Guild Wars 2

Draygo.9473:

My email account I use with GW2 is a yahoo account and ive had no issues receiving mail from gw2 support.

One caveat though is I do not have arenanet send me mail very often to that account (only a handful of support inqueries, and a few auth).

I assume that support emails are coming from a different sender (and probably route) than authentication emails. Hence they might get through while authentication emails are blocked/lost.

I do feel that at this point its in yahoo’s court with getting the emails through. It is possible that they have some sort of account level blacklisting for emails. The odd thing is my yahoo account is receiving support emails just fine, while other people are not – which to me is strange. So it has to be affecting a block of yahoo accounts and not all yahoo accounts.

Again, it might be blocking all authentication emails for all users. Knowing whether or not it does that would help.

At this point, yahoo has a standard procedure — postmaster to postmaster communication. I.e. its up to ArenaNet to contact yahoo postmaster.

Are the yahoo accounts with the issue all mail+ accounts? Are there any specific features on your account that may be contributing?

I think that everything is mail+ now (as of a month or so ago). Difference now is unpaid (with adverts) or paid (ad-free). Mine was a paid Mail+ account originally, now its paid ad-free.

Make sure you double check your blocked addresses list in your yahoo account settings and verify that guildwars2.com is not there.

I checked blocked addresses list, and filters. No problems there.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Wreave and IC – Thanks for these insights. I’m following the discussion with interest. We don’t have much insight into Yahoo as users, so your experiences are of value to us in what works, what doesn’t work, etc.

Thank you. But we still don’t have info from you as to what you’ve done with respect to contacting yahoo’s postmaster. For those of us who have contacted yahoo, their last (semi) useful response is that this needs to be sorted out between you and yahoo. How is that progressing?

There is info that you can determine/provide:

• Progress on discussion with Yahoo postmaster. Are you stuck in form mail hell with them or are you making progress?
• Is the problem with yahoo mail users affecting ALL of your yahoo mail users? I.e. have you continued to receive successful authentications from at least some yahoo mail users? If not, how long has it been since the last one?
• For affected players are you sure that the authentication mail is going out from you? (I.e. there may be something internal on your side which is preventing the mail from going out. Or perhaps its going to the wrong email address.)
• Is that SKU thing correct for the mail that is going out?

There are some things that your tech department could actively check out for affected users:

• Trying different yahoo email addresses
• Trying different non-email addresses.
  As I mentioned in my report, I’m willing to help with these.

Also, there’s the issue of the “Remove Email Verification” button being grayed out an unselectable when I tried that. What’s up with that? Is it intentional on your end? (In which case some explanation “e.g. Must be logged in in order to remove email verification” should be on the page. If its an error, then it should be fixed.

@Inculpatus: http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_MAIL_ML&locale=en_US&id=SLN3523

Disposable addresses consist of a “base name” and a “keyword” and appear as: [base name]-[keyword]@yahoo.com.

So all yahoo disposable emails should have a ‘-’ in the email address (unless there has been a change that has not been documented on the help page). Disposable addresses are setup under Settings: Securing on yahoo email.

@Inculpatus: Did authentication requests stop showing up for you? Or was it just that the mail was going into the wrong folder? If your email does not have a ‘-’ in it, yet you still had authentication emails disappearing, then that means that it isn’t the ‘-’ itself that is messing something up.

Re “new and improved” You can switch to a basic version by going to Setting: Viewing Email: Mail Version" But its not the same as “classic” yahoo view. I tried switching to Basic mode to see if it made any difference on authentication, but it did not.

However, they also now have more free (aka ad supported). This did not itself cause an issue for me (I’m paid mail plus yahoo user, and the yahoo change to more free email happened well before I started having difficulties with receiving anet email). However, it they’re doing more free email service, they may have started filtering spam more aggressively.

I’ve had this problem for 10 days. I have been watching this thread, hoping that the issue would be resolved and that I would be able to login, but no luck. Finally tonight, I gave up and asked support to remove email authentication.

For folks in my boat (and there may be a lot), until we throw away the safety net of email authentication, this thread is the only source of info. There really should be more info from ArenaNet here.

