage from conditions happens “once per second” but this is an assumption that doesn’t actually hold up to scrutiny when looking at bleed—the damage even happens after the bleed effect ends.

No, the wiki has very general information only. Detail like when ticks happen is well beyond the wiki.

I am pretty sure they even fail to mention how existing bleed stacks are modified by adding a might boon to a player.

I’m a numbers geek and I love looking into how different systems are implemented. Recently I’ve been looking at condition damage. For my first test, I took my thief, which is set up to inflict both bleed and poison damage, and recorded her killing a few enemies at 25fps. I then did a frame-by-frame analysis of the video to see when the conditions were applied, ended and when damage ticked.

Poison was very straightforward. Every 25 frames (+/-1) I could see a tick of poison damage. Poison was processed on a fixed schedule--the time between inflicting the condition and the first tick of damage varied, however the frame number for each tick mod 25 yields a value of 10 (+/-1), implying that all poison damage is processed on the same once-per-second interval across all enemies. This is what I expected to see.

I expected bleed damage to follow a similar pattern, but it did not. In fact, the pattern was quite unusual, and borders on not being a pattern at all.

The first bleed I looked at had 32 frames between when the bleed was inflicted and the first damage tick. The last tick of damage was 7 frames after the effect ended. The 4 ticks were 101 frames apart total, and had approximately 25 frames between them (+/-2).

The second bleed ticked 35 frames after being inflicted. This was the only damage tick, as the foe died soon after.

The third bleed ticked 25 frames after being inflicted, 25 frames later, then 38 frames later, then 25 frames later. The effect ended before the fourth tick, but 101 frames after it began.

The fourth bleed ticked for the first time 28 frames after being inflicted. This was the only damage tick, as the foe died soon after.

Across all of these, the frame number mod 25 yields values around 22 some of the time, 0 some of the time, and 9 some of the time.

At no time was bleed refreshed / stacked.

Before going back and doing an analysis of other conditions/effects on the enemy and expanding my analysis to the remainder of the video I have, I was wondering if anybody else had looked into bleed in detail and had any information to share.

If a dev would like to step in and give an answer that would save me hours of staring at spreadsheets and video, that would be awesome too :-)

I see no difference between any of those images (aside from ambient lighting and such). In all cases the eyes look normal both at distance and under scrutiny.

Nappy, I get it, but you’re missing the point. There is absolutely no way for the game to tell who is a leader and who is a follower. All of the alternatives simply shift the focus from gold to another currency, which has the exact same problem.

Glory? Unrelated to skill in WvW.
WvW Badges? Unrelated to skill in WvW.
Dungeon badges? Unrelated to skill in WvW.
Karma? Unrelated to skill in WvW.
Gold? Unrelated to skill in WvW.
Achievements / Titles? Unrelated to skill in WvW.

All of these could be earned by either leaders or followers, or inept leaders, or anybody at all. What is the difference between spending 100g and sucking at being commander and farming 1000 WvW badges and sucking at being commander? Nothing. The problem of commander inherently being little more than a status symbol hasn’t changed. It doesn’t matter what the threshold for acquiring it is, it doesn’t matter what verb you use, the path to it and the effects on the community are the same.

I primarily use the forge to upconvert materials. Converting a stack of silver ore to a quarter stack of gold ore (actual yield is random, within a range) can be cheaper than buying the gold ore. Also, given how difficult it is to acquire large quantities of t6 materials, converting 5s to 6s to have the materials to craft other items helps.

There are also recipies to create specific exotic weapons—the wiki has a list of many known recipies. Icy dragon swords, spirit weapon skins and so forth.

A lot of people ignore those two and focus on the third major use: toss in 4 similar items and get one random item back. The quality will never drop, nor will the level (note: this is based on the lowest quality and level put in, if you mix), but the resulting item is generally worth less than the 4 source items combined, and may be less useful / valuable than any one item. It might also be incredibly good and valuable. This is a gamble, and it works with runes, sigils, weapons, armor… all sorts of stuff.

