Guild Wars 2

Cannot be reproduced on test servers so it isn’t happening.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

We’re actively working on it, but without being able to determine HOW it broke, it’s a tricky process. Without a way to reproduce the issue on a test server, I can’t be sure that the fix is good. Also, note that actual “content” updates are on a monthly schedule at the moment, so if an issue isn’t fixed immediately, it doesn’t mean that we don’t know or care about the bug, but we need time to run new fixes through testing before it goes live. (And there is lead time, so anything I fixed right now wouldn’t make it into the January update.) I’m not all bad news, though. I’ve added some safety checks to these events to make them more reliable, but unless I can repro the bug to test my fix, I can’t provide an accurate ETA.

I’ve read this very same statement dozens of times and it leads me to believe that the “Test Servers” do not reproduce the same data as live and that perhaps more time could be spent experiencing the issues on live to get a deeper understanding of issues. It seems more time is spent asking your customer base to send you information than is actually spent in the game experiencing the actual issues first hand. According to Anet not many issues raised have ever been able to be reproduced on the “Test Servers” so doesn’t that set off some bells?
If i pulled all the quotes saying you can’t reproduce this on “Test Servers” we could likely fill the boards…just saying.

I think the biggest concern and the confirmation posters were looking for was that all ascended gear and infusions needed to do open world content in game can be obtained through open world and that nothing critical to being successful will be limited to dungeon only. I fully understand the concern especially in light of how ascended was released solely through Fractals , as one who HATES dungeon crawling I do not want to be pigeon holed into having to do content I despise doing out of necessity.
In short, if i wanted to play an MMORPG built around dungeons I’d have stuck with the other game.
If options are given to fully equip myself for all outside content in the open world, at equal levels of gear quality and chances to obtain said gear (I won’t get into the whole open world loot nerf thing) then I think that would satisfy most posting here including myself.

One thing that dawned on me today; in the first three months of playing I purchased 4 new bank slots to store green and yellow gear and since November 15th I needed to purchase only one.

I had no issue providing information after all I was the first to question the whole change back in November, but frankly the 65 days it took to get any kind of an answer is why you see the current level of frustration. Secondly, I’m not entirely sure of your motivation but frankly this is not “your” soapbox and people don’t need to be admonished, guided, nor scolded for their views by you, as for myself, I seek neither your guidance nor your approval in how or what I post.

As far as needing more information, the very hour this stickie was made I clearly requested what type of information, and in what format would they need said information and even this basic request was met with silence for over a month. So in my opinion if they choose not to give any guidance than I suspect they either have what they need or it is exactly what Puffintoast has claimed it was, smoke and mirrors and delay tactics.

Is the re-spawn timer triggered at death of the critter or when it’s engaged? I too have noticed some spawning much faster in Orr but it would depend on the timing of the trigger.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I posted this elsewhere, but just quickly wanted to update where we stand on this issue:

We’re continuing to look into this and have a team of folks sifting through insane amounts of data based on all of your reports. This is an incredibly time intensive and unfortunately mostly manual process while we work on building tools to streamline this in more automated ways so it’s going to take a while.

We’ll update once we have more tangible information to share.

Why couldn’t this have been done two months ago? So much aggravation could have been avoided! I’m not saying this will resolve any issues of ill will but it could have spared many of us months of unnecessary angst and loss of faith in Anet and likely would have spawned far more cooperation among your player base.

I’m not surprised by the lack of response, after two months of total neglect I’ve come to expect this kind of treatment from Anet now and frankly I’m rather numb to it all.
To be honest this whole experience has pretty much soured me on the game in general and I find myself playing less and less. Nothing else to say other than…thanks for ruining my game experience, keep up the good work.

Posted in another post regarding fractal loot changes. I’m not sure about the open world tech but I can’t see there being a major difference and if so to me this statement is a very telling piece of information as to what and how things have changed regarding the loot parameters and pretty much negates the OP’s position regarding needing further information.
If it’s this simple then frankly I really am flabbergasted!

“Robert Hrouda

Content Designer

Hey folks,

What was happening here was that some of the mobs were respawning in the dark forest area, and they were dropping loot. This meant that the spawns could be farmed continually in an instance, which is something that poses some danger.
We have the tech to turn off their loot without having to patch. Our next content patch will fix the issue with them respawning, and they will have their loot turned back on then once they can no longer be exploited by farmers."

