Guild Wars 2

As part of a post in another thread I asked it could possibly be happeneing that I was soloing champs and getting nothing. I have been soloing 2-3 champs a week for months just to see if there had been a fix, with the normal result being no loot whatsoever.

Is there a link to a thread about this specific issue?

Well said OP! +1

1) Thank you for finally admitting the problem and promising a fix. I hope it goes better than the dye drop yoyo fix, as an example.

2) The lack of any apology for the situation occuring in the first place, and for the ridiculous amount of time it took to find the cause, is par for the course here. I have been soloing two or three champs a week for months to see if anything had been done, and getting no drops off any of them. I quit even bothering to report it as being insulted got old. Just to be sure I will ask, is there Any Possible Way you can Solo a Champion and FAIL to ‘do enough damage?’ I quit bothering to read the loot drop bug thread so this has probably been asked and answered already.

3) While an official apology would be nice, a better and much more sincere gesture would be an email containing 1 silver per day to EVERY PLAYER ACCOUNT in the GAME, for each day that player logged on at any time, during any day this bug was in place. Yes that would mean stupid stubborn people like me who did not just give up for having their time wasted would get a lot. And rational gamers who quit playing except once per week or month and started exploring other games – like just about every other member of my guild – would get less. But every player who still bothers to play would get CONCRETE evidence that those in power actually REGRET wasting our precious time and killing our fun. (Note also: my playing time has fallen to dailys only, I was beaten at last, and downloaded other games too so I could play with my friends again.)

4) I hope this is not a case of too little too late, as I really have come to like this game a lot. But if equitable rewards for time spent are not in place soon, and real support for meaningful guild activities does not occur, our group will be going to greener pastures.

I searched, no references found.

Just starting to work on my Alt with Chef again and finally realized – There is no Bacon?

Seriously, NO Bacon????

We need something to drop Slab of Bacon. We need a recipe to make X strips of Bacon from Slab of Bacon. (And we need a Bacon Slicer skin for daggers.)

We need Bacon as a snack(?) and as a crafting ingredient for other recipes.

We need Bacon Double Cheese Burgers. Bacon for Pizzas, Bacon for Bacon Baked Potatos, Bacon for Bacon Cheese Omlets, Bacon for Bacon Bacon BACON!

Just my opinion of course.

Hard to call yourself a Chef and not use some form of bacon!

PS: If there is a trhead about bacon would appreciate the link.

+1 to the Don’t Do It vote.

I got a full set of Green MF armor/jewelry for a tiny investment on reaching 80. I noticed an immediate and very positive effect on income when combined with MF food.

Used the increased gold to level my Armorsmith to 400 and crafted a set of rare MF Armor and used the extra income to level my Jewelry to 400 also. And crafted a rare MF Jewelry set. Also put on a full set of Superior Rune of Scavenging. This paid for the full set of Exotic armor in short order and I perfect salvaged out the runes from the rare armor and transferred them to the exotics.

That setup (including a Superior Luck sigil for the +15% MF on one weapon) rocked – for all of about 10 days.

Then the Great Loot Nerf to open world hit with the Lost Shores patch. It has never been officially acknowledged, but one of the nerf effects seems to have included some change that pretty much nullified the utility of really high Magic Find. There are any number of threads that have discussed the loot nerf and Magic Find fail ad nauseum and most have been merged.

The bottom line is that, at the present time, I get pretty much the same drop frequency and drop quality just using Omnomberry Bars and my Magic Find Sword stacks (as soon as the stacks max at 25 I switch to a better sword.) But I still notice a good boost to silver drops from the Scavenging Runes combined with the Omnomberry Bars food. +15% coins from the 6th rune in combination with the Omnomberry Bars +40% coins is solid, especially when facing a lot of bosses, as in dungeon running. Since dungeon runnning is the only place to find decent loot anymore anyway I am planning to build a new set of Non-magic Find armor but still with a set of Superior Scavenging runes and my regular Exotic Jewels. With Omnomberry Bars that should provide an effective Dungeon setup. +65% coins and +80% MF from Runes (35) bars (30) and Sword (15.) The MF is mostly ineffective in dungeons but comes with the coin drop boost so might as well take it.

