Guild Wars 2

The event is scaled upwards as more and more people join the farm so scale the event back down each time the event fails. After two or 3 failures in a row, Champions will no longer spawn forcing the farmers to HAVE to complete the event in order for it to reset.

Why not? Come on over and we will do the same for you! Free of charge!

Ran into a glass cannon thief last night in our BL. He was stupid enough to taunt 2 Rangers. I never did get my shot off, the wife was slightly ahead of me, one “Sic Em” and then Long Range Shot and the thief was dead, dead, dead. We take pride in our thief hunting abilities, especially since we can hear each other’s “Sic Ems” and time 2 of them in succession. Very few thieves will live through that.

Later as something totally hilarious we were at our southern camp and I was near the water/bridge when a thief stealthed in to backstab me! I just flipped into the water and the silly, silly thing was stupid enough to follow me in to get the kill, he wanted it so badly! Thief vs Ranger underwater? Guess who died?

Happened last night while I was mapping Frostforge on one of my alts. Seems there were a couple of people attempting to do their personal story but the “farmers” were only interested in failing the event. I went over to try and help out but the event was scaled way above the 4 people that wanted it to succeed.

That can be fixed. Every time the event fails the number of Champions spawned in the next round is decreased, that is to say the scaling drops even if there are 80 people standing around waiting for it to fail so they can milk Champions. To reset it they would have to have the event succeed.

BooDuh.2841:

That is such a good thread title Mr Swift. Ok, lemme think on the rest of your post now …

Lol I was wondering when he was going to get to the part where we eat enemy babies.

It should be “Where ARE my loot bags” or if you wish “Where is my loot BAG”

However I think the extra spikes, hooves and other trash items have replaced some of the drops in the loot tables.

Copy and paste will not work. Take 2 points on the map, A & B separated by a dozen tiles. The problem you will encounter if you want to rotate A & B is that there could be an elevation difference in the tiles between them. Just look out your window and flip/rotate one small section of what you see, you could end up with a ditch sitting higher then the road level!

Tie any rewards for WvW, including Karma, coin and loot drops to the server population balance at any given moment, a modifier to multiply your chances. To maximize reward you will want to play during non-peak times or against a force larger then yours. Once the large, highly populated servers realize that they get more bang for the buck on the lower populated servers they will move. Over time it will all balance out. No need to change population caps.

Now I figured it out! I was working my ele through map completion and came across the event in progress. There were a pile of people there that were doing nothing. Now it makes sense, they were failing it and scaling up the event to spawn champions.

There is farming and then there is farming. At one time, near Mount Maelstrom, Gauntlet Gulch, I used to farm the spiders there. There are 4 “nests” and if I did them in sequence I could stomp and kill the spiders from each one, stop and kill the veteran spider and its entourage, and rinse repeat until my Diminishing Returns kicked in. As the wife and I usually leveled our characters together, I would spend my time making coin when she was not on by farming spiders.

Now this type of farming did not affect anyone else, it did not involve part of a quest or a personal story-line and in essence was totally innocuous. However ANET saw fit to nerf it and change the spawn timers on the nests so it was no longer a viable area to farm. I never did figure out their reasoning behind it. I cannot see the logic behind nerfing or restricting such farming when they already have their diminishing returns doing that for them.

Has this been put into play yet? Just asking as I was doing map completion with my level 80 Ele in the Cursed Shores and received a level 78 exotic pistol and a level 78 exotic rifle as a reward. You know, the ones that say in red “this weapon in not usable by your profession”.

A few things have changed to skew the silk market. Back when silk was plentiful there were also major champ trains, farms such as Union Station, and bugged events such as Plinx farming and few people had their crafting to 500. One by one these were nerfed/fixed/ so the supply of silk going into the system dropped. While that was happening more and more people took their crafting to level 500 and started to make ascended armors. So now you have greater demand coupled with lower supply.

The game currently tracks siege and siege deployment but at present only the Trebs are shown on the map. I mentioned this before but I am going to alter it slightly to suit our purpose here.

A map of each tower/keep is created as an interface tool. One of the upgrades for a tower/keep grants you a siege mechanic. This siege mechanic’s interface, once open shows each piece of deployed siege under his control, where it is at and the time left on it before it decays. Remember this is already done behind the scenes by the game.

So now we add a radio button to refresh or dismantle each piece of siege. If 3 people (number is open for debate) click to dismantle the piece of siege is dismantled returning 50% of the supply back to tower/keep. Selection to refresh/dismantle have to be made within the first 10 minutes of every hour. The names of each person who elected to refresh or dismantle is logged in the same way Guild bank transactions are logged.