So criticisms to ArenaNet:

• You’re the ones who should have recognized and posted about the SKU issue. Instead, Draygo was the one to find it.
• Having been informed about it, you should have been reporting progress on it. Instead days go by with no progress report. Again, its Draygo who reports that it has been fixed (but is that for all email?). More time goes by before you answer that, and still there’s no real detail from you about what was fixed.
• Several people have reported that after badgering yahoo for a bit, the only response that they get is that the email sender postmaster (i.e. you) needs to contact the yahoo postmaster. I’ve seen no indication from you that you’ve done so. That should have happened days ago (at least) and we should be seeing regular reports on that in this thread.

Again, this thread is where you can talk to people who can’t login because of these issues. There should be a lot more info here and it should be updated more frequently.

Another ArenaNet issue: Throwing away the authentication safety net is not something that we do lightly. But I finally do that tonight, going to the recovery page. I enter my information, and it verifies and… the button to disable authentication is grayed out. I try closing my browser and trying again. I try using a different browser. No go again. Its frustrating to be directed by knowledgebase to do something… and then to find that option unavailable. (I’m only in now, because your customer service rep disabled authentication after a couple of email exchanges.)

Now some details on my situation, in hopes that will help solve this or help someone else:

• I’m on yahoo mail with a “disposable” email address that I use ONLY for communication/logging in with ArenaNet.
• The last authic notice that I received from ArenaNet was dated 05 Nov 2013 05:25:38 -0000 (UTC). The next one that I should have received would have been dated an hour or two after that. (I’m wondering if issues for other yahoo users began at exactly the same time.)
• Re: “Click Not Spam breaks it theory”… I’m not sure. I know I clicked the “Not Spam” several times on one mail around that date, but I’m not sure it was an ArenaNet authentication mail. I will note, that when I clicked it, it did NOT move out of the spam folder (as I was expecting). I clicked it several times, then surprised that it did not auto-move, manually moved it back to the in box. (Again, I’m not sure this was the ArenaNet mail.)
• SPF The SPF from the last Authent message before they stopped arriving:
  Received-SPF: pass (domain of guildwars2.com designates 174.37.226.90 as permitted sender)
• The only GW2 email I’ve received after that date from ArenaNet was the “Face the Nightmares” promo email. However, that comes from a different email address than the authentication emails come from. (Actually it comes from guildwars2@ncsoft.com vs. noreply@guildwars2.com for the authentication emails — so it doesn’t from the same domain name.)

Questions that Occur to Me:

• Clearly yahoo is having particularly bad problems, since we’re not getting emails at all. However, is the “spam” issue resolved for other email providers (gmain, etc.)?
• Is it affecting ALL yahoo email accounts? Or just some? (Keep in mind that people with fixed addresses won’t see the issue until their IP changes to an previously un-authenticated address.
• Did the mail cease appearing at the same time for all yahoo users? (I can nail the time down to within an hour due to my logins.)
• Is the “Not Spam” thing consistent for all yahoo users? (Again, I’m not whether or not this was the case for me.)
• Is the disposable address consistent for all affected yahoo users? Probably only a small percentage of yahoo users use this feature. We can be recognized by email addresses of the form “xxxx-yyyy@yahoo.com” — its the dash in the middle that is the indicator.

Comments on Yahoo:

• Having spent a week trying to get them to do something about this, I’m not encouraged. There’s about day lag time in their replies, and their replies seem to be form responses. There was never an indication that they actually read any of my mail — could have been bot only responses as far as i could tell.
• I’m considering dropping them because of their failure to deliver mail. But that would be a huge pain in the butt to do (and I’m not that thrilled over alternatives). So I would like to know where the problem actually is — on their end, or on ArenaNet’s end?

About the only positive thing here is that these folks must feel some guilt, else their defense mechanisms wouldn’t be going full blast.

For those who were too busy defending their own complete lack of consideration to actually read the OP’s post…

HE AND HIS FRIEND WERE NOT ABLE TO TAG MOBS BECAUSE HIGH LEVEL PLAYERS WERE KILLING THEM TOO FAST.

Yes, we know how sidekicking works. Yes, we know how tagging works. Yes, 80’s often do come into low level zones — but they do not ordinarily flood the zone to this degree.