The Exotic Karma Armors are not consistent across types (Light-Medium-Heavy) and P-T-V is not always available for a full set. There is no Power-Toughness-Vitality Heavy Helm for example.

Also getting to the Temple you want is sometimes a challenge as Orr is not heavily populated on all servers. Balthazar in particular can be a real pain to find open.

The Sky is Falling!
The Sky is Falling!

…and it’s Gift Wrapped?

Was on a guild team last night when one member was engulfed. Fun stuff.

I have no problem with the game having jumping puzzles and other content that only the most skilled can complete. All levels of players should have fun challanges in the game. I am ok with the fact that there will be many parts of the game that my skill level will never permit me to master or complete, and some rewards that others can display and I can only admire. Olympic medals (jumping) come to mind. Or Superbowl rings (sPvP.)

(Brief aside. My sister once found a Superbowl ring hidden in a band aid box while cleaning out a vacant house. But she is an admirably honest gal, and knew the ring’s rightful owner who had lost it, so I missed my one chance. Didn’t even let me try it on.)

But ALWAYS making these Killer puzzles part of SPECIAL EVENTS, that should be Community Inclusive is a really bad, Community DEVISIVE, idea.

If the simple truth of the flat declaration above is not immediately apparent to you as a player, and more importantly to the game designers and community management teams, then any amount of additional arguement or exposition is pointless.

To put it another way, I believe I am absolutly and unassailably right in that opinion on this one issue, and those who do not agree with me on this one particular issue have an unfortunate blind spot.

Anakita – Great Idea!

If any of my present guildies were GW1 vets I would do just that, at least part of this holiday. I’ll have to log in and see just how many CC shards I have at least. Have 4 GW1 acccounts, seems a shame not to visit.

Have opened 65 chests so far this AM. I hoarded my keys – foolishing expecting some Wintersday items in the regular as well as the Holiday chests. However the major revamp on the chest drops is a nice surprise. Kudos!

However ….

Chests # 2, 3, 10, 21, 47, 48, 57, and 61 gave only 2 rewards. (and I do mean exactly 2 total – no 2 of 1 item and 1 of another as can now happen – In fact I have received 2 un-id Dye and 2 other rewards twice (4 items total.)

That is a 8/65 = 12.3% bug rate ??

Additional observations (not complaints) -

Instant Repair Cannisters so far are always 1 at a time, never 2.

Heavy Bag of Coins is also supposed to have the chance for a 2 drop like Un-Id Dye and Instant Repair, however out of 25 chests that have dropped a Heavy Bag all have been singles.

So are short item Chests now a possibilty or is this a BUG?

This inability to give a start time, and to deal with an International, world spanning playerbase in a Professional manner is astonishing. Seriously – requiring all the players (many of whom probably don’t speak english or have any idea where you studio is, and WHY should it be THEIR responsibility to know that in the first place?) to do all the work regarding time zones etc. on every announcement that has a time component is your idea of best practice?? I watch these attempts at PR and just ….
Sigh.

Umpteen years developement, and several months of preperation for what was in GW1 traditionally the biggest event, and this critical (imo) release is so shaky that the release time it is just sometime, 12-14-12, in your Your Time Zone. Hatchling the rest of the world.

Announce December 14th, 2012 at 11:59:59 PM PST (and possibly give the local times for key zones in Europe and Asia where of course IT IS the 15th already) and be done with it.

If you beat that time maybe someone will care. At least it will shut people up. I’m going to go read a good book.

Great Hedgehog shot, wish I could find mine to give a prickly smile back. And really I am hoping for a dandy event.

If all you want is no UI then CTRL+SHIFT+h to toggle UI on / off works.

Fix! FiX! FIX!

Cut new events in half till the Steaming Swamp of existing power bugs, DE bugs, dungeon bugs, bugs no one admits to bugs, and the bugs within bugs, is mostly drained and the Stink is bearable. No one with any experience of these type of games expects perfection but really.

And when releasing new events/content, please make it NOT the cluster duckling that was Lost Shores. Please. Pretty Please, with sugar on top.

So very much good being fouled by so many small and not so small problems.

So many of the comments above seem to imply that if FPV was offered the zoom wheel would stop working or something. That FPV players would not adjust their angle to match the needs of the situation or would somehow be affecting the FPV haters ability to enjoy the game their way. What the puppy.

