Guild Wars 2

The botting shown by the OP video is relatively unsophisticated and doesn’t appear to do much harm. Even though they should be banned ASAP the “smart bots” at events need to be dealt with first.

My problem is with the mass smart bots that ruin dynamic events because they are “smart” and run around killing everything way faster than you can. I saw a video of a bot that was so smart it could go out find mobs to kill, loot and then go back to an NPC vendor to sell once the inventory got full. Then rinse and repeat.

I have been at a few events where I’m sure 3/4 of the “players” were bots. But they acted so much like real chars it was difficult to tell… other than the fact they went back to the camp and stood around until the next event, multiple times.

This means you don’t get XP if your mob dies before you get to hit it. Also because the game is designed so that if you don’t do much damage in the kill, your loot is non-existent or junk, this is a form of “killstealing” by the bots.

Anet please ban these bot faster!

lol, op deleted his post, but the thread stayed. I guess he realized how dumb the question was.

But no you can’t teleport while in combat, try it.

You didn’t make it clear if you are completing hearts only in one racial zone or multiple. In any case you get tons of XP for completing dynamic events so always go for them when it pops up on your screen. You don’t have to go looking for those events just doing Heart quests usually finds you a few DEs. Stop your heart quest temporarily when the notification pops up and go for the DE.

There should be an exclamation mark icon near the bottom of the mail window. That allows you to report the mail.

How about trying logout?

Thanks for sharing the video, it was interesting to see what others do.

To answer your question, no the levels are not too hard. They are hard but not too hard. I think your real problem is movement and tactics.

First, on my ranger the 2 weapons I use are Shortbow and Longbow. I always get the best “Strong” shortbow and longbow I can find/buy. This gives +Power and +Precison. All my Armor is also +Power +Precision. I eat food that gives either Vit ot Regen. I think at your level they are the apple pies. My Trinket slots are either +Power + Precision or +Vit +Healing. I swap them depending on whether I need more health or attack power also add the sigil of bloodlust to all your weapons. This allows you to gain a stack of extra power that lasts until you die. The minor sigil of bloodlust gives you +5 power and can be stacked to 25, that is +125 power!

The shortbow has a very high rate of fire on the 1 skill and damage does not depend on range. This is the one I use most but I switch back temporarily to Longbow for the AOE and #2 rapid fire. With the build I suggested above you can kill fairly quickly with just the #1 skill on the shortbow. At your level you should be able to get around 30% crit which is one out of every 3 shots. My ranger is ~50s at the moment and has 50% crit.

Movement, circle strafing while facing your enemy is the most important thing to learn. This allows you to keep hitting your target while it chases you (kiting) and the continuous movement away from the direction the mob is facing makes it very difficult for them to hit you. The way I do it is to hold the E or Q button down while moving the mouse with right click held down. then I use either my pinky or ring finger to hit 1, 2 or 3. If you need to move forwards while strafing hold both left and right buttons down. If you need to move back keep strafing left and right and back up at the same time. In an emergency dodge roll forward or back.

With the above technique and a good pet, I can whittle down a fairly large group without dying. I rarely have to dodge. Test out different pets, you will be amazed at how different they are. Some of the pets are much more powerful at killing than others. While some are better at slowing, rooting and knocking down the opponent. I don’t like to use the Bear much because even though it has high Health it has low attack. The Lynx has one of the fastest kill rates, the Krytan Hound can root and knockdown and has decent attack. I swap between those two as soon as one dies.

In this particular quest it tells you in advance that you WILL be overrun, so you want to be aware of where the action is and not be so far forward that you can’t retreat without dying.
Hope this helps.

Much as I would like to see botters removed immediately, I think what Anet is doing is watching them and seeing who they transfer the stuff to. Then they will mass ban all those responsible. Since most bots are probably on hacked accounts, unles they trace them to the people responsible it doesn’t make any difference.

The OP suggestion, although amusing would easily be identified by the offenders and they would simply move to another hacked account.

What I do want to see do is faster response to Gold Spam because that does directly impact the user experience in map chat.