So you have 3 keeps and 4 towers per map and 3 people would have to visit each one at the top of the hour to refresh or dismantle siege. You can even extend that to 2 hours. However the person would not have to wander all over SMC for example looking for siege, it is a one stop affair.

Most of the above mechanics are in the game already, they just have to be pulled together to do what we want it to do.

Edit: As an added bonus for a nominal fee of let us say 10 Silver the Siege Mechanic will on the hour perform all repairs required to Cannons and Oils cause face it, it is frustrating when a couple of enemy, not enough to raise swords, take the cannons down to one hit remaining.

Well the smart thief would avoid a high concentration of Rangers or Engies. You want to be able to sneak in an enemy keep and stay there indefinitely without being discovered like you “used to be able to do”? As well if Rangers and Engies cannot spam reveal if there are more then one as is your wish then should the same be done for thieves, when there is more then one, so they cannot spam stealth?

LindaW.4308:

Theftwind.8976:

I have 9 level 80 characters and highly doubt that I will start another unless a new race/class is introduced but please clarify something for me. Can you still get the skill credits in an area even if you cannot use them or do you have to go back to that area once you have gained a few levels just to get/clear the skill challenge?

I started a new Asura Friday and found that I could get credit for a skill point if I joined in the combat after it was started by a player who met the level requirement. I could not activate it myself at the lower level.

Then that totally blows. If I want to clear a map before moving on I do not want to have to come back to that map just to do the skill point challenges. When I leveled my toons to 80 the wife and I would both start new characters and work as a duo to get through maps and personal stories. Working as a team we found it a faster and more efficient way of leveling then doing it alone and could challenge things that were above our levels.

Yep I have a Commander spoon and a Commander spoon and a Commander spoon from Commanders.

I have 9 level 80 characters and highly doubt that I will start another unless a new race/class is introduced but please clarify something for me. Can you still get the skill credits in an area even if you cannot use them or do you have to go back to that area once you have gained a few levels just to get/clear the skill challenge?

For heaven’s sake the plural or Thief is Thieves and not Thief’s or Thiefs.

Now that I have that off my chest I can put most thieves down with my Ranger quite easily and they will usually run from me unless they are sure they can get their burst off and kill me outright. For those adept thieves the wife and I will both run our Rangers and since we can hear each other’s “Sic Em” we time it so the poor thing has almost 12 seconds of reveal. They have a habit of dying a grotesque death at that point.

I have noticed that it is almost impossible to hit anyone with a ballista now unless they are standing absolutely still. Any movement and the shot will end up behind the person. Even if the person is moving directly across your fov without making any effort to dodge the bolt ends up behind and will not hit.

So yesterday two of us capped the southwest tower in our BL. From the NPCs in the Lord’s room I received no less then 7, that’s right, 7 spikes! Now I know they gave us this nice new trash collection but if my charr ranger wanted to be a trash collector he never would have made it out of the Black Citadel and would be mucking out the animal pens.

Lol you should hear what is said about some Commanders! Got to love those Commanders that pull boneheaded , stupid moves (I suppose to feed their egos) and then rant and rave at their guildmates or even more so at the pugs who were smart enough not to follow that boneheaded move. Then they rage-quit the map when one of the pug members points out the obvious flaws in the Commander’s tactic that failed so miserably.

The song says it best…

“Rubberband, rubberband
Stretch it out as far as we can
Rubberband, rubberband
Snap back together again hey”

I will repost a suggestion I made in a similar thread some time back.

As I suggested in another thread the system already keeps track of each and every piece of siege, hence the timers. If they placed a siege “mechanic” in each tower/keep (as one of the upgrades to go along with the extra worker) with a map of the siege placement under his control (trebs are currently shown on mini-map which would suggest that the game knows where all pieces of siege are placed) a person refreshing siege could open the interface, select which siege they would like to refresh and tell the guy to get to work. All refreshed siege in that keep would be under one timer, siege would not get missed by the next shift coming on, and it would save people time. If it is a piece of troll siege then that piece is not selected for refresh on the mechanics interface.
For extra badges or silver depending on the amount of siege under the mechanic’s control the timer could be extended to a max of 3 hours.

Alright, I have never ever since day one seen so many Spikes dropped then I have tonight. I must have easily had over 100 of those useless things. I know I sold a stack of 60 and had another 26 on one toon and that was on my ranger, and not counting my Guardian that I played longer.

Anyone that has shares in the Spike market better sell them fast as the price is going to go to rock bottom. I do not know if it was an intentional fix or unintentional but I do not like it.

Erinyes.3596:

This is my first character to 80 so just my 60 cultural and some greens I found along the way.

