Guild Wars 2

I agree with this 100%

Well, since the anti-farm code’s not officially confirmed, just obvious from empirical data…

In my experience though, it does affect WvW. Usually not noticeable unless you’re in big, prolonged fights though. For example, when my server was dominating eternal battlegrounds last round, we pushed an enemy server back to their spawn and set up about 12 ballistas… shameful, I know, but I got about 10 badges within the first minute. It started to trickle down from there until I wasn’t even getting a loot bag more than once every 10-20 kills. Same thing with a big siege on our Borderlands, defending the Bay keep. Was on cannons/arrow carts most of the time and was getting a ton of badges… then a trickle… then nothing.

“No friend, you misunderstand! Fluffy is MY cat! They have EVERYONE’S cats! Down with the cat-nappers!”

Just have them take longer and cost more to make it a bigger deal. Anyway, made a separate topic about it because I think it’s worth discussing.

Well, that’s HoD… y’all are kinda crazy with that PvP ;p I’m on Emhry, which is around the middle of the bracket, and I can say that in the past two rounds I’ve seen at max 5 fully-upgraded keeps and maybe 10 towers, on our side and the enemy. That’s mostly in the borderlands, too, where at least for us things tend to stay more static. We held Stonemist for the entire last round and it was never fully upgraded.

Even discounting that… doesn’ kitten seem a little nonsensical that the attackers apparently tear down a set of perfectly good metal/stone walls and put up wooden ones out of pure distaste for the enemy?

Did you run up to them and /say “Friends! We have found your cat! The enemy holds him at Durios Gulch! We must repel this attack then bring the fight to the enemy there! FOR FLUFFY!”

Just gotta know how to deal with these people.

AoEs do no use line of sight. Can’t be fixed without a major rework of the entire code, and implementing it would be extremely hard even then. As far as ANet’s coding ability is concerned, if you think you can do better, by all means apply for a job there and show them how it’s done.

Anyone else think it’s a little odd that when you capture a fully-upgraded keep that the metal walls immediately turn back into wood, the fixed weapons disappear, and the gates go from reinforced to regular? I can understand why personnel upgrades would be reset, all the guards and merchants are either dead or fled when the place gets taken over, but the structural upgrades make no sense.

Now, I understand it’s supposed to be a gold sink, but in that respect it’s not working. In fact, besides your “home” keep (Garrison on your borderlands and whichever keep is nearest your spawn on EB), I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen fortified walls or a waypoint on any keep ever. Same goes for towers. It just doesn’t seem to be worth the investment when it’ll all get lost if the place falls.

Wouldn’ kitten make more sense to have the structural upgrades be permanent, but have them cost more in both gold and supply? That way you’d see the battlefields evolve a lot more as the match went on, and the upgrades would be a lot more important as well as utilized more. I know that I, for one, would much rather spend a gold on a wall upgrade for a tower that I knew would be there even if we lost it and took it back than 15 silver that would just disappear if the place got capped after I logged off.

Thoughts?

TBH I feel like upgrades should be persistent. The battlefield would seem much less generic then. Also, having your walls change from steel to wood just because your fortress got captured seems… odd.

I think a lot of it has to do with class and playstyle, tbh. First character I rolled was an Engineer, got to level 44 in about 4 days, including a weekend. Rolled a Guardian after that and hit 50 in two weekdays, 80 a few days after that. Even then, I spent a lot of time exploring, was by no means “rushing” to level as some people claim. Constantly. Even managed to keep both the crafting professions I chose initially on par with my level during that time.

The answer is drops. I was earning good karma when I was going through the low-level zones for my map completion, but the amount of gold I was making was next to nothing. It makes more sense to farm your Karma in Orr because there you can get a level 80 Rare or even Exotic drop, and even the vendor trash sells for a lot more. The only problem is that the anti-farming mechanic becomes painful after a little while because all the Orr mobs are classified as Risen.