Ideally, high level players knowing this would back off and be conciously helpful towards low level players. And… many are. I am. Back off dps a little. Let other folks tag mobs and get some experience. Or better yet, move on to a different zone.

But of course in this Age of Inconsideration, there are plenty of players who personify it.

Which basically means, that Arenanet needs to address this in some way in the future. Usually, there’s a benefit of having 80s in low level zones — they help populate it and keep it alive for the new players. But when they flood the zone like this, then they can ruin the experience for new players.

Sorry to hear that, Trogdor. GW2 is quite good in general about promoting cooperation, but this is obviously a case where they’re failing. Hopefully, they’ll do a better implementation in the future. (IMO, stronger sidekicking in starter zones might be best.)

Also a bit sad that many of the replies display such complete lack of empathy and inability to read. Again, this community is better than most, but obviously not perfect.

Anyway, welcome to your friend! Please let her know that that experience was much more the aberration than the norm.

My problem: “Disarm”

You’re told explicitly that the device “disarms” the mines, and using the wrong frequency causes them to blow up. So i try to knock Canach back into a still armed mines and try to blow up the mines by using the wrong frequency when Canach is in blast range but I’m just outside it. Hard enough to do — frustrating when I see him taking no damage.

Finally I figure out that in ArenaNet’s dictionary “disarm” == “convert to friendly”.

Halloween: A finders quest that was horribly designed and implemented. Followed by the jumping puzzle.

Lost Shores: Massive lag. Invisible (culled) mobs. Every quest bugged. Then fixed only to have more bugs appear. (Though I did like the final day event.) To this day, hearing the Sylvari in LA asking us to ‘please donate’ irritates me because it just reminds me of how bad the two events were.

I had pretty massive goodwill towards Anet prior to Halloween. And there’s still so much to love (e.g. the central garden is DR is just gorgeous and the environment is so rich). But events should be awesome; they should showcase whats really great about the game. Instead, they’ve been horribly broken. (Invisible enemies?? Every quest bugged?? What the heck??) So I’ve lost a lot of that good will.

Goodwill: Three years ago I got a Christmas card from Anet. I had only played Gw1 for a month or two about 8 months before then. I liked Gw1 but found it too limited — but I thought the card was awesome, and I went back and played Gw1 once in a while and often bought the outfits even though I wasn’t playing much since I wanted to send some money their way and encourage them to keep going towards Gw2.

I’ve loved Gw2 in many ways. But the events… Just bad. They’ve pretty much burned through the good will that that Christmas card from three years ago generated.

Now, I hope that Wintersday will be good, but like the OP, I’m not expecting it at this point. And that’s unfortunate.

PS: Stuff that I really hope not to see at Wintersday:

• Massive lag and/or invisible (culled) mobs due to stacking more players in an area then the server/client can handle.
• Bugged/stuck events. This really shouldn’t be happening at all, but it especially shouldn’t be happening in limited duration events.
• Poorly designed puzzles. Especially puzzles that seem to disregard basic factors – like that the game is multi-player, not single-player.
• Confusing events where players are having to go to outside source/guides just to understand what to do and how to do it.

Might have to talk to the inspector ellen kiel first – she’ll tell you to search stuff. Crowbar doesnt do anything until you get an interaction that says you need it.

Got zero damage from all of my attacks one one character (level 30 mage). Some folks said they were getting condition damage, so I swapped to my necro and seemed to do fine.

The 30 mage was logged in before the event and was not in overflow. I was wondering if there was something buggy with upleveling that kept her from fully upleveling. Or it could have been the condition damage only thing (though allowing only condition damage would be a bit much, and she should have been getting burning damage at least).

Lag was pretty bad in normal. Not as bad in overflow, but the event failed. :/

IMO this is a bad idea. It still means that the less-skilled player won’t be able to complete the puzzle, and its the not-completing that’s the source of frustration. Compare to existing dungeons where you ‘complete’ the dungeon in story mode, even though you haven’t completed it in the harder explorer mode.

If you only make it part way through the CT, then you’ve still failed, even if you get partial award for it.

@Yhumana about lack of info – absolutely agree. I think that in moving away from the quest model, Anet has gone a little too far in not giving enough information that the player needs for background. More info should be available in game, either from NPCS or from a World Event dialog like Rift has.

