Signet of Might - Ridiculous Annihilation

To Gaile: This blatently shows the flaws in the Alpha testing program that PvP'ers have been bashing ever since before the last preview. You expect bugs in beta events, but stuff like this, or Dervish Way back in the other ones....Are things that SHOULD have been flattened out before these were even added to the preview. I wont go into here, but Alpha testers do talk about how it is, and mostly it is under testing, no reason for them to test, and PvE things like monster placement and stuff get more attention than skills and builds (this is them talking).

One thing, noone knows why Arenanet is so "Lock and throw away the key" about their testing. As we are told now by Alpha testers (Anet wont talk, so we gotta go on what they say) then its by invitation by other alpha testers only to alpha test. There are TONS of people that are better than these people, would be more active, and WANT to do stuff like this. I myself would probably like testing all the time i'm on guild wars...Just saying there are people that would do stuff.

You EXPECT bugs, its in beta, but this is like...DUHHHHH why didnt someone notice this (even more so with the Dervish thing last preview)...Its almost like you coded it and threw it right into the game..If you let the public as a whole find big things like this, you get threads like this one on Fan Sites, which is bad publicity for yall.

Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Kills maid with SoM yielded no faction, so the only faction a team using the exploit would gain is the faction received upon winning the match.

The MAJORITY of faction gained form a GvG is from winning it.

500faction (+100 if its flawless) for a few minutes work if you win with this.

Or the ~200-300 faction you'd gain from 20 minutes worth of taking out members and NPCs.

His point being, they got more faction than usual. You are right it isnt enough to worry about, but you made it sound like winning a gvg gave you almost nothing.

Yes, I 'm well aware of the faction gain in gvg. However, you can make more faction by simply running thump way as a lower-ranked guild than with this. And trying to faction farm in HA/TA/RA was pointless with this build. Not to mention that there is no way the exploiters "probably have managed to unlock every new skill in the game in just a few short hours."

The point is, don't post sensationalist bullshit when it's clearly nowhere near the truth.No, not really.

Hmm, so let's take a look at the EULA for a second. Oh, in the "Rules of Conduct" section, under 18, it states

Now, I don't know about you, but the fact that a skill can kill the GL in 10 seconds doesn't really sound like the way the skill was meant to be used. So therefore, these "offending" guilds have used an exploit to their advantage which in turn is breaking the EULA, which brings the "possible" punishment of banning accounts. Now I say "possible" because with the widespread usage of this exploit and the limited effect it will have (if these guilds are only gaining rank because of an exploit, then things will settle down now that it has been fixed) makes banning everyone who used it practically impossible.

And yes, I do agree that life is not fair sometimes, but you can't say that these people who willfully and knowingly used an exploit, not once but numerous times, that is against the EULA should get off scot-free with no punishment what-so-ever. What kind of example does this set for the future? "Oh, if I exploit this bug that managed to slip through alpha testing (and sometimes these things do happen, since when is everyone perfect?), even though I am violating a document that I signed, who cares because Anet doesn't do anything?"

I think the real world has a response to this to: it's called if you violate the law you face criminal charges, in this case the law is Anet's EULA and the criminal charges have been set as the possibility of an account being banned.

They implemented the skill into the game, this so called "exploit" should be laid at Anets feet and not the guilds.

Also I fail to understand why it's so bad for the GL to go down quick, wouldn't this encourage more creative play by teams if they know the GL is under "true" threat? lets face it no one worries about the GL because he is nigh on impossible to solo correct? now that he is solo able this will show us who is truly a worthwhile team.

Perhaps this is too much of a challenge for the average GvG player?

Are you kidding? So GvG should turn into a "who can use the skill that instantly kills the GL first?" This is broken beyond belief, and makes a mockery of the tactics and depth you see in high level GvG.

Bans for the bigtime offenders would be easy to process, but beyond the major offenses, bans should be handled very carefully. A better solution would have been to lock the ladder during the weekend, but I read somewhere that that would lower the creativity to find these builds: this skill could have made it into final release without the ladder being open. Scary thought.

Counter FTW?? Find a counter skill that renders the build useless, job done.

omg they're testing the skill, so there's bound to be some bugs in it

people make mistakes, I'm sure anet will fix this and we can go on with our lives

its about impossible for testers to use every skill in every possible situation, thats why they have us, to check things for them

chill out

This is on the first page.

You really think something like this is good for GvG on a whole? Make it so each GvG build HAS to have at least 4 primary or secondary Rits for the purpose of killing the lord with a blatant bug? And the counter would be what? you would have to similarly bring 4+ interrupters to counter people's rits, and there goes any semblance of fun in GvG.

Making the GL a "prime" target would be good for GvG.

