Guild Wars 2

Can stealthed thiefs see other stealthed thiefs? If not, wouldn’t that make sense somehow, at least as a signet?

I understand the Karka event’s planning started a long time ago. The devs probably knew about the culling problems and that the servers wouldn’t be able to handle the load (I’m sometimes wondering if they never did any load tests before starting the first beta, I’d expect many people to be in one place in an MMO, but ok) and so on, but there was no way this event could have been delayed, and the underlying problems require a lot of the work on the engine’s core mechanics as a dev already pointed out a few days ago. Actually, I’m kind of sorry for them, I wish this would have worked out better (On the other hand, in all honesty, how can an experienced team not foresee that people will be disconnected during the event, missing the rewards? This would have been one of the first things I would have discussed during a meeting. But this is going OT.)
What I really don’t understand is why a dedicated team, even if it’s just two people, cannot handle at least the more trivial profession bugs. What are they doing all day long? There are just a few profession fixes in the regular updates. We all hoped for a big improvement with the latest update, but many were disappointed. Obviously, especially the rangers.
If those two designers spend most of the time on other parts of the game, it’s not their fault if they’re told so, but it’s not good. Note again that I’m not even talking about balancing, which is a process that probably will go on forever. I don’t know many multiplayer games where this is different. At this point, I’m wondering if there exists some kind of learning process on ANet’s side. I’m working as a software engineer, beta tester and code reviewer for twelve years now, and things live this would never have slipped through in the companies I’ve been working for. Why is there no public beta server so those bugs can be identified and fixed before they are rolled out? Let the community do the work, this is working perfectly with with the wiki. Hundreds of people naturally see more than just a handful. I’m really afraid this won’t get better in the future, that would mean that I can just stop playing now. I still don’t know what to tell my friends, currently I tell everybody not to get the game but wait for a few months until this has settled, but I somehow doubt this will get better.

I don’t understand why bugs that are directly related to people’s gameplay experience are not treated with a higher priority. My main is a mesmer, so I know best about this class, but the same holds true for many other classes.
Please take a look at the mesmer changes in the latest patchnotes:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012/first
Then take a look at the list of bugs after the latest patch:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Overview-of-mesmer-bugs-after-patch/first#post755000
There are several things that I just don’t get:
I understand PvP is meant to be competitive, but why are things broken in WvW and PvE just to accomplish better balancing in PvP? Skills should simply be treated separately (and they already are, rarely) as it was in GW1. I don’t want to say that one game mode is more important than another, that would be pretentious, but most people primarily playing PvE probably don’t care about PvP and the other way round. It seems the designers aren’t thinking about the implications their changes have on all players. Which is a problem with a team of just two: they simply cannot play all classes and all game modes extensively. And as they may personally prefer one class over another, there’s nobody to actually tell them they’re wrong (except us). Also, some fixes just don’t work out. What was a portal cooldown incrase from 60 to 90 seconds meant to achieve for example? I don’t care about the change, but that’s not a fix or good balancing. On the other hand, it’s duration is still too short – so either the skill or the tooltip is wrong.
Then we know there are only two designers actively working on the profession skills. There are developers working on fixing the bugs of course, Teulux is right, but somebody has to tell them what to fix. Some of the bugs are hard to fix, like a teleport putting players below ground level or the LoS problems, sure. And I can totally live with that. But there are extensive lists in each profession forum that give a detailed overview of all bugs. So they don’t even have to consider all the hundreds of skills and traits in the game. Many of these listed bugs could be fixed within minutes, even if GW2’s core design was fundamentally broken. Some just require updating a tooltip. Nevertheless, some of them exist since headstart. Going through these lists, sorting out the easily fixable bugs, the bugs that are harder to fix and those that aren’t actually bugs but balancing related, takes a team of two less than one workday since the community already did most of the work. Going to each profession forum, asking people about the balancing related things, takes another day. This means two days of work and a lot of people would stop complaining.
Finally, there doesn’t seem to be a methodical beta testing phase. The Phantasmal Berserker bug introduced with the latest patch would have been noticed instantly if somebody actually played the class for a few minutes. Playing with a greatsword isn’t really unusual, this shouldn’t have slipped through. Again, I can only speak for mesmers, I’m sure there are similar problems with other classes.

Major problem would probably be that most people just don’t have enough gold to pay the listing fee. There are actually people in LA trying to rip them off by telling them that they have the gold and will list the item for them.