I’ve been playing WoW/MoP a lot recently, so I didn’t have time to really experience the whole event. But coming back, I had high expectations, only to find major parts which just didn’t seem to be tested/thought out well.

I’ve got a very long post(s) about problems with the Mad King Memories quest (see Feedback on Mad King Memories), but in short, it just didn’t seem to be well tested for how it worked in a group environment, nor did the scanner work well, nor was enough info given.

Clock Tower: The problems w that have been discussed at length. Again I was very surprised to find an event which just didn’t seem to take group interaction into account. (Large Norn/Charr blocking smaller characters — how do you not think about that ahead of time? And what happened to ‘being glad to see other players’??)

The decision to include such a challenging JP in a limited time event was also surprising/disappointing. Aside from the grouping issues, the JP itself sounds very cool — but making things like this a limited time event forces the player to play by the events schedule rather than their own.

Costumes: Cool, but I was annoyed that my human has this freaky smile frozen on her face while on the broom. Not a big deal, but again, it seems like something that should have been fixed in testing.

Costume Brawl: Very cool idea, but forum complaints covered issues w some costumes being OP. Yes, brawl is supposed to be fun, but they should still be balanced. Again, this seems like something that should have been caught in design or testing.

Having been playing MoP, I was looking forward to coming back to GW2 for the Halloween event and seeing the game with a fresh eye. I was disappointed enough that I went back to WoW for most of the rest of the event.

I’ve long had an very positive view of ANet and GW, and have been very happy with GW2 (really an awesome game is so many ways). But it’s lost a bit of its luster now. I sincerely hope that there won’t be similar issues for the next holiday event.

Its disappointing because the Halloween even has so much cool well done stuff (e.g. costumes look great, the wicked looking moon, etc).

Skipped it after reading about it on the forums. It was reason #2 for my skipping most of the event.

I was already very frustrated and disapoined w the implementation of Mad King Memories, and then I read about it Clock Tower the forums which seemed to suffer from one of the exact flaws that Memories did. Both CT and Memories implementations seemed to fail to test or think about what happens to such a design when theres a bunch of players working on it simultaneously.

Reaction: I had been away playing WoW/MoP for a month and was looking foward to coming back to GW2 and seeing halloween done right. Given my experience with Memories and what I was reading about Clock Tower, I (mostly) skipped the rest of the event and went back to WoW until halloween is over.

Difficulty: From what I hear the innate difficulty is challenging, which is absolutely fine IMO. The main problems are: 1) obstruction from other players, and 2) the limited time of the puzzle.

5% Success Statistic: Apparently Josh designed this thinking that only 5% of people could succeed. That’s wrong. For challenges like this (and many others), its not a binary can/can’t do, but rather, how long it takes people to do it. I.e. its more like: 1% can complete in an hour, 3% can complete in three hours, 10% in ten hours, etc.

And that’s why having it be a limited time puzzle was such a bad decision. Essentially, you set something up that people will want to complete and solve, but then set a time limit on them which makes it necessary that they do it NOW if they want to achieve it. For folks who complete it quickly this isn’t an issue, but it is an issue for the folks who are going to take longer.

While some folks will step away from a challenge that is beyond them, many other folks. given a completion time limit, will forge ahead – but after a while, they’ll quit having fun, and then quickly end up frustrated and angry.

And that is why it is a bad idea to put a challenging event into a holiday.

Other Scanner Issues:
1. Button 5 is confusing. It occupies a skill slot, but its not a skill. The tooltip’s double message is also confusing (tooltip shows both Cold and Hot messages, which looks like a chain skill, but isn’t. Just having one message showing at a time would have been less confusing.
2. Button 5 icons are not that different from each other and are confusing. While it was not a great idea to re-use a skill button slot for a non-skill, at least if the icon was more obvious (e.g. RED: Nothing to scan for. GREEN: Use scan!) then it would not have been as bad.
3. No hot/warm/cold scan info. Given that many of the areas to scan are large, the lack of hot/warm/cold feedback from the scanner is painful. Unless you’re looking for the clump of players, then trying to find the object by scanning the entire area is just time consuming and irritating. (Contrast scanner quest with Wow’s archaeology site investigation, which works very for a very similar goal.)
4. Unnecessary scan variations. Player’s are given four scan types — but usually essentially no clue as to which scan to use in a given area. An underwater ghost: Water because its underwater? Etherial because its a ghost? Or Corporeal because thats what you want to make it? Or the other one because you just don’t know and can’t tell? Moreover if you have to fight anything in the area, then you’ll have to drop the scanner (thus wasting any remaining charges). So the end best use is: activate the scanner, use all scans, then move on.
5. However: missing info — Does using one type of scan hide the results of another type of scan? We’re not told and it’s not at all obvious. If it does invalidate, then popping all 4 scans at once is not a good strategy.
5. Tedious inventory access. Every time you want to use the scanner, you have to open your inventory and re-use the scanner object. If you’re trying to scan a large area, you’ll have to do this a lot.

