Guild Wars 2

This coming from a person who had a lot planned for this holiday weekend in game and got banned although I have never used any third parties or even a macro.

Please roll back the bans and fix the automated system or get rid of it and do it over, preferably in the middle of the week when everyone is working and not wanting to play.

No one at Arenanet is going to give me back the hundreds of TA tokens I could have been making or the karma or the time I am missing with my friends in WvW, so the least you could do is give the, at this point, hundreds of unrightfully banned people back their accounts and go back and fix the bot problem with manpower.

Hell, I will put in my resume right now if you need more people looking into bot reports and actually watching the people and their consoles I am all for, but don’t automate it.

A system that allows for this much error is doing more harming than helping and the bots that need to be banned are still there while people who are legitimately playing have lost about a week of their gameplay time.

Yes, I have only been banned for two days, but I doubt this will be resolved any time soon with the mass amounts of banning that is still going on.

PLEASE!

Give us all back our accounts and fix the botting problem manually instead so innocent people don’t get their weekends ruined!

Dark Revan.7634:

joybox.4593:

I don’t think they work on weekends and its a holiday weekend this coming Monday.

Oh god….so basically we will have to wait into Monday for them to come back and THEN look at our support ticket which could also take a few days….

Yes. Not to mention people are continuing to be banned.

Meaning by Monday there will be a massive influx of support tickets.

And you can never get this holiday weekend back.

No one will say they are sorry and no one will fix it.

Good going arenanet.

Snido.4827:

I do not know if this will help but I figure it cannot hurt. My ticket number is 120911-007975 and I was banned for “third party addons or botting” while running a macro. I was in a dynamic event when I was sent a message by some1 I guess testing to see if I was botting. By the time I went to reply to them I was banned. The message read “hi hi” and it was by some one with 2 names I believe they both started with A. If you check this was the second time I participated in this event and between both times I was running collecting nodes and viewpoints and visiting the merchant. I was obviously not botting if I was I would have been standing perfectly for a long stretch of time ignoring the world around me when I was not in fact I switched my weapons several times and changed which direction I was firing in. This information combined with the fact that I know I was sent a message and what it said should be enough to vindicate me. If macros are this big of a problem then I will just stop using them. I have been a loyal customer and played guild wars 1 for many years with no indicents before changing to guild wars 2. Please help me!

Macros are actually against the ToS.

You should have read before you posted.

Now you make the rest of the unlawfully banned look that much worse even if we have never used macros or anything of the sort.

Destinee.1097:

I think the banning system is most likely working which is why there has been no official statement as to why it seems there are so many people being incorrectly banned. If that is the case that would most likely mean that all of those who were unjustly banned must have shared some of the attributes they have set within the parameters of the flagging system. I’m not saying we are all guilty, I’m saying the system is probably working it just needs to be refined as to not create false positives. That or it has been bugging out and they haven’t fixed it yet.

The bad part is actually not that we are not playing at the moment if we were banned for allegedly, “botting.” but the fact we will not know what actions we took to get flagged. Myself, as I spend a lot of hours in the game when I’m not at work, will always have a little bit of uneasiness not knowing if its going to happen again or why it happened in the first place to avoid it in the future. Although one should not have to “avoid” certain actions because they could lead to a false ban.

I think the idea of the automated ban system is great and when it can finally have about a 95-100% success rate [that being 95-100% of only guilty parties being banned] it will be fantastic. Until then Anet I’m sure realizes there will be some blowback by the community that gets hit, but unfortunately for us, it is most likely for the betterment of the game in the long run as it allows them to see what is and isn’t working properly. If it had been me however, I would have stuck to one server while still in the early stages of the system, and if this isn’t the early stages of the system, Anet is going to be having some issues. Because every time this purge happens more and more actual innocent people are going to feel betrayed.

Thing is, are you really happy with an automated system knowing you, an innocent person got banned, and there is a guy sitting in Frostgorge right now named 45t7yb framing trolls?

This system is causing more trouble than helping. They should roll back the bans and just do it right.

No. The system is not working and never should be an unmanned automated one.

That leave room for error.

I know some people get crazy over robot overhauls and ai and how great it is, but there is nothing like the judgement of an actual person.

Seems like people are getting pegged for VPNs, Logitech mice programs, and overall number of reports made.

Botters aren’t the only ones who get reported for botting. Hackers or supposed hackers get reported.

What happens when you make a character that does something that that type of character doesn’t normally do? OMG She’s a hacker.

My character cures conditions and heals faster than conditions and damage can be put on her legally. I have a feeling that the reason for my ban is 1 of the three things, my college VPN, my logitech mx518 mouse that has to have a program to run, or people just thought me running in and out of zergs and not taking damage was a hack and assumed I was a hacker and since there is no “Hacker” report item, reported me for botting and therefore I was banned under that specific reason.

This is unfair and I will never get this wasted long weekend back. Arenanet owes me TA tokens and money and all sorts of stuff that I missed out on this weekend.

It simply isn’t fair and since people are STILL getting banned, they should turn it off, roll it back, and then try again when it is in fact fixed.

From what I hear from my friends in game, obvious bots are still runnign around so it is clearly not in fact working.

It could be anyone. I was killing people in WvW for the last month. No clue how I got banned.

Sorry for your loss. don’t expect it to get fixed this holiday weekend.

I put mine in two days ago. Still not happening.

Gaile Gray.6028:

Accounts are not terminated solely on the basis for player reports. If you were not involved in botting, please contact Support by filing a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page. They will be able to assist you. For tips on what information to provide in a ticket, please read this post.

Then why?

Why is there no function that can at least give us specifics as to why we were banned such as we found “such and such” program on your computer, or “You were farming in the same spot for 5 hours.” or “Players in PVP flagged you as suspicious”.

Why can’t we know when banned, especially if it is a mass ban of people that have not been proven guilty of a ban?

I am very peeved that we can’t at least know why we are being accused so we can try to help get it lifted faster.

This is a holiday weekend for most of us and was going to be an eventful one with the invite your friends event. this whole false ban wave really hurt that objective.

Destinee.1097:

Toble I think the first set of numbers are the date if thats true then the 121109 really could be 11/09/12 which was the day it happened. My ticket was 000560 so I assume that should mean it was only the 560th ticket that day [or] to that department. So realistically it means that shortly after this purge happened there was a huge influx of tickets being issued. It would be curious to see where they currently are in the counter, and when I hear back on mine at 560, I will let people know here.

121109-000269

By that methodology this means that 1, I would be low on the list and shouldn’t be waiting for 2 days and 2. That is not the date since it was input on the 8th.

I doubt that is what they do since I put it in late in the day on the 8th and I am pretty sure others have gotten theirs back more expeditiously.

It’s whatever though. Arenanet shouldn’t have gotten themselve into this mess. It is just hurting them, especially on and “invite your friends” weekend.

They should roll back all the bans until they can fix the system instead of fixing it one by one. I would rather the bots get another few days of play verses us getting none.