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

I’m willing to wait to see what they’ve got; are you?

If you wish to continue believing nothing improper has been done, that is your choice. If there had been nothing to hide it makes absolutely no sense not to respond after two months of people posting legitimate concerns.
Certainly I’ll admit that I have become quite cynical but anyone would after being ignored or flat out insulted by people telling you it’s all in your mind. This whole situation is by far the most poorly handled community relations debacle in MMO history. As I’ve said I have been actively playing MMOs since 1999 and have never witnessed such disdain for customers as I have regarding this particular issue.
As I’ve mentioned, before, it isn’t so much that they lied to me its that I cannot trust this company anymore or certainly not their key representatives. No response as promised in the AMA, no response after the holidays, and every possible attempt to bury this since November, unprofessional doesn’t even begin to describe this mess!

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

The “new baseline” is what drops will look like. You won’t have to guess.

The fix is coming – beginning this month and continuing into February and beyond. It’s not ready yet.

What he is telling us is that it’s coming – and when. How is this unclear?

Frankly, I think this issue has been addressed and the fix is coming per the announcement and coming more info. It would be reasonable to proceed to close this thread.

But that would cause too much trouble. %)

How about coming here and making it as clear as possible that this is exactly what they mean so it isn’t your interpretation of a statement or others for that matter. The issue is they have neither point blank acknowledged there has been an issue since November 15th nor have they denied it, quite frankly they haven’t had the intestinal courage to say anything, Chris Whiteside being the worst culprit…unless he celebrates the holidays until Valentine’s day.
Regardless, I’m sick and tired of trying to draw hope from every pathetic scrap they put out that may or may not mean something or tie into this issue; someone there needs to grow a pair and just tackle this head on because frankly this is by far the most pathetic example of community interaction I’ve seen since getting into online gaming in 1999!

It seems to me that 6 days shy of two months since Anet pushed the ignore button on this; the question asked should be "ANET, why don’t you share your data about “perceived” strange loot behavior"?

You people need a reality check, take a look at the main page on these forums, 5 of the 8 topics are related to money making, coincidence, I think not!

Any game developer would clearly have the information they claim to be looking for, and they are completely aware of the consequences their changes have made, the truth of the matter is they just don’t care enough to answer us. That and the fun factor of the game does not trump the money card, trust me the proof has been in the pudding since November 15th.

Nice, another bug discovered 30 minutes and 10 silver too late. First off the kitten thing didn’t show up and we wasted time and money (which is ridiculously hard to come by now since it’s been nerfed into the ground) then we find out its bugged and we cannot proceed. Why no just list all bugs in one section of the forum and save everyone some time and travel costs instead of making us have to read each section of these forums to find out what we can or cannot do in game.
It’s no kitten wonder you’re looking for a QA manager this game is becoming a gigantic mess!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/page/26
I’d hardly call this jumping in, and I don’t appreciate your reckless attitude trying to force your views onto many who have generated concrete data in the last month, clearly you are entitled to your opinion since these are open forums. Do not for a moment think you can sway a host of people who not only experienced the difference but ruled out luck and posted their findings since Nov. 15th..
I want an explanation from those in charge of the game, more so a justification for burying my thread.
I once was told a good piece of advice, you may want to dial it back and grasp this; just because you think an issue is perceived by those around you does not mean it wouldn’t carry the same implications nor weight or consequences from those who believe it to be.
Everyone including those in charge should heed this lesson because the act of sweeping this under the rug can have far greater consequences long term than just admitting to their customers what real situation is; “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

One last point, does anyone really think people would waste all this time complaining for nothing, really? Who exactly does that benefit. All rhetoric aside this is and can continue to be the best game ever made, the choice is theirs everything else is greedy shortsighted vision.

Listen, you can believe Approposterous Fire or you can believe your own experience. I can tell you with no doubt the loot value and quality changed on November 15th and I would challenge any unbiased person playing this game to prove me wrong you included (good luck since there are no records prior). You may think because you can post what you have looted it’s the truth but if this is at all tied to DR your case means nadda. You want real proof so do I, and that can only come from an Anet employee coming here and saying to me point blank they changed nothing on November 15th and I can guarantee that won’t happen…why because their own patch notes say the opposite.
You want proof call them out on your defense otherwise you’re posts are all speculation and no validity!