Scanner Fuel Issues: A lot of the scanner issues are tied to its using fuel — if it didn’t use fuel, then you wouldn’t have to keep reactivating it from inventory, and scanning large areas would be a lot easier.

Aside from that, fuel is going to be a particular problem for players who have come back just for the event (e.g. me!). Not only do you not have any corn, you also don’t know where to get it, nor do any npcs tell you where to get it. And if you’re not going and doing a bunch of other stuff, then you likely won’t have much.

Its certainly possible to argue that you have to play more of the event to get the fuel, but presumably part of any holiday event is to bring back players who havent been playing for a while. This quest would have been a lot friendlier and fun for returning players if it had not forced them to go out and farm the corns just to use the scanner. If the scanner had not had so many other issues, this would not have been as much of a problem. But still, skipping the fuel requirement would have been much better.

Lack of Info/False Scanner Readings: When going out to scan the ghost sites, the exact same sites contain other objects, which are not related to the ghost. I can see what the thinking was: ’We’ll clue the player to visit the site and the scan will reveal some objects. Some will be mysterious (leading to loot bags) while others will be suspicious (leading to the ghost).’ Problems:
1. The player isn’t told this, finds something clicks on it, but doesn’t get the ghost. Thats confusing.
2. Hot nodes that stay hot even after the object is gone. Essentially the scanner finds nodes, but some of the objects only appear once per day — which the player doesn’t know. And then the player spends time (and fuel) trying to make the object re-appear, when meanwhile the ghost is far away.
3. False hot spots. Looking for ghost in Old Lion’s arch, I first saw what turned out to be one of the ‘once a day’ spots (pylon). Off to the side of that hot spot was what seemed to be another hot spot (swimming around and watching the on/off scanner, it seemed that there was a clear, not too large hot spot centered around a broken aqueduct area. Though I scanned repeatedly there, I could not find anything.

Overall Reaction: Frustrated and disapointed. I have been away playing WoW/MoP for a month and was looking forward to coming back and enjoying Halloween GW2 style. Because of this and some other issues (Clock Tower, etc.) I chose to skip most of the rest of the event and go back to MoP for halloween.

Nominally this quest is exactly the sort of quest that I like, but there were so many design issues with it, that I ended up disliking it intensely.

Scavenger Follow Other Players Event: This has been called a ‘scavenger’ event, and nominally it looks like its supposed to be a ‘go uncover the hidden objects event’. But the problem (and this is especially true for a limited duration hunt) is that what you actually end up doing is finding the group of players who have found the quest item. I.e. I would be in an area looking for the ghost, but few players are near me. Then I see a group of players standing around at one point – which of course is where the ghost is. Most of those players have either done the ghost before, or have looked up the answer in a guide.

The thing that ticks me off about this design flaw is that’s so obvious. How would the designers not see that find-the-object quickly becomes find-the-other-players in an MMO?? Just thinking about it a bit, not to mention group testing would reveal it.

Invisible Ghost: The first ghost to find (Serene near the quest giver) is almost invisible even when standing quite close to her. This depends somewhat on camera direction, but even knowing exactly where she is, I still lost her. (See attachment, yes she’s in that picture, and no, nothing is wrong w my video card.)

