Problems with the event

I don't know if it explains all the glitchiness, but the district you're in needs to exist before the event starting time, else no event will spawn. Some higher-number districts may be spawned after the fact.

Hah, yeh. I tried that twice before I decided to stop being greedy.

I thought it was funny that 4 presents got spawned behind a gate. Everybody tried to get them,but the guard wouldn't let them in

Few facts to be considered by some here...

1) GW/Anet is NOT required to do anything for a holiday, they do so at their own choosing.

2) The gifts/presents/loot spawing is IMAGINARY, why sweat it?

3) The idea is to have fun, not get as many presents as you can OR be as big a jerk as possible (although the latter is becoming the most popular new profession in game).

4) Memorize this and say it over and over..

"It's only a game, it's only a game"

Me, I'm done whining about the game, I'd rather chase my girlfriend. It's much more profitable

There was a collector in Shing Jea Monastery for a week after the event. You should have been able to at least get on a some point during that week.

The game lasts for around 15 minutes. If the avatars aren't there within, say, 2 minutes of the scheduled time, change districts. Why doesn't anyone ever think of this?

Yeah I saw that but I was on a vacation from June to the end of July, but hopfully they will have it again this year.

Let me explain what is happening, to the best of our knowledge. I called Mike O'Brien (ArenaNet cofounder and programmer). Mike called Mark Young (programmer who kindly offered to help), and the three of us had a conversation on the issue of some districts not having avatars, meaning that the hats and presents did not appear. What we learned is this: If you are in a district that spawns after the event has begun, the avatars will not appear. Mark established that by being in District 159, where there was an avatar, and then going to 160, 161, and 162, which spawned after the event had begun. Sure enough, 160+ did not have the event. That is confirmed by all I've been told by players.

So it appears that this non-appearance is happening only for districts created after the finales begin. It doesn't matter if you stay in a district for hours afterwards, what does matters is when the district was created, and it must be created prior to the event's start.

Mark further checked the code and learned that this is intended. With the offset timing -- every third hour in Lion's Arch, quarter-past in Kamadan -- the program was coded so that those districts that spawn for latecomers are not set to contain an event. This is to prevent zone jumping by people trying to get all items in all zones in a single event. This is a fair and reasonable prevention, I think, since the offset timing has been put in place. If you consider that some accommodation has been made for multiple zones in a single hour, and if you consider the Festival Hat NPC makes taking all characters to all events, then zone jumping really shouldn't be part of the deal, too.

The answer? Easy!

• Be in a district at least 10 minutes before the scheduled event start time. For the upcoming finales, this means:
  • Be in Lion's Arch by at least 10 minutes before the hours of 6 and 9 p.m. and Midnight PST (2:00, 5:00, 8:00 GMT.)
  • Be in Kamadan by at least 10 minutes before the starting time of 6:15 and 9:15 p.m. and 12:15 a.m. PST (2:15, 5:15, 8:15 GMT).
  • As many districts as are needed will be spawned, and all that are spawned before the start of the event will receive the full event.
    

If you follow that recommendation and find that the event still does not spawn, please share the event hour (and your timezone), the district number, and when you arrived in that district. According to all research, the suggestions above will assure that you attend a live event that is, really, live.

Thank you for your patience, and for understanding how this works and accepting that it's really not broken, really isn't a bug, and that missing the event is completely avoidable if you are there on time!

So in other words you now have to attand all events if you want all the hats. No more getting all hats in 1 setting. Sucks for people who dont have 12 hours+ to get all 4 hats.

im working to get my last 2 hats.been workin hard all day at getting them well....not really but the freezie helmet is the best helmet by far in my opinion.

What's hard about it? My friend went to LA at 9:00 PM, then to Kamadan at 9:15 PM and got both hats. She waited thru each event, and even got presents at both.

*shrug*

Thank you for providing some solid info, Gaile. I, for one, really appreciate that.

And kudos to the dev team for implementing assigned wintersday gifts. Good call.

i managed to get 3 hats in one sitting, couldnt get the last one because a guildmember who was with me and was party leader was slacking around and forgot to go district jumping

I got my four in the first 3 events, and well over 150 presents total. Then I went to bed and then went to work. Now I'm back for the last few... Is it really that hard to do this? I don't think so. Go to LA low district to wait. Check Kamadan top dist at that time BEFORE EVENT. Get your hat in LA. Now skip presents in that dist and go to Kamadan. the dist you looked up before the event. In a few mins or right as you enter the event should be starting there too. Get that hat and do your looting... after about 15 mis of looting surf around districts to get more presents. Some districts have less people looting then others. Thats how to maximize your loot at timeouts.

At the most you only need to wait 3 hours.

Get to the first event on the hour in LA, get your hat and head over to Kamadan for the :15 after event there. 3 hours later do the same thing for the other 2 hats.

If you are greedy and stand around in LA grabbing presents and miss the Kamadan event that is your own fault.