Edit: The pistols you mention are exotics that fall into the second category above—known recipies with a guaranteed result.

@Nappy: It doesn’t matter how many people buy the gems—it oculd be one or hundreds, gold actually leaves the economy this way (the purchase prices is more than the seller receives, jsut like the TP takes a cut on every transaction). Similarly, it doesn’t matter how many people sell the gems,either, from an economics standpoint.

You seem to insist that this is the only way to earn 100g, and that somehow being a commander gives you an advantage over other people. These are both false; my wife is closing in on 70g, and she’s only level 63 on her main with far less time played than I have. She has actualyl spent gold on buying gems before, never the other way around.

I don’t disagree that it would be nice if the only commanders that exist knew their stuff, but this is the crux of the problem: how do you differentiate a good elader from a bad one? This is a determination that can only be made by the community, not the game engine.

I don’t care how many vacant keeps you raid, zergs where you contribute nothing but your presence, or bots you slaughter—none of these would ever be considered the makings of a good leader. From the game’s perspective, these are the equivalent of coordinating a siege, organizing a large group as you strike at key points and lead the enemy into ambushes, and waging a successful campaign. The game will never know the difference, so the game cannot determine who is and who is not “real commander” material. A massive gold sink at least asks people to sacrifice something of value—it limits the field to people that really want it. Lacking a means of filtering out people that are bad leaders, it is about the best we can hope for.

If you want a focus offhand, it sounds like you’re aiming for survivability. Mace (party healing) or scepter (as a ranged weapon it is a little lacking, but it gets you out of melee if you need to save your skin) would be a good match for these. A 1-hand sword will give you a lot of defensive capabilities, perhaps more than you actually need.

To elaborate on costs of crafting:

Jeweling requires no money to level at all.
Tailoring will require you to purchase thread and/or runes (thread for armors, runes for bags—thread is cheap).

There is no real cost for purchasing recipies (you pay karma for those, and even then you don’t need them until very high levels) or anything else. You can gather all the materials on your own, aside from the thread and runes mentioned above.

@Nappychappy: I’m not sure I understand. My point was that it doesn’t matter how you acquire your blip, it doesn’t make you a leader. Your words make it sound like you agree with me, but your tone does otherwise.

To elaborate on my earlier point:
Do you get your blip for WvW activities? I’ve participated in every type of activity there is to think of, but it doesn’t make me a qualified leader.
Do you get it for PvP activities? PvP and WvW are totally different beasts. Small-group combat and king-of-the-hill does nothing to prepare you for defending a keep in a siege.
Gold is just as valid as either of these solutions, possibly better, becasue gold, unlike a passive unlock for accumulated experience, requires sacrifice—you have to want it to get it. It doesn’t mean you are qualified, but neither does anything else.
Changing the currency to WvW badges changes nothing—how many people sit on the walls of Stonemist and just bombard an area to farm badges—this is no more an indicator of leadership qualification than any other loot-based currency.
The “best” solution would be to elect your server’s commanders, but look at the US government and tell me that elections result in the best people getting the job and make everybody happy with their leaders.

The other side to consider is that extensive experience participating in content doesn’t make one a leader, either.

Leadership cannot be purchased, it can only be demonstrated. Leaders will make themselves known through their actions. The blue blip on the map is a tool, nothing more. You can unlock that blip through PvP, WvW, random loot in a Black Lion chest, or for spending a large sum of money and it won’t be related in any way to your qualifications when it comes to leading people.

My wife plays a ranger. She provides very nice support to the party and her pet is very durable. It is a versatile class.

I have a low-level thief that I play on occasion. I was surprised at how support-focused the thief can be (specifically with a shortbow). I’ve died a lot, but I attribute that less to the capabilities of a thief and more to the fact that…

My main is a guardian. Guardians are probably the most durable class there is, and it is hard to play a guardian that doesn’t fill a support role. A lot of gurdians play greatsword or hammer; these are not agile weapons—the 1-handed sword is. guardians don’t do the ranged thing very well, but in melee, we are quite formidable.

Elementalist can also do a lot of support while blasting things from afar…or up close—they have short-range capabilities too.