Level 30, Catacombs of Ascalon. All you need is a group of 5 people.

Are you sure about the food continuing to go? I often log in many hours later to see that I have time left on my food.

Random dyes I think include a “gambling” premium for the people who like to gamble. So on average they will probably be worth less opened than unopened.

It seems to me that while there are many Rare colors, only a few, usually the very Black and White hued dyes are worth much.

If you had bought Gold with the Gems instead of the dye packs you would have done much better. You could have got the color you wanted.

But I have sold every random dye I found and just through selling my drops from normal questing and leveling I got several gold on 1 char in the first 40 levels, enough to blow 5 G on dyes. BTW Midnight Fire looks Brown not Black on some medium armor. I found out the hard way and had to blow more G to buy Midnight Ice.

BTW, you do know that Black isn’t really black but more like dark grey. Midnight Ice or Abyss is better if you want a dark Black.

Anyways, if you are looking for a specific color you are better off buying it in the TP. With the humongous number of colors, the probability you will get the very one you want randomly is very very low.

InsanityPlea.9163:

The city I hate most is actually Rata Sum. I fell threw the hole at the bottom of the city and took about 12,000 damage.

On my level 2 Asura.

ROFL, but you can’t deny the conversations in the Asura areas are so funny. The Asurans aren’t much for personal safety with their Thermonulclear reactors and dangerous experiments.

My main character is human because I like the home map area and the look. However, I have played Norn, Asura and Sylvari up to around lvl 20.

I can tell you that the experience is very different. Not only are the Personal stories considerably different but the entire culture feels different.

I would recommend starting with human and just test out a few of the other races. The culture of the Asura race is really cute and humorous. I hated the Sylvari cities. They were beautiful but so complex to navigate. Norn is very humanish but all snowy.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

The logitech G13 gaming keyboard is nice… made me laugh when someone said using it will hurt more than help.

Personally – don’t get the Razer gaming keyboard – it isn’t very compatible with Windows 7 and made me dislike the company cause they said they’d get around to updating drivers to eb compatible sometime this November.

However I don’t use keys for movement, I use the thumbstick for movement and continue to hold the RMB for looking since I have to use the mouse pointer when it comes to ground targeted abilities.

Then the programmable keys are very nice as well since I can press G10 and not change the skill from key 1 – because at least during the Betas reconfiguring it screwed up the range notifier. What I mean is the gaming keyboard acts like a hotkey instead of a reassignment so your skills will still show the red bar saying you’re out of range whilst changing them made that function stop working.

I’ve hotkeyed all 10 skills and the 4 F-keys as well as jump, drop bundle (aka weapon swap), and interact to the keypad and still have 5 keys I can assign at a later time if I so choose.

I would personally love to not have to use the mouse as I think it’s an outdated method of input… but there’s no quick way to ground target without it so I’ve had to make do.

Thanks for this info. I’m getting so much conflicting info on this I think it must simply be a matter of personal preference. Maybe I’ll buy it from somewhere that has a decent return policy in case i don’t like it. But the G13 was exactly the Gamepad I was thinking of.

Blacklight.2871:

A gamepad is the last thing you need. This game is not friendly to keyboard turners, which is pretty much what a gamepad makes you. If you’re finding it hard to play now, you’ll be that much more ineffectual with a gamepad.

The solution is to work on your keybindings and possibly invest in a mouse with a few extra options. You don’t need a million buttons on your mouse. I play fine with just a couple of extra ones, one on each side and it cost be about $30. Setting up a proper keybind scheme, one that works for your play style, is all you need to do after that.

Not really sure what you mean by " not friendly to keyboard turners".

Anyways here’s the thing – I’m strafing left and right using Q and E (index and ring finger), and mouse to keep facing the mobs/bosses. I have to reach up with my pinky to hit 1-2 to attack if i don’t want to stop moving. Can’t reach the others or F buttons unless I’m strafing right with my index finger, or stop moving momentarily.

