Guild Wars 2

Have you been in one of the places Stephane named?

Arale.4207:

So, basically what you are saying is, it takes 7 months to fix a floater issue?

We do not know why this floater is sometimes not appearing but because it is a visual bug only we have prioritized other fixes over it while we try to figure out the root cause of this issue.

What he’s basically saying is that they’re not even trying. If you have an issue tracker full of outstanding issues that are sorted by priority, you’ll always be working on the high priority ones and not go through them chronologically. And if nobody ever tells you to fix an old bug with a lower priority or escalates it to a higher priority, you won’t fix it. Because your work will be audited by other departments and/or a superior, and usually every step (commit) is documented in the issue tracker as well as in the code repository. So unless you’re doing those low priority fixes in your spare time because you have a personal interest in fixing that specific bug, you’re not working on them at all. That’s how it has been in all companies I’ve been working for. And while it’s logical and totally makes sense, there should normally be somebody monitoring customer feedback and escalating those old bugs that always slip through when people get too vocal.

They said they’re testing on a closed beta system. Which probably isn’t even hosted in the regular datacenter but in their office, at least they also said several times that some live issues only come up because of the delay/lag they don’t have when testing.
He just tried to say that 200.000 players find more bugs in ten minutes than a few beta testers could find in a month. That doesn’t explain bugs like the inaccessible POI though. That one means: zero testing. Updates to one subsystem (class) can always break things that seem completely unrelated, especially in a complex software like an MMO. Okay. But there doesn’t seem to be a structured and well documented testing / QA process, unlike they’re telling us (the statements can be found in the dev tracker).

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Iruwen.3164:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

The event itself is tied to the ingame time and will happen at dawn (ingame). So your fireworks might not have happened yet, as it is not dawn ingame.

Why dawn? I guess most people would expect a firework to happen at dusk.

It makes total sense to me that the fireworks take place at dawn.

This way, when you’re adventuring anywhere in Tyria, and night falls, you know that you have 35 minutes to get your kitten to LA.

If the fireworks happened at dusk, there would be a 70 minute daytime window to cover.

This way it is much easier to time, without having to sit in LA for over an hour.

I think that was pretty thoughtful of the devs.

Except every map has its own time, try walking out of LA at night, chances are it’ll be bright day. Plus you’ll likely end up on an overflow during events where everything is different anyway.

Relshdan.6854:

lol…..so the skill can hit between ZERO and 4 times. this is intended?

Judging by the attack pattern Jon posted, it should always hit at least twice on a stationary target. Sorrows video clearly shows that this isn’t the case.
I see what the berserker is meant to do and whakittens advantages are, also every hit can crit independently, but at least two hits should always connect. Imo if they can’t find the problem, its mechanics should be reworked altogether considering it’s our only ranged direct damage weapon. GS is already a strange weapon because of the auto-attack and phantasm designed to keep enemies at range with a bouncing skill (mirror blade) that says the opposite…

JonPeters.5630:

It took me a while, but here is a better explanation with an image.

The illusionary berserker uses an animation similar to warrior greatsword #3 where they spin and move while creating attacks. The attacks are circles (shown as pentagons in my image) that are created at frames in the animation. In this image I highlight the position of all 4 attacks. What this means is that based on the relative position of a iZerker to their target, and based on the targets motion it can hit between 0 and 4 times. The damage number listed in the skill fact is based on all 4 hits connecting as shown by the 4x next to the damage #. With a static target this is possible but extraordinarily unlikely. The movement is meant to help this attack hit moving targets, which is its primary purpose as a skill which reduces movement speed.

In this particular series of screenshots, 3 of the strikes (#2, #3, and #4 ) overlapped the target golem, but as is known in the bug only 1 damage floater was displayed. I am able to examine the golem health before and after and it takes 3 strikes worth of damage but again the visual damage floater is not appearing. We do not know why this floater is sometimes not appearing but because it is a visual bug only we have prioritized other fixes over it while we try to figure out the root cause of this issue. In the meantime, I hope this image shows more clearly how this attack works and what the real bug here is.