Being fully zoomed in to FPV is an option that is just as valid in some situations as being fully zoomed out. Why not let each player play the game the they want to and not try to dictate how others have FUN.

I am 99% of the time zoomed out and salute the recent angle change, but I miss the OPTION of FPV a LOT.

FREEDOM!

Today I thought I would try to farm a bit since something is better than nothing. I put on my MF gear and went to wander Cursed. I was surprised that I seemed to be getting slightly better drops. Not pre 11-15 quality/quantity but a lot better than lately.

After I finished I went to change back to regular armor and noticed that I had failed to put on my MF trinkets and was thus running 35% lower MF than normal.

So has anyone investigated if the current Loot nerf/bug situation might include a MF sweet spot in between the +140% range max add-on and unenhanced base?

Programmed my own little games in Bally Basic on my Bally Professional Arcade home console. Upgraded to a TI 99/4 and later a TI 99-4A. Still have both machines and the various game and real-world app cartridiges as part of my computer museum.

I recently heard that the rumored cost for a basic Guildhall, when they are finally released, will be well over 100,000 influence.

For our little guild of personal friends and family this is a rather dismaying number. We could eventually buy enough inf to supplement the modest amounts generated by the normal play of just 14 players, but I am the only guild member who actually likes gold farming, and farming gold has been shot in the head recently anyway.

Has anyone else heard this rumor, as I could not search up the source, and could we possibly get some officail feedback with a projected cost or range of costs to start saving up for?

The exact cooldowns of your crit triggers vs the frequency of the attacks that generate those triggers should also be figured into the decision of what will constitute an optimal crit chance for you build. And don’t forget the Food and Potions!

My spouse is a professional proofreader/copywriter-editor for a very large company. If a bad coupon or special offer gets by my spouse it could literally cost that company thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. In some cases it can result in lawsuits. In parts of Canada it can result in a store being forced to close. In addition to the potential monetary loss there is the erosion of customer trust and goodwill that bad copy always engenders.

While this flub is not all that serious, it is part of a pattern of constant failure to communicate effectivly, even with what should be a carefully prepared statement. The extemporaneous gobbledykitten that is sometimes present in the forum responses would be downright comical if it was not so important to some people.

Your company needs someone who can work with/across all departments as my spouse does, to insure that your public staments actually say what they mean to say, and are accurate and timely. It would save you and your players so much wasted time and grief. It would also build rather than tear down franchise goodwill.

PS: Using only spellcheck and grammar check automated tools is a recipe for disaster! (My spouse suggested this add on .)

fishergrip – shhhhh. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

Simple answer – yes.

Well to name the two principal games I play/ed with 8 person normal max they would both be by NCSoft/Anet and are —-
Guild Wars 1 and
City of Heroes (recently murdered by NCSoft)
So apparently Anet does know how to do 8 person. And City had Leagues for big events / instanced missions that spanned 4 × 8 person teams – those were epic and great.

EDIT: And just how will they implement one of my favorite features from GW1 – Heros – with the small max party size. Perhaps my favorite thing to do in GW1 was design Heroway teams and duo with another player and his fab 3 to tackle almost anything. And GW1 had some 12 person superteam instanced events too.

I searched but could not find a relavent thread.

Is there any chance that at some point we will get a larger max party size? I would hope for 8, the standard for every other game I have played.

It is really hampering our guild, as we are all used to 8 person teams from our other favorite games. Existing RP groups and combat teams just won’t port worth goslings to this smaller party size.

Any hope at all?

THANK YOU ANET!

Just got my chest. Have not opened it yet because my good or bad luck will not affect my happiness at seeing your company come through in good faith. Here’s hoping the many other issues still pending will get a fix soon too.

jak

I vote skipping any interim sizes and going straight to 30. Nice even rows, no gaps.

If you have like say 22 slots, that is one extra row of scrolling for not much added space, and my scrolly wheel finger is somewhat arthritic.

They spent 5-6 years developing this game and no one thought to make adjusting loot drops something easily modified/fixed? The DR code has developed a life of its own and will soon be announced as the first stage of the Real Forbin Project and the devs are all enslaved to it?