Stormleaf.1769:

Skill can mitigate Agony, trait builds can mitigate Agony, playstyle can mitigate Agony, people are just refusing to even look at how it works or how they might be able to deal with it without ascended gear. Try looking at what even causes agony (such as evadable mechanics) before saying ascended gear is the only way to ever deal with it.

If it can be avoided, why introduce a new tier at all and not just require people to get skill? WoW, as bad as it may be in many aspects, actually required special tactics for each boss.

PS: how to you avoid the agony applied by Jade Maw?

JonathanSharp.7094:

We will continue to listen to your posts about balance.

If this means you fix the balance in one game mode and break classes in two others, please do us a favor and stop listening.

Too bad you cannot see the professions people play in the forums, would be very interesting in threads like this.

I would say people have no clue of stochastics and just make up numbers. Also, many are just trolling. ANet are the only ones who know the truth.

Why care at all? Be happy that the prices go down, it’s not like having the precursor will get you a Legendary. There will be more precursors anyway when ANet ist done with the new way to get them.

Misirlou.8971:

Guys. The lighthouse in Lion’s Arch was destroyed. Am I the only one shaken to my very core by this?

Not really, It always ruined my view. Looks better now. Thank you Ancient Frisbee, eh Karka.

- this thread was made sticky although it contained wrong information about where the event starts; all we got in LA was a mail that said “go to Southsun Cove”
- again, the correct information appeared on Twitter, which many of us don’t use
- during the transition to Southsun Cove, many were moved from their real servers to an overflow and seperated from their friends
- the overflows had severe performance problems, this seems to have been better on the real servers
- the event started instantly, since the eastern waypoint was contested, people were automatically moved to the southern waypoint and didn’t know how to get up the cliff
- after the eastern waypoint wasn’t contested any more, it was still unusable for many, even after the lag got better
- again, heavy lag and “people and enemies popping out of nowhere problems”, as already mentioned especially on the overflows
- if you were disconnected, you seem to have ended up in a different overflow with the event in a different state, which felt very inconsistent
- one time, shortly after we entered the cave, the NPC suddenly disappeared and the event completely reset
- several times, multiple veteran Karka spawned right on top of each other, spit invisible acid, applied immobilize and a 20k stomp, killing everything within vicinity within less than two seconds without a chance to react – that’s not challenging but frustrating (http://i.imgur.com/LbNtp.jpg)
- the waves of reinforcements that had to be fought were just plain boring, I actually went offline for an hour, logged back in and fortunately got right to the end of that phase
- the Ancient Karka teleported happily at one time, when we pushed back and were at the bottom, it didn’t run up but disappeared and reappeared at the top, which felt wrong (on the way down it actually moved; it was probably meant to bury itself in the hive’s ground, but it just vanished into thin air)
- the final chest could not be opened by many who were dead, as it seems it disappeared for them, same is true for anybody who was disconnected and so on
- if you participated in the long, boring part of the event and missed the final boss (which really was fun) you didn’t get any loot, people should’ve gotten it by mail; as I said I logged out and came back later, so I didn’t do too much but still got the full loot

Leatherbag sea turtle: http://www.orma.com/wp-content/uploads/leatherback-sea-turtle-mouth.jpg

Siphaed.9235:

If he had 2 level 80’s, then yes. However, I doubt he did it twice on the same character as I know people that tried that and it wouldn’t let them loot the chest. Then again I know of people that had multiple 80’s and were able to finish the event on one 80, then went to an overflow that hadn’t finished it with a friend and participated in that with their alt and looted it there. Which I see no problem with people with multiple 80’s being able to do the event with each character considering they put the time and effort into getting those characters up there.

Why should characters below level 80 not have been able to do the same? I got three exos on my level 50 char, except two of them had a level 62 requirement so no precursors. Even a level 1 char could have done that.

http://i.imgur.com/LbNtp.jpg
There we had three veterans spawn out of nowhere within a few seconds that instantly spit huge amounts of acid we could not see before it was too late, additionally they had immobilize and a 20k damage stomp. As you know, reviving people generates a lot of aggro, so go figure what happened. It took about ~2 seconds to wipe out almost everything that may have lived in this cave, the rest was killed while trying to revive. That wasn’t a challenge. It was a massacre.

Seems like they give loot after the meta event chain ended.

Now after the event has ended, the Karka also seem to drop loot.

It’s true: http://www.abload.de/img/gw001f7uvv.jpg

I’m in the forums most of the time, since there’s no loot anyway you can probably just hit a mob from time to time to have participated in the event. This isn’t epic. It’s just boring. At least the lag got better. Actually, I’ve been away for an hour to have fun with my gf and they’re still doing the same.

There’s neither loot nor XP to even out that repair bill.