Well, report him under botting like everyone did me. I assume this is how I got banned for botting automatically recently, but make sure it’s a hack before you actually report him. If it is an ele or a thief, chances are they can teleport around quite well.

Just make sure because you might be getting an innocent player banned with this stupid system they just set up.

Well it’s definitely too late now. 10 pm central.

See you guys maybe after the weekend is over. Lost a lot of faith in Arenanet these past two days.

And I thought Ncsoft was bad with their support ticketing and ban process. At least they never unrightfully banned me for botting.

I’m just going to switch games for now, not worth the wait.

buyurgan.6023:

WaLkz.3970:

So within 4hrs approx 700+ tickets have been made inbetween my tickets. This is a serious problem and it just seems to be growing even bigger by the minute.

if it’s true that 4hours/700 ticket, approx 4000+ tickets in a day…

it’s possible that they have around 20k unsolved tickets in their queue created in the last week only. And I guess they don’t work at weekends ?

And you know what that means. None of use will ever get our wonderful relaxing long weekend back and I am stuck watching my friends have fun on reset night while I have to sit and wait for days on end for an unlawful ban to be lifted.

I will never get repayed this time and they probably wont even apologize for all this and call it a minor inconvenience when it could have been avoided in the first place by being more careful and not rushing a ban wave.

I am very unsatisfied with the service. I wont be inviting any friends on for the free trails, god only knows they will get banned too. I wont be advertising for GW2 at all in fact. It’s just not worth it if people are going to get banned like this.

I have a digital purchased version that I pre-ordered from the site before beta.

Anyone know how to find the serial key for it unless I need it?

When I pre-ordered in site it just automatically let me download and authenticate.

Even if I do make it in time for the event how many days of TA did I just miss? I calculated my skin set being had by Wednesday with the time I had on the long weekend, but now It’s going to take twice as long and possibly longer since all my free weekend time was wasted staring at an unresolved support ticket.

Funny they had time to label a ticket I did in the ask a question section as duplicate but no time to actually look at it and do something about it.

It’s pretty sad, but none of us are going to get a “sorry we banned you and wasted your weekends guys”

I’m all for more power to the bot banning and I wouldn’t mind so much if it was just a few of us, but this is a lot of people to get unrightfully banned all at once.

A whole week worth of working hard to come home to talk on vent and say “sorry guys, can’t help you in WvW tonight”

Great weekend.

Corvindi.5734:

Toble, I know my post was long, but did you miss where I said right off that I wasn’t trying to say that everyone making the claims I highlighted was a bot? And I finished off hoping the innocent get unbanned quickly.

You are right, automated bans based on player reporting alone would be ludicrous. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that some botters/hackers report legitimate players, especially if those players are harassing them or reporting them.

I have never known of a game company that provides precise details on why they think a user was botting or hacking, though. This is because they don’t want the people who make and use illicit programs to figure out how they were detected. Even so I understand how that would tick an innocent person off. I wouldn’t be happy about it, but it’s no court of law, they don’t have to tell players much of anything, really.

Like I said, I want the botters gone. Gone forever and ever. But I’m worried about a few things. Like people saying they were afk at a vendor or similar and came back to a ban.

Could be coincidence, but bans for no activity would be ridiculous. I go afk all the time. To heat up food, use the restroom, or have a conversation with a real life person. Except don’t you get kicked from the server eventually if you aren’t active for a certain amount of time? And if someone is macroing or running into a wall or whatever so that won’t happen, well, that’s close enough to botting for me. But then again, I’m still mad about the botters who made my server’s queues hours long.

The other worry was the VPN thing. I don’t use one, but if doing so is likely to cause false bans, Anet should have told people that. So far as I know, they haven’t actually come out and said it will get you banned, but they’ve sort of hinted it might not be the best idea to use one. Don’t hint! Just tell people not to use the darn things!

The last worry I have is the possibility of people teaming with botters or running with them while farming or doing hearts and DEs and being mistaken for a botter due to proximity. I would hope that hasn’t happened. I’ve farmed right beside bots before just to figure out if they’re farming any loot worth my time (they weren’t). I would hope that won’t be bannable, and there are so many botters sometimes that avoiding them would be a mini-game unto itself anyway.

I read your post, but the either or thing is silly. We know that, what most of us are pissed about is not being given evidence of anything. It’s not like we accidentally botted once. If we don’t do it, we simply don’t and have never done it. You can’t accidentally hack in the ways that go against the ToS. Using a vpn is not accidentally hacking. I have signed on with the VPN my college uses in lounges at break time and that is not hacking. If they specified what for, this would be much more easily solved.

The people saying they do dungeons and were kicked in pvp and such simply mean as a habit they don’t really farm at all and have no reason to be suspected.

The worst part for everyone is not the being banned, it’s not knowing why, whether they will get their accounts back or when.

for most of us who haven’t gotten their accounts back yet, there is little hope for a holiday weekend. We will probably be waiting for 3-5 days from here on out to be unbanned.

Instead of determining a VPN is hacking or a logitech mouse program is hacking, maybe they should look at what they really are, a college VPN durning break time and a VPN to do illegal hacking on are two way different things. A program that auto macros and a program that turns a button on your mouse into the up arrow button are two completely different things and they should have looked into it personally before doing a giant bot ban wave and putting all the work on the shoulders of support to clean up the mess.

Corvindi.5734:

I’m glad the bots are being handled. I’m sorry for those who have been misidentified as bots, though. However, I have a few issues with some of the comments in this thread, even though the people making those comments might be completely innocent.

First are the people claiming that they can’t be a bot because they pvp and do dungeons. They must not realize that it’s not an either or thing. It’s not either someone bots all the time or not at all. There are leveling services that ridiculous players pay ridiculous amounts for so they don’t have to play the game themselves. I doubt very much those services provide hand leveling. It’s certainly automated.

Also, anyone with a decent mouse and keyboard or money to buy illicit software to play the game for them can set up afk farming, then take back control for some fun pvp or dungeons.

There are also bots farming in WvW (admittedly, pretty sure they mostly farm mobs), and I’ve even heard rumors of sPvP bots.

Then there is the “I can’t be a bot, I was playing when I was banned!” posts. Someone who is a botter might have happened to be at the keyboard when the ban happened but botting earlier in the day/week/month. So that’s no proof.

I wonder if the fact that some people are getting notices they might have been hacked after getting the ban notice means some of the gold farmers hacked accounts, played when the user wasn’t on, and left everything the user had alone in order to keep using the account. Never heard of it happening before, but I suppose it could.

Anyway, I hope all you innocent people get your accounts back soon and that all you guilty ones go do something else besides play MMOs, because you’re missing the point.

Dude, what are you smoking?

I am happy they are dealing with bots too, but I have literally almost never farmed anything. I leveled my characters in WvW. All the money was made by following my guildmates around and gathering in Orr along gathering routes.