Current drop rates are terribly nerfed, ‘a blind man could see it with a cane’ as Doc McCoy once said. Three rares in 8 hours moving constantly all over Cursed Shore in full exotic MF with MF food and 25 stacks of MF is not ‘a bad run of Luck with the RNG’, it is puppy or perhaps even ducklings (tired of kittens, thank you.)

OP I would.
Barely.
Well —- Maybe.
Actually —- Probably not at this time.

I will wait and see if this is really truly the only gear level addition, and how it proceeds. But I am worried and not even mostly by the Ascended issues, which are still way to early to judge.

As a refugee from City of Heroes, any possible trust in any statement from anyone who works for Arena Net / NCSoft is already gone forever. Ignore what they say. Observe, analyse, and NEVER Forget what they DO.

I literally purchased this game less than 72 hours before they pulled the plug on CoH with No warning and for No good reason that has ever been revealed to us. I so wish I had not. Now I feel guilt that I was one of teo people that encouraged our entire Super Group to come into GW2 based on my initial experience. We all enjoyed the fisrt few months, but lately Guild night is smaller and smaller.

I gave friends free copies of GW1. I still have free sets of GW1 to give, and I still would. I started playing CoH because a friend gave me a free copy. I gave away free copies of that game too.

Not GW2, not now.

Well, unless you have some other stacking sigil you prefer, you can always just get 25 kills and then stick it in the bag. The stacks stay on till you zone or are downed. I use Skybringer that way a lot. Same for Breath of Flame and the 25 stacks of .6 magic find if farming (EDIT: I replaced the stock sigil with a Superior Luck.) Dosn’t work in dungeon’s very well as I go down too often, but in general PvE it seems fine.

Anyone else amused by the fact that while we get a ‘Black Friday’ sales event over the weekend, here in Cyber World we don’t get a ‘Cyber Monday’ sale in the BLTC?

I have read Brutaly’s great guide stickied at the top. My present build is pretty much taken in whole from that thread and thank you so much. But I use GS not Hammer.

Why? A glance at my forum handle, which is also my main, and you might suspect I like hammers. I own perhaps 200+ in my real world collection. Hammer as is just does not get it done for me.

I read and reread the guide and threads on the animation skip for the #1 chain, and have watched the vidoes. I simply cannot learn to do the animation skip. Without that edge I just don’t feel that I can perform nearly as well with Hammer as with GS.

I contend that those defending the as is Hammer so strongly almost certainly have mastered the skip.

I think that giving a weapon a passing score because it has the hidden benifit of a dextreity exploit, and suggesting l2p as a fix for the rest of us, is not best practice for the weapon, the class or the game.

Valatar, Well siad sir!

I have only been doing MMO for maybe 6 years, but have been a gamer since my early chilhood in the 60’s. I have traveled all over the country to various conventions, tournaments, etc. for just about every type of game you could name. Real Money like Poker, Bridge and Chess. Role Playing, Strategy, what have you.

I honestly believe this weekend takes the Cake, the Pie, the Parfait, and the Milkshake with the Whipped Cream (no doubt for the gyrations) and the Cherry on top.

Silver Lining – it can only get better from here, and we all get to play the “You think this is bad, you should have been there for Lost Shores!” card on all future whiners.

I too went down in a river of Karka Hatchlings near the end of the event. Of course, having never played the event before I had NO WAY of knowing how close it was to completion. My team was all dead too so I rallyed at waypoint and was returning to the hive when I HEARD the we win Victory cry from the NPC. I knew I was screwed because I did NOT get an event completion medal and as expected when I got down there there was no chest. If you can hear the NPC you kitten well should be close enough to get the complete. I KNOW the chest was still up when I got there because a team mate led me to the spot and jumped up and down on it. So I was visciously ripped off because I did the right thing.

This was the only mass event of the three that went about right, some lag but acceptable, epic if somewhat boring fight. Pretty great overall, then totally wrecked at the end.

I filed a bug report, I would file a CS ticket if I could get your system to acknowledge that I exist.

I certainly hope that this weekend was an anomaly and things will be better next month.

BTW – I was in a PUG because the entire rest of the membership of my Guild GAVE UP on this weekend’s event long ago. I was playiing with strangers all weekend. That will never happen again, and if they GIVE UP on this game entirely I will stick with THEM. Our entire group are already refugees from the arbitrary shut down of City of Heroes. This game is Anet’s LAST CHANCE with us.