A stain is a very hard thing to remove, especially one that has been there for a very long time. A ton of evidence was given during this thread to clearly point out it was not a perceived issue. If this is the stance you chose, fine, there is nothing we can do to change your minds if they are already made up, however there are others within the gaming and financial community with louder voices then we have here and the entire 26 pages will be made available to those with interest.
We as a community voiced all the evidence a company would care to have when honestly trying to correct an issue, so we’ll begin again of course the results may be very different when the real evidence gets out. One tin soldier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qswm7lHp7oY

Can you possibly explain how we can provide the data to you and compare it to prior to November 15th since we could not possibly predict there would be a change?
And if that isn’t possible, what precisely do you mean by “Concrete Data”? Please explain the “EXACT” process we should follow to provide this data you are looking for so it is no longer “PERCEIVED”! Let me be perfectly clear, there is nothing perceived about this issue!

Je suis complètement déçu par la rédaction de ce post et votre considère qu’il est extrêmement insultant et décevant compte tenu des efforts que j’ai mis pour identifier et porter cette question à votre attention. Permettez-moi d’être parfaitement clair, il n’y a rien perçu à ce sujet!

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We’ve seen reports from players questioning the randomness of the drop mechanisms in GW2 and in particular asking if it’s been changed recently. This is not the case and we don’t think that the randomness mechanism is misbehaving, but we’re running some data to be sure there isn’t anything unexpected going on. So far nothing shows anything suspicious but we’ll keep gathering data and analyzing it. We’ve also created a thread where players can share with us their concrete data about any perceived strange drop behavior they encounter:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Share-your-data-about-perceived-strange-drop-behavior-here/first

Thanks for your understanding and help!

Can you possibly explain how we can provide the data to you and compare it to prior to November 15th since we could not possibly predict there would be a change?
And if that isn’t possible, what precisely do you mean by “Concrete Data”? Please explain the “EXACT” process and data you are looking for so it is no longer “PERCEIVED”!

Please try not to derail the thread I intend to keep questioning and gathering information here so we can get an explanation or come to some obvious conclusion as to what happened after Nov 15th. Well that or someone at Anet works up the moral courage to do what’s right and fill us in on why this is going on, after all it is the holidays and I think we have all suffered enough.

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

To be honest a majority players do exactly that but in all honesty it becomes harder and harder to turn away from those exploits when you make a conscious decision to cripple the economy but nerfing loot in general. For the most part those decisions begin to play a major role in why some turn to this behavior, some not all and certainly not myself but you need to take some responsibility.

Yes i agree there may be many factors regarding the issue we’ve experienced and i also believe there may not be a simple solution, what i don’t understand is this uncaring and apathetic attitude for the people who have shelled out money for the game. There is nothing else i can call this behavior without getting banned which to be honest would be rather hypocritical considering the only thing I’m guilty of is trying to get an answer about a real issue from a company i once trusted and held in such high regard.

I won’t get drawn into an argument with someone who is obviously trying to derail the thread but I clearly said one exotic that I received through the loot table, not one I could purchase. To be honest, i got that level 78 exotic as the reward for the Lost Shore event even though i had been 80 for over a week.
Yes the loot table has been that bad, we regularly do all dragons at least daily and several times over the weekend and to date Jormag has not dropped one usable exotic for my Necromancer, meanwhile we have guild mates drawing ascended out of fractals and the best I’ve gotten in the open world in a month is a few yellows none of which I am currently using. so please don’t tell me I’m exaggerating.
One final note, i have not spent anything since then on gear and my character has less than 7 gold, likely more had I chose to sell the few yellows and piddly greens but I’m leery of letting anything go in case i do decide to stick it out and choose to level my other characters.

I’ll be keeping a very close eye on what happens after this content patch before making any further comments. I’m hoping that they have accomplished what they set out to do and will now make open world content viable again for those of us who do not enjoy dungeon crawling. As it stands today the changes have crippled solo play advancement for me and I have now played a full month with the only exotic I have received from the loot table since reaching level 80 a week prior to the Lost Shore nerfs.

I’m away on business this week so it’ll be a good break for me from the game since it has been several frustrating weeks coming back over and over to see if they bothered to respond.
The worst part of all this is that they have given us no real forum to voice our concerns, since they pick and choose what they wish to respond to and ignore the rest.