I don’t care if you think we are bots or whatever, I want to SEE the grounds which I have been banned upon. I want to see an e-mail that says on this day at this time, we tested your account and scanned your computer, your were running this program or that macro and you were doing repeated actions undynamically for this amount of time and we have solid PROOF of your botting. They can’t get a report from a few people about botting or hacking and believe it without proof. I have gone over the NCsoft problem that happened with the HKN guildmaster. The massive amount of reports got him banned without investigation and then when looked into the person dealing with the ban was penalized because there was no evidence of any hacking, botting, console changing or anything involved in his gameplay, it was just a bunch of false reports because the opposing team hated the guy.

I hope you know that the opposing team can in fact report people in this game, let that tell you a little something about automated banning and unlawful banning. If you wanted to kill a guild, ban the guildmaster, if you wanted to kill a server, get allt he commanders banned. That is all it would take.

I have checked the IP addresses connecting to my account and all three are mine. I was not hacked, no one else has used my account.

They don’t have this proof and have not looked into this proof and I am 100% positive that an automated system was put in place or someone messed up on the job and should be penalized.

Otherwise, give me the proof that I have or have had a third party program or bot running. if you can find this legitimate proof, sure I’ll spend 2 weeks to make another character, but they can’t. And the fact that they have not presented any of this proof to any of us is what is distressing.

Since it has happened to me, I openly believe that it is 100% possible legitimate farmers are also going punished if someone who sits in WvW and PvPs all day is also being wrongfully punished.

I can understand the happiness everyone is feeling as they get back their accounts.

What I can’t understand is why they let this happen in the first place.

There is no way to know.

I know for certain there have been many cases where it wasn’t individually looked in to.

I as well as many others do not farm. I do not have mass amounts of gold, I do not afk.

I spend about 95% of all of my time in WvW Pvping other players with my guild. the other 5% is running TA to get the skins.

There is no way Arenanet looked into it before banning me or they would have seen them and I have demanded an explanation as to why flagged players are now automatically being banned. Of course people in WvW who don’t like me because I am a tanky elementalist healer are going to report me for heal hacking or hacking to reduce damage or movement hacking on thief or whatever, but if someone actually took the care to just watch me for 20 minutes covertly, they would see otherwise.

This has been handled so poorly and people are still getting banned as we speak like this. I am very unhappy as a customer with the service I am receiving, and on a holiday weekend I am going to have to spend my time doing other things than running the GW2 recruiting event in my guild where I was avidly going to get people who don’t have the game to actually play this game via the new free trail system on the 12th.

That most assuredly is now not happening I would not recommend a game to my friends where the Anet team makes such obvious and wide-spread mistakes as auto-banning.

I agree that they should put a halt on the banning and deal with the problem before it escalates.

Lilun.8732:

Now kids, everyone of us can Zerg equally. It just depends on the time and place.

Actually, no, no we can not.

The only time when Ehmry bay has less people is from 6am until around 12 noon.

All other times, I have personally found both sorrows furnace BL, ehmry BL, NSP BL, and Eternal very populated by Ehmry bay.

Wednesday at 6pm, my guild went to NSP borderlands and took over the entire map for our server.

We left to ehmry bay borderlands, all blue, and the guild was unable to make headway on even towers in the EB borderlands.

5 of us stayed in NSP BL and soon enough our Bay keep was overrun by over 40 ehmry bay as they took that and hills away from the 20 people on the map while successfully holding their side in ETB, holding SF borderlands and defending against over 40 extra people in EB borderlands.

NSP and sorrows furnace simply do not have enough people to keep our borderlands full against ehmry bay numbers. we never have ques anymore, so the population is a huge problem in these weeks with Eredon Terrace, Oops. I mean, Ehmry bay. It is population since more than 1/2 of the day at least 2 of the borderlands NSP players have the outmanned buffs and sometimes on all three BL maps.

We even occasionally get outmanned on Eternal, which is just crazy.

I have heard it is similar on sorrows furnace. Thankfully this new match up will be more balanced against our next opponents who have similar scores due to similar populations.

Chippalrus.5437:

Toble.2968:

Chippalrus.5437:

Toble.2968:

Several of my posts were deleted for bolding things by using caps for a few words.

I would like the effort of deleting my posts to go toward restoring everyone’s permanently banned accounts before the weekend comes and we are stuck all weekend without GW2 not being able to help our guilds out in WvW on reset.

Unfortunately, deleted posts are likely done by mods and not ones in charge of going through support tickets

But what do I know?

I know this, yet again, what I am saying is maybe take some of the manpower and put it toward support ticketting instead.

I do understand they are different jobs, but I also understand that this problem is a “wave” problem, like retail in the Christmas months.

No one wants to get stuck all weekend unrightfully banned. Most of us have 9-5’s all week long and want to relax with our buddies during the weekend and just play.

Like someone previously said, it’s less that I can’t play and more that they made such a blatantly horrible mistake and that it is continuing.

When I told my guildmates that I was banned, they basically said “for what?” When I said booting, they were just as surprised as me. They all thought it would be for swearing or harassing someone by trolling them too hard, nope. Botting, somehow I bot while actively pvping with them all day according to arenanet and that is why I am rather angry.

I’m going to be real, if I was banned for something legitimate, okay, it’s only 60 bucks and 2 weeks of grinding to get my most recent character back. No biggie for someone like me.

But the fact that they didn’t even put int he effort to at least watch me for a few minutes was the horrible thing. How can you determine someone is a bot simply based on reports?

Back in Aion, the leader of a large PVP guild was banned without warning and without a reason because a rival guild got all of their people to report him and because of the mass influx of reports, this person was banned without investigation.

Fortunately for him, even people not in his guild protested until they investigated his account, found all the allegations to be false, and the support ticket handler was punished for the large problem they had caused.

I have seen it happen before so it is either a flawed automated system or it is happening again and someone should be fired.

For me it would be $150.00 since I got the collectors edition. In which I would ask why would someone risk their own account who has paid $150.00? 150.00 to me is a lot of money.

It’s unfortunate, because it is clear that in this ban wave they have not done any personal research whatsoever on the accounts banned.

They have not searched logs to look at things like that.

They have not looked at chat logs or activity logs on what dynamic events we participate in.

They have not looked at our gold influx or success in the game.

They most certainly have not personally taken a look on what our characters are doing since many of us participate in WvW, dungeons and dynamic events. (dungeons can not be done with bots.)

This should not be happening especially when I hear from my friends that 4sb456 or whatever is still farming up a storm in Orr or whatever.

How the hell did I get banned while in WvW and they did not?

There is some large error here. I have requested reasoning on my ticket which will probably take another 3-4 days of valuable game time to resolve.

Ash.3641:

Are badges obtained too slow?

I’m an avid WvW player and I am aiming towards a set of the invaders exotic gear.

In the meantime i’ve crafted exotics to be on par as possible in wvw.