I get the feeling that we’ll be taking on Jormag next. A lot of the Norn characters repeatedly say that they’ll be heading straight for Jormag once Zhaitan’s taken care of. Plus, there’s Frostgorge and the fact that it’s much higher-leveled than most of the other Shiverpeak areas, on par with Orr.

Well, with the way capture mechanics work, even with the keep lord down if there was a single defender in the circle it still wouldn’t cap. So the problem is that both sides had approximately equal numbers but neither could force the other out. Could be avoided by moving the Lord to the second floor to limit the number of ways to get to the circle, IE funneling everyone through the stairs instead of having 4 entrances all around the perimeter.

Still, as I said… sounds pretty epic.

There is nothing wrong with trying to deny your enemy access to the jumping puzzle. However, when on guy with an arrow cart can hold the entire puzzle indefinitely against every enemy player on the map, the system is broken. Pure and simple.

Nerva, you know what I mean. First off, by Anet’s statistics only 30% of players PvP. I myself spend more time in WvW than anything now that I’ve hit 80, but excellent PvP does not excuse lacking PvE. That’s a cop-out. Game needs more high-level content.

Yeah, Gaile is, has been, and forever will be awesome

Finished 100% map completion on my main last week, mostly just been grinding and waiting for the final story mission reward to get fixed so I can finally go kill Zhaitan and get better than blues for it. Tried leveling an alt, but it’s the exact same content 90% of the time. Went vigil on my main, I’ll see how different it is for Priory or Order of Whispers, even though they converge after about 6 missions anyway.

Was doing a lot of WvW, but interest almost disappeared on my server after the first few days so there’s no movement there except late nights. Plus all the exploits and hacks that are coming out of the woodwork now make it more frustrating than enjoyable. Nothing like spending hours sieging a keep, capturing it and the orb inside, then having a flyhacker come in and steal the orb back 5 minutes later.

Well, Eles do have the best AoE damage out of pretty much everyone. Very useful for farming and WvW. A couple good Eles can completely lock down a section of wall and annihilate any siege there.

Good MF gear is pretty easy to obtain and is worth its weight in gold. Can buy Green armor off the TP for a silver or two with the same stats are Rare or Exotic (in terms of MF, other stats and armor will be lower, but PvE’s really easy anyway). I personally use a set of Rare MF armor I crafted myself. Accessories are also dirt cheap, Opal’s what you’re looking for. Got a full set for 15s on a weekend.

Overall:
Armor = 3%*6=18%
Runes = 60% (Can use 5x rune of the pirate and 1x rune of the traveler. 5x trav and 1x pirate’s arguably better but the other way’s much cheaper)
Omnomberry Bar = 30% and 40% more gold drops (There’s a +40% while under a boon, but I prefer the bars as a guardian)
Accessories = 15% (No back item with it AFAIK), stones in accessories = 18%
Magic Find Booster = 50% (Arguably useless with the loot cap, it costs a lot and lasts and hour so unless you’re zone swapping you’ll get loot capped. Personal preference)
Guild Banner = 25%

So that’s a total of 216%, or just over 3x the chance for rares. I think there are a few other bonuses I’m missing, and I’m deliberately leaving out Outmanned because that’s only for WvW. I’ve seen a post where it’s possible to get almost 300% or 4x drop. Either way, it’s a lot more money until you hit the anti-botting wall.

This is exactly what caused me to quit SWTOR. Then TSW. I think a big part of it is, honestly, the fact that you can solo 95% of the content in the game. The thing that got me hooked on GW1 and the only other MMORPG that every got me hooked for more than a year (decade, actually), Anarchy Online, was that you had to group up for a lot of the content. Here, you don’t even have to group up for a World Boss. Just a bunch of people show up, kill it, and leave without saying a word to each other 90% of the time. I never got bored re-doing even the most basic zones in GW1 because there was always a new and (most of the time) interesting group of people to do the content with, in a way that required you to talk to each other. Welcome to the Massively Singleplayer Online Game experience ;p

Agree 100%, the code as it is now is just punishing the entire playerbase for a small minority abusing 3rd party programs.

