May 24th Update has arrived

Man, did everyone here just miss all the complaints from people saying that being able to unlock skins from previous PvE only things would screw over the economy etc etc. etc and that they wouldn't be satisfied unless it was very difficult to unlock etc etc etc? Where was your voice then? It was thread after thread after thread till they moved on to the next complaint of the day.

I don't like the fact that it's not an account wide unlock either but geez, it's very little wonder why Anet has to PAY someone to read the forums with all the complaints that go back and forth. :P

maybe it gives you 10k faction, since the normal one give's 1k faction. im not sure though.

Golden Flames give you 3k faction. Enough for an elite skill. No more. No less. Enjoy.

Maybe you don't understand the system... I don't understand why you think Anet is deleting your reward items.

Yes it was a farm, and not an exploit. So I guess letting creatures do what they are supposed to do now is an exploit?


It would have been a perfect update, but it makes you wonder whats next. No exp or drops from stuff killing themselves of traps and that.

stop flaming

I was gonna let Gaile's semantics spin go, but I gotta agree, it's NOT an exploit, it was the result of a creative and insightful player who analyzed a situation, came up with a result, and applied it, all within fair gameplay.

Gaile: stop blaming the players. Sure it needed a nerf (though not as much as some FIXES to this game are needed)

Bunny's rant.

I am very disappointed in the Tournament Rewards system. It's up there with the HoH double chest drop weekend (simple maths tell us how many ppl can benefit from that and most of the community DIDNT).

Im in a guild that gvg's 2-3 times a day 5 days a week. We've competed in a tournament and faired pretty ok, enough to get me 6 tourney points.

Now to unlock the most basic of basics, reqs 10 points. And as I understand, this isnt even an account unlock.
Then you spend 10 points to unlock each piece of armor, 50 points to unlock a set.

Now all the leetist die hard never stop gvging people should stop reading and go away because you dont represent the bulk of the GW community.

The average GW player, casual gamer if you will (which GW claims to cater to, along with player skill not eliteness forward slash rank) wont actually get to benefit from these rewards as for one reason or another they wont be getting any or many tourney points.

Not all guilds can gvg in a tourney as there are many reasons
1: timezone conflict
2: work/study
3: lack of guild skill to win or compete in top 10-50
4: lack of members in guild
5: lack of members online
6: members dont like gvg

Sure you can do hero battles, but please, hero battles is mainly R6-9+ players on their sin with an sf ele and 2 monks. Like, total skill involved there.

So the bulk of GW players wont see any benefit from tourney rewards. I would have much rather seen tourney rewards cheaper or reserved for very high end unlocks. EG, rare skins or elite/15k armors. And Balth faction used for standard armor, basic/common skins.

Even members of the pvp community get boned with this current update, ab'ers, ra'ers, ta'ers all pvp and would love some skins to bling themselves up but even if they are highly skilled and have a plethora of balth and titles its useless unless they run along and find an active, competent gvg guild and then play gvg as much as they do ha, ab, ta etc.

I would like to see tourney points be used to unlock only high end rare skinned items, but balth faction to be used to unlock common armor/items. So more people can enjoy the fruits of their labor. And yes it is hard to gvg, my guild has lost about 2/3'rds of it's members over the past 10 months because they've found GW doesn't deliver in comparison to other games.

On a side note, thank you anet for what you've done with the armor, it's greatly appreciated that insignias have now been adopted globally. And the new help feature is also welcomed. I really like how what used to be knights armor is now called templar armor, the male 15k knights/templar armor does indeed remind me of the knights templar if dyed red :P


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Hmm this update is working wonders at GoK. I have already got 4 Radiant Insignias in 2 runs. Now I can upgrade my monk heroes.

Great update...this means i dont have to get all my chars to NF to buy inscribable armor

Entering an elite mission 30 times an hour is definitely an exploit. glad this was fixed!

you can still enter elite missions 30 times an hour. You hit 'enter mission' button. Is hitting the 'enter mission' button an exploit?

Nebulaz brings up a great point: there are some great armor skins in Factions that people such as myself held off on buying because they weren't inscribable.

I like the 'Help' option, saves me from minimizing and navigating to the required article myself, not that it's difficult but mainly because I'm a lazy git!

One thing I'd like to see is the implementation of an in-game browser, much like the kneeboard in Microsofts Flight Simulator, so the game doesn't need to be minimised to view the Wiki articles. Many time I've been flying around in Flight Sim and surfing the web via the kneeboard and thought "how come more games don't do this?"!