Here is the image: http://imgur.com/idkTMrl

Note: the 3rd attack is visually present in two of the images because of the timing of my screenshot.

So the attack pattern is setup so it’s likely to hit a stationary target next to its spawn location twice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8vtwO_PvM
Watch 1:00 or 1:27 for example, what happens there doesn’t really make sense to me, and it doesn’t look like missing damage floaters when you watch the enemy’s health bar.
What might have changed:
- the attack pattern
- the distance it travels
- the raw damage
- some LOS bs that causes it not to connect all hits when it spawns right in an enemy or passes through it exactly when the attack is triggered
Didn’t this first occur when the LOS change was implemented?

Martin Kerstein.3071:

The event itself is tied to the ingame time and will happen at dawn (ingame). So your fireworks might not have happened yet, as it is not dawn ingame.

Why dawn? I guess most people would expect a firework to happen at dusk.

There’s a huge difference between an intended random effect, which is inherent to all abilities and especially inherent to the mesmer class, and missing reliability because of bugs. If you ask me to create a random generator that spits out numbers from 1 to 10, you probably wouldn’t be too amused when you notice that it sometimes returns an 11. Or even worse, a 51423697. Buy that logic, we could abandon all bugfixing and say "well, it’s random". Also, I don’t accept bugs just because "hey, it’s a game". While I don’t expect the reliability of an embedded car system here, there has to be a certain degree of quality that’s clearly missing in GW2’s development process. See Jon’s thread above, I already raged there in length.

Carighan.6758:

Likewise, it seems incredibly obvious to me that a whirlwind-line attack will *not* be able to always hit all hits on a single target, being an AE ability at it’s core. And I would never suspect the number of hits to be stable either, unless the mechanic hard-caps them at 1.

I don’t expect that either, it’s four separate hits with overlapping hit areas. That’s totally fine. And it’s totally not the point of this bug report, because Sorrow’s video clearly shows that "there’s absolutely no persistent logic in the path it travels and the hits that actually connect", as I already said above.

PS: we (mesmers) have a really comprehensive list of issues here. There’s also lots of details, but most should be self explaining. If there are missing details, nobody ever asked for it. They’ve also been reported in the bugs forum of course, but that thread even is a sticky, so you’d think they noticed it. The number of fixes over the course of nine months is so small that it’s almost negligible. Half of it being small number adjustments or tooltip changes. Most issues aren’t that important, some are. Instead, new bugs are introduced. The balancing is based on broken skills, which means they have to rebalance sooner or later, twice the work, unless they don’t fix bugs at all. If skills are left broken for balancing reasons, not even the tooltips are adjusted most of the time. It’s a complete lack of certainty for every serious player. Some ANet official announced a bugfixing patch for for the end of last month in the necromancer subforum, but not even their low health on downed has been fixed properly (see here). It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

TrevorEh.6915:

Might be better posted in the Bugs forum though… I’m not convinced Anet monitors this forum.

See https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/The-forum-bug-process/first. While what he says is generally true, in the end it’s just a collection of lame excuses.

velestra.9415:

a public testserver there u go.