The technique works well, using a ranged weapon, by continuously moving I can handle several mob solo, even ones several levels higher and I don’t even have to roll dodge much. But it feels really unwieldy to be stretching my fingers like that. The keyboard really isn’t suited for a game that relies on so much movement while hitting attack keys.

If the G13 works as advertised I should be able to use my thumb to control strafing and forward back movement freeing all four fingers for attacks and other commands. I use my middle mouse button at present for dodge.

Try checking “promote target” which locks you onto your current target. Also you might try turning off auto targeting.

I dunno if this is really a bug, but i find it annoying too. They should keep names with the type of animal you named not with the animal slot.

On my human Order of Whispers char Lvl 48(?) personal quest, the reward was supposedly a ring with some nice upgrade gem stats included. When I actually got it the upgrade slot was missing the upgrade.

Same problem with +7 and +5 versions.

Ranger has the longest ranged combat and a pet to use as a tank.

Even so it is largely how you play and your build that determines survivability. High DD DPS means you need power and precision which means you take away from putting stats into Vitality, toughness and healing.

You kinda need to choose but you can also switch armor depending on the situation.

One thing to note is learning how to constantly strafe around the mob will greatly improve survivability. In this game you can’t stand still and cast.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

NinjaKnight.1340:

It seems to me that the OP and others want the Bosses to adapt to their play style rather than the players to adapt to the situation. It would be like saying take away Burn Immunity from XX boss because I like to use fire skills. I think they need to adapt to the situation instead.

By design most group events are fast moving fast kill scenarios with the Boss appearing at the end. High DPS is the only way to get a Gold consistently. Most of the pre-boss mob go down in a second or less. Even Veterans and Captains go down in a few seconds a big stack of DOTs would do no good on those.

I was often getting only Silver in some of the Centaur raid events until I switched to a high power high precision somewhat Glass Cannon build on my Ranger. Now I’m almost always Gold Medalled in any event. I even carry a set of +Vit/Health/toughness gear around when I want to become less squishy.

I really don’t think this needs to be changed. Those events are optional so those players should just go somewhere else where their condition based build has advantages over DPS builds.

Adapting your playstyle to the boss’ means something like how with the Fire Elemental you need to get inside the room and not hang back like you normally would. It does NOT mean that the boss should, by its very nature, utterly invalidate 1 of the 2 methods of dealing damage in the game, especially when certain classes (namely necromancer) largely can only deal that type of damage.

Also, considering conditions are all ABOUT DPS, since they only have DoTs, they should honestly be BETTER against enemies that take a long time to take down, compared to how direct damage is better for disposing of weaker enemies, namely groups, more quickly, since it doesn’t have to wait on the DoTs. Except it’s broken now, where condition builds get screwed in both situations

Adapting playstyle can mean different things using different weapons and skills and in some cases even changing build.

And I guess I meant high DD DPS.

I haven’t played my Necro for a while but I’m pretty sure it does have DD weapon skills.

Besides, it isn’t as if a Condition build can’t survive a boss fight, it is just that they don’t get a Gold. If that is such a big deal then rebuild for the fight.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

I still have plenty of maps that are not complete in the game, but there is now a HUGE disincentive to go and do events/go explore the map because of the anti-farming code kicking in super fast and causing all drops to stop after a few minutes.

This is where I got the idea you were visiting low level areas. You said it yourself.

All I’m saying is that I don’t feel it is a problem. I don’t think it ruins the experience for most players, only the ones who go around mass farming continuously. There are many other things to do in the game.

This game wasn’t designed as a grind/farm game, and thank goodness for that.

Drakortha.6974:

Kal.2376:

Hum… Ok… I just don’t see the reason for this. Does it matter if you are higher level than other people in an area? Since we are all scaled down, it really makes no difference.

Well firstly it would make me feel more progressed and experienced, and other players could see that. As it is now high level players are hard to notice unless they are wearing eye catching armor or if you are in one of the home cities.

So you think it would impress people if you go into a newbie area and they can see you are level 66? lol.