The mob pit in tkitten puzzle is really hard for me as a norn, as is the well at times. Not because of complex jumping, they’re pretty straightforward, but because they’re in such a cramped space and I can’t see anything through my massive character. Meanwhile 10 asura are doing the whole thing at a sprint while I’m carefully lining up every jump trying to see =p

Ryce, I think a big part of it might be the massive number of people at the events, especially Penitent/Shelter/Jofast. Loot seems to be proportional to damage done to some extent, and in a lot of cases I see entire spawns get killed before my attack animation completes. Try getting a group going and see if it affects your droprates.

Oh, man… the religious back-and-forth has started… won’t be long before a wild Hitler appears.

Anway, saw a ranger called St Ranger Danger that someone had done their best to make look like a pedo. I lol’d.

Good news everyone!

=D

I’m just saying screw it and wearing magic find armor for everything I do these days. Saving my karma and gold for when the everything’s fixed.

It really bothers me because I spent a decent chunk of time and money making an armor/accessory set with maxed magic find for farming. With MF booster and food I’ve got almost 250%, more if someone dropped a guild banner, but with the amount of mobs I kill I get capped after 20 minutes… so unless I keep farming in an inferior zone I lose all benefit from the remaining 40 minutes of the booster I paid quite a lot of silver for in currency exchange. Did that math and I’m actually losing money using them, so I don’t anymore. One more useless gem store item I have no need for, and another gem store item Anet won’t be making any money off of when everyone realizes it.

ErikB, it seems like you and your ilk need to enjoy life more. Humor is the most basic component of happiness, after all. Stop being such a dour debby downer.

While it might be amusing to you that someone named their ranger pet after your favorite obscure character from the Star Wars Extended Universe, puns definitely have much more mass appeal, despite being the lowest form of humor.

So smile! Laugh! Play! Rejoice in the glory of life. You’ll thank me someday.

EDIT If you want something slightly more cerebral, I’ve got a Norn Warrior named Carolus Wrex. Combining a small pun and a reference to a Swedish historical figure that nobody would get. I find it amusing, but most other people don’t. Hence, I did not post it here. But, after all, you asked.

Sounds pretty epic to me, tbh.

I’m not saying that this is the only way to exploit the rendering issue, either. It’s just one of the most egregious. Not saying it should be removed, either, just looked at.

Top-of-my-head temporary fix, just put a cap on the number who can go through before it collapses. If you set it to 5, you can still use it for PvE and PvP with a full party.

Good job getting those screenshots OP, and major respect for BV for doing the right thing and reporting this guy. This kind of deplorable behavior ruins the game for all legitimate players. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon… until then, I’mma level me some alts. WvW’s some of the mokittenn I’ve ever had in an MMO, but I always end up rage-quitting when something like this happens =/

Sly, it usually doesn’t kick in from normal play, but I’ve noticed the drop behavior following the pattern in long sieges, especially when operating AoE siege weapons like arrow carts and cannons. Was defending the Bay keep from constant attack for about an hour and was getting roughly one badge per 5 kills at the beginning, but around the end I was barely getting a loot sack for every 10. Basically in normal WvW you’re killing a lot less players than you are mobs in PvE, but the mechanic does kick in when you’re racking up kills in specific situations. Not game-breaking but still incredibly annoying.

Far as getting stomped goes, I was mostly playing our Borderland and, in that area at least, we were getting flat-out crushed as soon as primetime rolled around every day =p

Guys, the argument here isn’t against portal hotdropping. It’s an awesome and powerful tactic if used well. The problem is the rendering issue. It’s not the whole enemy zerg being dropped into the middle of your own group nearly so much as the fact that, as far as your client is concerned, they don’t exist but can still damage you.

This can be countered by massing AoEs on the parts to catch them all in one place, but a lot of the time the portal itself doesn’t even show up until it’s already too late for that. Now I realize it cuts both ways, and that the enemies coming through the portal usually can’t see you either, but the difference is that they know you’re there and they know to spam AoEs and spread out the minute they’re through.