But to me, it just feels as though badges don’t drop enough. My main is a pure dps ranger, always tagging players and it feels tough. I dread to think what it is like for less -dps orientated classes.

Along with the gear you are able to buy blueprints with badges. It just feels simply as though there isn’t enough badges dropping. Grinding (there’s that word again!) jumping puzzles everyday just isn’t fun – so please don’t recommend that!

Does anyone else feel the same way?

There are plenty of badges.

I can make over 100 in a 4 hour period of pvp gameplay.

100 is enough for 1 siege golem. 11 rams/arrow carts, 9 ballistas or cats, or 4 trebuchets. in the course of 4 hours, that seems proper for the amount of siege people are getting.

Your rate of gain may be lower because of your class, DPS rate, or spec.

I obviously make less badges on my support Ele than on my thief. Although the ele hits more people, the amount of damage you do on a person does factor in to your chance of getting bags.

Now, you say you are a ranger and tag people often.

Well, the tagging might not be enough, one because you are mostly single target, and two because if people full heal or get up from a downed state even once, your damage tag is voided.

Also the amount of damage on rangers comparable to other classes is low. there are a lot of thieves and warriors and else doing three times your damage on the same target giving them a higher chance for loot than you. The more people hitting the target, the less likely you are to make these bags that contain badges.

This is what I have gathered from staying in WvW pretty much every day and having 3 level 80 fully geared characters, ranger, thief, and Ele.

My advice to you is give up and buy a crafted precision, power, crit set if you want to tag with high damage and use your badge set after for closer combats.

Raific.4652:

Miu Xie.5872:

quercus.9261:

It was a fun matchup once again. I wonder if we are going to get a three-peat?

Looks like the next matchup will be Dragonbrand/NSP/SF and Mag/EBay/Eredon Terrace.

Yep, I think this will be a much more even match up. Can’t wait!

Lol at eredon terrace fighting eredon terrace next week.

Should be funny.

Keiel.7489:

arminius.5270:

NSP is putting up a good fight, but EB is once again proving good leadership > zerg

You guys are the zerg…

+1

Chippalrus.5437:

Toble.2968:

Several of my posts were deleted for bolding things by using caps for a few words.

I would like the effort of deleting my posts to go toward restoring everyone’s permanently banned accounts before the weekend comes and we are stuck all weekend without GW2 not being able to help our guilds out in WvW on reset.

Unfortunately, deleted posts are likely done by mods and not ones in charge of going through support tickets

But what do I know?

I know this, yet again, what I am saying is maybe take some of the manpower and put it toward support ticketting instead.

I do understand they are different jobs, but I also understand that this problem is a “wave” problem, like retail in the Christmas months.

No one wants to get stuck all weekend unrightfully banned. Most of us have 9-5’s all week long and want to relax with our buddies during the weekend and just play.

Like someone previously said, it’s less that I can’t play and more that they made such a blatantly horrible mistake and that it is continuing.

When I told my guildmates that I was banned, they basically said “for what?” When I said booting, they were just as surprised as me. They all thought it would be for swearing or harassing someone by trolling them too hard, nope. Botting, somehow I bot while actively pvping with them all day according to arenanet and that is why I am rather angry.

I’m going to be real, if I was banned for something legitimate, okay, it’s only 60 bucks and 2 weeks of grinding to get my most recent character back. No biggie for someone like me.

But the fact that they didn’t even put int he effort to at least watch me for a few minutes was the horrible thing. How can you determine someone is a bot simply based on reports?

Back in Aion, the leader of a large PVP guild was banned without warning and without a reason because a rival guild got all of their people to report him and because of the mass influx of reports, this person was banned without investigation.

Fortunately for him, even people not in his guild protested until they investigated his account, found all the allegations to be false, and the support ticket handler was punished for the large problem they had caused.

I have seen it happen before so it is either a flawed automated system or it is happening again and someone should be fired.

tyu.9470:

Man every bot wave is the same stuff. To the innocent people in this topic:

Stop saying lots of people got banned for no reason or stuff like that just cause you read people say they got banned for no reason in this thread or in general. In almost every game every bot wave this happens.. and guess what? most of them are actually bot / 3rd party program users.

Saying that most of us who are putting the effort to complain in a forum that gives ne extra help to getting characters unbanned is incorrect.

The bots getting unbanned have put in tickets. Not many of them would actually consistently sit here and spend their time crying about it when they know, after being bots for years probably, that this forum does not actually help you get unbanned, as mentioned by the mods.

I’m going to be blatantly honest with you. You are quite stupid if you think that most of these people are bots.

Some of them may be, but since this is a massive influx of people talking in a community forum trying to figure out why exactly they were banned, I doubt it is just all bots. Not to mention there is something wrong with the system.

Yet again, if any of you are on NSP server, you openly know that Os guild and myself, (I am Harmless, Tele, Toble) Pretty much never leave the WvW scene when I am on. Making a mistake like this proves that there is probably major flaw in their system or someone did there job completely wrong.

Either an automated system was put in place that has a problem, or someone flipped through the reports and everyone with more than 5 reports they banned without actually looking into the situation. I can believe that I have been reported by other server players often. My character is tanky andI get out of some very zergy situations on all characters since I have a nice computer and play well. I can believe they they often report me as a hacker, especially on my thief where I have a full stealth build and the ability to bypass entire zergs and lots of siege.

I have a feeling the latter is what has happened since the people getting reported participate in WvW or dungeons, dungeons being pugged often by very angry people sometimes makes room for intentional reporting.

I have a feeling that after all this is said and done someone might be getting fired.

Several of my posts were deleted for bolding things by using caps for a few words.

I would like the effort of deleting my posts to go toward restoring everyone’s permanently banned accounts before the weekend comes and we are stuck all weekend without GW2 not being able to help our guilds out in WvW on reset.

I really hope someone is working overtime on at least fixing the bug in the system, because people are still getting banned when not botting en masse.

It is unacceptable that these false positives are such an ordinary problem lately. I understand there will always be false positives of people who simply farm a lot that seem like botters, but simply have a lot of time on their hands, but to be banning people who dynamically PvP all day and do not farm at all? It doesn’t make much sense that in the report they do not give you reason.

They certainly didn’t find my actual actions wrong.

In fact, I am positive no GM or Dev peered at my character and actually watched me while playing when they assumed me botting, so I want to know what grounds they banned me on.

Did too many people report me out of spite because they don’t like me?

Did they find a suspicious program running on my computer while playing that they couldn’t explain?

I would personally like to know how I could possibly be banned for botting or macroing where nothing I do is a repeat.

I dodge roll and switch weapons and attunements and talk to people and rez people and drop siege, so no one certainly peered at me and said, “Oh, that’s a botter, she’s using macros to keep her character online and make all of that 40 gold she got from selling a chainsaw during the halloween event”

They never looked at my transactions, they never looked into it enough to not make the mistake and that is what makes me very unhappy.

I wish to know why.