I said a PTR would be helpful before, but meanwhile I doubt it. They can’t let you test new content there, so most of the bugs would slip through anyway (achievements, exploits and stuff). What’s way more problematic is that they must know about many of the other bugs (see above), they should also know the details and many issues can actually be easily reproduced. Others lack in detail and/or can’t be reproduced, but they fix neither so that’s not an excuse. A PTR wouldn’t help with that.
If they think the forum is a good place to report bugs, ok. I see that real issue trackers are harder to use and probably overstrain most people. Our users are like trained monkeys when it comes to computers as well. Imo it’s way easier to find and merge duplicates in a tracker so people don’t think their report has been deleted, but ok.
Anyway, I’m only surfing this forum in my spare time while I’m at my 40h/week fulltime job and I’m also active on some other platforms, and even I can keep track of the reported issues. There’s about three pages of bug reports per day normally (minus what’s removed by moderators, 667 pages after nine months), several more shortly after patches. I’m sorting out more than that in my lunch break, not to mention what a dedicated employee could do. There’s more than 300 people working at ANet, we have several CCs in here or whatever they’re called, dunno how many people in their QA department, so it’s pretty ruled out that they don’t know about all the bugs, they have them in their internal bugtracker and they’re prioritized for sure, they just don’t fix them. Of course we don’t know how many bugs they fix that aren’t mentioned in the update notes at all, but it really makes you wonder how many actual developers capable of fixing real bugs (not designers, artists and so on) they have and how broken the game/engine already is.
If the Glassdoor review is halfway correct, they face a severe lack of documentation, a lack of communication between teams and a high fluctuation in the QA department, so probably nobody has a real project overview.
That’s how ambitioned projects usually die. What ANet does isn’t rocket science, they’re just a software company with an ungrateful but huge community. If we worked that way, we’d be dead by now because of our limited customer base (and the loss of money, I’m maintaining an accounting system).
What I also don’t understand is the lack of communication. Yeah, in case of the illusionary berserker for example there have been replies, but those were... lacking at best. It would have been sufficient to say that it’s a confirmed bug and watch the videos to see that there’s something indeed broken. For most other bugs, there isn’t a reply at all, even if it would just take thirty seconds to check a thread with SEVERAL HUNDRED REPLIES and say "that’s a bug, we’re working on it, won’t make it into this month’s update though". And when there are that many replies, you SHOULD REALLY work on it.
The right click interaction issue also is a sad story and a good example. That wasn’t even a bug, yet it took them how many months to deal with it? That should have been a simple executive decision. But probably the one who cared wasn’t the one who decided so the one who needed to fix it wasn’t told to fix it. Or whatever. You just can’t work that way.

Weekend \o/

Illusionary Mariner is broken as well. When it comes close to anything that resembles a shore, it stops doing anything at all. Eventually because the water doesn’t end where we see it end but it has an area that’s considered water or something which ends too early.

Blackhat.4016:

Moa is ok for WvW

For what? Taking one guy out before the other fifty stomp you? Hardly helpful compared to the other elites.

That’s not helpful. It’s not a balancing issue, it’s the complete lack of reliability that breaks it, which is clearly outlined in Sorrow’s video. If you don’t see that, that’s fine, many casuals probably don’t notice most of the issues the game has, but don’t neglect the existence of the bug(s) because of that, especially since they already admitted that it’s indeed bugged.

Bright.9160:

TIL adding a toggle after 9 months of begging = high priority list.

+1, I’m so looking forward to their next high priority fixes in 2018.

I’ll happily buy stuff with real money, but I won’t buy a chance to get stuff I want. The concept is ridiculous, it’s gambling. I want that stuff though, and that gives me a real bad feeling. I guess a lot of people feel like that. Plus the other things that make you feel bad about GW2, but are not bad enough to actually make you quit. That’s why there’s so much hate in the forums.

Hexxen.7216:

That is against a single target that doesn’t move though. The phantasm uses the equivalent of the WAR whirlwind GS attack right? That won’t hit more than once or twice if the enemy is standing still and not against a wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8vtwO_PvM#t=1m
Tell me this isn’t broken. If they reduced the lenght of the path it travels so it’s a guaranteed and reliable 2-4 hits with decent damage, I could even live with it. But considering what it does there, this wouldn’t even help.
Also compare these two ones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8vtwO_PvM#t=1m17s
There’s absolutely no persistent logic in the path it travels and the hits that actually connect.
Or this one, suddenly the hits connect instantly although the phantasm spawns right within the enemy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF8vtwO_PvM#t=1m42s
There’s probably even several issues at once:
- damage per hit (although the damage *is* low per description of the skill, probably to balance for the cripple)
- number of hits that connect
- pathing of the phantasm
- maybe its spawn location

PS: thanks for the video Sorrow.

RoyHarmon.5398:

I haven’t played my mesmer in a few months (though he is level 80), so I don’t actually know what bug you’re talking about. The post doesn’t make it very clear.
So, one bit of detail you could offer is: What’s wrong with this Phantasmal Berserker? And the answer isn’t "Go read through several pages of the mesmer subforum."