Hmm, where is this GoK?

Great update Anet! I especially like how Prophecies and Factions armor now have insignia slots! Now to buy 15k Knights!

There are over 20 sword skins in the basic weapon rewards, some of them very nice looking. That's just 10 Tournament points.

You can win that blindfolded. You don't even have to place in the top 8, just win 10 matches across any tournaments in HvH. Less in GvG.

Honestly, you can grab reward points in 1v1 easily if you can stomach the crappy meta. I can't stomach the crappy meta (I resign out of matches that bore me regardless of wether or not I can win), and yet still snagged 20 reward points in a single tournament.

And hopefully, that meta will improve soon. --hopefully-- -----HOPEFULLY-----

Never heard of farming I take it.

It was a "farm" and it was a "run." It was pretty much not an exploit, and yet it was nerfed.

Amazing how two people see things differently depending on how it affects them. According to that kind of logic, zoning, killing a few things, then re-zoning is an exploit, regardless of where you do it. Strange, and here I thought ANet wasn't against FARMING?

What's most amusing is that the requirements to get to the Elite Mission areas are generally outside the purview of bots, due to the requirements of Passage Scrolls or a town owning guild ferrying people there, and I hardly can see large guilds ferrying bots to elite areas lol.

Instead of arbitrarily removing the ability to gain loot or expereince completely, why not just change the skills used? Obviously, this would still alter the ability for "suicide running" but at least the solution would not seem as ham fisted and out of touch with reality as this one.

Ah well, just another change that further drives me to the edge of leaving. Its funny, but at this point, the ONLY thing that keeps me playing is my guildmates, the game itself has ceased to be very enjoyable on its own merit some time ago. Without the social interaction (available in ANY MMO by the way) of guilds, this game would not exist. I can't really call general public interaction fun, its like trying to talk to a friend at the other end of a nightclub in hushed tones while there's music blasting "WTS... WTS... WTS...YEAH!" and people screaming and shouting.

Something that would have been greatly alleviated by a fully functioning auction house, a minor and/or inconsequential issue according to ANet's priority list, never mind the fact that the general playerbase has been requesting it since, oh, the game's inception.

I don't see why they would label it an exploit, but it obviously was an oversight on anet's part. I highly doubt they intended to have level 24 or w/e level the those things were, suicide and just drop gold items and loads of experience into your lap.

I would really like to see this update reverted back untill the devs can fix all the glitches and leave account armours alone.I would only change those that the crafters make up.There are several armour glitches in this update as well the template code.

Anyone have a screenshot of the pvp skin unlock rewards =D

Anet doesnt have anything against farming.

What they are against are ridiculously easy farming runs with huge rewards for little effort.

The Urgoz spirit farm was a farm. It was just WAY WAY WAY WAY too good.

If you were doing it, and didnt think to yourself "Oh man, i better hurry up before this gets nerfed", then you were naive and delusional.

It was gonna get nerfed. How long have you played this game? Whats wrong with you?

removing +1 energy from collector masks and scalps is crap.

I've been playing this game for two years, are you telling me that now I have to replace my masks from 18 months ago? What do I do with all of my black dyed masks and helmets? Buy helmets and more black dye?

screw this.

edit: The more I think about this the more cranky I get. It took a lot of time to get all of those collector trophies for helmets, I generally don't buy them, and now I'm being punished for using collector helmets.

My mesmer alone has probably 4 collector masks that are dyed black (she's one of my first characters). Asking me to craft 4 masks and then go buy a bunch of dyes to try and match the old black color... That is ridiculous.

QFT. I wouldn't call it an exploit per se, but it was definitely stupidly easy for inordinate rewards.

She was thanking those who said it was a good update, why would she bother thanking those people who complained.

I like the update but i would prefer if the items you unlocked remained unlocked if you delete the pvp character

That's the point. I'd like to play enough HB to get skins I like and then leave it behind for real PvP. That won't work as long as I have only one PvP slot though. It doesn't matter how easy it is if I have to keep doing it for every time I want to reroll. I simply won't bother at all.

P.S. yeah everything else about the update (minus template glitch) is nice, including the Urgoz nerf. But this was the part I was most looking forward to, so its rather disappointing.

agree with everything you said. But the operative phrase is that this was NOT an exploit. That's an accusational term thrown out by Gaile that alienates farmers.