Do you have a suggestion on what armor I should be wearing for a guardian? I see in the guides they say not to spend the badges of honor because you need them for legendaries – so I’m kinda at a loss as to what I’m supposed to do.

Thanks for the input though !!

First figure out what type of Guardian you want to play in WvW. A roamer? A zerg runner? A defender? Healer? Know the role you want to play then equip with what armor is appropriate. There are several good builds discussed in the guardian forums.

Three ways to outfit yourself in exotics.
1) Craft or buy them from TP
2) Purchase with badges from WvW armor vendors
3) Purchase temple armor with Karma

You can also mix/match them if you do not have enough Karma/gold/badges.

With my Guardian I specialize in roaming, Borderland defense, and will solo cap camps or duo towers so I have myself set up in Celestial as it works for my play-style. Knowing what that play-style is is essential to your enjoyment of WvW as you can then equip to suit it.

Hope that makes sense.

“The tournament will last for 4 weeks (9/12/14 – 10/10/14).”

They should wait until 9/19/14 to begin the tournament. We all know what the bug fix patches do to a match and starting a new tournament the same week as a major patch we can expect a few bug fixes and down time/resets in WvW just as the match is taking off.

Astralporing.1957:

They are extremely unlikely to use a separate seed for every player (and type of rng). If they used the same seed for every rng-related roll on the account (which would cover way more than just drop generation) it would already skew the result to mask any possible patterns. If they used the same seed for all accounts (which they likely do, because this is the most sensible thing) any patterns from faults of pseudorandom engine would disappear completely.

See the 1957 after your name or the 8976 after mine? If that number is used as the fixed seed would it not give each account a separate seed? They have never stated how their generator functions or what type they used. At one time they were going to have a CDI on it but that went by the wayside. I am not a math genius but have monkeyed with random number generators way back when I was fooling around with coding but until they give us a hint to what type of rng they use all possibilities are open for discussion.

Works the same in WvW. If you are in combat and disconnect you will log back in dead. If you are not in combat and disconnect you will log back in alive. The system is in place to prevent the Alt-F4 group from avoiding a stomp.

Loading.4503:

I personally feel like there’s something similar to that with drop rates, it seems like I’ll go for a while without getting anything then I get like 5 exotics at once and then back to nothing for a while.

I posted a possible explanation for the above observance a few times. If they are using a fixed seed in their random number generator you will see patterns like this as a fixed seed generator will start repeating results after awhile.

Go here for a read and down to the second paragraph under “Setting Seeds”

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/28548/Pitfalls-in-Random-Number-Generation

Capes in my opinion are overrated. In certain situations a cape defines a hero while in most other situations it just looks dorky. A cape on Batman for example defines him while Robin looked stupid. Superman with a cape looks good but try putting a cape on the Flash and it just does not fit.

Mind you, I also think the fairy wing backpack pieces, the quaggan backpack and most others look juvenile and end up hiding my back piece for most of my characters. If they had for example a scabbard backpiece for my GS Guardian I would show it as it fits the character. He just looks pathetic with a grade school quaggan backpack.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

Why do people feel the need to come write up a “Dear John” letter when they don’t want to play anymore?

As long as your name is not John it should not bother you. People that write these sort of posts are reluctant to leave and many times will be convinced into staying a bit longer but they need the support and understanding of the community in order to make that decision or they want to let people that they know in-game why they are moving on.

I suppose one could ask “Why if it does not bother you that they are leaving should such a post interest you enough for you to read it and then make a negative comment on it?”

Not sure how that idea would pan out. Consider this scenario. We have a small group of homeland defenders that number about a dozen people in the midnight hours. At times the ratio of us vs enemy players is 12v0 as there is no enemy on the map. We spend our time upgrading, repairing, refreshing and building siege and yet are ready to stop a breakout or a small enemy incursion into our BL. So according to your idea we would be “autobalanced” and some of us would be forced to another map or go to EotM which most of us abhor with a passion. I for one do not do EotM nor EBG nor enemy Borderlands. I am a Home BL defender yet you would force me to move?

Zaxares.5419:

That’s… a pretty cool concept, actually. Kind of if Minecraft were an MMO. Did you have griefers try to destroy the bridge too? Or that wasn’t possible?

No, that was not possible although there always was a race between servers when there was a major project to see who got the job completed first.

Milkduds.7109:

No other MMO does something like the LS,

Not quite true. Years ago I played “Horizons: Empire of Istaria” which was a living evolving world. If a bridge was required to cross to a new area the bridge had to be built by the players. If a mine was required, you had to build the mine. Guilds could buy empty towns where they built houses, blacksmiths, banks, bowyers, etc. where you could craft your better armors. Things that were built became permanent fixtures in the world so newcomers could cross that bridge that you had a hand in building.