There are several issues here: 1) Lighting is probably poor. Other ghosts can be hard to see, but the light in the area is particularly bad for seeing ghosts. 2) Obscured by players. While in other areas, the ghost tend to be revealed by the player clump, here there are many players running around doing random stuff, and thus blocking the ghost. 3) Obscure option setting: Not having the option to ‘Always show NPC names’ checked makes a big difference. If ‘show npc names’ is checked, then you’ll at least see the ghosts name plate — but of course not everyone has this checked – and obviously the visiblility of the ghost should not depend on an obscure options setting.

Misinformation/Poor Design on Starter Ghost: We’re told right off that ghost is hidden and will be revealed by an etheric scan. Problem 1) the ghost usually is NOT hidden because another player has already revealed her. 2) If the ghost is hidden, then scanner doesnt actually reveal her, but rather a suspicious object, which when clicked reveals her.

Result: new quest player gets the equipment, starts trying to figure out how to use it, triggers the ethereal scan, and… nothing changes (because the ghost is already active). Humans are good at visually perceiving changes to a scene, and the player has been told a change will happen, and the equipment itself indicates that something will be revealed. So, the player is expecting to see a change, which then doesn’t happen.

And again, the ghost is nearly invisible. I’ve stood near the ghost and watched people start using the scanner and then start running around looking for here, when she’s already active, and even within arms reach.

Part of the issue here is – it didnt seem tested with groups in mind: 1) Didn’t consider that large groups of players would obscure the ghost. 2) Didn’t notice that the ghost already being up contradicted the npc’s claim that the ghost is hidden. 3) Didn’t notice that having the ghost already up provided no feedback (no ‘flash’). 4) Didn’t consider that having the ghost already up provided no ‘scan reveals a suspicious object first’ teaching moment (I was on my third or fourth ghost before I determined that scan revealed a suspicious object, rather than the ghost itself.)

This really bothered me – how would ANet miss such obvious group related problems? Shouldn’t part of the design/testing procedure be to ask/test, “How can this go wrong when a bunch of people are doing this at the same time?” It just looks like that question wasn’t asked.

(continued below)

Please post your feedback on Mad King Memories quest here. I’ll add my comments in a separate post below, but I only did first act so I won’t be able to comment on later Acts.

I remember seeing this article linked to a while back. It really put the finger on one of the things that I really liked about GW2.
http://kotaku.com/5945347/guild-wars-2s-subtle-mind-control-makes-me-actually-like-other-people

A quote: We really wanted every player, when they see another player, to be happy to see that other player, [Isaiah] Cartwright said.

Is that what’s happening here? People glad to see other in their fourth hour of trying to complete this puzzle? People glad to see Norn and Charr? Norn and Charr finding other players glad to see them and giving them friendly hellos? Players glad to sit and wait after they’ve failed while other players proceed?

Funny/Satisfying/Slightly Cruel Answer: Botters from all over Tyria will be summoned to to LA and shredded gloriously, gorily by the Mad King. And then banned forever.

Funny/Satisfying/Slightly Cruel Answer #2: Players will get an observation mode and watch ANet developers are forced to run clockwork – as Asura along with a mob of Charr and Norn who do not fall and continually stay on top of the devs toons. Devs won’t be allowed to logoff or quit for at least 12 hour or until they complete the event.

Fearful Answer: There will be some massive PvP event which will be different and fairly cool, but ruined at the end because it will be won by people who find some loophole that ANet overlooked. (E.g. last open beta event — which was won by people who popped elixirs.)

Seriously: I’ve been off playing MoP for a month and was looking forward to coming back and playing fun GW2 for the holiday. But I’ve seen too many of the Clockwork Tower type problems. Were it not for the strong ‘be sure to be there’ message, I think I would skip the Sunday event. But I really am afraid that some inadequately tested/thought out problem will show itself.

Why am I seeing so many user was infracted for this post notes? E.g. on the OP’s post. This is the third critical OP that has been ‘infracted’ that I’ve seen since I started seeing it the other day. I can somewhat see it for the other two topics/OPs where the OP was perhaps being uncivil. But this one? Its looking like you get infracted for just being critical.

Or is it that you get ‘infracted’ if someone reports you?

WeLoveKanjimari.6725:

The kitten thing is beautiful and awesome, but there’s no way this was tested with 4 charr and 2 norns in the way.