I also agree that anyone who thought this would be around would be disappointed (I posted "I got while the getting was good" in the farming forum thread about this that sums that up); however, some delusional yet altruistic part of me thought, Anet would surely work on pre-existing broken aspects of this game before making the trigger finger nerf, right? Wrong.

edit: Lyra, I see you edited OUT the portion where you said it was farming, and a farm run, but not an exploit. hm......

Probably that was not their intention, but again, their ham fisted tactics put them into these spots, then they get Gaile to try and sugar coat it all.

Had Hard Mode not simply been a global ability boost to ALL monsters, upping their health a bit, and introducing grind titles (very similar to Nightmare and Hell difficulty), then it would not have been so bad. Heck, a much more elegant solution would have been to manually code those monsters to not level above 20, so their drops would be crap IF they dropped at all.

Your first two sentences DIRECTLY contradict each other. Nice. If your first point is correct, then your third point is irrelevant.

Despite your and PR person's assurances to the contrary, EVERY well known and profitable farming spot is nerfed to hell usually pretty quickly, although strangely, mission farming, such as that done by BOTS is left alone...

Which means, you're naive and delusional if you don't regard EVERY farming spot as a potential target for nerfing, given ANet's track record, despite their placating tone.

Your fifth and final point directly contradicts your first point, and kind of makes your whole post look like nothing more than flamebait. If ANet was not against farming, farming spots REGARDLESS of quality would not be nerfed. If they're against BOT farming, but not player farming, then well known botting areas would be nerfed, not places that are almost guaranteed to be inaccessible to bots, such as the Elite missions.

However, IF ANet is against farming, then all their "updates" and "improvements" gel perfectly well. So either they're against farming and lie to the players, or they're completely incompetent when it comes to updating the game.

I'm not entirely sure which of those options is better, competent liars or incompetent George Lucas types.

But, considering the fact that they've announced GW2, unlike most game companies which keep sequels under wraps to keep interest alive, my gut tells me they really could care less about the state of the game, and are hedging their bets on the sequel, and to a lesser extent, the expansion, which at this point, I will be buying neither of.

Lets see, I could do 1 run on my monk in 30 secs, so about 100 ish times on hour think of th loading and stuff...

Funny sure seems like to me they have alot against farming. yes cause getting an average of 300 gold for 1-2 mins is SO HUGE a reward. And at 30 runs an hour thats about 9k for an hour unless you get real lucky. I like how people do 2-3 runs and get 4 golds and think OMG the golds drop like rain it must be to good it needs a nerf.

Actually no I didnt think Anet was gonna nerf it. Why for 1 its not an exploit. As I said whats next traps no longer give exp or drops when you kill something.

I just want to add some more observations about the 'bugged' Build Template sending (via the 'Send To Chat' button):

Sometimes it works. More often than not it doesn't. "Doesn't work" means it just shows up as text without a clickable link. Sometimes it will work for some people in my guild, but the same sent-to-chat build template won't work for other people. My guildie had it work for him once, but then after changing zones the same sent-to-chat build template stopped working (in the chat).

Hopefully this helps.


BTW, I love the update. Just like when more storage was announced, when we learned old armors were going to be made compatible with insignias it seemed a lot farther off then it actually was. I thought for sure it was going to be held off for GW:EN. A nice surprise to see it come so soon. Thanks.

I don't mind the nerf to the Urgoz run. You weren't even 'farming' the creatures. The spirits were making them suicidal. Why should players get credit (ie. drops and xp) for that?

I have to agree with Gaile on the Urgoz nerf. I farm a lot, but never did this one. Still, an exploit could be considered using a broken game mechanic to gain an edge. This was definately broken. They were supposed to challenge the player, not provide easy loot.
And A.Net is definitly not against farming. In my memory, there are three that have been nerfed. Trolls, Griffons, and Ettins. While I missed was not playing then, appearently they were lucrative.
If A.Net was against farming, they would have made prot spirit Target Other Ally by now. That would have been the end of it

Let me state my opinion on farming.

Imo, farming should require equal effort to match the reward. Its what i would consider "balanced" farming runs vs "imbalanced" farming runs. This isnt calculating the quality of random drops however.

For example, Chest Farming. Chest farming, imo is a very balanced farming technique, because it requires an investment of time and money in order to even out and make a profit.

The Urgoz Farming run was very imbalanced. It was too easy, the rewards were too good, and took very little investment in time and almost ZERO chance of failure.

So i guess to further explain my original post:

Anet has nothing against solo farming for players, as long as there is an effort by the player, and time invested and a chance for the player to fail, where the individual farmer's own skill can determine their survival.