I for one don’t believe anyone here is lying down or have been lazy regarding this particular issue and many have posted valuable information. My wife and I have spent quite a bit of our normal gaming time trying to determine the exact cause of what we’ve experienced, tried desperately to rule out whether or not it was anything we were doing wrong. In fact she has asked me not to keep coming back to this thread because it’s ruined my outlook and most of he last two weeks of my game time and my answer was this; first off my intent was to point out what I felt was a bug and I wouldn’t have to keep coming back here if the question was answered and I knew it wasn’t anything we did or I had imagined. I’ve done 22 years of quality control for an international firm and one thing I excel at is details so it was pretty apparent to me fairly quickly the issue was not perceived. Most here have done their best to help out, “give feedback” as they claim is needed and appreciated, they are the ones who haven’t had the decency to acknowledge the question or address the customers concerns.

That said I’m going to step back a bit before this completely ruins for me what I’ve said was the best MMO ever developed. I flat out do not regret starting the post nor my efforts to try and solicit a response because frankly many here seem to have greater concern about this than those paid to care and that’s pretty darn sad. Keep it going but I have very little faith it will matter in the end.

Perhaps the strategy is; not answering will far out weigh the aggravation of the initial problem and we’ll all let it go LOL!

I really don’t see any reason to duplicate the posts, they are obviously fully aware of this considering it’s been 15 days, 600 posts, and 20k views. There is little else left to say and I have little to no respect for the way they have failed to handle this whole situation.

Actually he responded to some Necro concerns yesterday regarding an upcoming fix…so yes, thanks Jon!!

papryk.6273:

It’s funny or I should say pathetic… that Anet can write something and answear to this similar problem here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Stealth-FoTM-chests-nerf/first#post922674 in a short time…while we are here waiting 2 weeks

It may be discouraging, disturbing, telling, apathetic, but I certainly wouldn’t define a thread with almost 600 posts and 18k views with no response as funny.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Neve.7134:

Why you don’t fix the fact that on Fractals if someone dcs cannot re enter in Fractal?

We’ve got people working specifically on this issue, it has turned out to be much more complicated due to the way fractals are implemented than we hoped. We’ll have a fix for this soon as it’s tested enough we think it’s clearly solved and doesn’t cause any other issues.

We are at least a week and a half away on a fix for this, possibly longer depending on how long it takes to test it properly, we wouldn’t want to deploy anything that makes the issue worse!

Thanks for your patience, we wish this one was super easy! =)

What about the open world loot issue that was posted on this forum 12 days ago. Why is it you people jump all over dungeon issues but can’t answer one simple question your staff agreed to look into at the AMA and runs contrary to your own patch notes? Why didn’t a fix make it in for that issue? Why don’t you have people working on that?

I truly expected to read a fix on this and am stunned beyond words at the complete lack of correspondence on these. I’ll leave it there as I have nothing good to say about this situation and whoever made the decision to kill open world content with this mess.

JaironKalach.4938:

I’m not particularly disturbed by the lack of feedback, myself. I don’t feel like we are owed a response every 3 pages, or anything like that. But, now you’re going to make me go search for what was said in the AMA.

I am aware of what was said in the AMA, it was posted several pages back, the issue in questions was raised after the last patch and as many have pointed out it is directly affecting the ability to play for many individuals. I don’t expect a play by play outline of what is going on but something beyond we’ll look into it and it’s a perceived issue would be helpful especially in light that it is a direct conflict to their very own patch notes.

If you aren’t affected by this because you’re dungeon crawling that’s fine but many others are feeling the pressure of not being able to afford to progress characters due to this issue and all I’ve requested is an acknowledgment and an update which after 10 plus days i don’t see as being unreasonable.

[/quote]What more would they say beyond what he said? “Dev is researching?” “Dev is coding?” “Fix for this is now in QA?” “This is our #1 Prioritiy?” “Our stats reflect no change drop rate?” Not sure what words you’d like them to give you to make you feel better about this. [/quote]

Any of the above would be better than the total lack of feedback on this thread, don’t you think? I would say, confirmation of whether this is a bug or intended would be a great start followed by a potential time frame for a fix.

JonPeters.5630:

Thanks for this catch. I will look at it on Monday.

Invuln and invis are intended to stop you from capping, but simple evades are not.

Jon

Good to see you here Jon, our guild thought you had moved on , happy that’s not the case!

Based on the thread I linked from the BLM section of the forums, it is my guess that they’ll continue to “monitor” this up until the patch on December 14th. Of course there could well be far fewer people playing by then and I for one will be keeping my credit card in my wallet cause Santa only gives to good little boys and girls and that certainly doesn’t apply here.