Gaile: About the ladder locks, I have always found that having a preview event during unlocked ladder was more of a discouragement towards GvG'ing than not. Quite simply my guild has decided both of these past preview events to not GvG during the event due to the high likelyhood of something extremely overpowered that we never expected coming along and tanking our rating. Thus far both times we've been proven right and are happy that we didn't spend time and energy GvG'ing.

The way I see it if the ladder was locked I would GvG impunitively and play with the new skills while at it. But for as long as they remain during unlocked ladder I don't foresee myself participating, at least in GvG.

Wow, Flame more >_>

Nothing to do with my post, see below

Nothing to do with my post, see below

Better not to mention it, because I agreed with you on that point, And it'd look weird if you brought it up again in defense against my post.


---------See Below Point------

My post said that yes his claimed about "so much faction to unlock stuff" was not true, but you implied that this exploit gave them no more faction than normal gyging, which was also untrue. Any outside use of this Signet, or other ways of Gvging have nothing to do with this point.

You're premise rests on the notion that during ladder locks the number of GvG players drops enough to where bugs won't be revealed. I think that it's important to note that:

1. The hard core GvG people and HA players (the bug showed up there, too) are always chomping at the bit to be the first ones to discover the capabilities and best uses of new skills. Any little edge they can get with the "new toys" will be diligently sought by every guild that wants to climb that ladder.

2. A locked ladder gives guilds a free pass to try out new skills & strategies. If they work, YEAH! If they don't - no harm, no foul. All the while, when bugs show up, if the exploiting guild wins with it, they may not report it, but the team on the losing end sure will!

Because of these 2 things, I can't see that A-Net would not have enough players participating in GvG during ladder locks and HA to give the new skills a good shakedown.

There's a lot of sense here, but also there's a strong counter. I've said on at least three different occasions "don't GVG or if you are going to use a smurf because the meta is (insert overpowered at the moment)". A lot of people like to GVG just because hey you've got a fun game. I'm in an Australian guild and we've got an American who wakes up at 3am for that reason alone, despite realistically accepting that we're not going to make the top 50, but that doesn't matter, people like GVG and would do it ladder lock or no.

Additionally active season means you don't want to try new builds too much. I'm sure the first IWAY was laughed at (no monks, how you going to do anything with that???) but it's a reasonable build, it just had to be tried. Good luck getting someone to try that in an open ladder though (I know I'm crossing HA and GVG here but the point still stands).

I also would GVG as much as I could simply because I want to unlock as much as possible - I don't think it's as big a problem as is made out to be, maybe put rewards at the end of a preview ladder anyway, top 50 = UAX or something to shoot at that's relatively harmless (realistically ~800 people getting UAX isn't going to hurt anyone).

EDIT: There's your answer, double faction gain or half faction costs on all new skills - people will get access to the skills more easily so they can find whats broken and there's an incentive to play. I'd play in a locked ladder just for the unlocking potential.

option number one, because it isnt a tournament season, the hours of the abuse were short so the ladder isnt ruined, other skills being broken before were dealt in this fasion ( dust trap and vengence are two that come directly to mind).

a ladder lock in a preview event would probably be a good idea if you slightly increased faction for gvg to make up for the drop in interest. A locked ladder also would make me people willing to experiment with the new skills as running a possibly weak and new build wouldnt create a drop in rating.

No pvp experience ftw? You do realize that most of these teams brought 7 or 8 copies of the skill, right? So, what, you need to bring 7 or 8 copies of Ignorance, Signet of Humility or Rust just to avoid being instantly beaten? That's a pretty ridiculous notion...

The problem wasn't that counters didn't exist, it's that the skill was so broken that it wasn't able to realistically be countered. Not really, it would take all the fun and tactics out of it. If you want to pvp where you can just run in and kill stuff without regard to team movement or strategy go play RA. I'm pretty sure a flame is a personal attack, so I'm not really sure what you're on about.

The skill did not work as intended. The skill description read:

Signet of Might
Elite Signet. Target allied summoned creature's attacks deal 10...26 more damage. After 10 seconds, that creature is destroyed.

Seeing as the spirit dieing under this effect killed the enemy guild lord if it was in range of the spirit, not only was it practically uncounterable, it was not it's intended effect in any way whatsoever. Thus, it was a bug. Unless you are mentally retarded, you would realise it was a bug. The rules state exploiting abug is a violation of the rules. Guess what? They were exploiting it.

I disagree with everyone who says that ANet should have found every possible ladder effecting bug/glitch/exploit before the BWE. If that were the case then it could just as easily be said that they simply shouldn't have any BWE's.

ANet has ALWAYS held the position that they will use BETA TESTS as BETA TESTS and not as final products. Just because open betas are just publicity stunts for other developers, does not mean that ANet should be forced to treat them as such.