If a farming run fails to meet those standards, and creates opportunities to gain massive amounts of gold, XP, items, etc without needing to rely on the player itself, then it goes to the nerf chopping block.

Sorry, the only assurances i make are that things will be nerfed. Im not Anet or Gaile.

Well some farming spots would be completely pointless to nerf since they do not have enough gold/item output to even match the amount of effort it takes to farm there.

I didnt have a first point. Anet is not against farming. Thats a fact.

The day i will agree that they hate farming is the day they kill the 55 monk.

I think we have the incompetent George Lucas type. Id rather have the Will Wright type

Anet = Good intentions, bad execution.

I agree. At least on the pre-existing collector helmets they could've made them so we could have Radiant insignia attached to them. I understand why they made newly obtained collector's items without insignia (because people would farm them and salvage them), but it sucks for those of us who had them.

Oh well, it's only money. I need to go shopping for new armor combos.

Despite the cleverness of someone figuring out how to cheese Urgoz -- and I'll sure "cheese" instead of "exploit" if you prefer -- it was not practical to leave that little "something" in place. Sure some of you like the loopholes. Sure some of you don't like getting stopped from a fountain of income for just about zero effort. Pennies from heaven and all that. But despite comments to the contrary, those were ill-gotten gains, far in excess of that intended, far over what you could or should realistically earn in any given period of time.

if any one of you can say that you truly believe "That was the way that was intended to work, we're playing the game with mechanics that did not require another look and did not require fixing" then I'm afaid I'm going to have to disagree. Or call you delusional. Your choice.

For those who don't know about the situation in Urgoz, it went like this: Enter area, cast a few spirits, run like heck while monsters with bad AI suicide against the spirits, dropping bountiful golds and other items. Wash rinse and repeat. In about 30 seconds. Brilliant gameplay against solid game design, or a bug or exploitable bit of code that needed fixing? You figure it out.

Edit: We are not against farming. We've lifted the blooming anti-farming code! We're against leaving in place an error that resulted in those capitalizing upon it gaining undeserved income, putting a hit on those who did not know of the "something" or chose not to use it.

Well by your definition alone then all the -5 ep items and that out there are exploits too since you use from prevention of edenial. However you want to say it was not using broken game mechanics at all. I dont know about you BUt id rather not have them suicide on me but something else, and thats what ppl where doing. nothing broken about that at all. Lets add stuff liek spel breaker too and the other stuff also must be broken at the same time, since they prevent the damage comming to you.

Holy crap, QQ more please about the Urgoz farm nerf. It was a stupid thing to leave in the game; every one and a half minutes killing a bunch of guys that literally suicide for you, potentially dropping golds? No the gold drops weren't particularly good, but loot scaling doesn't apply to gold weps, and that's what people were after. Gold weapons dropped from this run far, far faster than you could get anywhere else in the game, period. Anyone denying that this needed to be closed is just sad that their source of gold weps has just dried up.

Also, I'm amazed how short this community's memory is. Weren't these boards positively ABLAZE with threads proclaiming unlockable pvp skins as the bane of pve, and sure to make pve chars obsolete? Now we find that they're very hard to unlock, and to top it off you can't even delete your pvp char (effectively making it a pve char that you don't pay real gold to outfit, because you're investing in it), and people are up in arms. What gives?

Um no, then everybody would be using Earth Ele's.

About the only thing you do have right is the pennies part. Like I said 9k for an hour at isnt that much and there are other places that you get more than that. Ill let you decide about it all right tell me this what you do. Let them sacrifice themselfs on yourself or something else? I highly doubt you are gonna say that yes youd just let them sacrifice on yourself. So that would mean yes its good gameplay against solid game design. So whats next then traps Since like spirits you say is no effort either as you just lay them and run. Let your enemies just lollygag right into them. And yes trapping is just like that.

Now that part of the update is good and its about time the PvPer's get there change of stuff and it was added correctly, now we just need the excusive stuff from PvP alowwed to drop in PvE and it be perfect

It's sad that people are so blinded by elitism and greed to realize the truth. Thanks for fixing this

I'll take that as a modest concession that this was NOT an exploit

The way it was intended to work was to prevent 55's, and as such, it worked precisely as intended, like those chained soul guys in TOPK. Simple as that.

In case you missed the many, very long and well-documented threads, there is anti-farm code in Hard Mode, despite your claims to the contrary.

I'm not against this -- it's just your methodology and reasoning to us leaves something to be desired. More about that point can be read throughout this thread as posted by others.