As for nice armor, just ask nicely. IF they want to tell you they will. Some people spend a lot of time finding a cool outfit and they don’t want it cloned.

It isn’t irrelevant, it sounds like you are exploring the map going into low level zones and expecting great loot when you just wipe out an entire low level area without breaking a sweat. There should be no need for that kind of mass slaughtering when exploring new areas. Completing Hearts, getting waypoints and POIs don’t require that.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

NinjaKnight.1340:

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Redscope.6215:

ChairGraveyard.2967:

I’m already level 80, for one thing. And the anti-farming system goes across areas/zones with the enemy types, so it’s not a simple matter of leaving the area.

And no, my only goal is not to accumulate money/loot. I like to play the game AND BE REWARDED FOR IT not sit around getting no loot from hundreds of enemies and less and less reward from events constantly.

The point is that these systems affect normal players the most, not bots, and that it’s not fun to be constantly slapped with diminishing returns for simply playing normally.

What exactly are you doing that you’re fighting hundreds of enemies and not getting loot?
Where are you finding the patience to spend all that time in the same area doing the same thing over and over?

100 enemies is about 5-6 minutes when you’re killing 10 at a time. So, basically, where I’m finding this is ALL OVER THE GAME. Go kill 100 drakes or skale or whatever, you will get almost nothing, even if you just arrived, aren’t killing stuff you’ve already killed over and over again etc.

I don’t know about you but 5-6 minutes doesn’t require some monumental amount of patience from me.

Sounds to me as if you are OPd for the type of mob you are killing. 100 kills in 5 minutes solo? I think you deserve not to get good drops. This sounds like mass grind/farming, the very thing Anet was trying to avoid.

Really? I shouldn’t EVER GET DROPS? Solely because I can kill more than one mob at a time? What you’re saying literally makes no sense at all.

As I explained before, I’m talking about when I get into a zone initially (usually I just started playing for the night) and go and kill mobs for 5-6 minutes only to get crap loot (junk items or maybe 1-2 whites from 100 mobs) or nothing at all. I’m not farming. I’m not staying in the same spot for hours. I’m literally JUST ARRIVING to kill some stuff, and getting nothing out of it.

If you’re standing in one spot farming, FINE that’s an appropriate time to kick in the anti-farming system, but AS I ALREADY STATED I AM NOT JUST STANDING IN ONE SPOT, THIS IS HAPPENING ALL THE TIME.

As to killing 4-6 mobs at once, there’s a thing called “Area of Effect”. Learn what it is.

100 mob in 5 minutes is 1 mob every 3 seconds. While I can easily achieve that for short periods of time the extra time running around and waiting for a heal or skill recharge makes my kill rate lower.

So your kill rate must be overall much higher. Which means the mob are too easy for you. That is really the root of the problem risk/reward.

I think Anet didn’t expect so many people to reach 80 so quickly and what they need to do is up the difficulty of some areas and the rewards that come with it to make it a challenge.

I have no problem with you getting good rewards if you actually are being challenged and actually have the risk of dying. But the current situation sounds like you are just mass slaughtering and i don’t think it makes sense to give tons of loot for easy kills.

So i would propose that Anet make more difficult areas and commensurate rewards.

Elementalists already have 4 sets of skills they can switch to on the fly vs 2 for other classes.

I would only +1 this IF other classes are also given extra out of combat weapon swap slots. Otherwise it would create lots of QQ.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Redscope.6215:

ChairGraveyard.2967:

I’m already level 80, for one thing. And the anti-farming system goes across areas/zones with the enemy types, so it’s not a simple matter of leaving the area.

And no, my only goal is not to accumulate money/loot. I like to play the game AND BE REWARDED FOR IT not sit around getting no loot from hundreds of enemies and less and less reward from events constantly.

The point is that these systems affect normal players the most, not bots, and that it’s not fun to be constantly slapped with diminishing returns for simply playing normally.

What exactly are you doing that you’re fighting hundreds of enemies and not getting loot?
Where are you finding the patience to spend all that time in the same area doing the same thing over and over?