Other classes I am less well informed on.

You can start dungeons at 30. Well, technically earlier, but you’ll spend more time on your back than anything else if you go too much earlier.

The game doesn’t start at 80. At 30 you have access to a full set of gear and all your skills, so if you invest the time in gearing up properly, you will still be competitive with natural 80s.

At a glance, it looks prety similar to what most people run and should work fairly well for all content. It isn’t bad and, if it matches your playstyle, then it is probably pretty good. Personally, I’m not a greatsword-style person, so it isn’t mine, but it is still remarkably similar to what I run.

If this is the direction you’ve been heading, by all means, ride it out to 80. If it isn’t working for you after you hit 80, then it is only 3s50c to respec, so the risk is pretty minimal.

Edit: After taking it to 80, if it doesn’t feel like it is working, practice on the PvP golems in the mists—free respecs and limitless free gear do a lot to help fine-tuning.

The item to do this was accidentally released in the gem shop for a short while—they caught the bug promptly. When asked, the response was that it is not yet ready, but yes, it is on its way.

I saw a dev post earlier confirming that MF only affects loot from slain foes, and the effect is calculated at the time the kill is made. Chests of any form are unaffected—they are just random loot within the parameters of the specific chest.

@Kloaked: How much revolves around the thousands of people that are about to or in the process of killing a world boss that won’t respawn until ~3 hours after the restart?

You mean you got loot from the MK chest aside from total crap? Lucky you. Some of us were not so fortunate. I got blues. I think I may have gotten 1 green.

Danicco.3568:

Burning damages every second, bleed goes damage… 9x per second?

My experience is that both bleed and burning tick once per second. The difference in appearance is that since bleed stacks intensity, you will see the damage from each stack of bleed (which would be 9 numbers when you have applied 9 stacks of bleed) whereas there is only a single number from burn each second.

All of my bleeds, regardless of when I apply them, tick a the same time. It also appears that my burning ticks on the same schedule. This implies that there is a fixed schedule for applying condition damage.

However, when you hit an enemy with an attack that inflicts bleed/burn/poison, they receive the condition immediately—it isn’t, so far as I can discern, deferred until the next tick.

Based on these two, I believe that a 5% burn duration increase will be applied as just that. Since it is less than a full second increase (unless you somehow have a 20s burn skill), you are not guaranteed to receive any additional damage—that extra 5% duration must overlap the time during which condition damage ticks are processed.

For example:

At t=0s the enemy has no conditions.
At t=0.4s you apply burning with a 1s duration.
At t=1s the burning deals damage.
At t=1.4s the burning fades.

If you increased the duration of the burn by 5%, it wouldn’t make a difference; it would just fade at 1.45s instead of 1.4s.

However, if the burn was applied at t=0.96s, then at t=1s and t=2s the burn would deal damage and at t=2.01s it would dissipate.

I haven’t invested a significant amount of time into researching this (although it is on my to-do list), but it is consistent with my experiences. I’ve never seen anything to suggest otherwise.

A smoke effect that makes you look like this?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Darkness

@castlemanic.3198: At very low levels you lack so much in so many different areas, it is very hard to make any meaningful comparison. Until level 30, you don’t have your full set of skills. You probably won’t have a full set of armor before 10. This is part of the disparity—if I neglected to mention that incomplete gear is part, well… I’m only sylvari.

My goal was to illustrate that from 40-80 you don’t actually get stronger from gear, so it isn’t scaling and gear that is at issue. If you want to point fingers, it is that your typical new adventurer is ill-equipped to face the world.

At 30, you are now, in the strictest technical sense, ready to face the world as a hero—you have weapons, armor, and a full skill bar. Your power will not vary greatly from this point on.

Player skill is certainly a factor, much like having a full set of gear is.

Scaling in a nutshell (including definition of normalized stats):

At each level you have a base amount of power/toughness/vitality/precision. This is the base I mentioned above. To scale to another level, divide one of your stats (including food, gear, traits, etc) by this value. This will give the normalized value. To find your stats at a different level, you now multiply by that level’s base value.