In other words, freaking awesome event, awesome jumping puzzle, but I really, sincerely, severely doubt you guys bothered to test it with a group

This was exactly the problem that struck me about finding the initial ghost in LA — it just didn’t seem to have been tested in a group setting. Nor did someone think about what would happen in a group setting.

This isn’t just a problem with the event — its a problem with the testing approach.

LeEitge.3720:

in these situations, try to use the alt or ctrl key(cant remember which one is friendly npc’s) it wil show there names of nearby players and npc’s

That’s true and I tried that briefly, before going to options and turning npcs to always on. However, it shouldn’t be nececessary to use obscure interface settings or key actions to find the ghosts. This is a design problem.

NightShadow.1429:

The whole bog area seems to be “hot”…. the bog area is also knows to be an area that’s exceedingly close to the underworld (portals anyone?)… Geeeee… I wonder why this area is hot for spectral readings?

Not sure what your point is. Godslost Swamp which has many more portals to the underworld isnt hot at all. Neither are the Haunted Doors. If the logic is that ethereal locations should be hot, then these places should be. They’re not.

Gardavil.1762:

I guess I am not the only one scratching their head on this one.

Frankly I found the quest description confusing and unclear. Points for “mysterious” I will give it. Perhaps it was intended this way. If so then there will be players like myself that just won’t understand this quest and therefore never be able to finish it. (Fair enough, this is a mmo, no hand holding and I accept that. I love how Anet tries to challenge us more than other MMO Devs do.).

I have tried the scanner in LA as per the instruction in the mail I received when I got the quest, I have yet to see anything when I scan and the results have always been “mild” which is what they always are no matter where I scan… so I read that as a negative. I will try again today and see if I can scan when no one else has done so in that area for a few moments. Thanks for tip.

Quick tips:

• If the ghost is already up, then you dont need the scanner at all. However, the ghost is LA is nearly invisible in many circumstances. Also, if the ghost is already up, using the scanner has no effect at all.
  —* Listen for her emotes as people click on her. Typical young girl emotes (despite being a ghost).
  —* Go to Options: General and check “Show all NPC Names”. That will at least show her name plate.
  —* She is close to the questgiver and doesn’t move.
• If she is NOT active, then activate the scanner and use Ethereal scan. This will reveal a mysterious or suspicious object. Click on that to make her show up. She will stay active for a minute or two.
• You’ll need candy corn to activate the scanner. If you dont have any corn then the scanner doesn’t activate (but also unfotunately does NOT give you a message such as “Needs more candy corn.”
  —* Candy corn can be found in nodes. On the map they (confusingly) look like minining nodes, but the actual node looks like a big candy corn. They’re typically found in the countryside, and farm fields in particular.

• Button 5 on the scanner isn’t a skill only shows you if something might be nearby. Its not a skill, so clicking it does nothing.
  —* If its ‘Mild’ then there’s nothing nearby. Don’t scan.
  —* If its strong, then you can scan. Scanning reveals mysterious/suspicious objects nearby. But these arent particularly large and may be hard to see. And the scanning area is large, you may well see nothing. Clicking on these reveals a ghost, or something else which will drop Tot (trick or treat) bags.
  —* Mysterious objects that drop Tot bags only do so once per day… unless you’re in overflow. (Unless they fixed this.)
  —* Mysterious objects that reveal ghosts will appear as long as the ghost is not currently up.

That’s my quick (and possibly slightly erroneous) understanding of how these things work.

PS: The Ghost. Nameplate is only visible because I’ve moused over her. Its not apparent from this picture, but her model does become visible when she’s moused over.

Follow up. There was another topic on problems with this event. I would have posted there, but that was closed. I’ll just stick with my observations and some suggestions.

1. The ghosts are too transparent and/or lack enough ghost fog to make them visible. As is pretty obvious in the picture (look for the slightly whiter patch of ground over one players shoulder.)

2. Not enough feedback from using the scanner. Notably if the ghost is already active, then nothing at all happens when you use the scanner.

3. The use of four buttons on the scanner seems contrived. Since you can’t tell in advance which scan will be helpful, and since you may well be attacked, the safe strategy is to use all four scans at once. (E.g. should the bog be scanned for etherial, water, air or corporeal? There’s no obvious reason to use one over the other, and if you get attacked while searching (almost certain), then you’ll lose any extra charges you have if you go into combat. So why not just have one scan button? (However, I’ll note that that I wasn’t sure that this was the right approach though – since it seemed possible using one scan hid the results of the previous scan.)