Thing is, with this mass influx of banhammer right now, Arenanet needs to put people into overtime this weekend. Whatever they did to try and automate their system screwed something up and now it seems so many regular players are getting banned and frankly, the bots are not.

I can’t see this getting resolved for me too soon since there are so many others having this problem too.

And it isn’t just pages. It’s THREADS. There are now multiple threads on this topic.

That is a problem.

BoominB.1647:

Not sure whats worse…

Wrongly getting banned for botting
or the fact that how I play Gw2 seems like botting
maybe I need to dodge, switch weapons, and use different skills more often.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/006/026/futuramafry.jpg

It wont help. I spend all day in WvW on three different characters and have to switch weapons in combat all the time.

There is literally no method to it. You just got to be one of the unlucky ones like me.

5 people in 1 hour.

Not counting those who haven’t spoken up.

Gaile Gray.6028:

• We know there are false positives. When you’re banning thousands, there is some chance that an innocent player will be banned. We regret that deeply, and we work constantly to improve the processes (which are not automatic, by the way) to avoid false positives.

• Most importantly, you should know that a number of the people in this thread posting about their “unjust ban” are, in fact, botters. They may be RMT workers from a foreign country; they may be the guy down the street who is using a bot program and doesn’t think we can detect it. Not everyone is guilty, for certain! Not even the majority posting here are botters! But equally certain, not everyone protesting an account termination here is innocent, either. Please keep that in mind when you read this thread: The volume of posts, or the heat of the protest does not equate to the actual number of innocent players.

And again, we want to help, and we will, if you file a ticket and let us review the case.

This is what makes me so angry. If they are botters in a real sense, they will buy another account and bot some more. They wont cry about it, they will go and start making profit again.

Also, there is no way to get a false positive if the system isn’t automatic. Most certainly not a false positive like myself.

If the system is automatic, then how do they ban a person running around and PVPing in wvw showing no signs that indicate they are making profit through a third party program, showing no patterns or automating the character because I am dropping siege, using supply, switching characters, talking to people.

How do you make the mistake you made with me if it isn’t automated?

How do you make a mistake where a character literally signs on, gets into a battleground and kills other real people and mistake that for a bot or a macro or whatever if it isn’t automated?

Something is not right here and it needs to get fixed. If it is a clerical error and people are putting in the wrong account names, someone needs to get fired.

I am livid and I am going to post rather heated comments because this is no way to treat someone that you want to stay and play your game. And it seems like it happens OFTEN for however many thousands of bots get banned. there should not be an error of this many wrongfully banned people.

KrisV.5612:

Stupid if those who arent botters get banned for farming cause they want to actually not always be broke in this game omg. For Anet to say this game been setup to where ya dont need to farm is complete bs given the low drop rates on alot of the stuff required for Legendaries to where you have no choice but to farm to try to collect the items and money to do so. Either let this amazing game turn to crap by treating us non botters like crap and constantly banning us cause we’re trying to make money in this game for items we want or to help friends in the game. Or get this crap fixed to where we who report botters or whatever the issue is on why we’re being fixed and those who been wrongfully banned compensated for Anet’s screw up.

I haven;t even been farming and I got banned for botting. I spend all day in WvW Pvping with my friends and I got banned for botting.

I want to openly say that I was just recently banned while playing in WvW with my guild for botting.

Apparently, although my character has never really sat in one place and killed monsters before I have been banned for botting. I have put in a support ticket, but now my night of fun filled PVP with my friends has ended because an automated program probably has claimed me to be a botter even though all I ever do is PVP and run TA.

I have no clue how Arenanet could not make the distinction between my character and a bot.

I have friends staring at rangers named 3427fd8 and so on killing mobs over and over again for hours doing the same combos while I, a person who clearly isn;t botting, Typing in chat, picking up and placing supply, using supply items, killing people, rezzing people, healing people, have to sit here and wait for a support ticket to be looked at because you guys decided somehow that a perfectly functional character is a botter.

In some cases, I can understand if someone farms PVE monsters a lot in one area. But for someone who is actively playing, talking, changing groups to be banned for botting is clearly wrong.

If there is an automated system in place, it needs to be changed. I am not going to sit here and get banned a bunch of times and have to wait for god knows how many hours over someone else’s flawed system.

This is how dedicated players get turned off from the game right here. I have been playing since beta 1 with my guild and have no reason to bot whatsoever, but now that my account has been suspended without any warning or way to appeal before banning I have good reason to leave the game because I am not buying another account and I am most certainly not levelling up 3 more characters to 80 and getting them all the gear and skins that I have just lost.

It’s not the size that counts, it’s what you do with it. -wink wink-

Soon to be edited and up on youtube, Os guild took around 18 golems around eternal battlegrounds last week taking each keep at least twice and around 8 towers before all the golems died.

We got our money’s worth from our golem zerg for sure.

We await the final footage.

So somehow my tame post was reported and removed where I said if you kill 2-3 people at once it is warranted and that people are more likely to make mistakes when they come back angry.

You’d think they would have taken out my lovely teabag comment.

Inc.

You know you want to report it.

I enjoy a good teabag every once in a while..

Once again, to all this is not an argumentative or flaming thread!

This is a thread with the intention of compiling information and helping others and maybe even helping arena net by urging people to create proper reports of their problems.

:)

Sylosi.6503:

Toble.2968:

mulch.2586:

Rendering is still a problem in my home (I7 + good graphics, RAM, etc). Maybe it’s ping…

The profession problems (e.g. thief) that I see complaints about I think really are because WvWers haven’t done enough sPvP. If you eat big damage from pistol-whip, it’s your own fault. Unless of course the trouble is the thief remains stealthed because of the rendering crap.

I really think they should be doing better. NCSoft has had other games for years (e.g. Lineage 2 from 2003) that handle mass combat without these problems.

The problem with rendering here is new components to support and a much higher level of graphics.

There are new graphics components come out every year. Making sure graphics of this caliber are compatible with these new components I am sure is very challenging for Arenanet.

Also, Ncsoft did in fact have some culling issues in the beginning of Aion in large-scale PVP, but it wasn’t too much of a problem since people were still leveling for the first month before participating in 200 man zergs in the open pvp areas.

I can assure you that the culling WILL be fixed. They can not sell this game without the fix. The time it takes is unknown, but they know they can not afford for these issues to continue on past the halloween events.

I would expect it to be fully fixed by then.

You can assure no one of anything, I realize that you seem to be suffering from the delusion that you are in fact the lead programmer, but, and I know this is going to be a shock, you are not.

You can’t even get this whole culling business correct, despite the fact the devs answered thsi on reddit and explained that some of it is due to the amount of the data that needs to be sent from the server to the client and hitting bandwidth limits, not everyone has a 100/40mb connection.

Stop gspreading your ignorance by giving out false information that is a matter of needing a top of the range gaming PC.

thank you for giving that tid-bit of information! it is very helpful in our exploration to fix the culling issues. I’m sorry it makes you so angry, and I don’t believe I am a lead programmer, but I do know that the culling issues have ceased for me and others I have spoken to about it with similar machines.