I’m actually sitting in a corner of the cave naked.

That’s probably what they meant when they said it’ll be an epic multi-hour battle. Dear jesus.

http://i.imgur.com/LbNtp.jpg

So intense being owned by invisible acid from three vets.

Now the NPC disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. Magic.

Worst thing is: if you disconnect you’re suddenly on a different server where the event probably is in a different state and you’re pretty much screwed.

Tha lag is pretty nice when you have enemies with heavy AoE attacks.

Maybe they should consider not posting the opposite of what’s gonna happen in the forums. It’s unplayable on overflow and it seems the event just resetted.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lostshores/New-content-when-where

Clearly says it’s gonna start there. Where just got a mail to go to the island. The right information was on twitter. Now I’m on a laggy overflow again instead of my server with my guild.

/e: let me rephrase that: I condemn you.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lostshores/Where-EXACTLY-do-I-need-to-be-for-Phase-3/first#post783795

Thanks for totally confusing people. Again, nobody knows where the meta event is gonna start and you’re adding even more confusion with different information via different channels. I’ve actually been in LA and went to the island then, which caused me to end up in an overflow without my guild and with severe lag.

ZeroRaiNs.7154:

I don’t understand what the logic was with the recent changes.

Logic? They have two people working on like how many, ~500 skills? Those guys obviously don’t play WvW themselves, or they wouldn’t have come up with that ingenious 60s to 90s cooldown “solution” for portals in WvW. Also they don’t play mesmers, or they would have instantly noticed what the fix broke. There’s not even methodical testing required, just fooling around a bit. All that’s behind this drama is economization.

RhysSebastian.7651:

How did you beat a competent mesmer, at the henge in the Forest of Nifhel (NOT WVW, NOT PVE) prior to the LOS nerf.

I don’t know. But was the crude fix for this single problem worth breaking several skills in the two major game modes PvE and WvW? Especially since they already started to separate PvP and PvE/WvW skills? I doubt so. And if you actually think so, you’re too self-involved to be taken seriously.

TobyTucker.5317:

There must be some other way to do One Time Events. Apparently ANet feels that early afternoon (for NA) is a fine time to go gaming but those that have to work or have other responsibilities would disagree. I’m sure people in other parts of the world found the timing equally awkward.

It was fine for us in Europe (9pm) but really bad for Australia for example. Also, the event starting at 9pm today may take a long time according to ANet, so it may end way after midnight for us.

punchbunny.1325:

Also, are they supposed to drop anything ever? Because I’ve been through two runs of the event chain and veterans have dropped absolutely nothing. Ever. Everything else drops loot, just not the veterans.

I just opened a thread about that in the bug forum, we also killed several veterans and two champions and they didn’t give any loot. Seems the patch that should increase the chance did the opposite, at least on the new island.

The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.

This doesn’t work. We just killed a bunch of veterans, not a single one gave any loot at all. That may be statistically possible, we just killed the champion shark at the new island though and it didn’t give any loot too, although it should according to the patchnotes. As far as “should be guaranteed” doesn’t mean that you don’t know if your own patches may work.

/e: the broodmother also didn’t give any loot.

Kooki.6074:

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

The following sequence was supposed to happen:

• Trebuchet is built by workers
• Ancient Karka shows up
• Trebuchet fires at Ancient Karka
• Ancient Karka jumps into the water and flees to Southsun Cove
• Boat to Southsun Cove is available
• Players travel to Southsun Cove to fight karka there

A lot people are saying that the Ancient Karka didn’t show up on the overflow servers. On the overflow server I was in, the Trebuchet was built and then the tool tip in the corner updated to say the boat was available. Players rushed over and sailed away, I had waited for my party to be ready before moving on. A few minutes later the Ancient Karka part of the event started. We were lucky enough to have caught it.

So maybe the problem wasn’t that it didn’t happen in overflows, it was just in the wrong order. The boat was made available to early, leading a lot of people to jump the gun and ultimately miss parts of the event.

First overflow: no trebuchet. Relogged.
Second overflow: trebuchet but no Karka. Went to the island. Unintentionally disconnected.
Third overflow: event on the island already over. Relogged.
Fourth overflow: event on the island had not even started. Spawned within an army of Karka with like five other people. Some minutes later, the ships arrived. We followed the event chain, fighting invisible enemies, building camps or trebuchets we could not see. Then a champion karka spawned right within a camp, oneshotting everything including full exo warriors. Somehow zerged it down. Followed the event, building a road. Then a second event spolit the group, we followed to the south which was obviously wrong. Couldn’t find Ellen again. Missed half of the event. Logged out frustrated, having wasted a weekend.