100 enemies is about 5-6 minutes when you’re killing 10 at a time. So, basically, where I’m finding this is ALL OVER THE GAME. Go kill 100 drakes or skale or whatever, you will get almost nothing, even if you just arrived, aren’t killing stuff you’ve already killed over and over again etc.

I don’t know about you but 5-6 minutes doesn’t require some monumental amount of patience from me.

Sounds to me as if you are OPd for the type of mob you are killing. 100 kills in 5 minutes solo? I think you deserve not to get good drops. This sounds like mass grind/farming, the very thing Anet was trying to avoid.

It seems to me that the OP and others want the Bosses to adapt to their play style rather than the players to adapt to the situation. It would be like saying take away Burn Immunity from XX boss because I like to use fire skills. I think they need to adapt to the situation instead.

By design most group events are fast moving fast kill scenarios with the Boss appearing at the end. High DPS is the only way to get a Gold consistently. Most of the pre-boss mob go down in a second or less. Even Veterans and Captains go down in a few seconds a big stack of DOTs would do no good on those.

I was often getting only Silver in some of the Centaur raid events until I switched to a high power high precision somewhat Glass Cannon build on my Ranger. Now I’m almost always Gold Medalled in any event. I even carry a set of +Vit/Health/toughness gear around when I want to become less squishy.

I really don’t think this needs to be changed. Those events are optional so those players should just go somewhere else where their condition based build has advantages over DPS builds.

I’m indifferent to mounts, but I would like a way to have semi permanent swiftness even if it is only out of combat. Running is way too slow unless you are a class that has speed boosts/skills.

As far as I can tell there are foods that give increased swiftness duration but not actual swiftness.

Thanks for the ideas so far. I will test out some of the suggestions later.

Has anyone here actually tried the gamepads? In theory it sounds great since the dynamic nature of movement in this game really should lend itself to a joystick type controller.

Yeah, the Fire Ele boss is ridiculous. It seems the only way to defeat it is to go in with a ton of people and expect to re-spawn multiple times while the people who are alive at the time beat it down.

One shot kills with little or no warning is a cheap way to make the boss hard. But it also makes it not fun.

Agreed those non-tradeable Tonics are the most annoying things to come out of Chests.

Does Anet really believe everyone is so juvenile they get massive enjoyment out of being an animal? Sure it is amusing the very first time, then it becomes pointless.

At least if they could be sold to a vendor or salvaged into something valuable there might be some point in keeping them around.

Athens.6125:

For the love of Zhaitan, let me loot something I can actually use! Please, please change the loot drop mechanics to take into consideration your current profession and level.

When I am playing my ranger I get 90% heavy and when I am on my guardian, I loot 90% light. Times when I do loot the correct armor type, the level is 5 to 7 levels below my current level.

Did you notice that the drop level is related to the area you are in? If you are getting drops 5-7 levels below your level you are playing in an area 5-7 levels below your level. Play in higher level areas. Your suggestion only encourages high levels to farm loot in low level areas.

As for type of drop, they need to be random or the availability of that type of armor/weapon will become imbalanced in the market depending on which class is grinding the most.

And why should this be a problem? With the TP just sell the stuff you can’t use and buy the stuff you want.

Why? If you go to the trouble of figuring out a really cool outfit. Why should someone be able to just come up to you and see what you have and clone it?

If they want to tell you they will respond to a polite request.

It can be done already. There are several websites that explain how. (Google it)

The biggest problem is the lack of keys and mouse movement is not as great but there are ways around that too with the right software.

I got a set of 5 from somewhere besides Gem store, it might have been a Chest which I opened using a quested key. So they are available but are probably very rare. The only set I have ever received and I played since headstart.

Technically possible but risky and probably against TOS. Anet is watching for unusual logins from different locations due to all the hacked accounts.

I definitely would not advise it. Invite your friend over or have them watch one of the many Youtube fanmade videos of actual play.

IF it is only out of combat I can agree. In fact I would love a multi weapon set feature for all classes. So many times I have to search to figure out which weapon in my inventory is the correct one amongst the crappy drop weapons.