For these supposed PvP'ers that supposedly complain so much about the alpha testers to have their way there simply would not be any beta tests. Instead we would have nothing but final products. I am willing to risk the possibility of losing my place on the ladder in order to have a real beta test. In my experience it's not the real championship contenders that complain but the people that think they are contenders and aren't. (For the record, I do not claim to be a contender myself and it may be that's why I'm willing to risk losing my place of a hundred or so when those in the teens aren't.)

As far as having a ladder reset or locking the ladder goes I am all for it. and if I remeber correctly, and I may be wrong, the ladder was either reset entirely or rolled-back shortly before or after Factions went live.

I'd like to point out, that the moment the teams using the glitch reached rank 100 or below, they were getting between 750 and 1k faction per win, with each win taking a little over a minute, lets do the math.

Start GvG and wait for opponent - lets say 1 minute
Win GvG - approx 1 minute

at that rate, these guilds were pulling in between 20k and 30k faction PER HOUR, that's about 20x the normal rate. Whether or not the skill says it does action X and you determine that it's action Y, if you don't report it and you do take advantage of it, then it's an exploit, plain and simple. Don't like it, or any potential consequences that are upto ANet, then don't do it, IT'S THAT SIMPLE.

This is what happens if a PvE-player raises his hands on a GvG-issue. Ouch. Nothing more to say here.

I <3 you, but you are very much incorrect with many of the things you have said in this thread.

So I haven't done any math on the subject, but after a minute he can take about 50-70 damage a second or so. I realize that Signet of Might isn't damage and life steal (i.e. grenth's balance) won't work on the GL, but the fact that one skill can totally and completely destroy the guild lord is redicouls (sp?). And no one really wories about one person because the GL regens 10 health a second and has 1920 Health.

Wow. Try to avoid commenting on gvg in future.

Admin's Bane. Please stop posting. You clearly have no idea how SoM was screwing GvG and the ladder up or you're one of the exploiters trying to justify this.

Not to mention all the champion points they must have got.

Champion points were already devalued, though. D/Mos? Thumpway?

So far I must admit that your alpha testers really had a few serious screw ups as of late. Dervish one is the most evident, as most of my game fellas noticed the uberness of mysticism in first 10min of playtime. It was just pure and ugly incompetence.

Having some experiences with IT testing myself, I start to wonder if you even have any compiled test cases for your alpha testers or do you just throw them at the game without any guidelines.

You can't blame _all_ the alpha testers, the stories of things being mentioned and some retardfaces completely shooting down a very valid point are plentiful. From what I've been told some people in alpha are a complete waste of life. It's as if they are all from GWO or something

It's already very clear their Alpha for Nightfall sucks. Just from looking at how the two beta events have gone compared to how the Factions events went... That's without people who are in the Alpha saying that it's mostly full of PvErs who don't know the first thing about PvP or game balance...

How the heck are you supposed to counter a skill that you don't know what is capable of and does things which are not described anywhere, so if you haven't experienced it on your back you can't be prepared for it.

Unfortunately that won't change either. It's hard enough getting your guild together to play GvG. Then, they want you to play on the alpha ladder to test or actually play on the live ladder. You know what every competitive player is going to choose there don't you, particularly if theres a championship live.

I know I am beating a dead horse here, but hell, I got to this thread late.

Of course you do

Analogy... A person is attending a cash register or is using an ATM. The key for the # 9 is expected to do nothing more than register the # 9 on the display, yet every time the key is pressed, the machine spits out a fresh $100 bill and the person keeps it... infact, continues to press it like a little maniac.

Did the person make the machine? No
Did the person use the OBVIOUS error to their advantage? Yes.

Your arguement holds no logic, other than to agrue that someone who is aware of an error should not be held accountable of their actions in exploiting said error. Steal much? It's the workplace's fault for making it possible to steal in the first place afterall... personal morals or ethics be damned. Valid life choice... still makes said person scum.

Why not just get rid of classes altogether and just make BLUE players and RED players? Blue players only skill would be Win xEnergy yCast zRecharge while the RED players would have the skill Boredom x Energy y Cast zRecharge Skill Description: Temporarily hold of losing another boring match.

I argue that, holding with the tradition of just about every nation on earth, rules violators should be punished... Shocking I know!

And yes, life is fair. It's a chaotic jumble that favors cheaters, yes. But as the universe ages, more ordered structures arise, even though people are blinded by entropy. Was that overly philosophical? Yes. But societies have long countered cheaters with punishment, some more harsh than others... and that punishment always comes.