And no, I can’t assure you that it WILL, and I should probably change my words to say that I assure you that Anet will attempt to set a deadline for that time due to the steep drop in players they will experience if they are not kept interested and pleased with the game by the time the halloween events die down.

Thank you for your input about the connection. That is a good thing to note about the issue. I will add it to my post that possibly increased internet speeds on their connection might help the issue.

Good job!

FrozeNuggz.7219:

I agree with part of what the OP has to say. Bugs will get fixed. Not over night, because as anyone who has had a job knows job’s take hard work by professionals to get done. Also with the approx $60 million this game has made from sales, and the fact that ExPac’s are this games future revenue, the dev’s have a great incentive to fix the bug’s. To borrow a quote myself and other posters, GW2 is most definitely in its Beta Stage of development. For whatever reason, lack of funds, to meet the deadline, or its just the new model of F2P, GW2 was released with out a solid shake down period of competent player Beta Testing. It seems a lot of the problems with WvW, PVE Storyline and PVE quest bugs would of shown up repeatedly during a large scale Beta Test. In the line of that reasoning we should show patience and contribute to this vetting out period with accurate bug feed back as the OP mentions. As for the WvW match up imbalance issues there are many other posts topics that deal with the theory of why this happening, but i agree with all of the critics that is unacceptable in its long term and continuing effect that is leading to the decline of WvW playability. The “culling” “rendering” issue has gotten much better since the last patch but is by no means “fixed”, but the game is playable for me on my high end machine. Thief’s are fine as they are imo, and no i don’t play one, and yes my glass cannon elementilist has died to them many times, but there rendering bug of perma-stealth needs to be fixed. Damage should break stealth, either given or received, but thief’s have a right to re stealth as desired as they already do.

Thank you for your input! I hope a lot of people read your post you make many very clear points.

I did edit my post that it isn’t fixed for some and some information for those with actual culling issues to fix it!

:) Had to cut the post in half. The thief tips are in my second post later on.

mulch.2586:

Rendering is still a problem in my home (I7 + good graphics, RAM, etc). Maybe it’s ping…

The profession problems (e.g. thief) that I see complaints about I think really are because WvWers haven’t done enough sPvP. If you eat big damage from pistol-whip, it’s your own fault. Unless of course the trouble is the thief remains stealthed because of the rendering crap.

I really think they should be doing better. NCSoft has had other games for years (e.g. Lineage 2 from 2003) that handle mass combat without these problems.

The problem with rendering here is new components to support and a much higher level of graphics.

New graphics components come out every year. Making sure graphics of this caliber are compatible with these new components I am sure is very challenging for Arenanet.

Also, Ncsoft did in fact have some culling issues in the beginning of Aion in large-scale PVP, but it wasn’t too much of a problem since people were still leveling for the first month before participating in 200 man zergs in the open pvp areas.

I can assure you that the culling WILL be fixed. They can not sell this game without the fix. The time it takes is unknown, but they know they can not afford for these issues to continue on past the halloween events.

I would expect it to be fully fixed by then.

Radiodread.8469:

Toble.2968:

BlackRabbit.1259:

The rendering issues are NOT related to your PC. I know this for 2 reasons.

1. There was a post made by an arenanet employee that said this. in fact he specifically posted so that people wouldnt listen to fools like this. I cant find it, but it exists. trust me on that.

2. I have very very high end system, all the latest Kit, OC’d. SLI etc.

Do not listen to this guy and do not upgrade to the latest and greatest. sure it will improve your experience, but it will NOT solve this issue. it is a back end issue. Anet still need to solve it.

The person claiming to see the red names, but not the characters is having a rendering issue, not a culling issue. ^^

The new system is simply a suggestion for those who are having a rendering issue, not a culling issue. They are not the same things. The game recognizes that there is in fact a character that can in fact take damage and show that damage in the space given. The appearance of thieves out of stealth is often a rendering (Not in fact culling) issue. Mind you, I said often. If they appear seconds after they get out of stealth, that is often rendering. If they do not appear at all, that is often culling. You will see that culling is when nothing appears at all including damage reads and name of character. The only things that seem to appear are moves occasionally.

Yet again, it is simply a suggestion if you have found RENDERING issues a hassle as well as culling. My old computer still displays culling issues as well as rendering issues while my new one does not. I have talked to others which find that recently the issues have become less and less (Out of those with medium-high quality computers)

I also found through experimentation that the mac beta displays less culling issues as well on both old and new computers. if you have a mac and run on windows and are experiencing culling issues, I suggest try it on your mac platform. (Which I warn you has more standard graphics. Less sparkly)

All of my issues are culling. I never see red names wihout a rendered character.

In that case, the best thing you can do is send your specifications in to Arenanet, even better, begin a thread compiling system specifications and the level of culling issues among the community to gather this information and create a trend line to help the programmers looking for a solution to why some systems do not exhibit culling issues and why certain ones do.

Grumpdogg.6910:

“Having a thief character myself”

You should’ve stated that first so I could avoid reading anything else.

Well, that just shows how ignorant you are.

Would you rather read about how to beat a thief who knows their own weaknesses or another class complaining about thief.

Yet again, I also have other endgame classes and have played plenty of structured to know that beating a thief really isn’t that hard if you are quick and know how. I am just trying to share my knowledge on the subject. Since you are narrow minded and are probably one of the many people who hasn’t played thief at endgame and sits here on forums complaining you can’t kill them because they one shot you, I am guessing I should have stated it first as well so you would have made your post sooner so I could explain to everyone just how ignorant it is to complain about something and then complain about someone providing a valid solution that works for other people who actually play other classes.

“HOW DARE YOU TRY AND MAKE IT SO I DONT HAVE TO WHINE ABOUT THEIF CLASS BECAUSE I CAN ACTUALLY KILL THEM BY USING cERTAIN TECHNIQUES! HOW DARE YOU!”

That is all I hear. Capslock included.

BlackRabbit.1259:

The rendering issues are NOT related to your PC. I know this for 2 reasons.

1. There was a post made by an arenanet employee that said this. in fact he specifically posted so that people wouldnt listen to fools like this. I cant find it, but it exists. trust me on that.

2. I have very very high end system, all the latest Kit, OC’d. SLI etc.

Do not listen to this guy and do not upgrade to the latest and greatest. sure it will improve your experience, but it will NOT solve this issue. it is a back end issue. Anet still need to solve it.

The person claiming to see the red names, but not the characters is having a rendering issue, not a culling issue. ^^

The new system is simply a suggestion for those who are having a rendering issue, not a culling issue. They are not the same things. The game recognizes that there is in fact a character that can in fact take damage and show that damage in the space given. The appearance of thieves out of stealth is often a rendering (Not in fact culling) issue. Mind you, I said often. If they appear seconds after they get out of stealth, that is often rendering. If they do not appear at all, that is often culling. You will see that culling is when nothing appears at all including damage reads and name of character. The only things that seem to appear are moves occasionally.