Because probably this isn’t the best place to talk about specific bugs. Anyway, there is a 436 reply / 26371 views thread in the mesmer forum which already had several official replies, saying things like "sorry, we can’t find the bug" (seriously), "it’s working as intended" (seriously?) and later "it’s just numbers not showing up" - which has all been disproved with actual numbers, screenshots and videos. Then, instead of fixing the berserker, they broke the bouncing attack behaviour and there was not a single official reply to this, so both of our greatsword damage skills are now broken. Plus in April 30th’s update (TWO AND A HALF MONTHS AGO) they changed it so

Summoned creatures and pets can no longer draw aggro from enemies that have not already aggroed on their master.

but forgot (?) clones in the process, also no official reply whatsoever. There’s lots of evidence and quite clear that this cannot be intended (I hope) since it affects you randomly, escpecially in PvE starter areas where we have lots of critters and inanimate objects, I made several videos, yet they’re making requests for MORE INFO? I mean... it’s just... I’m baffled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SYHmS93Ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0918gFXVht8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6nPo5jJuU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WUJuwQJH9Y
I’m not even mad that they don’t fix bugs that I know are hard to fix because of engine limitations, like teleports or leaps not always working. I can accept that, it probably requires a large chunk of their programming schedule. But this is just plain ignorant, sorry.
Then look at how long it took them to reproduce the issues with necromancer’s downed health or the auto-attack cancel on dodge, it’s laughable. I can only speak for mesmers really, but it obviously affects all classes in varying degrees. Remember the cowtapult? How long did it take them to fix this, how many (not working) fixes have been in updates and wouldn’t it have been a wiser decision to remove it altogether or provide an alternate way to get to the vista instead of wasting resources on it? Eventually some developer/designer even said "hey, let’s just remove this bs", but nobody listened, who knows. Might be well possible according to the Glassdoor review.

William Fairfield.1428:

There has been no decrease in the rate at which coffers drop from holo’s or in the world.

There also was no decrease in the amount of ectos we got by salvaging rares.
Oh wait a second…

For threads with 100+ replies, it would be a matter of courtesy to drop a line if this is indeed a bug or wanted behaviour and if it’ll be fixed by th end of the month. Because if I knew that these things are intended, I could stop wasting money on gems and just quit playing.

JonPeters.5630:

1) I’ll spare the math but It would take our company about a year, with everyone dedicated to testing 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year to get as much testing time as happens in about an hour in the live environment.

So you’re telling me all the broken achievements worked in the test environment? What about bouncing attacks and clones targeting critters, summons, allies, inanimate objects or nothing at all? What about the inaccessible POI in Divinity’s Reach? What about auto-attack canceling on dodge (I can reliably reproduce this on my mesmer btw.)? I could go on for a while. I’ve developed and reviewed code myself (now sysadmin and actual software testing), whatever you’re doing so these bugs can slip through again and again, you’re doing it wrong and you need to work on a proper internal QA. We’ve all read the Glassdoor ArenaNet Review so don’t try telling us your QA isn’t broken, we’re not stupid. We can cope with the truth, but not with more lies.

StinVec.3621:

@Iruwen
@Liz

Just wanted to clear this up a tad. Apparently this has become a [merged] thread of other threads related to this new poi that is not bugged but is not an active part of the event yet and the mod who merged it did not add [MERGED] to the thread title. My initial response was to a thread that included no information whatsoever, and simply stated that there was a bugged POI and when would it be fixed yet did not include any information about what POI. As I thought they meant an actual bugged POI, and not the one that is not permitted access as yet due to that aspect of the event not being active yet, I gave a bit of a snippy response about how they should’ve included information if they would actually like help solving their issue. I know this probably didn’t need my explaining, just felt like doing it anyway as I had a minute free. I’ll try to not be as snippy in my responses and be nicer about mentioning what they could do to better their chances of getting help in the future.

Also, Meep owes me 10g or 4 feathers…and Muggo cheats.
Looking forward to the mystery aspect of the events. TY Anet.