Way to bring credibility to your arguement. Your <HARDCORE EXTREME REAL WORLD JOB OMG YES SO HARDCORE!!! YOU'RE SO LEET!!!> taught you to close with an insult to the few likely to fall into that catagory? Effective debating skills, valuable in the workplace. Mummy and Daddy must be so proud of you! Being gone from home, what? 5 years? Such wisdom learned in that short of time. I suspect that you are going to be the next Budha.

Yes, I know that it's hipocritical to close that way. Only... I'm not debating... just beating a dead horse.

Since you all can't see to read, or just didn't bother with my previous post, there is a simple compromise between ANet and the community conceptually over this issue.

A way to mitigate the gains exploit abusers reap during the times bug's exist around and after preview event's and new expansion releases is simple. I personally vote for HALVING or possibly QUARTERING (or any fraction people think works and is effective) the gains from ladder play during, as I previously stated, these 'abuse vulnerable' periods. Even if guild's were to gain 1 point per match on the ladder, they would still play in the droves (from my experience the guilds that populate the ladder at all, are bloodhounds for the gains, however small they would be), and any and all advantages they would gain from the abuse would basically be divided per whatever ratio you wanted to divide their point per match winnings from.

Its a simple solution. Yeah, I agree, its not perfect. But it would allow a sort of 'buffer' during these times where security due to lack of testing is a low point, and once the bugs had been identified, it could be returned to normal, and the small gain's from exploit abusal would be washed away in the tide of normal winning accumulation.

This concept basically saves the ladder as much as theoretically possible while still preserving GvG interest from the participating guilds (exploit abusers too, they are tester's like anyone else) allowing for the identification of bug's and the continuation of ladder play.



- Tremere

Are you seriously complaining? Are you actually mad that no one has commented on your idea in around 60 posts? You sure do think highly of yourself and obviously assume that since you've been ignored that everyone must not have read the briliant ray of light that will clear this whole situation up and bring life back to jaded gamers everywhere...

Seriously...

I hope that's not what you are actually doing. You're opening line seems to hint at that.

Honestly, Khift, Kook~NBK~, and dgb (posts 92, 94, and 95) did a damn fine job of explaining what is going on out there in a manner that is well thought out and is easy to read. Repost your idea if you want, because it's not half bad, but don't whine that we are not paying attention to you.

Lmao...

Seems 'someone' didn't get enough fibre in their breakfast cereal this morning

And yeah, it is a good idea, thank you.

The guilds that exploited this are going to get knocked back down the ladder because they don't deserve their rating. It's as simple as that. There's still plenty of time left in the season, and the wins garnered from a few hours of exploits are inconsequential compared to the rest of the season. IMO, what Spearmen did during the last preview event doesn't even come close to [sTar] farming rating with this exploit, but that's just me...

Yeah, I understand that like many of us here, but that's like basically saying "Ah well, since the affect-effects of such abuse aren't going to have long-term ramnifications, its not really 'wrong-enough' to do anything about, or really put the effort into doing anything about... so, why bother?" ...which to me, seems to be backhanded endorsement of such behaviour. Or maybe i'm just in a law-enforcement wet-dream, I dunno...

This bug is bad. Other stuffs were clearly unbalanced. But honestly, the Devs are trying this time to implement 'usefull' skills as opposed to a bunch of useless skills that came out with factions. The only way to test this is to run it through a beta that includes ton of players. However, I agree that the ladder should be frozen during such.

Something broke along the way, the kids had fun with an exploit. Now, as with any kids caught with their hand in the cookie jar, it's time to give a well-deserved punishment to the guilty.

people who use bug exploit just deserve a bann : there's no excuse about signet of might, people who used it on pvp knows that it was one exploit bug and done it by knowledge and not by ignorance. Stop to blame anet, they don't obliged people to use signet of might like this, blame people who can't resist to use bug exploit instead of just reporting it.

Sorry but that sounds ridiculous.

What about people who just stop playing guilds battles during those events just because of this new overpowered professions/skills. Don't you think people will just try more if it has no effect on ladder? If people is getting bored of locked ladder it's not a shortly locked week-end period that is doing it. People is tired of long period under locked ladder (without expecting any unlocking date sometimes). I really believe that most players when they are in a short beta week-end, will understand that there are some adjustments, and they really want to try some new professions/skills under a trying situation, that means: a locked ladder.

Where's the pleasure of playing a guild battle if you know you're going to face some overpowered or bugged skills? When I lose, I'm not going that mad, but if I'm losing against a player who is cheating or simply exploiting the advantages of the new abilities, it's simply disgusting, and I won't play hours anymore...

So tell us: what's the worse? Locking a ladder for 3 days, and giving players a ladder that has some sense, or simply let them fleeing away because of this non-sense.

Sorry for my english, but it's been a while since I haven't practised english.