Shabudua.7601:

Fildydarie.1496:

Warning: I am a numbers geek. I have invested more time researching this topic than any sane person should.

You’re probably in a good position to solve our quandary then: If scaling is working as it should, why are low-level areas such a cakewalk for high-level, high-geared characters? Was this just how ANet intended it to be?

A large part of the ease comes down to internal build synergies. While I was leveling, it was a rarity to equip 2 matching minor runes. Now, at 80, I have 5 matched Superior Krait runes (6th only applies underwater).

As you level, you tend to replace your gear as you have upgrades available. Due to downscaling and/or progression of content, you’re really treading water. At 80, with no more scaling, every upgrade is a genuine upgrade. When you couple this effect with targeted purchases, the effects of customized stats (as you level you get to choose how you want them distributed more and more in line with your desired build than at lower levels), rune and sigil bonuses (those do scale directly at higher levels), and major/minor trait selections, you do have an overall power creep.

When I go to a really low level area, it is pretty simple for me. I can take on almost any odds and win—it just isn’t very rewarding. Slightly higher level areas, however I still have to be careful—I can get overwhelmed and I am not invulnerable. As a seasoned adventurer going back to my old stomping grounds, this is how I would expect things to play out—as a hero, I should be able to perform heroic acts in these areas.

If you didn’t feel stronger, you would have the grind present in so many other games—it wouldn’t matter how much effort you put out, you would never actually get stronger in relevant content. Downscaling is a means to prolong the relevancy of content, not prevent the trivialization.

Also, I took a look at weapons; I only looked at weapons from 5-35, but they followed the same general trend as armor, specifically the damage on fine weapons drops relative to your base stats, suggesting that masterwork, rare, and exotic are necessary to keep pace with stat growth.

Warning: I am a numbers geek. I have invested more time researching this topic than any sane person should. If you wish to refute anything I claim, you had better have numbers to back it up. I’m not going to go into depth regarding the scaling mechanics as you should have already done that before starting this discussion—there are many threads on that topic already—I know because I’ve answered most of them. I will say that I deal in normalized stats—these numbers are universal for any effective level and provide the best point of comparison.

I will consider three levels. Level 1, Level 40, and Level 80. Progression follows a 2nd order polynomial curve, and there are some interesting disparities around level 40, so all other levels fall somewhere between these in terms of interest.

Baseline
At level 1 you have 24 to all stats as your base.
At level 40 you have 308 to all stats as your base.
At level 80 you have 916 to all stats as your base.

These are the values used to determine scaling.

Traits
At level 1 you have 0 points from traits (0 normalized).
At level 40 you have 600 points from traits (1.95 normalized).
At level 80 you have 1400 points from traits (1.53 normalized).

This shows that the impact of traits actually diminishes as players approach 80. At level 11, when you get your first traits, it is (20/68) about 0.29 normalized. Level 39 is actually the peak at 1.96.

So traits aren’t to blame for level 80s being overpowered in low level areas. The benefit of trait points actually diminishes as you level from 39 to 80. You do, of course, get major and minor traits, but we’ll look at those elsewhere.

Weapons
I haven’t looked at stat scaling on weapons, only armor, so it is possible there is massive inflation on weapons, but given the other scaling, I find this very unlikely.

Armor
A level 1 cannot wear full blues—the gear is simply not available.
A level 40 in full blues receives approximately 160 stat points (0.52 normalized).
A level 80 in full blues receives approximately 613 stat points (0.67 normalized).

There is a slight inflation in normalized stats from gear, however it is worth noting that the decrease in stats from traits is far more significant. Even allowing for exotic gear (32% over fine) this is only 0.88 normalized, an increase of 0.36 over level 40. This is measured from a full set of armor—6 slots. If you were to add in accessories, rings, and an amulet, you would see the effects more closely balance out, but still find that from 40 to 80, there is no appreciable change in normalized stats.