Nobody’s gonna be in that area in a few days because there’s nothing of interest, so you can do it then if you manage to get there alive and not being oneshot.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Iruwen.3164:

This thread is called “I am frustrated and not finding this fun”. Feel free to open a thread about how awesome the FotM are.

It would be swallowed by the hundreds of screamingly negative threads, I’m afraid, and pushed onto the third page or so.

Don’t worry, moderators merge all the complaints into one thread where they can be more easily ignored and will make your thread a sticky.

Just kidding, but why should I write something positive about the FotMs or anything else I didn’t care about today. The only reason I’m home is because I wanted to participate in that heavily advertised event. And there is literally nothing positive I could say about it.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Cribbage.2056:

Without knowing, the best thing to do is to give people credit for writing their experiences (and conclusions drawn therefrom) accurately on these forums.

I think the best thing would be to give a fair and balanced appraisal, which isn’t what people are doing. People are going off the deep end with descriptions of the “utter crap” involved in this event, and the negative commentary outweighs the positive at least 10:1, when the dungeon & the map work fine, and they’re the bulk of the content.

I think people are writing their own experiences mostly accurately, but I also think they’re not giving credit where it’s due.

This thread is called “I am frustrated and not finding this fun”. Feel free to open a thread about how awesome the FotM are. Most people didn’t stay home to play the new instance but to participate in the events. Which were pretty flawed, to say it politely.

AFRDZAK.4710:

People don’t know what they should be doing because they aren’t assuming that things are bugged.

Also: people don’t try to do anything because they assume things are bugged after previous experiences. And they’re totally right to think so. If I cannot talk to an NPC for no reason and with no explanation, just because he can only be talked to every five minutes, that’s stupid.

Worst Crow.3972:

Fulcrum.1084:

I can understand people being annoyed that they wasted time doing part of this, but I can’t see why anyone would be upset simply for not getting to do it. The reward is pitiful (only 5 Council tokens), and there wasn’t anything interesting about the 3 npc encounters either. Also it definitely didn’t cost any gold.

i spent about 50s using the wps checking and rechecking the npcs

Plus some silver for being oneshot by invisible enemies.

Unfortunately, I still care. I don’t exactly know why, but after dropping WoW I didn’t really play any MMO extensively for a long time and I had really hoped that ANet would do the right things with GW2 after they had done GW1. Like they promised. And I’ve been happy for a while after release. Then they managed to destroy all that within a few days. Events are still bugged, NPCs are still bugged, the scaling is still bad, there are better stats on items now. Lots of broken promises, bad to no testing. They even broke my class. They said they have two people working on all classes, that’s insane. And so sad. They’re never gonna fix all skill bugs, they’ll make it even worse. I’ve not been so frustrated by a company and a game in a long time. Gaming should be fun. GW2 was, for a while. Until I realized that ANet turned into a different company. I won’t participate in the event tomorrow, eventually I won’t play for a while at all but rather wait and see what happens to the game and my class. Maybe I’ll be back. Some of our WvW players are quitting and it seems the guild somehow wants to move on but doesn’t know where because there’s no real alternative. Which doesn’t make it better. Looking back: WoW was actually more fun. Not because of the grind of course. It’s sad that these events never feel massive or epic, because friends and foes are just invisible most of the time. I’ve never felt more “alone” and anonymous in a multiplayer game than during these events with random people popping on and out on random overflow servers.

For three months now we’ve been complaining about bad event scaling (low health) and bugged NPCs. Then they added Noll. Which just proves that they didn’t learn a bit and they’ll never learn. Not even the most basic concepts. Some important people left ANet after GW1 was released, it’s a different company now. I just resigned. I doubt this will get better.

drkn.3429:

If you have actually talked to the marked NPCs, read what they say, and read the letters you got, you would have known where to go and what to do.
Yes, GW2 doesn’t spoonfeed you, doesn’t just mark a spot on the map saying ‘go there, do this’. Not always, at least. And when it doesn’t happen, loads of people are ‘lost’ simply because they are not used to actually getting info from, surprise surprise, the game itself.
The NPCs and letters give out details where to go as opposed to general hints during the Halloween hunts. It’s been made much easier already; how easy do you want it to be? Just your another MMO level of organisation because you can’t be arsed to actually immerse into the world, talk to marked NPCs, read the letters you just got and just act on it?