4. Button 5 is confusing. It looks like a chain skill but it isn’t. since the tool tip gives you both ‘mild’ and ‘strong’ versions, which is accurate? And when should you use button 5? All the time? Answer none of the time: because its not actually a skill button – making this the ONLY instance of a non-skill skill button that I’ve seen in the game.

5. The scanner is used to reveal other things — though there is no in-game explanation of this. Even more confusingly, these other things can be in the very area where you’re looking for ghosts. E.g. for old lions arch, I found one hot spot (the pylon), which someone else triggered, then I triggered. And which then was still ‘hot’ even though it was now (apparently?) untriggerable. Just to the side of that hot spot was another hotspot (roughly under/around the broken aqueduct — I spent about twenty minutes in that spot trying to find the next ghost — only to find nothing.

(By the way, confusion in the opposite direction – a haunted door popped up on me while I was using the scanner, so I thought for a while that the scanner was also needed to find haunted doors.)

6. The ‘hot’ areas are very large, especially considering the other problems mentioned here. E.g. the whole bog area seems to be hot.

7. Part of the point of this seems to be a scavenger hunt. But the problem with a limited duration hunt like this is that you can’t really hide information when there are a bunch of other players running after the same thing — most of whom already know what the answer is. So instead of finding the objects yourself, you end up just going into the general area and then looking for where other players are clustered around. Which make it not a ‘find the hidden object’ event, but rather ‘find the cluster of players’ event.

So overall: a frustrating and not-fun quest.

I think that part of what is happening here is that ANet is still working out some of the ‘syntax’ for a quest like this.
1. If I had been given a quest like this in wow, I would have a quest item which I would drop onto my action bar. They sort of do that here, but its not very convenient, since you have to go back to your inventory every time you want to do a scan.
2. Also a wow version of the quest probably would have talked to me more about where various things are. But GW2’s approach is to talk to the player less (e.g. NOT to say ‘Go to Gendaraan Fields and knock on three haunted doors.’ While GW2’s approach has a lot of advantages, its stumbling a bit when it really need to communicate more information. E.g. I should somehow be given more information on the scanner (e.g. that i can find things other than the quest ghosts) and more information on doors (namely that they only appear in certain zones).

Other than that, some concrete suggestions:
1. Don’t make ghosts so darned invisible!
2. If you’re going to use quest items like this, find some way to make them easier to use. (I shouldn’t have to continually go to my inventory to activate it.)
3. Finder type devices like this really should give some clearer feedback that they’ve found something. If someone else has recently found the desired object, that shouldn’t prevent me from getting ‘found it’ feedback.
4. Don’t use a skill slot for a non-skill. (Unless you do that frequently enough that it becomes a normal game syntax.)
5. If the point of the quest is a scavenger hunt, then make the ‘found it’ location vary randomly between players. Otherwise it becomes a ‘follow the group’ quest rather than a ‘find the object’ quest.
6. If you need to get more information to the players (e.g. that haunted doors are in some zones, but not others), find some way to do it. Players should not have to ‘google it’ to know how to play the event.

I saw that too. A brief or occasional smile would be very cool. But being stuck this rictus grin is unpleasant.

Do you see the ghost in this picture? Because its right where it should be and you can see it if you know exactly where it is.

Its not a video card problem.

I’ll keep this short. There’s a ghost in this picture. Find it. Yes, its up.

Now, consider that you’ve been told roughly where this ghost is, and which scan to use to find it. You’ve used that scan, but nothing has happened. (No, the mysterious/suspicious object did NOT appear even when using the correct scan. Why? Apparently, the mysterious/suspicious object does not appear if the ghost is currently active.)

I’m making my own gear as I level. You do have to pay some attention to which mobs are dropping usable mats. And if you want to not out-level your own crafted gear, then obviously you shouldn’t try to power-level at the same time.

If you’re leveling two fine-mats-using crafting skills at the same time, you’ll have to focus a bit more time on gathering those mats.

Frankly the crafting in this game is incredible. Brilliant, very cool design, and fun to do.