Conclusion
Traits (major and minor, not stats from traits), runes, sigils, and utility/elite skills are where you will find the difference between characters of various levels. As high level characters have reached a gear plateau, you are more likely to find characters that have reached the maximum and invested more time in producing synergies that are either unavailable at lower levels or require high-level runes and effects.

Characters that are leveling tend to not have the best gear for their level—I know I don’t have a full set of gear with the most desirable stats waiting for my alts at every level.

Scaling and gear is not the issue, as the game design already takes this into account.

Bella.3502:

Something that actually looks like a weapon and not a toy, pretty please.

Legendaries are meant to be over-the-top weapons with trails and fireworks which, no matter how emo you make those aspects, will always be toys.

If you want an actual weapon, equip an exotic.

Just my 2cp.

I don’t play a necromancer, but my wife does. She likes the audio cues as it is an alert that a minion died—one less thing to keep her eyes on.

Variety is always good, but brings with it resource considerations, too… personally I’d rather have cute-but-tiring lines with good performance than sacrifice performance for more variety.

The latest official answer I’ve heard on guesting is that it will be made available eventually, but it isn’t ready yet. ANet doesn’t like to talk detail until things are certain. So yes, you can probably expect guesting at some point.

Also, it may be possible for your friend to transfer to JQ still—people migrate between servers often enough that it warrants his keeping an eye on the situation to see if he can tranfer.

If this is done, then I want a waypoint inside each tower that allows me to respawn there when I die on the walls.

If I can fight my way through a siege and make it to that portal, then I think I’ve earned the right to be allowed in through the sally port.

/agree @jukkou

My experience also suggests chests are unaffected, and only loot from monster kills are influenced by MF.

The Claw of Jormag is one of the few places outside the Mystic Forge where you can get a legendary precursor.

I do these fights because I love open-world epic fights. No, these aren’t the most elaborate events ever conceived, however for “vanilla” content, they aren’t too shabby (It took EQ at least 4 expansions to equal the complexity, WoW didn’t in the open world—in instanced content they had it by the first expansion, although not at launch, as I recall).

So of us just play the game because we find it to be fun.

I have the same problem. Meanwhile, my family can, and I can log into the forums, so it isn’t an account or connectivity issue.

@runeblade: Troll elsewhere. The concept of hard mode is that the challenge increases as does the reward. A voluntary reduction in your stats for added reward is just that. If you need those extra stats to make up for your natural ability, that is fine, but don’t claim that I hide in the back like a coward and don’t contribute. If I can go 4v1 (I’m the 1) in WvW in my MF gear and win, there is a determining factor in the outcome that is not the stats on my gear. Maybe I don’t need all that extra toughness and vitality in dungeons because I can dodge effectively and avoid damage. You don’t know me, so don’t pretend that I’m some bumbling fool that can’t accomplish anything on my own.

@Six: Half the loss due to MF can be had in a food buff. I said that. There are other consumables that stack with food buffs as well; two consumables and you have overcome the MF “deficit”. I said that too.

Food also gives things that you don’t get on basic armor. Things like condition duration modifiers, stun resistance, boon procs, etc.

Since the contribution from food is optional, and MF food is being encouraged by the people arguing with me (you in particular), how is it unreasonable for me to say that my build doesn’t need more of the stats that are on gear already, that I need stats that can only be had through food?

If you want to complain about people ruining dungeon runs or not contributing, that is fine, but it is pretty obvious that a lot of you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re just ranting because you had a bad group and you need to take it out on somebody. You’re making up arguments about how these people cannot contribute because of their choice in gear. They can. This doesn’t mean they will merely that the attribute you have identified is not actually the problem—plenty of people in combat gear don’t contribute. There are lots of ways to offer a sub-par performance, and they extend well beyond gear. Should we ban necromancers from dungeons because their skills are currently less effective than they should be? Should we mandate level 80 with full exotics? Downgrading from exotic to rare is effectively the same as wearing exotic MF armor, after all. When you look at the actual numbers involved, this is the same argument you are making, and it is patently rediculous.

I think you and I are looking at different design decisions.

Acquisition of a specific, desirable item depends on chance.