Dang that sucks because i really wanted to get this lol!

John Smith.4610:

I cannot go too far into our process, but we often set goals; in an expanding market though there is a split between preventative and reactionary measures. If you read my last blog you may remember one of my favorite aphorisms, "Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.”

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties, In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing certain. This is one hell of a gamble, especially when you consider that the vast majority of people involved in this complex in game economy are not students of economics nor do they understand the consequences of monopolization and their closest interpretation of Sherman would be a tank. You sir may gamble the future of this economy based on your machinations but at the end of the day many ordinary people could well be your undoing.
Some, no most are here to play the game not to play the market. To continue down this path will most assuredly cost your company many of their real life resources at which time an economist will be the last person they need. Consider that while you’re playing economic dungeon master.

" The lost shores event was not the only modification to precursors.

We’re tracking the changing economy. The changed prices come from a lack of supply relative to demand, not from a substantial increase in inflation (this is apparent when you look at the TP as a whole bundle of good rather than just a few items).

John Smith"

Taken from this thread; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Inquiry-on-status-stability-of-the-market

They know, they’ve always known and the rest is smoke and mirrors. The lack of supply is one they created, hence no bug no mystery just changes made to drain the economy, mystery solved.

I’ve sent several different PM’s in the hope someone would step up, no such luck. Seems to me the only conclusion to be drawn at this point is it’s intended and they want to bleed the economy dry to correct the bot infusion of goods to the TP, all at the expense of those of us who’ve supported them and played the game as intended.

I have no desire to sell anything right now because if this continues there will be no way to ever get the components later on. No answers, give up expecting anything at this point.

Himei.5379:

Guys, remove your MF gear, it seems to work better as of right now. That’s my tip, try it for one farming session and see the difference.

There is definitely a problem and hope it’s look at.

Been there done that it isn’t the solution. Besides it is rather insulting that we have to keep guessing at what is wrong or what is going on, you’d think they would respect their customer base enough to at least keep us apprised of what is going on. 4 short days ago they said they would try to do better and communicate more turns out just that was just more pr.

Not to mention,there is no longer any viable way for those who solo to remain competitive unless open work loot gets fixed. Also those of us who didn’t rush to get their exotics are left out in the cold now as we can no longer earn enough money to purchase them, and there is now limited opportunity to complete events for Karma since the open world is being abandoned for Fractals. Sad, so very sad.

Well I first posted this bug 7 days ago, got a glimmer of hope on Monday when Chris stopped dogging the question and at least admitted it was a perceived or potential issue and said they would investigate first thing Tuesday. Since then, no word, no information, confirmation of the status of this situation and absolutely no sense of urgency to communicate their findings or announce a fix regardless of the evidence put forward.
To that end I guess I’ve resigned myself to their indifference, as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them join them. I may or may not continue to play, up until my in game cash runs out but under no circumstances am I going to dungeon crawl in this or any other game in order to progress my character.

Here’s a real slap in the face for you all…a reply to a dungeon loot issue post after 5 hours https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/FotM-Loot-Scaling-Atrocious/first#post880908
I am somewhat disgusted right now to be fairly honest.

This thread is 7 days old and I am among many who feel very slighted by the blatant disregard and by the lack of attention this issue has gotten. I really thought this company worked to a higher standard than most.

For those who have yet to view the 7 day old thread pointing this issue out please see the following; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Change-in-loot-parameters-or-a-bug-Merged/page/5#post872768

I would recommend that anyone else having loot issues keep this as their information thread as it has most of the comments made regarding the issue as well as statement made by Chris W. during the AMA. This will also reduce the need to make more of these and keep it on the first page to ensure that action is taken as soon as possible, thanks.

Do we have any information on this issue yet? Was this discussed and is it indeed a bug?

“Hi Sin,

So yep you are right this is the question i have been likely dodging the most? The reason being is that it requires investigation. Vet and Champs should give good loot and there are a number of reports on perceived decrease in the frequency of drops. I will be discussing this in depth with the Production and Design team tomorrow and we will hopefully have more info soon.

Chris"

Dondarrion.2748:

Good job, Anet, now add the Name Change Contracts too so that we can change our character names.

This is something I’m also desperate to see, especially in light of the recent release of reserved names. I finally got the name back I wanted and now have no way to move it over to my main.