If you don’t have a Lvl 80 then Get Your Karkas NOW, before the event tied sidekicking stops. 200 Karkas needed.

Ok, made ‘Special’ time to do the main event kickoff, and the silver lining was that the lag sorta helped me get some nice screens of me appearing to solo an egglayer.

Other than that, after logging on about 6 different times during the last 14 plus hours, I got zilch as far as the event storyline goes.
Have not been able to get on a Fractal team yet either.
Did get and exotic Lionguard greatsword. At the cost of 1300 commendations it, and all the other Lionguard exotics, ought to come in multiple versions and a selection of different stats but still very nice.

Rating to date on event storyline = MAJOR FAIL.
Hear the new dungeon is nice.

I am glad Anet is sorry about the event storyline. Really sorrry. However you should be so seriously super-supremely sickly-er sorrrrrier than you are. You should be as sorry as this event is so far. If that is humanly possible. (Ok it’s 4:25 AM and I need a nap!)

How many more events have you planned for the upcoming months where you give yourselves NO room for error, timewise? Do you at Anet REALLY BELIEVE you can meet that standard of performance?

People calling for this trainwreck to be repeated after it is finally fixed should consider that a redo is probably impossible given the announced plan to have something ‘Special’ every month.

Based on results thus far, I think going to 12 Hour Events that cannot possibly be fixed, and can be just quietly be allowed to die (no achievments attached so the achievemnt hungry do’t suffer apoplexy) might be the way to go till you get your act together. You get to meet your goal of having ‘Specials’ every month (the BL Trading stuff can be left up for cash flow of course) and we get to ignore them with minimal angst.

There is SO MUCH praiseworthy about the game, why keep stepping on your whatever with a crippled foot in your mouth every month?

On a happier note Great Job on the Bots.

Gonna get that nap now. I’ll return later today with a song in my heart and Zero expectations for the event. Can’t fall off the floor.

I noticed a Harsh drop in Rares found and Greens too, especially after about 30 minutes (diminishing Returns code tightened up?), right after the patch that also boosted the dye drop rate up so high.

I had hoped the dye fix would also restore the rare rate. It did not.

I think any drop in rare prices over the last few days may be the flood from the glitched event that is spawning non-stop lvl 80 swarms. They are saying there will be a maintenance in a few minutes, and I suspect that party is probably over.

I did about 8 hours total of that and got about 1/3 the total rares I would have expected pre-Halloween.

I have been pretty happy with Cherry – Red – Ruby for the red depending on which armor, and Gold or Illumination for the gold color, once again depending on the material or metallic of the base armor.

Re: Borlis Pass bots.
Yep, overrun.

Re: Reporting
I spent hours at first trying to do that. Now I just try to see if I can ‘ride the coattails’ and if nothing worthwhile is happening move on. At most I report 1 bot in the swarm. Why?

It is simply not reasonable to expect us players to spend 15 to 20 minutes, per bot horde, trying to differentiate between 6-8 bots, all with the same name but one character different in a horde, then actually click on each of them (an arcade game in itself as they disappear and reappear and move so fast.) In many areas, If I actually carefully (whisper – ‘Are you a bot, respond or be reported’ before reporting, since WE have been specifically warned by a Redname in another thread that reporting a non-bot will get US banned) report all the bots I see in a normal day, I would have little time for anything else.

At some point you have to wonder if the real Bot policy, as opposed to the stated Bot policy, is to be sure that the gold seller bots make just enough money before their account is banned to encourage the botters to buy another 1000 copies of the game. Since the botters are supposed to be organized gangs, it reasonable to believe they get their copies wholesale, so that is not $60 bucks a pop they have to recover to break even, but something less. Still, 1000 times $40 or whatever wholesale is, it adds up for Anet.

I casually Hate ‘conspiracy theroists’ of every ilk, but at some point if it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and most particularly Smells like a duck, it may in fact be a duck.

In fairness, I did notice a large number of my least favorite bots vanish recently, only to be replaced by better bots. The latest generation seemed to be all engineers. Now they seem to be gone. But there are still new bots appearing. So maybe the ‘massive’ effort is actually Finally working. But I remain in wait and see mode.