I got all 4 of my hats in this way. You can stand around in Kamadan grabbing AFKer's presents as well as your own to make up for those you missed in LA.

I never said anything about it being hard. I alrdy got all 4 hats for both my accounts as i have lots of time.

I was however saying it sucks for those that dont.

wow I just... wow. It's great that the good people of Anet understand that you 'only need to be there on time', and only need to have 12 hours to get all the hats...
Oh well... at least I managed to get 3 eventually thanks to my brother playing for me.

I got all 4 hats on 2 accounts within the first 3 events. I could have gottent hem on the second, but stood for the presents.

I think most people here have shown that the event wasnt flawed at all.

Gaile has stated that the glitch was intended to prevent people exploiting the event.

And people have also stated that it wasnt time consuming to get all four 4 hats. You just had to find two time slots. Then in the first one go to LA and then Kam in one run. Then in the second one go to LA and then Kam.

You could get two in the morning and then two at night.

Or just get all 4 on the night time if/when you had 3 hours to spare.

I think Anet did this event well this year. They obviously set Kam's event 15 minutes behind LA's event to let people jump from one to the other, to save them waiting hours on end.

I say Anet did a good job. I just laugh at all those who didnt seem to grasp the whole circle thing.

The number of people shouting;

"How do you get hats?",
"What time are they coming?",
"Why are you in the middle circle",
"Is the middle cirle grench?",
"Is the middle circle red?",
"What are the circles for?",
"Does this cost Shards".

And the people trying to con others, making them think you needed a shard to get a hat.

Anet you need to put an NPC or a huge sign in the cities next year so people can read what to do, BEFORE grench and Dywana arrive.

Plus a count-down would be nice, so people dont ask "how long now" every 2 seconds.

It saves alot of annoyance and people having to explain the same thing over and over again.

Here here, (only for me it's my wife)

I seriously doubt that. No matter how big an info board you put up, there's bound to be clueless people who are too lazy to read and too lazy to find out where to read it from.

My problem with the event was similar to those of us affected by the Taiwan earthquake (which disrupted internet connectivity to a large region), was that I couldn't even login to get a hat due heavy congestion... sob... ok ok... so it wasn't a problem.</rant>

He's true about that. I went from lions to Kamadan dis 23, a friend of mine to 35 and I saw the event and he didn't, but the dis 35 was created 10 min before the event started. I went from dis 23 to 35 and wait there more then 45 min and yes no event ever started there. Bug? but sure he's true about that. Id didn't hear problems from Lions Arch, but I heard loads of them from Kamadan.

My record per district per event time was 69 presents using the ; space trick. That was on the third event before many gifts were spawned up on the walls.

Later I used the Grenchies death hop trick to get presents on the wall and I got many more. Basically using the same death hop trick that happens in the Kurzick Elite mission to hop up to the switch lol funny how not many people did that one. I did notice on the last day a few people figured it out and was looting the free gifts as I was. Since there was so many of them up there per district. lol On the last event I was just hopping around districts cleaning up what was left while the grenchies were killing people. (Had to be done during this time, didn't work otherwise) Out of 15 or so districts in Kamadan I got like 200 gifts in that way last min. I'm sure others did the same. I wanted to sit on that little gem till it was over however... Cause if people saw you up there early, it would give away the secret... lol

Anyways... its not like it was that big a deal. I just stashed the stuff for fun anyway. Not like they are very useful for anything.

Found out several small mistakes too:

in the UW snowball fights, when you got hit by twice by snowballs, your health went down to 399 instead of 400

Mishcievous Snowman -> Mischievous Snowman

A lvl 5 Jack Frost could solo a lvl 15 Snowman...

Now that we have a signed confession of you exploiting for personal gain, I'd say Gaile needs to jump in here and ban your account.

Most of the people you saw doing that, would have been game devs collecting the presents to redistribute to those who couldnt make it that night due to earthquakes in east asia.

And just generally collecting them.

Gaile stated in another thread that a screen cap of someone standing on one of the walls was a game dev who was doing just that.

As to whether Ingram actually did that himself I dont know.

Well I don't see how that could be a bannable offense, If they spawn things they expect people to get them one way or another. But if they do oh well. It will not be permanent. I have zero warnings on my account and have been a very loyal player and often communicate with the staff for things that actually ARE against the RoC.

If anything happens at all it will be a warning, and I even find that highly unlikely. I was not cheating anyone by using ; space, that is a 100% legitimate tactic the same as c space is for attacking, and the Death hop bug has been reported many times and always been told it is a known issue that is not important at this time.

Examples of this are the Elite mission Wall hop using res, and the Hero return or rebirth past portal hop to get more explorable area... Lets see, there are others reported. But you get the idea... Point is I'm not concerned. If there would have been a problem, I would have been contacted already, and have not, and will not be. I can 100% guarantee next year this will not be an issue as they will change the spawn routine to prevent the problem to begin with. so the point is moot.