Of all the games I have played since online gaming first began with bulletin boards and script based games that one encompasses what I would term a living story more then any other. Things you did in the world changed the world and not just an instance.

The glicko system works………to a point. If populations were static then the rise and fall of the glicko would follow the fortunes of the server in WvW. However populations are not static and a sudden increase or decrease in the server’s population and the glicko takes a long time to respond and re-balance the server matchups.

The glicko system was developed for chess ratings, and was modified for WvW. It does not have the systems in place to adjust for the rise and fall of server populations which in WvW is ongoing.

I am working on a set of Wupwup (Ascended Celsetial) armor equipped with Traveler runes for my Guardian. Currently I have an exotic Celestial set. After playing around with several different builds I found one that works quite well in WvW that is a bit different then the norm. 0-0-6-6-2 Mind you I have only played with this build last night but it worked quite well with GS and Scepter/Shield.

Great news. There is nothing more hilarious then seeing a thief in WvWvW going into stealth to run away and being able to track the thief because he has a mini out following!

Rank 810 and one Ascended chest to date plus one Ascended Ring.

1) Update game engine to DX11

2) Long overdue overhaul of WvWvW

3) Build templates

The hate derives from some of the bandwagon guilds that joined for a season and then left. Those fly-by-night guilds hurt HoD to such a degree that many wonder if winning the first two seasons was actually worth it. Sadly the hate these guilds brought upon HoD stuck with us long after they left the asylum. The hate is for them but it is easier to hate HoD as a whole.

Hoddor!

Do not listen to the person above claiming to be Ark Bladesteele. He is an impostor who has not made an appearance on our BL in the past few weeks. I am going to have to whip him soundly for being MIA and neglecting the poor foot soldiers of HoD. If it is the real Ark then he will stand and take the punishment due to him, if he is uncovered as an impostor……………. Fill in the blanks.

It all hinges around cash flow to the company. Face it, people with a full stable of level 80 characters are do not need to buy gems. They have their infinite harvesting tools, they have the skins they want to make their characters unique and other then an occasional new skin the amount of gems they buy from the gemstore for real dollars is going to dwindle. Veteran players have their craft disciplines to 400 or 500, they can make what they need.

With the F2P business model they have to keep new people coming into the game plus there is an added bonus in doing just that. New people will buy more gems because they will naturally want to catch up to their “veteran” friends. They will want the same skins, the same “cool” things that the vets have and if they can accelerate that process by purchasing gems they will do so. Crafting boosters, leveling boosters, scrolls, tomes, anything that will push them faster they will buy.

So with enough veterans sticking around to entice new players to spend more money and with enough new players coming into the game they can keep the cash flow going. In a subscription based business model it is more advantageous to keep those veteran players around and paying their subs, in a F2P model it isn’t.

So what could they do to show us they are actually investigating and acting on cheats/exploits/hacks?

1) Create a Dev only postable sub forum for Cheats/Hacks/Exploits. No replies or discussions are allowed.

2) If they receive a report that person C in Guild BC on Server ABC was cheating and if they found out after investigation that no cheat was involved they can post exactly like that. "Person C, Guild BC, Server ABC was reported to be cheating. Here is a description (sanitized) of the behavior observed and after investigation the specific behavior is possible under certain conditions and is not a cheat/hack/exploit.

3) Person Z, Guild YZ. Server XYZ was reported flying into a Keep and porting Guildmates in. After review they could post that yes it was a hack, Person Z has been perma-banned and Guild YZ have all been suspended for 7 days.

Now reading reports 1 and 2, I as a player will know that the first behavior is not a cheat/hack/exploit and will not report that specific behavior in the future thus lowering their workload. I will also know that the second behavior by Player Z was a hack and that there were serious consequences for his actions which included everyone involved. Anyone thinking of doing the same in the future will have second thoughts.

My frustration level is lowered, the amount of actual cheating is reduced, and players have a better understanding of what is possible within the game design. To me a Win, Win, Win or WWW situation.

In my opinion and of course it is just an opinion rezzing through the gate is not an exploit. Reasoning?

1) If you can AOE/melee/kill a person on the other side of the gate then rezzing should also be an option.

2) Most if not all classes have some sort of “pull” skill to pull the enemy away from the gate before stomping

I do agree with getting rid of the ability to reset the timer.