If there was no rendering issue, it would be a powerful and completely legitimate tactic, but as it stands it’s not being used that way, it’s being used to deliberately take advantage of the rendering issue and is next to un-counterable.

Artificial caps never solve anything. There’s always a visit from the Gods of Unintended Consequences. Besides, the winning team won’t stop trying to conquer the whole map just because they aren’t getting any more points.

Unfortunately badge drop is both nerfed and broken, since as a loot item it seems to be affected the the loot cap/diminishing returns system, so the more you WvW, the less badges you get.

As far as spending money on upgrades goes, the cost should at least be lower. I’m on Emhry, fairly low-pop, and we’ve been getting pretty well stomped in our most recent matchup with TC and Maguuma. There was a period when I was literally the only one on the map buying upgrades. Spent 6g, as a solo player. Basically, if your side is losing badly, nobody wants to put money into a keep that in all likelihood won’t last much longer than the upgrade time. Since nobody wants to put money into upgrades, you’ve got a bunch of completely naked keeps, towers, and supply camps, and get rolled almost immediately when the enemy decides to push. Same goes for siege. Nobody wants to spend money putting up defensive siege in a keep you’ll in all likelihood lose regardless, and it just keeps snowballing like that.

One solution would be to put in a Karma/Gold/Exp reward for the “Defend the Workers Upgrading the Keep” event that pops up if you put in money. Another good thing would be the option to put in a percentage of the coin for the upgrade. That way, you wouldn’t have one person dropping 1.5g on the final keep wall upgrade, which is almost enough to buy a piece of exotic armor or a weapon you can actually use.

I’ve tried asking for donations towards upgrades when I’m tapped out, like “If we all put in 10s we can get the waypoint up at x keep,” but GW being what it is right now 90% of players just assume you’re trying to scam them, and of the other 10% maybe one or two will send you something which barely puts in a dent.

Well, there is that I suppose. Most skilled groups I’ve seen or been in avoid their LoS for that specific reason though. Would still be nice if you could do more with them, though.

Maybe make them upgradeable to have 2-4 guards and send a patrol up and down the road? Make the upgrades cost like 1-5s and not take supply? Wouldn’t make them OP, just able to stop a Yak with no escort and give people a reason to pay some attention to them. As it is they aren’t even worth bothering with unless they’re on the way to someplace you’re going anyway.

Well, one reason people farm them is the level boost. You can be a level 2 player, get boosted to 80, and kill these level 80 mobs that drop level 80 loot to farm a lot more cash than you could in Queensdale. The same can be said for the random Eagle Griffons too, though. In fact, I’ve seen groups of extremely low-level players doing exactly this.

Still don’t think the actions of a few people should necessitate throwing out a major part of WvW. After all, in some cases it’s more like WvWvWvE. Two of the best fights of my life involved me 1 on 1 with another player while being almost overrun with mobs. One was me trying to solo the Quaggan altar on my Guardian in our Borderland. Was fighting about 10-15 Krait, killed most of them but was at extremely low health with a few seconds left on my heal recharge. Got jumped by a Tarnished Coast thief who downed me but got mobbed by Krait. Had a sliver of health left downed, managed to kill one Krait who had a tiny bit of health left and rally. Downed the thief, he dodged my finisher with his downed skill, then HE killed a Krait, rallied, and tried to run before I killed him in the water and took the altar.

Other time I was locked in a 10-minute fight with an incredibly well-played Mesmer in the middle of a Raptor spawn. I’d get her down to a sliver of health, then she’d heal, then I’d have to go defensive, all the while 7 raptors were chasing us around until finally we were both down to next to nothing, probably double-digit HP on both sides, and she got her next attack off a split second before me and downed me. Then SHE got downed by the raptors, but rallied when I got finished off first. Was epic. Almost wished you could communicate with the other team just to say thanks for the awesome fight.