Acknowledged and roger, not your fault

Navi.7142:

I tried to stay only with the berserker bug because I think that is the most annoying bug that HAS to be fixed right now.

Imo the bounce and clone targeting issues are more annoying/dangerous - that might be a question of personal preference and playstyle though. As I’m doing a lot of PvE in different zones, I have severe issues with critters, yellow mobs and inanimate objects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0918gFXVht8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6nPo5jJuU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SYHmS93Ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WUJuwQJH9Y

StinVec.3621:

Perhaps you can’t, I have never had any problems with any of them in Divinity’s Reach.

• Include image, name, area/quadrant of the zone, what is keeping you from getting it if you would like help with your issue.

You should check your map, specifically the top left corner where it says Map Completion – POI 721/722. Then try to get the last one in Divinity’s Reach and come back.

Didn’t read anything but this is probably a QQ thread about phantasms being too strong, so I’ll just chime in and say: whatever you (ANet) do - don’t freaking touch PvE (unless you’re planning to fix iZerker, that would be welcome) . Thanks, go on.

Mentalhead.5721:

This sounds great, but what about real autoloot that could automatically pick up loot so we won’t have to press “F” ever again.

With AoE loot I see myself constantly hitting “F” over and over. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great addition that will save us time and some loot, but it would be great if we got autoloot interval of 0.5s or something like that.

Spotted the lazy one. Try clicking the link.

109710_0931 AoE Loot
109710_0930 Automatically loot all lootable objects in a radius around you.
109822_0170 AoE Loot On Interact
109822_0171 AoE Loot whenever you press the Interact key.

…

Says a lot about their testing when all that would have been required to discover this bug is to go there just once. It’s not just bad testing. It’s zero testing.

Jester.1236:

I’ve never understood the forums mentality. If your doing something as means of enjoyment and relaxation, and your miserable and hate everything about it, from the class you play to the developers that make the game, then why would you still play it? I always see Mesmers say " I love Mesmer, except this list of 1450 reasons I hate it" It makes no sense. Maybe it’s just me. I play to relax and have fun.

I already spent several hundred hours and quite a bit of money on this game and I still love it, but I hate ANet for their attitude and continuing failure. I’ll never get tired of complaining until the obvious and massive bugs are fixed, but considering the amount of bugs the last update alone had, their QA is obviously so messed up that I’m slowly giving up hope. I’ll wait for the patch that’s coming at the end of the month and decide what to do then. I want to play to relax and have fun, but they’re doing their best to prevent it. Let me put it like this: just because my favorite team keeps losing, it’ll still be my favorite team. But my critizism will become louder and harsher.

PS: the reason I’m still hoping for the best is that they also didn’t fix the obvious auto-attack on dodge bug, so I guess there’s something incoming by the end of the month.

That is so freaking annoying, especially when playing in swamp areas with lots of critters…

marnick.4305:

Iruwen.3164:

marnick.4305:

1/ They gave us something comparable to a big thank you. It’s a free gift.

I see that more as a big sorry for screwing up again and again and again.

I must have missed those screw ups. Thanking people, admitting and fixing mistakes, staying true to a manifesto and promises … for you those are screw ups maybe, but in the EU these are qualities.

I guess that was sarcasm, thanks for the good laugh.

marnick.4305:

1/ They gave us something comparable to a big thank you. It’s a free gift.

I see that more as a big sorry for screwing up again and again and again.

The holograms’ health is so ridiculusly low, a single shatter or hundred blades can kill everything that spawns. Just another failure in this completely screwed up update.

Somehow I’m getting way more dragon coffers off skales than any other mob. Doesn’t matter which ones. Better kill as many of them as possible before ANet fixes it.

Katastrofi.5816:

Iruwen.3164:

Doesn’t make up for the borked update and continued inability to fix the game.

Way to be an epic downer. Stop playing the game if that’s how you feel, yah?