Yet again, it is simply a suggestion if you have found RENDERING issues a hassle as well as culling. My old computer still displays culling issues as well as rendering issues while my new one does not. I have talked to others which find that recently the issues have become less and less (Out of those with medium-high quality computers)

I also found through experimentation that the mac beta displays less culling issues as well on both old and new computers. if you have a mac and run on windows and are experiencing culling issues, I suggest try it on your mac platform. (Which I warn you has more standard graphics. Less sparkly)

Kardiamond.6952:

You can pay 5200$$ for a computer? I hope you will keep it for a long time man ahah

And I have a 6 old month computer with top end vidoe card and all, and I got rendering issue too.

And did you say run around when the thief attack you? How do you exactly run away from a thief? They cripple, jump, stun. I don’t say Thief are really that OP, but I would like to kill one without him escaping with invis + best mobility in the game.

There are several builds of thief Recognizing the build is the key to killing them. Many run dagger dagger full DPS build, stealth heal, stealth on cloak and dagger that costs 5 initiative and 12 initiative total in their pool. They do not have immobilize and have to use 5 initiative for dagger throw to cripple. I suggest you spec an evasion or roll that clears the cripple condition. Most class has at least one. These thieves go like this if they are good.

Throw dagger(depending on state of the enemy) Steal (With mug trait for extra damage) Cloak and dagger (For stealth) Signet for extra damage, and then a backstab as a finisher.

The way to counter these thieves is to dodge roll out of the cloak and dagger. Wait for them to either heal stealth or cloak and dagger again (Which you can also evade again)

And this is the point where you can go in for an attack. they will probably heartseeker you or auto attack you and try to flank you, but whatever class you are, you have avoided the one shot that everyone hates.

OR there is the sword and dagger thief which is a little more tricky because they usually run stealth on steal, giving them an extra edge.

The sword is easy to spot, they are held outward, not inward like daggers are and are much longer. These thieves have a built in shadowstep to their swords costing very little initiative and an auto attack that on the third attack allows for a short 2s cripple.

Fortunately for you, these thieves reach only up to about 6k damage and that is only on the their tier of tier auto attack or cloak and dagger.

The easiest solution for this is to be constantly moving so their auto attack never reaches the third tier. and to make sure you run away from the stealth to avoid cloak and dagger out of cloak and dagger which is an instant crit and fairly high damage.

The flanking attack on sword is nothing to worry about either. Not very high damage and can be evaded out of fairly simply.

Venom thieves are fairly impossible to kill. No one complains about them because very little people play them. They operate using extra poison on their auto attacks as will as use death blossom constantly. You will most likely run into this kind of thief NEVER, but if you do, just dot them back and run. They will most likely have less health and heals than you, so you will be able to hit them with a dot, evade out of their dot-stabs and get them down eventually with a well-placed burst. This is void if you are a warrior. just burst the venom down and you will go down after they have gone down. You can use second-wind or whatever to finish them before yourself, of course.

Hope this helps even more!

Jado Cast.1805:

The TL:DR Summary of the OP is L2P.

Top Rigs still have rendering issues in massive fights even with the patch. Nothing we can do about it. Many people hate thieves simply because they do not understand the class and know how to counter. To make things worse, tons of people have flocked to WvW with thieves to take advantage of stealth. I started playing thief long before anyone posted the Bleed, Pistol Whip, Heartseeker, or Backstab burst builds, and love the class. I can tell you that 90% of the noobs that want the flavor of the day will stop once the majority of people figure out how to counter the low health glass cannon builds and move on to the next flavor of the day.

My thief is my main. I have several other endgame characters and talk extensively with people who wish to know thief dynamics since I have been researching and playing a thief since beta I.

I do not have a DPS build.

I have never hit someone for more than 8k.

I am VERY effective in PVP, mores effective than full DPS builds in WvW because of my ability to simply run away. Full DPS thieves do not have these types of abilities and if caught in a multiple enemy situation will often have trouble, even after downing enemies due to low health and the fact that WvW is an open world system where people are often added to fights on the drop of a hat.

Full DPS thieves also have difficulties extracting themselves from a zerg. Even if they are able to get the finishing move off on a downed person, the amount of AOEs placed on top of them, stealth will not help and neither will smoke screen.

The manner in which people die (One shot) and the popularity of the thief class are the only reason they are considered a problem. (Other than the culling issue out of stealth)

I’m glad you recognize that I am trying to help people counter thieves, but I am not necessarily saying learn to play in a degrading way.

I am simply trying to give specific classes ways to counter thieves in generic ways so that if their own personal style doesn’t suffice as an anti-class they have an option. This may make them weaker to other classes, but this proves that thieves are not THE problem if they can in fact be anti-classed.

Radiodread.8469:

While they fixed the crazy rendering issue caused by the patch last week, I wouldn’t say this is a “fixed” issue. I run a top of the line system that I built 2 days before head start (3570k, z77 extreme4, GTX 670, and I run the game off of an Samsumg S3 128GB ssd) and I still experience rendering issues (admittedly for the most part still very playable).

I was 2-shot on my alt ranger last night. 8.2k Cloak and Dagger immediately followed up by a 13.4k backstab. This was in a pretty big team fight in EB, but I verified it in the combat log. The thief rendered after he finished me in my down state. Yes it was an alt, yes I had negligible defenses, but 13.4k is ludicrous even for a base damage on crit.

It could be worse. There is a thief in my guild who has topped 22k damage in one hit. Mind you this was on a lower level clothie, but it is still a very large achievement due to might stacks and an active signet and a lucky lightning strike.

13k is not that great.

I would love to redo a post I did in a separate thread, but many classes can stack that much damage in similar time that have many more defensive measures and a lot more health than thieves. Youtube has many videos documenting this and I am sure we have all endured a knockdown with haste Hundred blades or knockdown and elementalist fire stack. Engineers and rangers can also stack over 10k damage in that time with less set up and lower cooldowns as well.

the unfortunate thing is that thieves are engineered to appeal to the masses as the glass cannon build, other classes are not, therefore you do not see very many high DPS, low survivability in other classes that can do similar damage. The thief problem is, unfortunately, a matter of popularity.

The culling issues with thieves are also not the classes fault, therefore can not be factored in to this conversation.

Onedoesnotsimply.5740:

The fact is, gw2 is still in beta testing that went live I hate to say. Free server transfers still? Realms are “full” untill offpeak hours when they are “medium”? No when a servers full, it should be full. They should have made free xfers available to SELECT realms, they acknowledge orb hacks and such and its still there. Like one other said, that’s all fine it WIll get fixed, but WHEN. My necro STILL has 80+bugs with more surfacing all the time. Current state – game should have been free in general. I got my 60bucks worth – barely. Good thing we got halloween eventz gueyz LolOl -

Every game as intricate as this one is going to have bugs. considering the massive amount of content provided and all the many combinations of skills and traits, I am astounded that there are not MORE bugs.