Next best idea is a bag type to hold weapons that displace all other weapons in the Hero window.

I can’t see any advantage to F2F trading. It only adds scamming and spam. I have played games with trade channels and the traders still use the World/Map chat to spam since more people read it. Anyways by reporting and blocking gold spam Map chat is still somewhat active.

I can see a problem if they didn’t allow mail transfer of stuff, but hey if you don’t trust the guy use the TP, 100% secure.

I did try the Logitech MMO mouse. I didn’t really find it intuitive to use and it fit my hand badly. Maybe the Razer would feel better.

I currently have a 4 button mouse so I have dodge on the middle and F on the side and that works just fine. (I have F on the side for easy looting while on the move)

I personally feel that if I could free up the four fingers from my left hand for skills and simply use the thumb for direction, that would be the most intuitive.

Any reason why you say don’t use gamepads?

DruonGrawal.3596:

Lets face it: WvWvW wasn’t created just for the best of the best – it has something to offer for all players, regardless of their skill level and interests.

It never was intended to be a privilige for the elite. And I am quite sure ArenaNet will never let it happen that it turns into such a place.

Your idea would harm a lot of players in favour of a minority. Also: How can inexperienced players work on their skill when you constantly boot them from the battleground? They need the time and training if you really want to turn them into good soldiers for your realm.

Totally agree.

One of the things that sold me on this game was how they promoted the fact that WvW was playable by any level due to the up-leveling. Unfortunately that doesn’t really work since they still get lower stats.

But the real problem with the queues is the player limit. If there are 1000+ players that want to WvW they should just upgrade their servers to handle it. Anet is making enough money to afford the upgrades. The map is plenty big enough for that many.

OP means a separate window so you can see multiple chats simultaneously.

I support this idea.

Flankenzee.7958:

so adding it is only going to please more people, while not hurting the people that don’t necessarily want it.

WRONG – it would promote trade spam. There is already enough Gold spam out there.

If you want to trade in the field mail it. If you don’t trust them enough to mail then use TP.

SHM.7628:

Disagree. If you don’t like it then don’t use it. Why punish people who enjoy it?

This ^^. Op is QQing over an optional 10%

Trading between players is a terrible idea. Trading post works just fine for trading.

Can you imagine how much Trading spam would pop up up in chat if this was allowed?

I agree. NO INSPECT. Much as I would sometimes like to know what cool armor or weapon someone has, I respect my own privacy even more. Besides with the ability to transmute, you can’t always know where the look came from, even with inspect.

I felt it was lower if I went back to a much lower level zone that i had already explored.

But same level zones seem to drop reasonably well until you do them too many times.

I read somewhere that this is an anti farming/botting measure.

The TP works fine as it is. I would hate to have to give up selling from anywhere or having a time limit. Those I some of the things I love about GW2.

If there are items in the TP that are in excess supply – SO WHAT? That just happens to be the equilibrium given the drop rate and demand for that item. Anet should be the one fixing that by adjusting drop rate.

There is a filter and search for you to look for the items you want.

So I’m a fairly casual player coming from MMOs where usually you have to stand still and cast. I love the ability to move, attack and dodge in GW2 but I find I’m doing crazy contortions with my fingers just to strafe around while selecting the appropriate attack, switch weapon, F key etc. I’m doing ok in PvE but compared to experienced PvP players I feel like a total Noob.

It seems to me that this game would really benefit from a console style controller.

Tips on what you guys do would be appreciated.

I’m thinking of getting either the Nostromo or Logitech gamepad with the thumb controller but the reviews seem to indicate the thumb controller doesn’t work well in WASD games. Any experiences you guys can share?

Switching pets makes sense because they have different abilities and stats and can be used to advantage in different situations just like different weapons.

What would solve the problem of people wanting the same pet all the time is to allow the same animal in both slots. Apparently this was possible during beta but was then taken out. I think it should be reimplemented. That would make switching pet seem like you are rezzing your same pet.