You are positing that the dependency on chance is a backwards decision.

I am claiming it is a step forward because the most desirable items confer no benefit over common items.

To go back to the FFXI example: Nobody would group with me because I lacked a secondary class (Obviously, I was a noob). I could not complete the quest to unlock a secondary class solo (it would have been a relatively simple matter, had I already done it). This is a bad design decision because new players are forced to rely on an existing community to advance. After beating my head against this for a month, I gave up and canceled my two accounts.

In GW2, once you equip that level 80 exotic, you have advanced to the end. You have the best. Legendaries are not desirable beacuse they are better than exotics, they are desirable because people want the rare weapon skins. In pretty much every other MMO out there, desirability is linked directly with numeric gains (possibly not in FFXI, I never got far enough to find out). This is the step forward (admittedly, one that was made back in GW1) that I am talking about—casual and hardcore players can experience the same content (because they have the same stats) but the hardcore players still have that badge to show off the fruits of their efforts.

To buy the lodestones is not unreasonable—yes, you are compelled to rely on a community that may or may not be there, but the only thing that is blocked is your advancement towards an optional goal. Not having a legndary doesn’t exclude you from content.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

@ oZii

I mean… 40 exotic staves and 100g is a serious commitment of time and effort for a casual game. RNG is RNG I know… but there’s a difference between RNG 50/50 chance and RNG 1/1000 chance.

Yes, maybe Anet doesn’t want everyone running around with Twilights and Bifrosts and such… but making the barrier one of insane farming and RNGs rather than insane challenges seems to go against the very design philosophy which Anet and so many people staunchly support.

If the barrier doesn’t exclude people, is it a barrier?

Why should any casual player think it is unfair that they did not get one of the rarest weapon skins in the first 2 months the game was out? Shouldn’t this require a year or more?

Why are poeple so fixated on the mystic forge instead of the chest from Claw of Jormag or the Orrian Temples? Fight dragons for a chance at it if you want an epic accomplishment; throw excess loot in the mystic forge if you want more chances than those schedules allow.

Edit: Why does having an accomplishment associated with it make it expected that everyone will get one? Other games feature accomlpishements for world firsts, participation in activities that no longer exist, and other similarly exclusive events. Your accomplishments should be a list of things you have done—certainly this merits notice, but the fact that it can be done should not be taken as evidence that it is expected for everybody.

They have no use aside from being a general indication of how much you have done in-game.

I clicked on this thread because the title, when truncated on the main page left me…curious.

It read “Can anyone help me in reproducing a son…”

Suffice to say, my iniial thought was that this is not the type of help this forum is meant to provide.

Wait a sec… you just said that if I run with my guild it is fine… how is it fine if you insist that it be banned from dungeons? What if it is a PuG but everybody agrees? I’ve pugged explorables with everybody in magic find gear (no, we didn’t exploit).

You can’t argue that there should be a game-based rule to prevent this but accept there are times where it is permitted. You either accept the practice is valid or invalid.

Fellow software engineer, didn’t expect that.

A lot of other MMOs do have this problem, but the problem has grown more and more severe as the market becomes mroe and mroe profitable. Where you find money, so too will you find corruption. GW2 is the latest MMO, and as a new game it was bound to have both bugs and players desperate for in-game superiority. It is a high profile target, not necessarily a flawed one.

I agree that the input validation needs work, but until you’ve been attacked, it is hard to know exactly how an adversary will attack you. All the analysis in the world isn’t proof. When you combine that with needing tolerance for production-level network activity (with network activity being measured in millions of simultaneous users), erring on the side of caution does not penalize legitimate players when things fall outside your thresholds. As you learn more about the real operating environment and the threats beign presented, you close the gaps.

I don’t believe in the infinite health and magic find hacks. These are a scam to get people to install keyloggers and/or backdoors. Remember, ANet is serious about acount security and stopped most of the account-targeted attacks already, so the scammers need a new set of tools to get them. I remember a friend, way back when, asking why a hack program wasn’t working. The answer was because it was actually a well-known trojan, not a hack program.