A good example. Last night I was fighting/chasing an enemy engie from one end of the map to the other with my guardian. He was doing things I had not seen engies do and which I have not experienced or done on my engie and I was certain is was some sort of hack/cheat. Before submitting it as such I talked it over with a few people on the server and found out that by equipping certain traits the behavior I witnessed was indeed possible for an engineer.

If I had not talked it over and submitted it as I saw it then I would not have found it that it was a legitimate behavior and with the lack of any feedback from the devs on my submission I would only A) become more and more frustrated on witnessing the same thing again and Think that the game we are playing is “dirtier” then what it is.

Even if they would compile a list of all the cheat/exploit reports they have with a basic description of the behavior and then a simple “yes, this behavior is an exploit” or a “no, this is possible under certain paradigms” then people would not feel so frustrated upon seeing the behavior again and the number pf complaints the receive would drop considerably.

mattm.4516:

Interesting read. Thanks!
Just out of curiosity: Does you knowledge influence your playstyle in any way? e.g. do you keep on playing when you start to get some good drops?

Currently if I get on a lucky streak I will try to extend my session as long as possible. I am thinking about setting aside a whole day of gaming and track each and every drop to see if I get a streak or not and then do it over a day or two later. If it is a fixed seed I should see the same pattern of results. That is going to take a lot of effort however and I would rather the devs tell us if it is a fixed or random seed they are using in their rng.

As I mentioned many times it all depends on whether they are using a fixed seed or a random seed. Here is a link on RNGs and if you scroll partway down to the heading “Setting Seeds” you will find an explanation of what I am trying to say. Fixed seed rngs are faster to return a result but have the tendency to return a repeating pattern of results.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/28548/Pitfalls-in-Random-Number-Generation

So in essence if you begin a gaming session and the beginning part of your “pattern” gives poor results and end that session the next time you start a session you will again start at the beginning of that pattern and get the same results. That is why people will report “streaks” of good luck if they play long enough as they will reach a part of the result table that is “good” but they will suffer again from mediocre returns if they restart the session.

That is why I carefully worded this thread and did not point out anything specific, pointed no fingers and laid no blame. I made sure to read and re-read the forum CoC and there is nothing so far that can be construed as a violation of it. It is a overview of the problems and issues that caring people face and a suggestion as to what might possibly help.

Before I begin this I would like to ask anyone that replies to do the following:

1) Do not post names of people
2) Do not post names of Guilds or Servers
3) Do not post examples that you are aware of

This is just to open a discussion on what cheating does in a game and what type of enforcement and feedback that is or should be required.

We do know that cheating goes against the Code of Conduct and probably all agree that cheaters should be banned for life. Most of us know how to report a blatant cheat or abuse/exploit of a game mechanic and most of us do. However that is where things fall apart.

The community has no affirmation of whether or not a cheater has been investigated and punished. Many discussions on this forum, other forums or in-game revolve around the fact that people have reported someone a number of times but the behavior continues. If there is no feedback to the person reporting and if the behavior still occurs then the reporting person gets frustrated, comes to these forums and ends up being censured.

We cannot and should not bury our heads in the sand pretending that such illicit behavior does not happen in the game. It does happen, in this game and in every other game I have played going back to the days of public dial ports and BBS’s. The less feedback the community receives on the issue of cheating, either on these forums or visually in-game the more empowered cheaters feel to continue what they are doing.

A form letter that your “complaint has been received and is being reviewed” is useless without any followup on whether or not what you have seen and reported was a case of actual cheating or abuse or a misconception on your part. That lack of feedback is hurtful to the people that actually care about the game and face it, we would not be complaining or posting about exploits and cheating if we did not care about the game. Those that use cheats, abuse exploits or outright hack do not care about the game, they care about themselves. However there is a growing feeling in the game from many people I have spoken with that a blind eye is being turned to these people. Whether that is true or not is something we will never know due to the lack of any feedback.

If I report a behavior that I believe is a cheat/hack/exploit I want more then just a “thank you” for reporting. I want to know if what I reported was in fact a cheat/hack/exploit and not just an erroneous observation on my part and I want to know if the person has been punished. After all I do care about the game and I do not care about cheaters. The majority of players play the game without cheating but that majority is becoming more and more disillusioned and the minority that do cheat are becoming bolder and more blatant in their actions.

The colored tags are what the WvW community has been asking for but not for 300 gold a pop. The simple fact is that unless you play the EotM karma train you never make gold in WvW, if you want to make coin you are forced to go farm in PvE or EotM.

The blue badge should remain as it is, useable in PvE and WvW but the colored tags should cost badges not 300 gold. Those that have accumulated the badges through actual WvW experience would at least know the ropes in WvW versus some TP flipper.