What you can do to help solve this issue is document the bugs and take screen shots. Send it to the support center in a clean, organized way and the support staff will put it in the “Programmers fix your kitten bugs” pile to which the programmers will have to painstakingly try and go through in time for the next matinence. Mind you, this might take a while since the culling issues are considered much more widespread than necro bugs.

I would urge you to stay and see what happens, but you are right, arenanet can not expect paying customers to stay if they are unhappy with the state of the game. My suggestion is to make your own happiness by making an alt or a character that exhibits many less bugs. I find that elementalist, thief, warrior and guardian are very stable characters with very little glitches to be had.

Other than that, I can’t imagine the Necro bugs are as game breaking as you say since this is the first time I have seen someone so fervently peeved over it. Maybe just stick it out and do some Structured. Necros are BOMB in structured.

Windows® Minimum System Requirements

Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

These are the minimum requirements for the game. Minimum does not mean the minimum requirements for the game to physically run.

I have a second computer, laptop, 4g ram, quad core, nvidia graphics card from about 4 years ago. 7200rpm (Nonssd).

In an environment with more than 3 characters (open-field environment) my former laptop which has much higher specs than minimum requirements would have 1-5 fps and lots of rendering issues at lowest settings.

This game was most certainly not meant for even medium-spec PCs.

Transfers

Transfers were never intended to be permenent. They were never intended as free either in the beginning.

The proof: server guesting.

They have added a flexibility that applies to a permanent system to which the transfer system voids.

So yes, the transfers will be changed.

Thieves are something widely complained about in WvW because of their ability to output massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time and go stealth.\

Thieves have very little health and the ones who can output massive damage do not have much stealth and movement speed.

Thieves can only output the large damage when in stealth, so if you see it go stealth, put up your shields, invulns or other stealth and run as fast as you can away until they appear.

Stack toughness and vitality if you really are that annoyed by high-output thieves. Having a thief character myself, I find that the hardest type of people to kill are plate classes that have a lot of health and a lot of toughness.

If you happen to be a low-health glass cannon ranged class, I suggest you run when stealth and aoe as well as Aoe cripple or immobilize. Thieves are notorious for being one of the lowest health classes, so a few well placed aoes and they can be downed while they are in stealth.

Dots are also a very effective way to deal with thieves, as well, they may turn on you using dots as well. (Although it takes very little time for a necro to stack these and kill a thief. and there is no chance for a thief against a good necro.)
The only effective way for a thief to kill a tank-build plate class is to dot them consistently.

As a plate class, if you want to spec to kill thieves of this type, I would suggest condition removal buffs be included into your tank build. This also helps greatly with Necros and burn-based Eles.

For rangers, it is not hard to kill a thief. Rangers in general have higher toughness and health than thieves (By a lot, considering they are both medium classes???) One thing to remember as a ranger killing a thief is that rapid fire does not stop for stealth, and arrow storm also is effective when a thief is in stealth. Personally, I have never had a problem killing a thief on my ranger due to these two skills. Another thing to remember is that both sword warhorn and greatsword have aoe based auto-attacks, although I highly recommend greatsword for farther AOE and warhorn if your health pool is extra low on a ranger for faster running and a bird-bleed (Also not interrupted by stealth).

Engineers- Not turrets, mines. Just throw down mines and run. That’s all there is to it. A well placed elixir and mines.

There are several builds of thief Recognizing the build is the key to killing them. Many run dagger dagger full DPS build, stealth heal, stealth on cloak and dagger that costs 5 initiative and 12 initiative total in their pool. They do not have immobilize and have to use 5 initiative for dagger throw to cripple. I suggest you spec an evasion or roll that clears the cripple condition. Most class has at least one. These thieves go like this if they are good.

Throw dagger(depending on state of the enemy) Steal (With mug trait for extra damage) Cloak and dagger (For stealth) Signet for extra damage, and then a backstab as a finisher.

The way to counter these thieves is to dodge roll out of the cloak and dagger. Wait for them to either heal stealth or cloak and dagger again (Which you can also evade again)

And this is the point where you can go in for an attack. they will probably heartseeker you or auto attack you and try to flank you, but whatever class you are, you have avoided the one shot that everyone hates.

OR there is the sword and dagger thief which is a little more tricky because they usually run stealth on steal, giving them an extra edge.

The sword is easy to spot, they are held outward, not inward like daggers are and are much longer. These thieves have a built in shadowstep to their swords costing very little initiative and an auto attack that on the third attack allows for a short 2s cripple.

Fortunately for you, these thieves reach only up to about 6k damage and that is only on the their tier of tier auto attack or cloak and dagger.

The easiest solution for this is to be constantly moving so their auto attack never reaches the third tier. and to make sure you run away from the stealth to avoid cloak and dagger out of cloak and dagger which is an instant crit and fairly high damage.
The flanking attack on sword is nothing to worry about either. Not very high damage and can be evaded out of fairly simply.

Venom thieves are fairly impossible to kill. No one complains about them because very little people play them. They operate using extra poison on their auto attacks as will as use death blossom constantly. You will most likely run into this kind of thief NEVER, but if you do, just dot them back and run. They will most likely have less health and heals than you, so you will be able to hit them with a dot, evade out of their dot-stabs and get them down eventually with a well-placed burst.

Thieves———-> Fix time: 0 minutes!

Slamz.5376:

Well that’s lovely. Will this be before or after the majority of my guild quits?

Personally, I want to see more noise and action from Arenanet because I would like to convince my guildmembers to stick around and tough it out. I’m sure that, 1 year from now, it will all be very nice but what about tomorrow or next week or next month?

I’m also unsettled that they are making big plans without getting any community input. What if their plans suck? That’s basically what happened to DAOC and Planetside. (“Behold our new content that we worked for months developing! Hip hip…? Oh. Nobody likes it.”)

Actually, I can say with great enthusiasm that Arenanet more than others takes pride in consistently interviewing it’s players. Not only do they interview for community spotlights, but you will see surveys go out in your mail occasionally that allow you to give them input. I am not sure if these surveys are for selected members who participated in betas or what, but I know for a fact that they take a good amount of sampling input.

I would assure your guild members to continue play and remind them about the halloween pve content. Everyone needs a break from WvW. I would also refresh their PVP spirits by creating a structured tournament team. It is very balanced and SUPER fun. One thing you can also do is remind them to participate in guild dungeon crawls and events because new content will be coming out after the Christmas months.

New videogames usually release as such:

Release late summer/early September.

Let the game settle for a while.

Halloween events to keep players interested.

Let the game settle for a while.

Christmas events to keep gamers interested.

Let the game settle.

Major patch within 3 months of Christmas.

So remind your players that new content is coming all the time!

I hope everything works out!