I find it hard to criticize lack of transparency when I’ve never worked for a company that was comfortable discussing potential vulnerabilities of live systems. The other side, discussing solutions, I see as an offshoot of the rapid iteration and ‘when it is done’ methodology. Why talk about something that might not pan out after being implemented?

Both ANet and the botters are ramping up.

Sdric.8526

You have an approx. 50% base chance to crit with a normal crit build.
You should have fury up half of the time in most dungeons groups.

65*0.7*0,5 +65*0,5*0,5= 39%

So by taking Magic Find you give up 39% damage
In most scenarios (2 Warrios /Ranger…) fury will be up all the time making it 65×0,7= 45,5% damage you sacrifice.

Now please.
Tell me again you ain’t hurting your team when you swap a damage stat for personal-purse-boost (Magic find).

I don’t run a crit build. I run a condition damage / support build.

I don’t run with 2 warriors, and the ranger I run with doesn’t give fury. The warrior I often run with doesn’t either.

I didn’t say it doesn’t take away form the team, I jsut said that MF is not the source of all evil. My son’s reflexes are not on par with mine, so he gets downed at least once per boss fight. Between time spent on his back, time spent avoiding hits so he can heal up, and slightly sub-par gear, I contribute far more in my MF gear than he does in full combat gear. What about the players that stack crit damage but no precision, or ignore the base damage from power? What about players that don’t use half the skills on their bar, or never pop their elites, or any of the other ways you can offer a sub-par performance. What is is about magic find gear that is so horrible? So why don’t we just face the fact that there are other ways to detract from a group that are far more severe than wearing magic find gear.

And, just for the record… I generally don’t wear MF gear in dungeons. But I’m a libertarian at heart, so I fight the good fight.

captaincrunch.6731:

This is silly. Food is not a prerequisite for dungeon running nor should it be. You can get by just find with an appropriate potion for teh dungeon you are in and make due with the +70 condition damage or power that a magic find food item gives you. If you boot someone for this you are just being a jerk.

The problem here is people completely removing a potential 3rd stat from their gear in favor of magic find – which is a different story and, in my opinion, stupid. I don’t even want to use it in normal pve but I feel like I’m only hampering myself by not doing so.

Food gives stats.
Gear gives stats.

I fail to see how you can claim that stats from one source are inherently different than stats from another.

I also fail to see how you can claim that consumable buffs (more than just food) are not a prerequisite. If there is a prerequisite, it would be a stat threshold. Consumbles can help you meet this threshold. So does armor quality and level.

At level 80, you have over 3600 stat points inherently. You have 1400 points from traits. A full set of exotic armor weighs in around 1000 points. If you equip full MF and ignore that, you’re sitting around 700 from gear. 6000 vs. 5700. This is a 5% drop in overall stats, which is well within the range of contribution from player skill. Over half that difference can be overcome with a single food buff, and you can stack multiple consumables.

Forgive me for being dismissive of the arguments presented, but the numbers say that consumables can offset MF, player skill can offset MF, gear quality can offset MF, and the lack of a clear baseline for what is ‘appropriately geared’ makes this a witch hunt and not a reasoned argument.

But when I have more money I can afford better / more vaired gear, I can respec more often, I can stock up more consumables… these things help too.

Edit: Obciously I’m going a little overboard on the sarcasm here, but the basic fact is valid—everything helps. There is so much that is not gear in this game that contributes far more. Give me proof that magic find is as toxic as you say, that it is not within the skill threshold, and you have my support.

Orichalcum is t6.
Gossamer is t6.

where is the disparity?

I call bullkitten that you think you got a decrease, every attempt you make gets better yield until you hit the bare maximum.

You see what I did there?

I never said every yield was better than the previous, I just said the end of my set was better than the start.

You got unlucky. It is not a conspiracy.

Don’t forget that a lot of the bots are compromised accounts. Being too heavy with the banhammer harms legitimate players too. This is why the botters are so brazen—they have nothing to lose.

Anybody who uses a MF consumable in a dungeon should be kicked from the group. This is a team game, you should be using consumables that help the team, not yourself.