NightShadow.1429:

To all those saying there was no warnings… there were plenty of warnings!

Martin Kerstein
Head of Global Community
Next
We want to give you a heads up about Phase 4 of the Halloween event. Phase 4 will start at 9:00 AM PDT/16:00 GMT on October 31, and will run until we publish a new build on November 1 (which will be sometime after Noon PDT/19:00 GMT).
Once Phase 4 starts, the Ascent to Madness dungeon will no longer be available – but you will still be able to enter the Mad King’s realm, including the Labyrinth, the Clocktower, Reaper’s Rumble and Lunatic Inquisition.
Also make sure that you will “Attend the Party” in Lion’s Arch once Phase 4 starts, and do not worry: It is a non-stop party, so swing by any time you want!
Happy Halloween.

Also in game mail stating that it was open* and that it was running for a limited time. As well as the multiple social outlets that they announced all the information on. I also have a life and was able to hop on and do the 10min run. Stop kittening people. Also, you could have asked about it in LA. Guaranteed people would have told you.

The message you quote went up, in the Haloween Event section of the forum only, at 4 minutes to Midnight (were You awake at 11:56 PM PDT and reading the forums? That’s 2 AM in Central and 3 AM Eastern btw.) on October 31st, according to the time stamp. That is approximately 9 hours notice, if and only if you happened to be so anal and GW2 obsessed as to check the forums for Critical Information every day before you go to bed (bedtime in the US at any rate.) I will simply state that does not meet my standard for an acceptable warning, by a margin of at least 39 hours.

The in game statement that events will be available for a limited time is completely vague and non-specific. It is in fact obvious that special events are always available for a limited time, but as so many here and in other threads have stated, Everything Else related to the completion of various Halloween achievements, and/or simply for the fun of experiencing all the Halloeween event content, is still available. Indeed the pattern was that each Act added a layer of richness to the event, and I for one had no clue (sadly I am often clueless) that there was a plan to go in and gut the cake of fun. I think all of us who are complaining are doing so in response to a reasonable expectation that ALL the content would cut off at the same time, based on the information we had access to and the general patttern of such events.

That there were ‘multiple social outlets that they announced all the information on’ is perhaps the most bogus defense of the manner in which this really necessary warning was made.

Nowhere have I seen an official advisement, that if I want to really know what is going on with this game, I should ignore the forums and haunt ‘social media’.

However, as it appears that this company, like so many others, has adopted the obnoxious and underhanded practice of having the REAL, but unaknowledged, primary comunication channel between it and its clients be ‘social media’ – so as to boost their what? – “Social Media Prestiege” – I suppose I will have to now check three different places if I want to actually know what’s going on.

Finally, why do we have to use our email address for Everything if they are NOT going to use that for Important notifications? They sent two Halloween related emails to me but not one word for Act 3 or 4.

PS: As I mentioned in my first post, all nine of my other guild mates missed this closing information too. While I choose to avoid ‘social media’ whenever possible, several of them are fully competent and active users of the two most popular providers. Yet we ALL missed this info.

PPS: Please also understand that I completed at least one MK dungeon run on every one of my various characters. This is only because I happen to be a non-working shut in, and was able to spend the morning running MK after I just happened to swing by the forums at 6AM local after a bad night’s sleep. My pain is for all my friends, only two of whom had even 1 run. I sent a heads up to everyone asap, but they all work/have lives.

note to self – local time for this post is 2:26 PM CDT

My whole guild was planning to run the MK dungeon Wednesday night. The idea that all 10 of us – every one of whom play several hours every day – all missed the ‘plenty of notice’ does not hold up. Please feel free to rub my nose in the ‘plenty of notice’ that was given – In Game – about the timing of and length of the various parts of this very fun event.
A – so I can learn what to look for, or
B – so I can learn how to interpret A-Net speak.
Seriously, quote the in game email or whatever I missed or misunderstood, please.

While we play every day we do not try to wade through this massive forum every day. Indeed, with all the forum start up problems (it only started working – by that I mean I am now able to log in and Search – on my machine about 10 days back) many of my friends gave up and never come to the forums at all.

I hope that in future an in game pop up news at start up system may be implemented.

Thanks for an overall great event.