Wow, rambling dude is rambling. Anyway, a simple solution would be to make WvW drops appropriate for your actual level, not what you kill. Would also help with the problem of level 80s getting level 5 blue items for killing boosted players.

At the moment, it seems that all they’re good for is capping for a quick +170 karma. Almost any player out there can take them over solo, and they can’t even stop an unguarded enemy Dolyak plodding down the road past them. They’re not any kind of movement impediment for enemy players, unless you count when the zerglings get to them they stay there for 30 seconds to get the cap before moving on.

Anyone else think they need some reworking to be turned into something that’s actually useful?

Saw a female Charr ranger called Catnip Everdeen. Make me lol for a second until I remembered I hated the Hunger Games.

Norn female called Tygol Biddies

Ranger jellyfish pet called Tyrion Clameater

While I agree with almost every point you’ve made here, I have to disagree with your post. What you’re basically saying is that everything in WvWvW is fine, in which case you’re a fool. By saying “don’t listen to any of the whiners in this forum” you’re saying to ignore anyone who has a legitimate issue or complaint, be it about broken mechanics, exploits, or even just ways to make WvW better. Shame on you, sir.

What really ticks me of is that I’ve already got almost a full set of Exotic armor on, an Exotic weapon, enough food to last me for days, 3 crafting skills at 400, and no desire to get a Legendary at this time with the economy so broken, so pretty much all I farm for is WvWvW. Spent about 6g upgrading towers and keeps the other night which took me a couple of hours to farm fast-travelling between Cursed Shore and Frostgorge. Spend another couple of hours slowly but steadily taking our borderlands back and getting them fortified for peak hours, then two enemy zergs pop in and roll us all the way back to the Garrison within half an hour. Now, I got plenty of Karma from running around fighting supply camp wars and re-capping the keeps and whatnot, but it seems that if I want to play WvWvW, which most players consider the endgame, and do well for my server, I have to spend hours every day farming gold to have enough to buy us the upgrades we need to hold on. That wouldn’t be so bad, but it feels like the game is fighting me every step of the way, like it doesn’t want me to have fun. The anti-grinding mechanic is actually making me have to grind more, just to participate in the things I consider fun.

Oh, and furthermore, the loot cap needs to be removed entirely from WvWvW maps. I can understand the logic behind having it in PvE zones, flawed as that logic is, but to have the cap kick in and nerf my badge drops from killing other players in PvP is nothing short of moronic. I can confirm this. Was manning a cannon, defending the bay keep during a long, protracted siege. Was getting about 1 badge drop per 4-5 kills at the beginning. Around the end? Over 30 kills with zero badges.

This has disgusted me so much that I haven’t been able to bring myself to log in since Tuesday. It’s not that I don’t love this game and have fun playing it. It’s one of the best MMOs I’ve played since GW1… or at least for the first 30 minutes I try to do something before the system steps in and tells me I’m having too much fun. It’s like Gandalf’s standing on a bridge in front of me shouting “YOU SHALL NOT PLAY!” Truth is, if they don’t fix this, I probably won’t.

Agreed. Spent about 6g on upgrades to keeps and towers the other night only to watch the enemy morning zerg roll them over and push us all the way back to Garrison in our borderland the other day. I was the only one with any kind of money on, so I was doing about 90% of the upgrading. Asking for donations helped, but that only made up for maybe 1g tops. Kinda sucks that farming that other 5 gold took me a couple hours the day before, and I’d farmed it specifically to upgrade keeps and towers.

Ended up getting so disgusted I haven’t logged in since =/

Another solution would be to make the Skritt/Centaurs like the Quaggans. These bots are usually part of the “defending” team in my experience, so if this was changed the mobs would be green and therefore un-killable to the defenders when captured, and if the opposing team had bots running there the bots would capture the place themselves rather quickly.

Then just have it be similar to the Quaggans, where you get a Skritt squad at the west tower and supply camp (Longview/Arah’s Hope or equivalent), a Centaur Squad at Cliffside/Astralhome, and both of them at the Northern supply camp (Godsword). Would also give real players more incentive to go to these locations after they’ve gotten the POI and SP, which would clear the bots out.