You see what I did there?

This argument is old. Very old. It has been around since the headstart weekend. Magic Find gear is the hardmode. It is the gear that people use when they do not find the content challenging.

You want to claim that magic find severely hampers performance? Prove it. Show me that a skilled player in magic find gear contributes less than a novice player in appropriate gear—don’t just claim it, establish proof.

At level 80, exotcs have approximately 13% more stats than rares. However, you don’t gain 13% by upgrading rares to exotics, you gain about 4%—your traits and base stats are so much higher than what you get from gear. The actual impact is fairly minimal, and well within the margin of error presented by varied skillsets.

Edit: Removed the part that Sdric referenced in his reply, as he was right, I did overlook that part in my initial read. It does not, however, invalidate my argument.

Jiggawattz.2697:

How about a simple captcha system, I suggested this in an alternate post but unfortounately legitimate suggestions that seem to simple to solve this issue get deleted before they can be read and discussed, I used to have a huge respect for Arenanet but they just keep sweeping everything under the carpet rather than handling it. If they spent half as much time working on anti bot anti hack measures as they did scouring the forums for people outing them on obvious in game crap, so they can hide it for publicity, this wouldn’t be an issue… this post in general probably won’t last much longer before it gets deleted like the rest. I am just fed up, I waited so many years for this game and put so much faith and support into Anet… and they are disappointing me at every turn, and when I ask them about it, they brush me aside in favor of keeping their visage clean. Of all the things I never considered them, it was inconsiderate of players.

The problems you think are easy to solve are, in fact, not. Hacks and exploits are an arms race. The fundamental problem is that the hacks and exploits toe the line between valid and invalid commands. The client cannot be trusted (hacks exist because the client is compromised) and the server cannot determine the maliciousness of the data it receives, only identify it as valid or not. The more strictly commands are regulated, the more burdensome it is on legitimate players.

ArenaNet has a staff of over 250 world-class employees. They understand and follow best practices.

The client can’t wait for the server to approve an action before showing the user the efects. The user wants to get feedback in less than the time a round-trip to the server takes. Furthermore, neither the client nor the server can expect to receive data from the other (faulty channel problem). this means that both client and server have to operate on a good-faith system. The server will permit the client to do anything the client can legitimately do. At the same time, the client will assume the server will permit the actions it relays because it knows they are valid.

Enter the hacker. By manipulating the rules the client follows, they report data to the server in a manner where the server has difficulty detecting it is invalid. It is possible to move from one location to another, and it is possible to have a large speed buff. If the server receives no data for a short while, then is told the player is at a new location, it has no choice but to accept this as valid, because it is completely possible.

I’ve played games where the server strictly validated actions. If you activated a speed boost while moving, the server would bounce you back to the last known location because ‘you moved too far for your base speed.’ Entering water had a similar effect—you had to slowly walk into water, not run. If your connection started getting bad, you would be unable to perform any actions at all. There was a quarter-second latency between clicking a button and it being added to the command queue.

The game is reasonably secure and playable. Exploiters are being dealt with. This is like the best possible case, especially with a game that has been open to the public for 2 months.

Yes, actually, it is a coincidence.

4-6 is not a lot. I had a general increase over 15 runs, but even 15 is not statistically significant.

I’ve yet to get over 18 orichalcum when I convert mithril. The fact that you got 35 on an equivalent conversion is mind-bogglingly lucky to me. Your first conversion was a statistical outlier and this provided a false expectation.

The better your first result, the more likely the second will be worse. When these two happen, your brain sets up an expectation of the trend of diminishing results. Because you never get that lucky again, the pattern appears to hold. But what really happened is you initially had good luck and used that to establish unreasonable expectations.

It has been stated very clearly by people in the know that diminishing returns does not affect the mystic forge at all.

First of all: No, there isn’t.
Secondly: What are you attempting to make that you think there is DR? Earlier today I did 15 fine crafting conversions (t5→6) and the yields increased over time, starting with the first few at 5 and ending with an 8, 9, and finally 11.