With 70 people online in my guild throughout the one-time events, i can only say that the lag issues were not observable by everyone; heck, not even by majority, especially today. Most of us had no problem playing the game, no freezes, no lags, no rendering problems even. There were some unfortunate guildies who couldn’t move at all due to 20k ping, but given the overall ‘testing group’, lagging is mostly something either on your end or on the way, completely out of control by either you or ANet.

I’ve been in teamspeak with about 80 people in my guild and I read what people wrote in the chat, as I was stuck on an overflow server I saw that people from all over Europe complained, and I can confirm that there have been massive issues. I have been disconnected myself. Also, many people didn’t receive those mails at all, except the one they got on every zone change. And so on.
So no, it’s not their fault. It’s ANet’s. They failed miserably. Again.

phantomdust.4729:

I’m largely disappointed.

In Lion’s Arch, I fought over by the Fort Marriner waypoint for about two minutes (checked the clock, actually) and I had to resort to spamming AOEs because no enemy mobs were visible on the screen (this bug still hasn’t been fixed). I was downed and killed a few times inexplicably, which I have no tolerance for. I don’t mind dying (I play Demon’s/Dark Souls), and it can be fun and challenging in some situations, but this was absurd.

Then the event there ended abruptly (I received copper participation, but I’m not sure how) and confusion about that ensued. The NPCs talked about boarding a boat, so I went over to the harbor and jumped on the boat with a group of other players and nothing happened, so we wandered around for a while. There were conflicting reports of having to go back to Fort Marriner because of a Tweet (what does it say about your game’s communication with its players when you rely on Twitter to give them information about a live, high-profile event in a perpetual world?) and speculation about the boat.

Eventually we stumbled across the new NPC that was ferrying people to Southsun Cove (to one of two points, but this choice was unexpected and the consequences of choosing one over the other were unclear because they were never mentioned before that time).

I arrived at Point Pride and we blindly defended an NPC against invisible enemies again for a few minutes, capped some points for siege equipment that I never saw being erected and arrived at a camp.

Everyone within the camp walls was instantly downed by a cheap shot from a campion Karka that appeared without warning (even warriors with full exotics; I myself have full exotics on my Elementalist).

Then the champion was beaten and everyone was dispersing because there was a lull in the dialog, so some players missed the start of the event to ‘make a road’.

The event chain eventually split into two, but this wasn’t clearly presented to us. Do we follow the Consortium crony? How were we to know that was an option when the Lionguard NPCs was so against it to begin with?

And then that was it! We followed the NPC until the event chain didn’t lead to other events, and then we were free to explore. But no one explored right away, because we were all running in circles looking for the next event in the chain that didn’t exist.

The map is disappointingly small, the events are the same old events as everywhere else in Tyira (gather some eggs, defend this point from that enemy, guard this person on patrol).

And that’s just Phase 2. I couldn’t complete Phase 1 because every event was bugged, even when it was ‘fixed’ last night (Blackgate and Stormbluff Isle), so I was missing context and all that hard work put into the content that was bugged was wasted.

This matches my observations 100%. You’re absolutely right.

This is also just a WvW/PvP view. The mesmer can currently be considered broken in PvE.

Joklo.4936:

They’ve invested in several test servers, trust me. What they don’t have is millions of people to test. Unfortunately, you simply can’t always predict what’s going to happen when an update is deployed to production.

Give Anet time. They’re learning. It will get better.

If they would be actively testing with more than a handful of people, somebody would have noticed that several classes have severe new bugs. There’s just no excuse for that. Anbody would’ve noticed that within five minutes of playing.

As a mesmer, I cannot even create illusions thanks to the latest patch, which means my healing efficiency is heavily reduced. This is all bs.

I seem to have taken the wrong turn on the island and missed the main event chain by following some other event that I thought belonged to it. Didn’t miss anything though I guess, the only thing that felt massive was the lag.

Apart from fact that the event lagged like hell, it seems it started with different delays per server. Sounds like a good idea, but: I was disconnected during the event. First time I logged in again I was on an overflow island where the event seems to have been over already. Logged out and back in again – and stood amongst an army of karka on another overflow where the NPCs seemed to not have opened the path to the island yet, so we were just a few players and pretty alone (and doomed). This is stupid, honestly.

http://i.imgur.com/F9Gym.jpg

I’ve been on another overflow where nothing happened, it’s either delayed or some are bugged.

I also thought of doing that, but submitting tons of bug reports will do more harm than good because there’s just two people working on the skills for all classes.

haviz.1340:

If you referenced nerf to the necessity of having LoS, well, most skills require LoS.

I wouldn’t mind it requiring LoS if LoS wasn’t heavily bugged and we had a decent ground target AoE.