Why should I, already spent hundreds of hours on it. I’ll just complain on every possible occasion until they fixed it. And that gift simply doesn’t make up for their poor update history. And it also doesn’t make up for spending thousands of gems on RNG boxes with a chance so low that it’s ridiculous. Hell, that’s the least they could do to compensate.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

From the patch notes:
“The Rich Dragon Coffer is now available in the Consumable category of the Gem Store for 100 gems each, or 5 for 400 gems and 25 for 2,000 gems. This special festival box always contains Dragon Bash candy and also has a chance to contain fireworks, a Mini Holographic Risen Knight, and rarely a Dragon’s Jade Weapon Skin Ticket. Rich Dragon Coffers contain all the same items as the Dragon Coffers* *that drop commonly from Dragon Bash enemies, but have better chances at rare items.”

“have better chances at rare items” I don’t understand how some people that means that with 10-20 chests that they should get what they want. They even include that the normal ones drop from enemies, and yet you don’t try to get those first. It’s not like this is a 1 day or 1 weekend event, it is a month long.

KeyVerin.6051:

2000gems – 25 Rich Dragon Coffers
Nothing but candy and some fireworks. I converted gold to gems (about 70g)
I learned my lesson, not going to buy anything again.

Now it’s been a while since I took probability, so someone can check my math. Assuming a 0.5% drop rate for a ticket. The chance of getting exactly 1 ticket after 25 chests is 11.08%. If the drop rate was 1% the chance of getting exactly 1 after 25 chests is only 19.64%. For a 5% drop rate, after 25 chests the chances of getting exactly 1 ticket is 36.06%.

To be fair going much higher than that and I’d have to start adding in the chance to get 1 or 2 tickets (or more) but still I think my point is clear. Even with a 5% drop rate, which I doubt it’s that high, you are still very likely to not get anything.

See, that’s why almost everybody forgets math after school. While this is a perfectly correct answer, it’s completely useless and doesn’t consider several factors, the real-life value of 2000 gems for example.

Doesn’t make up for the borked update and continued inability to fix the game.

Welcome to the world of ANet. I want to punch somebody in the face. That’s what their game makes me feel right now, congratulations.

Vahkris.6847:

It looks like they’re giving the pack away for free to certain people (theory is those who have paid money for gems previously, but not confirmed)

Let me confirm this, then.

Sharki.5693:

This is old or new object? And i see smoke field on the mountain. Molten alliance coming back? :P Or the tengus? Or Primordus?

I guess you found the dragon’s wang.

It took me just a few minutes of playing to find a massive amount of new and old gamebreaking bugs and exploits. This is probably one of the worst lows in GW2’s already impressive history of broken updates. Shame on you ANet. Shame on you. And especially on your QA. Thanks to Glassdoor, at least we now know why your QA is so inferior.

What the hell does it bounce off here? That thing cannot even be targeted…

Wtf? That’s not even a targetable object.

That doesn’t mean they fix the other bugs, not to mention introduce new ones. I lost all trust in their work, especially after reading the Glassdoor review on ANet as an employer, specifically concerning their QA. It’s ridiculous.

Just tested: neither bouncing attacks nor clone targeting are fixed.

Double-clicking doesn’t initiate an attack if auto-attack is disabled, did this work pre-patch?

- Fixed a bug that let teleport skills teleport players through certain walls, most notably the clock tower’s walls in The Battle of Khylo.
- Fixed a bug that made line-of-sight checks frequently succeed when they shouldn’t.

These actually make me afraid, chances are good they broke something again while "fixing" it.

Here are the changes of today’s patch:

Nothing.

Thank you ANet.

Imo the mists weapons are great for mesmers since the illusions also use them, but there is no mists staff - so I’ll go for that one. Plus I love those rainbows and there aren’t many good sta kitten .

/e: wat. Word filter, what are you doing. Staaahp...

Since when does the combat log show phantasm damage?

Runic.4350:

I see a Zangief over there…. XD

A Zangief / Iron Man crossing

PS: no purple here either. The F&F colors are really great.

WvW isn’t PvP, PvP is PvP. WvW is WvW, which is large scale PvP in a PvE environment. Most of the time (until the retal/confusion changes in the last update), PvE rules (skill balancing) also apply in WvW, not PvP rules.