Seems like another risk vs. reward issue, because as far as I can tell Champs/Vets/Etc. have the same loot tables as normal mobs. So basically, if they’re not the target for a DE then they’re just a big, annoying obstacle that’s there for no reason other than taking a long time to kill.

The only place where I’ve seen a difference with this is WvWvW, where the camp supervisor/tower/keep lord has a tiny chance to drop siege BPs or Badges.

Have to do a certain amount of damage, it seems the more damage you do, the higher the chance of loot. As far as I can tell, getting the killing blow also guarantees loot more or less. Seems being in a group increases your chance of getting loot in these events, too.

Also, since there’s only one enemy type in Orr (Risen), you’re going to hit the loot cap if you play there for more than ~30mins straight. I rarely even bother with Orr anymore, which sucks because Cursed Shore’s the only level 80 area.

Also, the Gates of Arah karma vendor in Cursed Shore has power/tough/vit exotic armor.

I’ve gotten Exotics from the rewards chests after defeating World Bosses like the Claw of Jormag, but that’s it. It also seems like the rewards for those are much better the first time you do them, as the first time I did the Claw I got 2 exotics and 2 rares with 0% MF, then subsequent times I got some crappy greens and blues with over 250% MF.

Rares on the other hand, I get fairly frequently as mob drops in Orr/Frostgorge with my MF gear on.

Let me start off by saying that I’ve been playing Guild Wars since E3 2003. I love this franchise. But these kinds of lazy solutions that hurt the legitimate playerbase more than the people they’re intended to target make me feel that I’ve wasted my money and my time.

Now, before anyone comes in here to troll about “Durhur don’t farm the same DEs in or all day lololo” like I’ve seen in every other post about this subject, this is not the case. This isn’t about farming the so-called “karma highway” in Orr… it’s about just playing in Orr. Or many other zones for any extended period of time. In Orr, there is only one type of mob. Risen. That means that if you’re in Orr and killing things, anywhere for any reason, you will hit the loot cap very quickly. I’ve had it happen in the course of completing a temple chain. Even if you’re just exploring the map, if you want to actually be rewarded for all the enemies you’re hacking your way through on your way between POIs, you’ll have to take a half-hour break to sit in Lion’s Arch every hour or so, max. This isn’t about farming, it’s about playing with your hands tied. At least in other zones, be it maguuma, shiverpeaks, kryta, ascalon, there are multiple mob types so that if you’re playing legitimately and not just standing there killing centaurs all day, you’ll probably never hit the cap. But there is only one level 80 zone, and in it all enemies are the same.

This is just lazy game mechanics, and I honestly expected better of you, ANet. Instead of taking a proactive stance in regards to bots, you put in a lazy system that punishes your entire playerbase for the simple act of playing for an extended period. I’ve been trying to do my part, I’ve reported dozens of bots everywhere from Queensdale to Cursed Shore, but when I come back two weeks later and see the same bot still there, it quite frankly kittens me off. Forget “banning in waves,” you say it’s to prevent botters from figuring out how they got caught, but when they’re warping around for hours in high-traffic areas, I think it’s fairly obvious. All you’re doing is giving them weeks to run the same account, and they’re laughing all the way to the bank, meanwhile the rest of your playerbase suffers.

You need to get your act together before this game flops harder than SWTOR.

Usually yes, Nok. However, the orbs/altars can be a bit buggy. I once saw a lord in a keep that formerly held an orb still getting the bonus. Also, my server’s altar in Garrison on our home BL is permanently broken.

Yes, we were hitting the walls for ~6k and the gates for ~5k, as is expected. However, we had a scout down by the walls and gate who confirmed that the walls and gate were taking literally no damage and that the keep was completely tapped out for supply. Even if they had a massive supply train running, in my experience it can’t keep up with continuous treb bombardment, and even if it could, we’d still have seen the bar move back and forth.